Monster Train

[tripedal]

Great little roguelite deckbuilder released today. Imagine Slay the Spire but sort of mixed with tower defense? Every turn new enemy reinforcements come in and you have to prevent them from killing your train. The board is also split into three levels, with the attackers moving up a level every turn. I've only played a few hours but it feels very deep so far.

There's all the standard card unlocking + extra difficulty stuff, and 5 different factions (you pick two of them at the start of every run).

The trailer's pretty bad, but Northernlion has some good let's plays.

 

[Jasede]

Yes, this game is fantastic. It certainly feels easier than Slay the Spire at first, but there's 25 levels of Ascension so I am not worried. And the races you unlock later are quite difficult/creative. The Umbra are wtf to me.

I heartily recommend this game to anyone who likes the kind of games NL likes. I've been playing nothing else!

I must also compliment the developer for coming up with mechanics that are new. Okay, maybe not entirely new, but I have played so many deckbuilder card-games that it's hard for me to surprise me. I don't want to spoil much of the game but I really like how different the various races feel, and the often unique mechanics they enable (and you can combine two races, as well.)

Important: While perhaps not for every hardware constellation, the game still crashes/freezes for a lot of people. Especially on laptops/notebooks. It can crash harmlessly, or it can lock up the entire computer, forcing a hard reset.

 

[GrainWetski]

Yeah, the 3 unlockable clans are fun and fairly unique. No crashes or bugs of any kind for me at all so far.

 

[tripedal]

I've been playing some more and I'm loving it. Agree that it's a bit too easy on 0 ascension. No crashes here.

The biggest weakness so far is the lack of enemy variety, I hope they add more in the future. OTOH there's a ton of variety in what you can do, so it's not too bad overall.

 

[Shackleton]

Goddamn, this is one of those games you start playing then look up to find it's 5 hours later. Thought I'd give it a shot as it's fairly cheap and I wanted something a bit different, and now it's apparently consuming my life.

Only got one win with the Hellborne, thanks mainly to rolling the artifact that makes every summons -2 Ember and getting a couple of the 50/50 Demons early. Then managing to upgrade one with Endless and Multistrike, then duplicating it lol. Meanwhile my champion was quietly getting up to +20 on Slay and then got Multistrike himself. The last boss didn't even move up a floor before he was toast, think my champ was up to something like 130x2 on attack by that point.

Things I wish I knew earlier: Ascending or descending between floors ignores the floor capacity so you can totally overload a floor with big dudes.

 

[tripedal]

Early overgorger w/ multistrike + morselmaster + morselmaker + fossilized fangs (gorge abilities trigger an additional time) = 270x2 damage.

 

[cvv]

I loved the gameplay in StS but I hated the cheapo, goofy art style. This looks like it's been done by someone who can actually into art and not by retarded children with palsy. The Steam rating rn is Overwhelmingly Positive but it could be just a honeymoon period. Keep posting impreshuns plox.

 

[Jasede]

Well, I love the game, so it's tough giving unbiased feedback, so I will try to focus only on negative things:

1) The game could use more enemies and bosses, especially bosses.
2) It would be nice if there were a speed setting even faster than Ultra for animation speed, although Ultra is already fast.
3) It would be nice to have some more random events just to mix things up, and more relics and such.

 

[Projas]

Game's p. good. Liking the new clans they added since beta, just unlocked the last one yesterday, at covenant 4 so far. Not sure if there's enough variety between runs to guarantee long term replayability of the game tho. Still, definitely worth it if you like card roguelites, would recommend.

 

[Dodo1610]

Yeah, it's pure fun, it clearly lacks the depth a game like Slay the Spire has but it makes up for it with a great flashy presentation and tons of cards. I never thought a turn-based tower defence game could work but Monster Train somehow does it. I doubt I will be playing this for months like Spire unless the devs add more enemy variety and random events though.

 

[Jasede]

If you hold right click during the enemy move it speeds up the animations, even faster than Ultra. Very handy!

 

[Jasede]

Early overgorger w/ multistrike + morselmaster + morselmaker + fossilized fangs (gorge abilities trigger an additional time) = 270x2 damage.

My own Night of the Living Overgorger:

Imagine if I had given him 2 Multistrike upgrades...

Quick tip: for easy run sharing, just use the Copy Deeplink at the top right, then share the link. If you put this link here in your browser, it will open the game and the run summary:

monstertrain://runresult/d9fe4433-c273-4fa2-bc10-f787aed8b6a2

 

[Shackleton]

I know it's only Covenant 1, but really pleased with my Awoken/ Hellbound win. Let's see if this deeplink thing works:

monstertrain://runresult/f82d9424-5787-42ea-b5ff-8d1b3db2a4be

Run was mainly spikes and sting, as I rolled the artifact that gave +20 Magic power for sting spells straight away. Grabbed a Demon Fiend for damaged behind champion and then a couple of Vinemothers to get extra sting spells every turn. The cherry on top was the Bramblelash that did x10 spikes damage to front enemy and then making it Holdover, and then duplicating it!. Seraph didn't get off bottom floor. Would probably have been even more insane if I'd gone Stygian instead of Hellbound and managed to get some Spell weakness going. Hmmm.... next run coming up!

