Gen Con has come and gone, and with it, the prerelease of Monsterpocalypse. Some of you grabbed starters and units at the convention, while some of you are still waiting patiently (or not) for the full release of the game in September.

If you missed it, the show was full of Monsterpocalypse fun. In addition to the starters and units that were for sale, we also had the con-exclusive Brewgrosh model, the alternate model that represents Cthugrosh taking a refreshment break while destroying a city. If you missed your chance to pick up the model during Gen Con, don’t worry: the regular Cthugrosh sculpt will be out in October, and there will be other chances to buy the exclusive sculpt in the future.

Our booth wasn’t just a place to buy Monsterpocalypse, though; we also had demo games going the entire weekend. An endless stream of players sat down at the tables to get their first taste of city-smashing fun.

And the booth wasn’t the only place that you could find Monsterpocalypse action at Gen Con. Saturday morning featured the first-ever Crush Hour Monsterpocalypse tournament. As the event approached, we chatted amongst ourselves, curiously speculating about how many people would get their models put together Thursday and Friday to be ready to throw down. When the time came, just two days after Monsterpocalypse went on sale, we had a great turnout of 20 people who played five rounds of awesome games.

One of my favorite things to do at conventions is to talk to people about the process of making games, and I had quite a few conversations with attendees about Monsterpocalypse. Since many of your reading this couldn’t attend, I’ll share a bit of what we discussed.

When we set out to resurrect Monsterpocalypse, we first started by playing games using the most current rules. We knew the game was solid, but we also thought there were aspects that could be reimagined. Over the course of a few weeks, we made decisions about what to change and what to keep based on what we thought would make the game the most fun it could be.

Our main goal was to streamline the amount of decisions that were necessary to play the game while still keeping it engaging. We wanted play to be a bit faster and for more monsters to be on the table at the same time without dragging the game down too much.

At its core, Monsterpocalypse is a resource management game. You have 10 white Action Dice that act as your primary resource. They are used to spawn units into play, make attacks, and perform special actions. Proper use of Action Dice will win you the game, but if you are not careful, you won’t have the dice available to do what you need to win. There are lots of things that Action Dice could be used for, but we wanted just the right amount of decision making in this new edition of Monsterpocalypse. As we tested the game more, we narrowed down what these dice were used for and came to a point where every decision felt like it had the right weight.

After looking at the core rules, we dug into the models. Everything in Monsterpocalypse has rules that are meant to invoke the character of the models and how they fight. As we looked over the rules of models, we noticed things that were very evocative but didn’t add a lot to the game. We also noticed rules that encouraged playstyles we did not want in the game. Lastly, we found that monsters weren’t quite awesome enough, and units could wear a monster down fairly quickly. In the end, we dialed everything in so monsters were the most important models in the game and were each distinct and interesting, and dealing with an opponent’s monster required one of your own.

As I write this, we’re only a few weeks away from the full release of Monsterpocalypse. If you didn’t get a chance to buy any at Gen Con, you can preorder through your local store and continue following our social media feeds, or read more (including the rules) at monsterpocalypse.com to get ready for your chance to destroy the world (or protect it) with giant monsters!