Another attack on Monopolis

Last week I brought my Monopolis setup for Ogre to Dragon's Lair for the Tuesday night game. Five people showed up to play, including another longtime Ogre fan who is new to the area.

I didn't have any river or stream terrain available, so I just set up a city without regard to the map that I used for the Millenniumcon Monpolis scenario. I also brought some new minis: In addition to a couple of extra Ogres for this game, I took my recently acquired truck convoy to use as an objective.

I also gave the option of cruise missiles to each side. They could trade their smaller Ogre for three nukes. While the attackers left their cruise missile crawlers at home and had two cybertanks, the defenders traded in a Mark III for a trio of nukes and set up their stationary missile silos downtown, a block over from their command post.

And of course, the defenders unleashed those doomsday weapons on the first turn. With the gray-clad attackers approaching Monopolis from two sides, the green painted city dwellers sent nukes to the east and west, disregarding the Monopolis real estate on each side. While the attackers shot down one cruise missile, the others proved destructive to both the enemy vehicles and to the defenders' own citizens, wiping out a good portion of the city's buildings, and keeping me busy replacing those town hexes with rubble markers.

Both sides lost a few units to the nuclear blasts, but most vehicles managed to survive unscathed or were just knocked offline temporarily. However, tanks and infantry had a lot less cover to hide in after those mushroom clouds sprouted.

Meanwhile, the two Mark Vs started jousting, with the attacking Ogre getting the first strike. On the other end of the table, the attackers' Fencer B was showering its missiles on defending GEVs and tanks.

At the same time, surviving GEVs worked their way past the rubbled sections of Monopolis, entered the burning city, and made their way toward the defending command post.

The defending Ogre's weapons quickly got stripped thanks to some good dice rolling, and the attackers also shot up the convoy of trucks that was trying to escape.

In the end, the defenders capitulated, with their Ogre eviscerated and most of their other units down for the count. It was surprising that despite the city's decision to go nuclear, the invaders were able to conquer Monopolis.

I told Grant, one of the defending players, that the reason he nuked his own city because he must be getting a kickback from building contractors. He didn't seem too concerned about civilian casualties on his own side. "It's 2085," he joked. "We'll just clone some more people."

I enjoy running my Monopolis game. Even if I do have to start replacing city hexes with rubble on turn 1.