Terra Khan- The Tester's Dilemma

Terra Khan- The Tester's Dilemma

I've been an avid Planet Eaters fan even before I knew I wanted to play. So to say my second faction out of the base six(Terrasuars) is like the red-headed Bastard Step Son is an understatement. In particular I've NEVER been able to win a game, or even make a game close, using Terra Khan.
I love Terra Khan. When I got into this game 3-4 months ago I knew that whatever monster I got out of my starter would be my secondary faction(unless I pulled a second Gorghadra, and then I'd only play one faction. So when I pulled Terra Khan, I was excited. I thought, "sweet, the Godzilla monster, I can now also grab Rodan at some point and the other three". They were always intended as my secondary faction. So in the last week after finding out the prize for this weeks tournament(mega Tyrranix) I decided, hey look, Terra Khan.
Now as I began testing I discovered this might be worse than I thought(I've even been considering playing the secondary faction for testing purposes, Rogzor). Alright so let's look at Terra Khan himself before we make any judgments.

First His Alpha, because we have no choice in this(hint hint PP, i want some alternate alphas!)

Wow, he's not bad for an TK
Speed: 6
D:6
Brawl:8 *2
Blast(long) 5*1
P; 6*2
Hp: 5

Abilities: Feeding Frenzy(brawl), Munch(Brawl), Berserk(blue), Flank, and Motivator.

Alright so clearly those abilities support two themes. 1) Unit support. With motivator, Flank, Berserk you are clearly supposed to be up in your opponents grill with units with Terra Khan standing beside them so they can just kick the monster. Also Feeding Frenzy makes TK want units next to your opponents monster so he can do that extra damage with brawl.

The other theme, though light, is unit destruction(though to be fair this more supports the idea that you want to be more defensive with TK than you do with say a destroyers monster.

Despite having a blast attack, this form does not support blasting. You really are better off using the extra dice to step or brawl a building for health and or p-dice.

Next we have Ultra Khan.

UK's stats are
S:8
D:5(ick)
Brawl: 9*4 (holy crap)
Blast(short) 7*2
p:7*2
HP: 6

abilities: Lightning attack(brawl), Disrupt blast, Explosion Blast, and Weapon master power attack.

UK is much a change in strategy. No longer do you want to hold back and use your units to support trying to beat on your opponent, this is all about rushing the gates and doing as much damage as you can. Right off the bat you can do one of two things. Brawl twice with dice in play(this should come out to two points of damage) or use a power attack with weapon master. Depending on your available a-dice(which unless you had a full p pool or just won't gain p die from power up, you power up bringing you down to 7-8 A die). at 7 or 8 A-die you really will benefit from doing a power attack since you are likely to gain building damage one way or another. Even if you just use a swat you can make sure to gain something out of it. In other words you want to be using Power attacks over brawl attacks and use the brawl attacks when you are out of P dice.
He can blast, but that's only really good for early disruption, there are easier and better ways to kill units, and if you honestly feel that dropping someone out of hyper is better than killing the hyper form, be my guest, disrupt away.

Lastly we come to my after testing least fave. Mega Khan.

Mk's stats look like this:

S:8
D:5(ick)
Brawl: 9*2
Blast(short) 6*1
p:8*3
HP: 6
something looking odd there? You just traded B die and pools in brawl and blast for a extra pool and b-die for power...
Maybe his abilities will support this idea?
Brawl chain attack, Charge, super rampage, and terrify.

Oh dear god this guy is bad. Chain attack is the single worst way to deal extra damage. this is because it doesn't use dice in play. Terrify isn't really useful either because most of the powerful abilities don't require adjacency, and there are more problematic blasting units than brawling units.
This leaves super rampage and charge as his only good abilities, and charge is only marginally good and can't be used if you are using rampage.

I hate Mega Khan because he offers no synergy within himself. At least UT uses his abilities to make up for his own shorting comings with some attacks so you actually can make a variety of strategies.
Mega Khan's best strategy is to turtle. You field five Mt. Terra's, five apartment buildings, and then an Insurance building and a Imperial state building. ISB is the best P-die production off a single building. Mt T. is No fly zone allowing you to slow down other monsters. And also fire. And then Apartment buildings are obviously Health.
If you didn't know, insurance building is the best building in the game. Shuffle and insurance do wonders for you. Buildings die left and right and this pays you for it. Then Shuffle is great if you need to take that turn where you really need that extra A-dice to take another turn. Be it monster or unit(I'm known for taking up to 7 Monster turns in a row)
Then Mega Khan does things like run( not far for this to work), punch your opponents monster and rampage back to your side of the map. Can't get to your opponents monster without 8 steps? Then make sure you have full pools or else it's not worth using chain attack. I learned with xaxor without perfect dice management, Chain attack helps no one but your opponent.

so lets assume your running ultra Khan.
I judge a defense of a monster based on its defense plus health and then a (-1) for each point bellow 7 on defense. That makes Ultra Khan a 11(-2). Alpha Khan is then a 11(-1). Therefore you either need to be really defensive with Ultra Khan(which again with his abilities does not synergize) or be very aggressive.
This is all well and good, except his Alpha clearly wants to be played defensively. And this comes to my fault with Terra Khan. he doesn't Synergize with himself. I love both Xaxor and Gorghadra because both have a plan and can be played the same. Any monster that requires you to completely change the way you play the game is going to throw you off, especially when you are knocked from one form to the other beyond your control(i.e. disrupt or death of a form) and can mess with any strategies you've built. If your playing as UK or MK and are going nuts at your opponents monster only to flop and roll and get smashed into three buildings and lose your form you are suddenly in the Unit heavy leader form but with no units prepared to support your new situation.

I will admit, there are play style issues going about for me. I'm a far more aggressive player in miniatures(I come from playing Tyranids in 40k) and this is working against me. But I'm also a power attack heavy player. I find that the most damage, control and disruption comes from performing power attacks. And yeah therefore Negation gives me trouble, but there are still ways around that.
Terra Khan, and much of the T-saurs units feel that they are built for turtling. This makes it hard to win timed games. I don't agree with fielding a monster who can't win the timed matches. Because all tournaments are going to have them. This plus his lack of synergy for me to build a unit force upon makes him a subpar monster in my book.
Therefore If you must play TK, play Ultra. But ultimately I can't recommend him.

We will see as time goes on if I finish this series and review the other four T-saurs or if I take the easy way and do an article for the Planet Eaters. I might, if I get any response for it, recommend some of the new faction monsters once I have a better idea of the field.