There’s tons of news to announce, most of which I’ll be doing in my monthly newsletter (which you can – nay, should – sign up for on my homepage), but I do want to highlight one thing here and now:

We have new cards!!!

That’s right, designer Umut Comak has come through with a host of new layouts for Monster Wasteland cards, all of which have blown my mind and I’m so excited for everyone to see them. Without further ado, here’s a look at the new and improved Monster card layout:

What a sight to behold. Again, I’m over the moon with these designs, but they’ve also got me feeling nostalgic. So if you don’t mind, let’s take a walk down memory lane to look at the history of the monsters of Monster Wasteland.

In the Beginning…

I’m talking about the wording. In retrospect, the Deep Dweller here is a little overwhelming, with unnecessary text that makes for confusing abilities, as well as weird and frustrating rules. Take “Omni”, for example. Way back when, Monsters would spawn facing a certain direction, and their Line of Sight would be a combination of “Directional” – where they were facing – and “Omni” – in all directions. This was so confusing and annoying to track. If a Monster had “Dir 3 Omni 1” you had to mentally imagine a bubble around it at all times to figure out what it was doing, which got increasingly difficult as the Monsters got bigger and their Line of Sight got wider.

Here’s an old map so you can see what I mean. That compass in the bottom left represents the direction a Monster is facing, and you would occasionally roll a d6 to turn it. Talk about a headache to do upkeep for.

But Wait – It Gets Worse!

That’s right – in addition to symbology making it a little more confusing, I decided to throw in a “targeting system.” Because more tracking and another addition to the stat line was just what the Monsters needed. To my credit though, I simplified Line of Sight – it became entirely omnidirectional which was fine, if a little generic.

Also to my credit, I was learning how to cut text to both save space and make things easier to parse. Whereas before, “This Monster spawns on an Aquatic space instead of a lair space,” it now just “spawns on an Aquatic space.” I don’t need to specify instead of a Lair space – I tell you what you need to do and the rest is implied. However, I will take some points away from myself for using the word “Aquatic” in the next ability when I could have just… used the symbol again. Oh well, let’s get simpler!

Now we’re starting to come together. Some big changes: instead of “Monster – Huge,” it just reads “Huge.” It’s pretty obvious that this is a Monster card just by looking at it, and if you still don’t get it, the big “MONSTER” on the back of the card when you draw it from the deck should do the trick. There’s also no words in the stats line, just icons and numbers (also, when a Monster does have “special” movement or damage, it’s now simply represented by a “*” and the specialness is highlighted in the ability box, which is where you’d have to look anyway). I also removed most instances of “This Monster” because the card is always referring to itself, removed “space” after the Aquatic symbol (because it can’t possibly be referencing anything other than a space), and removed some other filler bits. Why use many word when few do trick?

The final version of the Deep Dweller I shared above is nearly the same – the only major change is that “2 spaces away” becomes “Range 2.” Range is a simple enough concept that for a large number of players it translates to “2 spaces away” even if you haven’t read the rules. Keep it simple, smartypants.

And that’s how the Monster cards have evolved over the years! There were other Monster-specific quirks that got ironed out like the rules for The Blight, a Colossal Monster who spawns and moves along intersections instead of individual spaces, essentially covering three spaces instead of one. The rules text for that ability used to be three full sentences taking up five lines of text – now it’s just “Spawns and moves along intersections instead of spaces (occupies all spaces its intersection touches).” When you realize what doesn’t need to be said to make your cards legible and make cuts accordingly, things get quicker to read and play, text can be larger, and it can just plain look nicer. Brevity is something I struggle with in my daily life, but figuring out the shortest coherent way to say something in a game has helped me trim my sentences down. Somewhat.

Until next time, bye!