Subject: /Martians/ Ravage America - a variant for Monsters Ravage America From: aahench@aol.com (AAHench) Thought I'd post an idea that occured to me while watching the movie "War of the worlds". You could take the map and pieces from "Monsters Ravage America" and use them to play out the movie. There'd be a Martian player, trying to destroy cities, and one or more military players trying to stop him. I haven't worked this out for play balance or anything, but I wanted to post it in case someone else might find it interesting. The Martian player uses the deck of Monster cards to plan his cylinder landings. He arranges them in whatever order he wants. Each turn he draws the next Monster card from the deck and rolls two dice to determine lairs from that card. An infamy marker is then placed picture side up in either of the lairs rolled. This represents a Martian cylinder. The next turn the cylinder can be converted to a war machine. This is done by flipping the infamy marker over to the "one free attack" side, and placing it in the same or an adjacent hex. Cylinders have a Defense of 4, and can't attack or move. War machines have a Defense of 5, a move of 5, and get one attack each. It takes 4 points of damage done in a single combat round to kill a cylinder or war machine. Any extra damage (or insufficient) damage is lost at the end of each combat round. The Martians get health markers whenever they destroy a city. At the end of their turn 12 health points can be turned in to buy a new war machine. BUT, this war machine can only be placed in a hex containing a cylinder. So if the Martians convert all their vulnerable cylinders to war machines, they won't be able to build any more war machines. The military player(s) get Research cards, but some of them would need to be altered a bit. I don't have the deck with me right now, so I can't list all the changes. Some Research cards and attacks normally have a chance of producing mutations. In this variant, each such mutation result would give the military branch that got it a +1 on combat rolls against the Martians. This would represent that branch learning how to fight the Martians better. The Blob card could represent the Martians getting sick, with some sort of result detrimental to them. For instance, at the start of the turn the Martian player might have to roll for 1d6 of damage against each cylinder or war machine on the board. Since 4 points of damage would be needed to kill them, a 4-6 would remove the marker, a 1-3 would leave it alive. Approximately half of the Martian force would then die each turn after the Blob is played. The game would continue until the Martians are all dead, or all the cities are destroyed. The Martian player wins if all the cities are destroyed. If the Martians are defeated, the branch(es) that killed the most Martians would win the game. Alan Hench AAHench@aol.com (512)835-7141