Monster Menace America is a board game depicting a battle between rival monsters to destroy as much of the country as possible before duking it out in a final, winner-take-all show down. This may not be classic board gaming at its best, but few fans of giant monsters can say they wouldn’t at least love to give it a whirl.
The Pieces
The components of Monsters Menace America are very nice, just as we can expect from Avalon Hill. There are miniature monsters, jet fighters and tanks, cardboard character cards, playing cards, and more. All these pieces are attractive and durable, and make the tactile side of the game quite enjoyable.
The monster figures are the first thing you are likely to notice when you open the box. These six figures – depicting a giant lizard, a giant ape, a giant mantis, a purple blob, a floating eyeball and a giant crab-monster – are all cast in rubber plastic so durable you could use knock them around with a baseball bat and not leave a mark. The sculpts are a little simple, unfortunately, and the paint jobs leave much to be desired.
The armed forces pieces are simple and attractive. Tanks, cruise missiles, and fighter jets are all cast in one-color plastic, with a different color depicting each branch of the service. There are also two other figures, the Mecha Monster and Captain Colossus, cast in solid gray.
Two small decks of cards show the monster mutations and military research advances that players can acquire as they play. The art on these cards is absolutely awesome, and usually hysterical.
Thick cards show statistics for the six monsters, the two military monsters, and the five branches of the military (counting the National Guard). These are not all that colorful, but they are well designed for quick visual access. Monster health points are tracked with little plastic clips that attach to the sides of the cards, but unfortunately, after just two games, the monster cards tend to get good scratches in them from these clips.
Infamy tokens – little cardboard triangles – are the same thick card, and the flaming destruction depicted on the tokens is great. The stomp tokens, which are hexagonal markers, show a big footprint in shades of brown, and are also very durable.
The board itself suffers from a case of utility over function. While it is easy to read and play, it is not very eye-catching. Eye candy takes a definite back seat to ease of play, which is fine, but a little disappointing for Avalon Hill. The board gains back a few style points by allowing monsters to stomp such landmarks as Graceland (heresy!), Area 51, and Three-Mile Island.
The Game
Game play is quite simple, though it is not hard to accidentally miss a step. There are four phases – move, battle, encounter and deploy. They are simple to follow, and the rules are easy.
Every monster card states how far a monster can move. Monsters will generally stomp from city to military base to landmark, destroying all in their path and gaining health as they eat cities, infamy as they smash landmarks and bases, and blasting through enemy forces.
Military forces move at the same time as monsters. The military cards tell players how far each can move. If a player can amass a large army and assault a monster, they can stunt his growth and possibly damage him enough to weaken him before the final assault.
After a monster moves, he must battle any military units in his space. Military units sent into the same space as an opponent’s monster also start a fight. Resolving fights is easy, and usually results in lots of smashed-up military vehicles.
Each unit and monster has a defense rating. The monster makes the first attack, and may attack three times to destroy enemy units. A standard die is rolled, compared to the defense of the targeted unit, and if it is high enough, the unit is scrap metal. After the monster attacks three times, the units attack once each. This happens for two rounds, and if there are still units standing, the monster has to retreat. He also takes a few hits if the units were able to damage him.
The best part of the game happens when a monster stomps something. If a monster stomps a city, he gains health points. If he stomps a military base, he gets a point of infamy and permanently destroys an opponent’s military unit. If he stomps a landmark, such as the World’s Biggest Ball of Twine or the Vegas Strip, he gets two points of infamy. After a monster stomps a spot, a stomp token is placed there to show that the space was reduced to rubble.
Monsters can also encounter mutation spots, such as Three-Mile Island or the Nuclear Test Bombing Site. The monster then gains a mutation, like the ability to fly or shoot eye beams at incoming cruise missiles.
After the monster encounters its space, the player may deploy forces. This usually consists of placing up to three units on military bases, but may be forfeited in favor of drawing a military research card. These cards allow players to airlift opponents to the middle of Montana, shoot antimatter rays, take control of the National Guard, or summon one of the two giant military monsters.
Once all the stomp tokens have been placed on the board, leaving a swath of destruction across the land of the free, the monster challenge begins. Monsters proceed to the showdown spots, where they do final battle against their opponents. The winner is the monster who can defeat all his foes, while the losers all get sent to Hollywood to be cheap effects.
The campy feel of the game and the funny theme make Monster Menace America a very light-hearted game. It is difficult to get overly serious about a game that allows players to destroy the Talking Paul Bunyan Statue. The fun theme goes a long way.
Unfortunately, the fun stops at the game play. Unless you like games that require almost no strategy, and can result in maddening overturns by the player who is losing badly, you may want to just laugh at the pieces and not play the game. Every time we played, the winner was just the player that got luckiest. The dice are too fickle to count on the odds to protect the better player, and the end of the game ends up rendering the time leading up to it almost pointless.
Summary and Observations
While I love the campy humor of Monsters Menace America, and was quite taken with the giant monster figures, I cannot recommend the game to any serious gamers. While the game play is deep enough to be engaging, it is far too arbitrary and leaves too much to the dice at the end of the game. I still laugh about getting to stomp the Corn Museum, though.
Style: 4 – The pieces are all sturdy and reasonably attractive, but I expect a game about colorful characters to be considerably more colorful.
Substance: 2 – Decent rules are completely crushed by the most arbitrary and luck-infested endgame I’ve seen in a long time.
