MonPoc Fundamentals: Building Archetypes & the Draft [Tekk]

Last time, we talked about the four archetypes of units and how it is important to keep a blend of each in your list for the variety of jobs you’ll need them to do during a game of Monsterpocalypse. Now, we’re going to do the same for buildings, as well as discuss the basic strategies for a strong building draft.

PART 1: BUILDING ARCHETYPES

When you first start playing Monpoc, buildings may seem like an afterthought. I have seen countless new and prospective players balk at adding buildings to their lists, thinking they are “just terrain”. That’s just not true! Your city is miniatures in your force just as much as your monsters and units are, and should be considered accordingly. A building’s abilities, when used to their highest potential, can make or break a list’s strategy. How you utilize those buildings fall into three major categories:

BACKFIELD

The most apparent building archetype for a new player is the Backfield Secure; buildings you are bringing to your list because they have strong Actions or other abilities you want to make use of. When you first start out buying buildings, the temptation is there to just load up your list with Backfield buildings; after all, they’re the strongest option, so why wouldn’t you? The fact is, due to the way the building draft works and because buildings will be destroyed over the course of the game, you’ll usually only ever be able to make use out of 4 to 5 secured buildings at most. Too many strong buildings, and you may find yourself forced to pass some of those buildings to your opponent’s side of the map, where they can use them against you. That brings us to our second archetype…

Backfield Examples: Imperial State Building, Guard Defense Base, Mount Terra, Industrial Complex

JUNK

Junk buildings are the models you include in your list specifically to disrupt your opponent during the draft, before the game has even begun. Junk buildings are buildings you actively don’t want in your backline, either because they have negative effects or just because they take up space doing nothing in place of something more valuable. When drafting, you want to aggressively place your junk buildings in your opponent’s backline or in crucial spots in the midfield your opponent is planning on using for themselves. (We’ll talk more about what constitutes the backline and the midfield later on.) In essence, the job of junk is to run interference.

Junk Examples: Media Company, Cathedral, Corporate Headquarters

MIDFIELD

The final archetype, Midfield buildings, are buildings you want to place in locations where you expect the majority of the fighting to happen. The reasons for doing this vary depending on the building; some Midfields are this archetype because their abilities have a restrictive range, and they need to be placed forward up the board to make the most of their skills. Others will deal additional damage or affect the layout of hazards in the late game, and their inclusion is important because you want to destroy them, not secure them. In this way, a Midfield building can sometimes be “Midfield Secure” or “Midfield Junk”, variations of the other archetypes, but they always live in the middle of the map where the action happens.

Midfield Examples: Reclamation Facility, Downtown Highrise, Tokyo Triumph, Myriad Singularity

PART 2: THE DRAFT & THE FOUR MAP QUADRANTS

Now that we’ve gone over the different roles a building can play in your city, we need to take a look at the map and understand where those archetypes live to maximize their value. For this, I’ve divided the city into four rough areas I’m calling the quadrants; in my examples I’ll be showing you where the quadrants lie on Downtown Beatdown, but every map has them if you know what to look for.

The first quadrant, shown here, is what we call your backline. These are the foundations closest to your spawn points, which, conversely, makes them the hardest buildings for your opponent to reach. Backline foundations are almost always yellow, which means you won’t be filling them in until the second half of the draft. This quadrant is where you’ll want to place the buildings you want to secure and protect for the majority of the game; try and avoid drawing the fighting into your own backline or you may find yourself without a power base in the late game.

All of the things that are true about your own backline, about being easy to protect and difficult to disrupt, are inversely true for your opponent’s back edge of the map. So, if it’s resource intensive and awkward to reach this part of the map with your units, how do you interact with the opponent? This is where Junk becomes important. By strategically placing buildings your opponent doesn’t want in their high value backline foundations, you can disrupt the efficiency of their power base even before the first unit is spawned. Whether you decide to focus first on your own base or harassing the enemy’s will depend on your opponent’s play; it’s important to be reactive during the building draft to make the most out of each placement.

The third quadrant is the forward section on your half of the map. In this quadrant, you’re going to want to put a mix of buildings that you intend to use to fight; either as a power source, a collision vector, or both, as well as a few lower priority securing options. Some buildings have an important but niche action that may only come up once a game, if at all, so it may be advantageous to draft those buildings here, where you can secure them and use their action in the same turn if you need to, but protecting them long-term is not as important.

The final quadrant is the one where you will honestly be placing the fewest of your buildings. Because this is the quadrant where your opponent will be placing their low priority targets, it’s rare that you’ll need to fight them during the draft in this area. However, sometimes it might be to your advantage to drop certain Junk buildings here, like with the Media Company’s Static aura, so don’t ignore it completely and keep an eye out for opportunities.

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

Obviously, this is a very rough and rudimentary way to look at the building draft. The nuance of questions like how many of each archetype you should bring, whether to focus on your opponent’s backline or your own first, and which buildings you want to go where could all fill their own articles. However, I’m hoping that this gives you, as a new player, enough information to at least start considering these questions for yourself when building a list. There is so much more to a city than just playing with twelve Apartments!