RETRO: Destroy Sheboygan With a Monster Of Your Own Design
Everyone’s always had the secret dream of destroying Sheboygan. No one talks it, but we all have that lurking in the back of our minds, nagging constantly. It’s time we do something about that.
As soon as anyone learns of the existence of the Sheboygan, Wisconsin, USA, they immediately feel the need to eat it. The whole city, gobbled up. It can’t be helped. Sorry Sheboygans, it’s the reality of the situation. And if you’re just now learning of Sheboygan, I’m sorry for bestowing upon you this dark and creeping need. Luckily, there’s a way to feed that need without keeping the Sheboygan reconstruction crews busy.
The Creature That Ate Sheboygan is a competitive 2-player combat game with army buying/monster building mechanics.
The Creature That Ate Sheboygan was made in 1979 by SPI. You might know SPI from some other games they’ve made.
The Creature That Ate Sheboygan might seem like a pretty big step away from the logistical nightmare that is Campaign for North Africa, but don’t you worry, The Creature That Ate Sheboygan also has charts and tables!
Unlike Campaign for North Africa, The Creature That Ate Sheboygan is actually pretty quick to learn. Each token for the human player shows the unit’s Attack, Range, and Movement.
On the human player’s turn, they will move their units around the board and work to get within combat range. They do have options for tanks and artillery with much ranger range than the police or infantry, but all combat works the same. The human attacker an combine as many units as they want into a single combat, to combine their attack scores. Then that attack score is ratio’d with the monster’s defense score and matched with a random die roll to determine the outcome. Check Table 6.4 in the image above, if you’re curious.
The game ends when all human units are destroyed or the monster is killed. If all the humans were killed, the monster wins! If the monster was killed, then it goes to scoring. Based on the amount of damage the monster was able to cause before dying, they could win, even in death.
Sounds neat and all, but you were hoping for a little bit more flavor, you say? Well, hold onto your butts because this game lets you design your own monster!
Kind of like Spore, but with less disappointing late game content.
At the start of each game, players are given a number of points, based on the chosen scenario or by just going full Who’s Line Is It Anyway? with it. For the human player, these are used to buy units. Each unit costs points equal to its combat strength. Remember, from left to right, it’s attack strength, range, movement.
For the monster, the real fun starts before the game even begins. The monster allocates their points among their attack, defense, building destroying capability, movement and most importantly, special abilities!
- Fire breathing
- Lightning throwing
- Web spinning
- Blinding light
- Radition
- Flying
- and more!
This is where The Creature That Ate Sheboygan really shines. This allows huge amounts of replayability as players can try out new monster builds, new armies, with new tactics and strategies. And, as with nearly every SPI game, you can find the rules and a full print ‘n play version on their site.
And in case anyone was curious….
Seems pretty close, really.
Thanks for reading!
