The last time I wrote an Insider about Monsterpocalypse, I talked about how excited I was to talk more about the upcoming game at Lock & Load. Now as I sit and write this, Gen Con is only a few weeks away. That means I’m even more excited, because Gen Con will be everyone’s first chance to give the game a try.

Monsterpocalypse is a unique game of resource management and giant monster combat. We’ve played the game twice so far on our Tuesday Weekly Rumble Twitch stream. If you missed past episodes, you can also watch the videos on our YouTube channel. If you want to know more, download the full rulebook, which we recently released on Monsterpocalypse.com.

I want to go a little deeper into what you need to play and how you construct an army in this edition of the game, so you’ll understand what models work together and how you’ll be purchasing your force.

A Monsterpocalypse starter contains everything that one player needs to play. In addition to a monster and a small selection of units, the starter includes a rulebook, map, dice, debris tiles, and buildings (more on the buildings later).

Dice play a major role in the game. A starter has 26 of them, and it comes as a surprise to many people that they are all for one player. Each player needs the included 10 white dice and 10 red dice to track their resources in addition to using them for attacks, and the six blue dice are bonus dice players will often need to add to their rolls.

All the models in the game fall into three categories when it comes to building a force. There are two Agendas—Protectors and Destroyers—and there are buildings.

When you build a force, you first pick an Agenda. Protectors are the good guys of the story. They have joined forces, sometimes in the loosest of alliances, to defend the planet from those seeking to destroy it. The Destroyers are the bad guys, and though their goals vary, they are here to wreck the Earth. When the game launches, the Agendas will be reflected by the two starters. After more products roll out in the first few months of releases, there will be more monsters and units to choose from.

The first thing you add to a force is monsters. Each monster offers a unique mix of abilities and stats that sets it apart from the other monsters in the game. We’ve built this edition of the game around the two-monster fight; each player brings two monsters. Within an Agenda there are multiple monster choices, and often you will want to take monsters from two different Factions so you have a variety of options for taking on your foe. For example, a Protector player may want to take Defender X to maximize power-gathering and Terra Khan for his raw aggression. The possible combinations of monsters in an Agenda make building a force interesting, and as the game expands, the options just get wider.

After selecting your monster, you add units to your force. Only two rules limit your unit choices. First, you can only choose units from within your Agenda. Second, the number of monsters in the game controls the number of units in the force. When playing with one monster on each side, players are limited to 15 units. You can bring 20 units in two-monster games, and you can bring 25 units in three-monster games. Many of the monsters offer a modest synergy bonus for units from their Faction, but this doesn’t mean you’ll only want to bring units in your monster’s Faction. For example, Destroyer players will often find space for a Martian Menace Power Pod and a Saucer to deliver it to where it needs to be, regardless of what Faction their monsters belong to.

Regardless of which Agenda you choose, you will need buildings. A starter comes with six Apartment Buildings. Six is also the minimum number of buildings that each player needs to bring to a game, so the starter covers the basics in that category. Before the end of this year, we’ll be releasing resin building models to supplement the Apartment Buildings from the starter. These buildings all add interesting abilities to the force that controls them during a game. Each player can bring up to 12 buildings to a game, so you’ll often want a few copies of these more-useful buildings. They provide advantages like the Industrial Complex’s Fuel Depot rule, which grants all of your models +1 Speed for controlling that building and can prove to be the difference between reaching an important position and not making it to where you need to be to win.

I hope this cleared up any lingering questions you’ve had about force construction and the basics of game. Visit us at Gen Con to get a demo or play in the very first Crush Hour tournament!