With a Purposeful Grimace: Monsterpocalypse, giant monster collectible board game

Our pal Nate Heasley is popping around at Toy Fair finding the stuff we missed, when instead he should be manning his booth to promote his award-winning board game, Wits And Wagers.

Board games are bigger than ever at Toy Fair this year, and it makes a lot of sense to me; dollar for dollar, there's no better value in entertainment than getting a game that you and a few of your friends can play over and over. Of the board games I've seen here, there are a few new standouts, and one of them is Monsterpocalypse. It's an incredibly intricate game that involves fighting two different "monsters" against one another over a cityscape battlefield. Each player gets one main monster, which can be anything from a classic Cthulhu-inspired creature to a Gundam-like robot, as well as some minions (people, tanks, little monsters, etc) and a selection of buildings. Players then move their pieces around the board, using the landscape as both cover and potential weapons.

The game is of the "collectible trading" variety, which means that there is no end to the amount of money that you can spend on getting creatures and minions and maps and all the other accessories in the game. I think the basic started kit runs around $25, but still requires another monster kit for the second player, so really it's more like $50 to start. I didn't get a chance to play the game but from what I read on BoardGameGeek, it's a very well designed game that is a lot of fun to play. The rules seem a little complex for someone like me, but I'm sure that any 10-year-old who has played Magic or Yu-Gi-Oh can handle it. — Nate Heasley