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Kaiju! Gesundheit!

This is a pickup game I brought to the Guns of August convention last weekend. I set up two quick games in 3'x3' areas using this quick and easy terrain project, our QILS rules and a scenario I have been playtesting for about six months. It runs in about 1.5-2 hours, so I figure I could get another few playtests in with different players.

The scenario uses cards for hidden human forces. This shows the human staging area with a 10 to remind that spades are units of four infantry and clubs are single armour units. Civilians are done with the red cards. I didn't have separate mobs of 15mm civvies; play went fine leaving the the cards on the board for them.

Cards are also used for kaiju scoring. The kaiju starts with a good, but not perfect knowledge of where the juciest treats are.

The monster has to balance between stomping buildings, dealing with the pesky military, and eating civilians (for which the kaiju gets no points, but the humans do). The whole military is an overmatch for the monster, so it has to figure out how to score points, deny points to the the humans, and get out before the humans can get organized.

The humans start out dispersed across the city and have to figure out how to concentrate firepower against a big opponent who is tougher, more destructive, and faster than them. It's a classic game of feint and strike.

All the games we ran started out with the monster going wherever he wanted and destroying buildings at will. The games started to shift as the humans could muster into concentrated firing blocks.

Here we see Gamera looking at two damaged building markers while human forces muster on his flank.

In about a fifth of the games, a savvy kiaju player (in this case, a kid taking tactical advice from his dad) can split, isolate, and leave the human forces feeling ... well .. a bit outmatched.

This made for an easy win for the monster side.

Raver flashy seizure ring, optional.

In about half the games, the human side was able to organize quickly, shake off the early losses, and sometimes even take down the kaiju.

In all the games at the con, and almost all of them otherwise, the scores were close all the way down the line and the outcome was up for grabs until the last turn.