Cartographer: dolomite13
An introduction to the Monsters map
In this world, wizards battle to become the most powerful. Beware, this journey is not without risk. You will need monsters as an army, but the monsters are in the shade of the stone that matters: The Powerstone. Capture the Powerstones and cast spells on your enemies in an ultimate attempt to reign over the Caverns of Power.
Classification
Size: Large – 88 regions.
Complexity: High, due to the features.
Maximum amount of players: 8
Features
- Starting positions, starting neutrals
- Killer neutrals: Mind Blast (resets to 3 neutral), every wizards Shield (resets to 8 neutral)
- Troop decay: Lightning Bolt (loses 2 per turn)
- Bombardments: Lightning Bolt bombards the Powerstones and every wizards Shield
- Auto-deploy: +1 per turn on every wizard
- Objective: Control all Powerstones for one round.
Borders
- All Monsters (Rev, Rox, etc.) have normal borders and assault adjacent monsters or Powerstones.
- Runebound Monsters one-way assault the Shield of the corresponding wizard, they also assault adjacent Monsters.
- Shield one-way assaults the wizard it protects.
- Wizards one-way assault their corresponding Runebound Monster (Rayden + Rog, etc.)
- Powerstones one-way assault their corresponding spells: Mind Blast and Lightning Bolt.
- Mind Blast one-way assaults every Runebound Monster.
- Lightning Bolt one-way bombards every Powerstone and every Shield.
Bonuses
- Wizard + corresponding Runebound Monster (+2 troops deploy)
- Powerstone (+3 troops deploy)
- Wizard (+1 autodeploy)
- Territory bonus only counts towards Monsters
Basic strategy
In short, you should get to the nearest Powerstone as soon as you can. Deploy on your wizard and take the corresponding Runebound Monster for the +2 bonus. The handful of Monsters you get across the map are close to worthless and aren't used 90% of the time. When the dice allow you, go for the nearest Powerstone. Make sure you can hold it and start assaulting your enemies from your Powerstone. You can choose to bombard (Lightning Bolt) their Powerstones to make sure they can't do the same to you or you can assault (Mind Blast) their Runebound Monsters and take over what they have. You need to outnumber your enemy, so if the dice are against you, be patient and wait until you have a bigger stack of troops.
Once you've broken your enemy's defense, it's important to keep breaking it every turn, so the enemy is unable to build up a force of its own. This will cost you troops, but contains the game in your favour, until you are strong enough to take over completely.
Settings
Fog of War
Fog of War defines the gameplay a lot. I'd recommend using Fog of War, so you always have the element of surprise. Without fog, a game between two players knowing the basic strategy will be decided by dice. With fog, basic strategy is necesarry, but an upset is always possible. Monsters is quite similar to other maps with starting positions in this respect; most people play Fog of War on Feudal War, Age of Realms and the likes.
1 v 1
You start with 4 wizards and a handful of random Monsters in the corners of the map. It is wise to get a Runebound Monster as soon as possible for the bonus of 2 troops.
From this point on there are different strategies possible, the two most common strategies are:
* Get every corresponding Runebound Monster with the wizards for the +2 bonus and go for the Powerstone with a decent stack to assault the enemy.
* Get the nearest Powerstone and take Mind Blast or Lightning Bolt to assault your enemy in an early phase, making it impossible to develop bonus troops.
Experts that have played this map lots of time, use the following strategy every single time: Get to a Powerstone as soon as possible and assault Mind Blast to get the Runebound Monsters of the enemy. This will not only lower their bonus, but you can advance all troops, so you might also be able to assault further.
Doubles, triples, quadruples
In the case of a teamgame you have the same two strategies you can use in a 1v1, so that's up to you to decide. But this being a guide and all, I'll give you this advice: When analyzing games on this map, it has become apparent that in a teamgame, it's usually much more beneficial to deploy on one of the players and let him/her take the Runebound Monster and Powerstone as soon as possible, so (s)he can assault the enemy and prevent them from getting stronger. Keep assaulting the opposing team every turn to make sure they are unable to build up a bonus and an army. Like 1v1, you assault Mind Blast to assault your enemy from there.
No Spoils
When executing a perfect strategy, no spoils seems the way to go. I'm afraid it has to be mentioned though, that Monsters can be decided by the dice in the first two turns, especially when playing without spoils. No spoils gives you an equal fight and is definitely a good setting if your enemy doesn't know the basic strategy of the map.
Flat Rate
Spoils are interesting, because this map offers you easy-to-get bonuses that are hard to keep. When playing Flat Rate, it might secure your bonus, but it can also give you the opportunity to attack across the field with Lightning Bolt or Mind Blast. Flat Rate will make a Monsters game very dynamic, much more so than on a geographic map.
Escalating
Analyzing games on the Monsters map, it has become clear that when playing escalating 1v1 or team, the cards don't really matter. The sets will rise to 50, because of all the neutrals, but the team that was ahead in round 3, will win the game, if they play it out properly.
Escalating spoils in a standard game is completely different. I dare not write a guide for that, because of all the Monsters in the corner of the map, that make it very hard to sweep the field. It's best not to assault from the Monsters in the corners when playing fog, because you reveal your position. In an escalating game this is very valuable information that you shouldn't give away for free. An 8 player, standard, escalating, fog of war game on Monsters will definitely be a hell of a ride.
Nuclear, Zombie Spoils
The map is too big for these spoils to matter, so the No Spoils strategy applies.
Reinforcements
- Chained: The usual setting. Most of the time, you don't need to reinforce more than one stack, so Chained will suffice.
- Adjacent: Tricky, because of all the one-way assaults. Will definitely slow things down in a standard game, which could be used as an advantage. Choose this setting carefully.
- Unlimited: Most of the time you don't need to reinforce various stacks of troops, so this setting has no added value to this map.
- Parachute: Could be used to reinforce troops from Lightning Bolt, to avoid the -2 troop decay per turn. Parachute allows you to reinforce from the Monsters in the corner and those troops would've been useless otherwise.
- None: A great setting for Monsters. The one-way assaults make the amount of troops you advance to the assaulted territory far more important than the troops you reinforce.
Trench
Start attacking the Runebound Monster and the path to the Powerstone right away with the Trench setting. This is the basic strategy as well, but in Trench, there is no room for improvisation. You need the bonuses and every turn you don't collect them, your enemy will.
Mind Blast and Shield are a killer neutral, so those territories can assault once more after being assaulted, keep that in mind.
Lightning Bolt is a very useful spell to use in Trench, because it can bombard the enemy's Powerstone. Without Powerstones, the enemy can't do any severe damage to you and because of the Trench setting, bombarding the Powerstones will keep you safe.
Assassin
It'll be a lottery, because of the hidden Monsters in the corner of the map (assuming you play with Fog of War).
Tips for free
- Use Fog of War, it makes this map a lot more fun and less dice-decided.
- In a teamgame, don't be selfish. The team-effort comes first, even if that means deploying on your teammates the entire game.
- Check the legend several times, if you are unsure about the moves every territory has.
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