How a Destroyer player chooses his force - a monsterpocalypse article
This article may feel redundant for some of you. For others of you it will blow your mind at how simple this is to do.
First off, Pick your monster. I am going to show to separate line ups using similar(in my mind) styles of play.**
Xaxor/Ultra Xaxor and Mantacon/Mega Mantacon
Let us start with what my choice of units would be for each and then I will explain why and how to go about choosing the units.
Mantacon:
Chomper x3
Explodohawk x3
Destructomite x3
Crawler x2
Spy Fly x4
Xaxor:
Explodohawk x4
Explodhawk Shadow x1***
Destructomite x3
Crawler x3
Explodmite x3
As you can see, the two lists focus on similar themes, now lets explain what went into these numbers.
Mantacon: the Whys...
With Mega Mantacon, I always, Always, always want to include chompers. They are your easy access to play mistake heaven. now this can be either poor positioning, poor dice rolls, or anything but if they are siting next to a chomper, you move next to the chomper with lighting attack and feeding frenzy do 4 points of damage(and then run away with Hit and Run). Also chompers grant energy cycle which allows you to conserve dice, which in the mega form is needed since you'll be using A-dice to snacrafice*.
The spy flys are of course there because with swarm, even shooty-less swarm, they are the cheapest way to secure a power base. My motto with mantacon is dice conservation. Taking repeated monster turns is the name of the game here.
The remaining units are support. Explodohawks are the universal cheese machine. With a better brawl stat than some monsters, Explodohawks are fantastic at scaring your opponent into thinking twice about moving near one without killing it. They are an easy diversion.
Crawlers and destructomites serve the same purpose. They are their to drop your opponents defense down as low as you can get it. While an obvious strategy for any monster, with lightning attack and dice conservation you are looking at reducing the number of dice you need to throw on turn one, to perform the combo again on turn two.
The synergy here is to get Mantacon to do maximum damage each turn. If necessary use explodohawks for damage.
Xaxor:
This should be pretty obvious if you read the article last week.
Explodohawks are for doing damage. Charge gives them an extra boost dice. therefore the plan is to charge and hit the enemy monster whenever possible.
This also synergizes with Xaxor who is a ranged/power fighter.
Xaxor doesn't have access to the free movement from the Spy fly so using it becomes less optimal.
Xaxor then uses crawlers and Destructomites to secure buildings to build up power, and weaken anyone who dares try to get close. Secondary, is that you can then try and set it up so that you throw your opponent near your power base once it is no longer optimal to gain p-die, and thus giving you a late game home field advantage.
The explodomites use a combination of the two strategies. They work to build the power base, but also threaten(in a team capacity) to hit the enemy monster that gets too close.
So the idea behind building a good force is synergy. I locate key abilities that I feel are best supported by units. So on Xaxor I pinpointed the blue charge ability and used that to my advantage. With mantacon I focused on Lightning Attack. The idea, I find, is that if you pick an Alpha/Hyper form pair that synergizes, you are more likely to synergize with your units.
And with so many abilities that monsters gain or lose when changing hyper forms, you need to focus on the abilities that remain constant when you are building a list.
overall I say this should be your goal. When building a unit force, they need to emphasize your monsters specialties. The unit, and the alpha, and the hyper should all synergize together.
Building choices are harder. Often this will come down to what works best with what you have access to. My building suggestions are going to be slightly less.
First off, since you are a destroyer, you will often want to destroy buildings. Therefore their abilities are less important. There are however a few key abilities to focus in on and make sure to have access to.
Superstructure- gives extra power die for destroyers destroying it.
Insurance: gaining extra power dice for the destruction of buildings is a great advantage.
Spire/blazing inferno/chemical spill: You deal extra damage.
The Imperial State building. This is a high defense, 3 P-die power up building. And it catches fire.
High Occupancy: Avoid fielding buildings with this ability because the number of nature monsters is on the rise, and Destroyers have none.
Shuffle: this is THE ability that can make or break a second turn of unit/monster because of the extra die.
*a term coined by a fellow player who seems focused on food and sheep puns, I.E. Bleep Back on a giant Sheep monster.
**note, If their is clamor for it, I shall also post on the other 16(1 ultra and hyper for each of the 9 monsters).
*** The one random extra ShadowHawk is for when you need to lure an opponent closer to a certain spot on the map, lest he take damage.
