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.