Great game. Yes, it'd be nice to have a few more bosses, but with 4 decks and so many choices of strategies it'll keep you going for hours. For £15 or thereabouts, this is one of the best value games I've bought recently.

 

[GrainWetski]

Well, my strongest run so far was 2x Holdover Engulfed in Smoke(one with double stack) along with a Hornbreaker Prince with multi2 and Slay +10 attack, rage not decaying(2x Spike of the Horned with +3x, Enflame and Ritual of Battle) and a Deranged Brute with multi 1.

Had 36x stealthed ~120x3/~50x2 on one boss on the first floor. It was pretty fucking silly. None of the bosses even got an attack off.

 

[Jasede]

Covenant 16. It's getting tricky now!

The forums/online seem to like Remnant and despise Hellhorn but you know what? I am never sad to see Hellhorned as my random clan or ally.

My absolute favorite so far are the Stygian Card; any Stygian run is a good run.

Umbra I plain don't like.

 

[Shackleton]

Covenant 16. It's getting tricky now!

The forums/online seem to like Remnant and despise Hellhorn but you know what? I am never sad to see Hellhorned as my random clan or ally.

My absolute favorite so far are the Stygian Card; any Stygian run is a good run.

Umbra I plain don't like.

What's your go-to strat for Stygian? They're the only clan I've never won with, they're just too squishy. I've tried Spell Weakness builds and Frostbite builds and come close, but at the end I always seem to get unlucky with the unit pulls and can't get anything down to stop the boss from crushing me. They always seem to have potential with the draw/ discard mechanic but I just can't seem to make it work.

 

[Jasede]

I haven't made a draw/discard deck work, but I find Frostbite, Spell Weakness and Lower Spell Cost all viable.
I think the key is, and I apologize if this seems obvious, is to have a really big tank, either from your allied race, or that shark guy. Upgrade him as fast as possible with extra HP so you can get the engine started and protect the champion. Unlike with other clans, I think keeping the champion alive is extremely important with the Stygians.

Here is the last run I had them with. It was a Remnant run, but the only Remnant thing that I was using basically was the champion to have a decent 150/150 tank in front of the Molluskmage and the Stygian unit that adds Spell Weakness. Keep them alive as long as possible so they can stack up Spell Weakness, then finish the boss with a Crystalis or Tornado.

monstertrain://runresult/69080d09-45a4-4f5a-b117-96d0f4022a38


Though I didn't get it that run, I also find that if you get the "5 copies of a card" event, that's a won run, and this is especially true for the Stygians because generally, 5 extra spells is more useful than 5 units you can't even field.

My problem faction are the Umbra. I just don't know what to do with them. My only victories with them were A), the Overgorger madness and B) the time I cut everything out of my deck except the 0 cost Emberdrain cards and just stacked those on my Champion for invulnerability by ways of divine shields.

 

[tripedal]

Frostbite is probably the most OP thing in the game right now. Lots of easy sources, the card to double it drops pretty often, and it synergizes perfectly with the sap cards.

 

[Jasede]

I looked around a bit and apparently at least right now there's tons of broken/OP combinations that sort of trivialize the game, if you are willing to restart for them, like a full Spell Weakness + Inferno deck that someone used to get from 15 to 25 without any issues (no minions).
However, I am sure they'll balance things around a bit in time, and since I just play random clans it's fine.

 

[Jigawatt]

First melty run after unlocking them, too easy

Mostly courtesy of this

It seems in general holdover + reduced cost is crazy good for a whole lot of spells, whether it adds thorns, frostbite, stealth, you name it. Getting no-rage-decay at the last shop didn't hurt either

 

[Shackleton]

Frostbite is probably the most OP thing in the game right now. Lots of easy sources, the card to double it drops pretty often, and it synergizes perfectly with the sap cards.

Yes, I finally got my first win as Stygian thanks to Frostbite. Got the x5 dupe card event early and only had the Melted +20 GP on slay dude, but spamming him kept me going until I got a few more cards and could doublestack the Frostbite 8, make it Holdover and then double it. Ended up with 999 stack of Frostbite on Seraph the Chaste and even he couldn't survive that for long.

 

[Jasede]

That 5x dupe event might be a bit too strong. If you don't have any cards that would be good if quintupled, you can still double (strong) and if you DO have a card it would benefit, you pretty much are guaranteed to win.

 

[Jasede]

I still don't like playing as them but now, every time random/random gives me the Remnant Burnout champion, I rise another Covenant level. He's so good. Your entire deck can be terrible, as long as you have 1 Molded you are gonna be okay.

 

[Jasede]

Covenant 24 is a pretty big difficulty spike for me...

 

[Shackleton]

Covenant 24 is a pretty big difficulty spike for me...

/brofisted as I felt happy to finally get to Covenant 4 lol. I'm really bad at these games, trying to train myself to not be distracted by the 'new shiny' cards and focus on a specific aim for the deck but it's hard. Half the time I'm not sure if it's just luck with the units you draw first few areas, but then I build a really good deck and I convince myself I'm getting gud. Then next run I can't get past Daedalus.