Battle Cattle

Battle Cattle is a great game of cow to cow combat. It's totally amusing and udderly fun to play. The rules are simple to learn and the book is only like 60 pages. I've had this game for years. I used to play it in the States with my game friends there. We always had a ball with this game. It's been almost 15 years since I played this.


I'm currently re-reading the rules and on the lookout for some plastic cows. Until I find some plastic cows, I'll probably make some cardstock standees to use for now. Cow pictures are easily found on the net. If I could just get my hands on these, it would be ever so much better. :)


Of course the problem is they don't make the metal figs anymore for this game. Which, in my opinion, just blows.


If you don't have this on your shelf, at least get a copy in pdf from here: Battle Cattle. You'll also want a hex map, and some plastic cows. :)

But hay..er..hey...if mini cow combat isn't your thing, check out the card game. :)


While the card game is amusing and fun to play, it doesn't have the same impact as the mini game. However, one cool thing about it is this: it's completely compatible with the Car Wars card game. Cars with guns, cows with guns...what's not to like?

Nothing New Yet

Well, it's been a while since I last posted. I've honestly not had a lot of time to get any work done on my Monster Island units. The flying tank is still a work in progress. And I still have no idea how I'm going to make a laser cannon. I'll come up with something eventually.

The worst part about all this, is I'm spending so much time putting together pieces of a game that I'm not sure when I'm going to get to play...if ever. :( I have played it online using Gametable. I have to say, if you don't have game table, you might seriously want to look into downloading it. I've used it to play Monster Island with friends from all over. It's nice when you can get old friends from one country to play games with your new friends in another country.

Well, here's a nice link from a Monster Island fan: Fan Site. Looks like he's put in a lot of work into his game as well.

Anyhoo, that's all for now.

More Army Units

So, I finished up a few more army units for Monster Island. There's 2 Armored Personnel Carriers, 2 Mobile Artillery units, and 1 Flatbed truck (for haulin' troops and cannons.

Here's some pics. Forgive the crappy phone pics, it was all I had at the time.

2 APCs, 2 Mobile Artillery, 1 Flatbed




And here's all the units together.

The army so far

While not terribly hard to make, they do require a bit of patience, which I don't have much of. I've got a flying tank put together and in the process of painting. I've attempted 2 different versions of a laser cannon, but wasn't happy with either and scrapped them. I have the vision of it in my head, it's just a matter of figuring out how to do it on such a small scale.

I'm also currently trying to figure out how to put the troops together. I did find this, which is all paper soldiers. They're very small, but I think they will work. Now to get my printer working, which has decided that it just doesn't want to print. *sigh* The things I deal with for the sake of a hobby...

Cardstock Buildings

I'm always on the lookout for decent terrain for Monster Island. I usually go for cardstock terrain, cause it's relatively cheap to print and I can make as many of the terrain items as I need. So, while poking around the net one day, I came across this site that has a lot of cardstock building plans. You can click the picture to see the site as well.

Here's what the buildings look like. Ignore the stupid
"hill", it's already been tossed in the garbage.

I'm not sure who spent all the hard work in designing them, but a huge thanks goes out to this person. The buildings look decent for Monster Island, are the perfect size and generally make the game look great when laid out on the table. Again, thanks to the person making them!

Monster Island: Latest Addiction

So, I've had this game for a while. I've only played it a couple of times, but it's a fun little Kaiju (giant monster) tabletop miniature (war?)game. If you are a fan of Godzilla (Gojira), then this game is a must!

I've got the following books: Monster Island, Escape from Monster Island, and Invasion of Monster Island. While Monster Island is enjoyable in it's own right, Escape from Monster Island makes the game even better. Why? Because in Escape from Monster Island, the monsters get to ravage cities and fight human armies. Then it really does feel like the Gojira movies!

Anyhoo, the game is only a book. You have to find your own monsters and military units. Although there are cardstock cutout standees, it's more fun to have the 3 dimensional aspect of minis to round out the game.

With that said, the monsters themselves are relatively easy to find. Any toy monsters around 2 to 3 inches will work great. The military units are more troublesome to find.

So, I thought I'd just build some. And here's the result:

The first wave of the military getting ready
for action


Mobile Atillery and Towable Artillery
getting ready to shoot a Kaiju
on top of a building


Kaiju trying to hide amongst the buildings
and a tank taking aim


Parking is never an issue, when
your ride looks like this

All it takes is 1)time, 2)scraps of foamcore, 3)bunch of BBQ sticks/toothpicks, 4)gobs of glue, 5) little paint, 6)lot of bloody patience!

So far, I've got 1 fighter chopper, 1 transport chopper, 4 tanks, 1 personnel carrier, 3 towable artillery cannons, 2 jeeps, and 1 mobile rocket launcher.

In the middle of construction are: 2 armored personnel carriers, 2 mobile cannons (basically trucks with big gun on the back), 1 flatbed truck (to haul around people and cannons), and one 1950's super flying tank (it's Gojira type science, remember?).

On the planning table: 2 1950's style laser cannon, 2 more attack choppers (redoing them, cause I ain't happy with the first one), 2 transport choppers (same thing here), gobs of little soldiers, gobs of civilians, 2 firetrucks, 2 police cruisers, 1 nuclear plant, 1 chemical plant, 1 oil refinery.

After I typed this, and read it back to myself, I'm like...great googley moogley, what am I thinking???

Zhen