The month of May is an exciting one for Monsterpocalypse
because it sees the return of two old friends that a lot of players have been
waiting for.

When we rebooted the game in the fall of 2018, we focused
on the original six factions that launched originally back in 2008. In the time
since then, we’ve only added more models to each of those factions, rounding
them out with more monsters and buildings. That means when building a force, Protectors
players could only choose from G.U.A.R.D., Shadow Sun Industries, or Terrasaurs
up until now. Likewise, Destroyers players could only choose from Planet
Eaters, Lords of Cthul, or Martian Menace. But, for anyone who isn’t familiar
with the releases from the first edition of Monsterpocalypse, there were six
more factions. And the month of May brings the first monsters from the second
wave of original factions into the new edition of the game.

On the Protectors’ side, the Tritons are reappearing from
the ocean’s darkest depths. Their first monster is Krakenoctus, a massive
bipedal cephalopod wielding a nuclear submarine in one of its many tentacles.

Redeveloping this monster was a lot of fun. When writing
the rules for any miniature, my goal is to tell the story of how that model exists
in the world of the game, but introducing new concepts to a game is also very
important. Krakenoctus practically wrote his own rules, so all I had to focus
on was what he meant to the state of the game. My thoughts were to give him a
significant weakness compared to the baseline stats of monsters and see what
that let him excel at.

The first of these weaknesses was obvious. Being a sea
creature with no visible means of exceptional movement, he never has the High
Mobility icon. This means he’ll always be hemmed in by enemy models and buildings.
To accentuate my concept about his lack of mobility, I also gave him the
slowest speed of any monster released so far. At SPD 5, this big squid thing
will have a hard time easily crossing the map and that felt like how he should
play. For a final small weakness, I also decided that Krakenoctus wouldn’t have
a Blast attack in alpha form.

With all of those weaknesses established, it was time to
see which dials we could turn up a bit. I really wanted to get across the idea
that Krakenoctus was a bit slippery when it came down to trying to hit him.
With all of those waving tentacles and that slimy skin, I went with Defense 9
in both forms and 12 total health. That makes sure that taking him down is
significant work and should compensate for him having trouble closing the
distance with enemy monsters. After those base stats, I also wanted to give him
a defensive ability, and I settled on Grappler. This, too, was inspired by his
many arms and the idea that he can easily keep foes from climbing over
buildings or hopping over hazards to get at him.

Next, I added a few rules to slightly compensate for that
lack of mobility in an offensive way. Reach is the most obvious of these. This
ability allows Krakenoctus to make Brawl attacks from one space away from his
target, meaning he has the same threat range as most other monsters when it
comes to punching something, but he needs to work a bit more to power attack
someone. Fling on his Brawl attacks gives him a pseudo ranged attack as long as
he has an enemy unit to toss at something, giving him a little counterplay
against ranged opponents. Lastly, I gave him Lightning Attack. This ability
allows a model to make an extra Brawl attack during a turn, meaning Krakenoctus
can smack a lot of things at once or focus on an enemy monster with multiple
attacks.

The final ability I gave alpha Krakenoctus is my favorite
and is the one I feel adds the most to the story of what he looks like on the
table. Waterlogged allows him to move through hazards without taking damage,
meaning he has a very restricted form of extra mobility, and any debris tile
showing a hazard that he walks onto gets flipped to the rubble side.

In hyper form, this monster retains a lot of basic alpha
abilities but loses the ability to make multiple brawl attacks (representing
his arms being injured later in the fight—maybe Gorghadra even bit off a couple
of them). He gains Slingshot, which lets him swat or fling units even farther,
and Windup, which give him super damage swat and throw power attacks. This
should mean that he stays a threat into the late game when many things that add
damage to attacks, like buildings and hazards, are gone. Finally, he gains a
short-ranged blast attack. I wanted his blast to represent spitting ink, so I
gave him an ability to disrupt his opponent’s power dice.

On the other side of the table, Destroyers are getting a
monster that looks and acts as different from Krakenoctus as possible.
Hammerklak is the first Subterran Uprising monster in this edition. These mole-themed
creatures from the inner Earth are here to wreck the surface world with a mix
of biological and mechanical beasts.

I’ve always loved the look of Subterrans, and Hammerklak
exemplifies the ideas I have for the faction in this new edition. I want the
Subterran Uprising to have a lot of movement tricks and not be entirely
straightforward to deal with. So, I first decided that this mole monster would
be fast. Hammerklak has a base SPD of 7 and High Mobility, meaning getting
around the map is pretty easy for him. In addition, he has Action: Sprint.
Sprint on a monster is a bit like a super step, allowing a monster to move
three spaces for a single action die. For a final small movement trick, I gave
him Side Step, allowing him to move three spaces when missed by an attack.

I wanted Hammerklak to be so much about movement that he
enhanced the movement of his allies as well. It was easy to come up with an
excuse for this since he is erupting out of the ground. The Tunneler ability
gives High Mobility to any allied model that starts an advance near Hammerklak,
allowing your other monsters to slip past buildings or enemy models to get into
the perfect position.

I also like the idea that the Subterran Uprising is a
sneaky faction. Mobility and sneakiness makes them a sort of evil mirror to the
Shadow Sun Syndicate. The idea that Hammerklak is underground when moving lent
itself well to the concept of Cloak, making it difficult for enemies to shoot
him. This defensiveness and speed meant he was going to be fairly difficult to
damage, so I decided he would be on the small side when it came to health.

Offensively, I wanted Hammerklak to be middle of the road
but also a little unpredictable. Crunch makes one of his attacks do super damage,
but it only triggers if an action die in the roll is a super strike double hit.
This means he has a way to do a lot of damage in alpha form, which is rare, but
it is never a guarantee.

When Hammerklak goes into hyper mode, he sheds most of his
subtlety, but his Defense goes up by 1 to show that he’s still a little
difficult to attack. He keeps Sprint, but he doesn’t help friends or dodge
attacks anymore. He trades those tricks for great dice stats on his attacks and
a couple of really useful abilities. Energy Cycle pairs great with Crunch since
it gives a rebate on action dice. Hammerklak can roll an extra action die in an
attack to get a better chance for a super strike, and if the attack hits, that
extra die returns to the active dice pool. Power Gorge on both his Brawl and
Power attacks mean he’ll get extra power dice for killing units and makes Stomp
power attacks really attractive with Hammerklak.

These two new monsters are going to shake things up in
Monsterpocalypse in really interesting ways, and they are only the first of the
classic second wave factions to be coming to the game this year. You can pick
up Krakenoctus, Hammerklak, and the
Statue of Liberty building this month.