Monsterpocalypse: Unboxing The Smashville Campaign
We’ve got our hands on the new Smashville box for MonPoc, let’s open it up and see what’s inside!
What’s In The Box
Inside you have a large blister that contains the Construction Yard building, 18 new assets models(7 unique types with multiple of each type), and all the relevant stat cards to go with them. You’ll also find the campaign rulebook so you can put all this stuff to good use. It’s also important to note that the Construction Yard and assets can be used in regular, non-campaign, games as well.
Stat Cards
The Construction Yard is the way you build the following 7 assets. Assets are small models roughly the size of units and occupy a single space on the board. In some cases, they are flat and have the Insignificant rule allowing your units and monsters to stand on them. The Emergency Barricade asset actually goes on a line between 2 spaces and hinders movement while providing a DEF bonus.
Tons of possibilities here and lots to explore. The Security Bunker immediately jumps out at me as super interesting. Helping you lockdown building while preventing a single enemy model from denying you control. It’s important to note ‘enemy model‘ here because that means monsters as well. With a Security Bunker an enemy Monster next to your building won’t cause you to lose control of it!
Campaign Book
Something I really like is that Smashville campaigns are designed to be played with a group of players, each round either issuing challenges to each other or being paired randomly. This could easily be a weekly event at your FLGS or a single day experience at a convention. It also works just fine for 2 players as well. I won’t cover everything, but here are some high-level bullet points about the campaign.
- A campaign is several rounds, called a block, followed by a Home City defense round
- At the start of the campaign, players choose an existing map to be their Home City
- A Home City starts as mostly apartments and is improved over time based on the results of each round and/or other effects.
- Players choose 4 Monsters from the same Agenda to be their campaign Roster
- Your 4 Monsters are available each game, but playing Monsters in back to back games causes Fatigue (-1 or -2 Health depending on if they were destroyed)
- Players start with 12, 1 cost, Grunt units in their roster and gain access to the additional unit by improving their Home City
- 9 unique scenarios that are played throughout the campaign
- After a Home City defense round any buildings destroyed during the game can lose their abilities in the following games or become destroyed completely and removed from your Home City!
Some Home City building rules.
Examples of a blank Home City map before the start of a game. Here is where you keep track of the buildings you’ve constructed and if they have been destroyed.
Wrap Up
A Smashville campaign is perfect for players wanting to add some narrative to their MonPoc games. It lets you play several ‘standard’ feeling games using unique scenarios. Those games will power up your Home City letting you prepare yourself for the Home City Defense round you know is coming. You don’t need to be a seasoned MonPoc player to jump into a campaign but you will need to own a few additional Monsters and Units if you only have a Starter Box. A Smashville Campaign is very modifiable so any group out there could easily change the campaign to fit their needs.
What do you think about the Smashville Campaign? What 4 Monsters would you choose for your Roster?
