Monsters Ravage America!
Published by The Avalon Hill Game Company
Game Design by J.C. Connors and Ben Knight
$39.95Avalon Hill has been exploring new territory in several recent releases, like Air Baron and Princess Ryan's Star Marines. Bright maps and components, short and sweet rulebooks -- basically the opposite end of the spectrum from the ultimate grognard grail that is Advanced Squad Leader. Their upcoming (as I write this) release, Monsters Ravage America!, continues this trend.
What's in the box? Well, my preview packet included a map of the United States (and parts of Canada and Mexico), a 16-page illustrated rulebook (only half of which is devoted to the basic rules), decks of Monster, Mutation, and Research cards, displays for the four branches of the armed forces, colored plastic counters for flying military units, and cardboard counters for everything else. There are also plastic stands for the monster counters, so that they stand up like Cardboard Heroes (although they are twice as wide and half again as tall). You need two dice, although I assume the retail game will include them.
The object is to win the monster challenge, defeating the other players' monsters and snagging the title King of the Giant Monsters. Your monster must have patience, though, because you can't challenge the other monsters until you've inflicted some heavy casualties on the cities of America. To make sure that you get to eat the best cities, . . .
This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.
Article publication date: July 17, 1998
Copyright © 1998 by Steve Jackson Games. All rights reserved. Pyramid subscribers are permitted to read this article online, or download it and print out a single hardcopy for personal use. Copying this text to any other online system or BBS, or making more than one hardcopy, is strictly prohibited. So please don't. And if you encounter copies of this article elsewhere on the web, please report it to webmaster@sjgames.com.