MonPoc Fundamentals: An Introduction to Tempo [Tekk]
Tempo is one of the most important, and also the most nebulous, concepts in Monsterpocalypse. It’s something that even experienced players struggle to explain succinctly (hence why this article took so long) but it’s something that, with practice and planning, will become a fundamental and natural skill. With that said, what is Tempo?
In its most basic definition, tempo is the flow of the game from turn to turn. Games of Monpoc unfold in fits and spurts, with a rhythm of small turns generating resources and big turns converting those resources to damage. Managing this rhythm in your own turns, as well as how your choices affect your opponent’s rhythm, is the key to strong tempo play. Below, I’ve documented some of the introductory concepts of tempo and how you should be aware of them in your games. It’s important to remember that this isn’t a simple how-to guide! I can’t instill good practices in you just by writing a single article; more than anything else I’ve written for the fundamentals series, these are skills that are cultivated over a period of training and self improvement. Hopefully, however, I can set you off on the right path.
UNIT MATERIAL
The first tempo concept we’re going to discuss is material. If you’ve played chess, this is probably a topic that you’re already familiar with. In simplest terms, material advantage is when you have more stuff on the table than your opponent; in chess, that’s your pieces, and in Monpoc, it’s your units. At a glance, you would think it sounds obvious that the player who has more living units on the board is winning. There’s a catch, however.
When taking unit turn, you can gain unit material much more easily and in a number of different ways. First, obviously, you have the opportunity to spawn units onto the board. You also have the opportunity to destroy enemy units, generating power while also gaining tempo advantage. On a monster turn, you’re limited in the number of units that you can destroy. You only have a few attacks you can make each turn, and you probably want to spend those attacks damaging the opponent’s monsters, if possible. So, the main way you’re going to be interacting with the enemy power base during the game is usually going to be through unit play.
What this means is that taking turns in which you’re giving up opportunities to skew the ratio of units on the board in your favor gives that advantage over to the opponent to gain material benefit, and should be valued accordingly. Chaining monster turns or attacking monsters with units will often seem very appealing to a new player because damaging the opponent is how you win, right? But in doing so, you’re sacrificing sometimes big swings in tempo, which your opponent can capitalize on to wreck your power production and cripple your ability to land big attacks later on. Once a player has gained a significant unit material advantage, it becomes very hard for the player on the backfoot to reclaim it, so these types of play can often have disastrous long-term consequences.
BREAKPOINTS
If that’s the case, then, is the answer to never chain? Always fight unit to unit exclusively? Not exactly.
As I mentioned in the introduction, damage on monsters tends to come in intermittent, large bursts. A single power attack can do two to upwards of six damage, and if a monster isn’t properly screened and your opponent gets to do that twice? Even the toughest monsters can lose huge chunks of their health pool in one bad turn. This is where our second tempo concept, breakpoints, enter the equation.
A breakpoint is a certain health amount on an opponent’s monster that you want to target to reduce them to exactly zero as efficiently as possible. For example, a monster at 4 health needs to be thrown into either a double foundation or a single foundation with super damage to be killed in one attack. A three health monster, on the other hand, is only one single collision from death, and a 2 health monster can be killed by just a hazard or incombustible building collision.
This is where chaining and unit damage become important. Gaining a monster advantage is almost always preferable to maintaining a unit advantage, because even a single turn of two healthy monsters versus one of your opponent’s can be game ending. If a single damage from units can put that monster into range to be killed by one attack on your following monster turn instead of two, then it may be worth the material sacrifice to do so.
This concept can be extended out to other significant health track numbers as well. Consider how common monsters with 10 health are. A ram power attack to descreen them, and then a throw to a single leaves them at 6, most likely at the bottom of their alpha form and two single collision power attacks from death. However, the difference between a 5 health monster and a 6 health monster is negligible, since it’ll take 2 power attacks to take that monster out regardless, so a smart player will often purposefully step that monster into a fire, taking a damage but getting an extra activation out of its hyper form.
MONSTER PRIORITY
Which segues us into our final tempo concept of the day: Monster Priority. Monster priority is the intangible benefit of the player who will be taking the next upcoming monster turn. Consider this: midway through the game, each player has destroyed one monster, and their remaining monsters are at an equal health total. Were a spectator to walk by and glance at the game in a snapshot, the assumption would be that the two players are dead even in tempo, but that’s not necessarily the case. If we’re to assume that the two monsters are going to trade equal blows back and forth, the first monster to land an attack will inevitably win that trade because they will always be either at parity or one attack up on the opponent. That’s the power of monster priority.
It’s important to be aware that each time either player chains monster turns, the order of monster priority reverses. When a game begins, player one will always have first priority, followed immediately by player two, and so on. But if player two for whatever reason decides to hold back some action dice and immediately take a monster turn again, they hold that monster priority for two activations in a row, flipping the order. It’s important to consider how a chain will affect your priority order when planning your turn, because sometimes it can let you sneak ahead when performed well, or it can punish you hard if your timing is off.
On a related note, you’ll often hear the phrase that a player is “forced into units”. When your opponent has 10 action dice in their unit pool, you know with certainty that they cannot activate their monsters, even for an underwhelming turn to save them from damage, and you can plan accordingly knowing they’re incapable of a counter-attack. This is another opportunity where it may be strategic to chain monster turns, since you might be able to land 3-4 power attacks on an enemy monster before they’re able to react.
PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER
Like I said at the top, these concepts are much less “do this and you’ll win” and more things you’ll pick up with experience. There’s rarely an objectively correct answer when you’re planning out a turn; a tempo-focus play may cost you damage, and a big attack may give up tempo. What’s important is that when you’re making a play, stop for a second and consider the consequences of that play two to three turns in the future. How is your opponent likely to react, and what is your response to that reaction going to be? If you leave five action dice in your unit pool and your opponent runs to the other side of the map where you can’t reach them, that’s a waste of half of what could have been a good unit turn!