In Warmachine Mk2 and Mk3, theme lists used advantages like free models or bonus rules to compensate for the limitations of sticking to a theme. I was thinking it might be nice to do something similar to “reward” running mono-faction in Monpoc? I’m not talking about anything official, I just mean like a homebrew rule, something that might make it easier for new players to get into the game
I’m not sure what would make sense as a reward though; perhaps starting with free Power dice, or maybe something like when you’re placing your buildings at the start, you are allowed to perform one building swap or something? Any ideas?
I would not, both for balance concerns and design concerns.
On the balance front: some factions are amazing at playing the mono-faction game. I’d put Necroscourge and Vegetyrants up there, along with the revamped Shadow Sun Syndicate and maybe even Ubercorp as decent/strong contenders. The good ones don’t need to get better.
I played through the Dimensional Doorways league recently, where one of the perks was starting with 3 free power dice. Free resources like that really tip the first-turn advantage hard. Potentially having ~8+ power dice to work with on monster turn 1 is a massive advantage, possibly even enough to convince somebody to go through with the turn 1 power attack.
From the design perspective: the game is intentionally designed for cross-faction mixing and matching . In the general case, playing mono-faction is simply not intended. Some factions can do it fairly strongly, mind you, but they’re the intentional exceptions.
I don’t think there’s a particularly elegant solution for playing mono-faction because of the aforementioned imbalance between factions. I think to make mono-faction play more fun, you need movement tricks in every faction and something that allows you to get more units out onto the table. For factions that lack these things, just giving them general access to like Metastasize and Empower once per turn without needing to secure a building could probably even out the playing field, but you’d need to have a tier list for the factions which can be a feels-bad.
I do hope that that an official faction pure rules set is released at some point though. I don’t particularly want to engage with the game in that way, but it is an incredibly common request, so I’m sure it would be good for the overall health of the game.
Oh well. I’m just worried that new players who get excited and jump in buy buying one or two whole factions, then realise the game isn’t meant to be played that way, might be disappointed and disillusioned.
Well, maybe they’ll get excited when they realise how easy it is to buy new models and slot them into their lists, rather than having to buy a whole new faction. Fingers crossed I guess.
I do think the Dimensional Doorway escalation league does a decent job of allowing for faction pure stuff, especially if established players just handicap themselves by either not taking perks or being several levels below the newbies.
In the last four or five months, I’ve helped about eight or so new players get into the game. Some of them wanted to play faction-pure (two Empire of the Apes players, strangely enough, plus a Vegetyrants player, plus a couple of Terrasaurs-only folks), and some of them started mixing and matching stuff that looked cool (Necroscourge + Cthul, Cthul + Planet Eaters, etc.).
The mono-faction players are having fun, and the mix-and-match players are having fun. Nobody cares that there might be a power level difference. Right now, for true new players, it’s chiefly true that the sharper and/or more experienced player is going to win.
Could I razzle-dazzle my way to a win with my standard 18-uniques-out-of-my-20-units unit setup, plus my broader building selection? Sure, absolutely. But could I also secure a win with Defender X + Sky Sentinel + G-Tanks + Strike Fighters? Also, absolutely, because I have waaaaay more game experience under my belt.
Everybody is cool with this. They’re having fun smashing cities with their monsters and living a giant monster movie. That’s all that matters.
Or, even smarter, not going for the “best” perks. Could I have grabbed the 8 free power dice and the extra SPD and similar things and really gotten nuts? Sure. But I tried for the more fun, wacky combos.
RNG 10 blasts are deeply amusing. Not great, but very funny!
