Charizard, Blue Eyes White Dragon, Greymon, and Nicol Bolas — all famous monsters from various card games. But the transition of famous movie monsters hasn’t always been the most direct one-to-one. Vampires, Mummies, and the like have all had cards of them across these systems, but you aren’t able to play out these character archetypes, in a way that matches how they are portrayed in films and shows.
And then there are kaiju. Kaiju are often not included even in card games, even where monsters take up the majority of characters. When they are, Kaiju are usually relegated to special types of monsters that don’t even receive much spotlight. However, Kaiju Assault, the brainchild of Brandon Phillips, sees you playing out the city stomping battles we watch on the big and small screens with an attention to detail that fans of the genre can appreciate.
Early History
Like many ventures made out of love, Kaiju Assault’s humble beginnings were founded on a dare. Co-Creator Brandon Phillips stating in an interview,
“A buddy of mine back around 2003…was trying to make a Transformers card game, and it was rough, and I kind of claimed that it was rough. Now, at the time, I had never really played any card games outside of magic and a little bit of Pokémon here and there, but it really wasn’t something that I was into. And I somehow managed to win three or four games out of the times we played, had no idea what I was doing. And so, he kind of popped off and said, well, let’s see you make a game. And I said, okay, I will. And I showed up to the school first, uh, period the following Monday, and I had a very basic version of the game that we now call Kaiju assault.”
At the time, Kaiju Assault wasn’t a game with original kaiju, but was instead a Godzilla card game. There have been Godzilla card games before, such as Bandai’s Battle Spirits line. Beginning in 2008, Battle Spirits has had several releases of Godzilla crossover expansions, and in 2019 a dedicated Godzilla CCG was also made. More recently, UniVersus announced in March of this year that Godzilla themed sets would be coming.
This however, isn’t unusual for many works, often starting out as fan project which allows the creators to express their love for an IP in unique and interesting ways. That passion was shared by Mr. Phillips’ circle of friends. One of them, Jack Armstrong, who would go on to become the second co-creator, would have his own thoughts about his friend’s card game on a rainy day they had planned to shoot a film.
“We had an outside shoot for a film we were doing, and we got a horrible rain. It wasn’t going to be the thing we were salvaging. So, Jack ended up just hanging out at my house, and we were bored. And I go, well, let’s play the card game.
He’s like, well, what do you mean, a card game? He thought I meant, like, Pokémon or magic…. And so, I pulled out these very crude, very ugly index cards with Google images of Godzilla and friends, glue stick and tape and pixelated and Comic Sans font…
Yes, I used comic Sam, and Jack’s like, well, this looks horrible. But, hey, this was actually a lot of fun. And then it kind of started spiraling into where and what we now promote and sell…“
As the card game became more refined, the rules, and material became closer to the games you would see on store shelves. It wouldn’t be until sometime later that the pair would begin having people at G-FEST try out their Godzilla card game. Receiving feedback each year, Kaiju Assault would find its footing and place at the Godzilla convention, being sold in the dealers with games being held in several locations across the final years the convention was held at the Crowne Plaza Hotel, before switching to a new venue.
Now at the Hyatt Regency, Kaiju Assault has a dedicated room, and although Godzilla and co. no longer have a presence in the game, the game is filled with a menagerie of unique characters. With a staggering 104 original kaiju developed by the team, with licenses from other creators bringing their monster mash of a roster up to 206 critters across 13 expansions. If you have your ear to the ground of indie Kaiju material, you may notice characters from across the community. A notable example being Matthew Dennion’s Atomic Rex, or G-FEST’s own G-FANTIS.
Design and Mechanics
Many card games have a shelf life for their card’s playability, with each release having its time in the spotlight before being shuffled off by the next one. This content creep has caused these communities to develop various formats to account for all the different combinations the creators didn’t account for that result in imbalance. This chaos results in players having to research the rules and ban lists to make sure they can play with what they want, on top of hunting for cards.
With Kaiju Assault, you buy the sets, and the more you have, the merrier.
“…Balancing is huge, and a lot of the bigger card games, they have balancing issues. Uh, jack hates bad balance, and so the reason why we don’t pull cards, or at least with everything that we have released, we’ve never had to pull cards.”
Unlike most card games, where you work within a deck you have built, pulling more cards into your hand each turn, Kaiju Assault presents an element of random. Instead, players focus on blind drawing cards from the various tiers, based on their point cost and the pool of points the players decide on at the beginning of game. Points generally range between 10 and 20 points, making this system similar in function to Warhammer 40k. Including this bit of randomness allows for neither player to gain an advantage from building around a set strategy or counter playing against an opponent. And as the starting deck can play up to four players comfortably, other players do not need to buy a starter deck of their own to play with their friend. It also allows for players to pool their decks together, providing players that may not have bought new expansions to play with those cards, or enjoy the fun that comes from multiple of the same monster on the field.
This kind of spontaneous interaction is what is referred to as “emergent gameplay”, as Kaiju Assault’s systems work in a way to simulate the back-and-forth monster brawls that kaiju films are known for. Much of the game reflects this, with standard attacks dealing damage, while moves such as grabs hold creatures in place for combo attacks. There are also projectiles that can result in clashes, like those of the Godzilla series, with players rolling dice to see which monster will receive the damage.
Rolling Dice is the name of the game in these battles. Working off of standard six-sided die, even rolls indicate hits and odd rolls a miss. Attacks with multiple hits will have players roll more dice to account for this string of attacks, and in cases where an aforementioned creature is grabbed, an odd number would result in the creature doing the grabbing to be hit.
Along with a gameplay loop that tries to emulate monster movies, the military deck also works to add to this. Serving as a neutral force, each player draws from the deck to produce an effect. These effects come in the form of appropriately themed tanks, jets, and other hardware that is often low damage. Military cards may not be able to take down a kaiju on their own, but through attrition and fighting other players, can sometimes take them over the edge. Kaiju Designer Alan echoes this,
“Similar to a monster movie where you have two monsters fighting, say, like war, the Gargantuas. And then the military shows up, and they don’t care who’s what. Good monster, bad monster. They’re just going to fire on anything that moves and try to kill it.”
As if other monsters and a military weren’t enough of a problem for players to worry about, there are also aliens! More accurately, another neutral force known as “hazard cards”. Serving as almost a bridge between military and monster cards, hazards are often creatures or entities that possess health similar to monster cards, but deal random effects across the board like those of the military. These effects can be positive, such as the monster slot machine, which can produce players with monsters, or others which can wipe whole characters off the board, changing the whole momentum of a game.
All of these mechanics and the general loose and random nature is KA’s biggest strength. Playing outside of the intended rules, such playing with a point cost below 10 or choosing to invest in an army of weaker kaiju gives every match and those in it an atmosphere that can’t be replicated. And due to relying on the heart of the dice, moments of spontaneous absurdity keep it fun. But through the creators’ dedication to ensuring the game doesn’t suffer from bloat or power creep, players won’t feel as though they are being cheated or at an unfair disadvantage based on what they have purchased.
Cross Promotion
As mentioned, Kaiju Assault is no stranger having other people’s content in their game. Serving as a form of special promotion. Dane Kroll, author of the Realm of Goryo series being the first to work with the team. This initial move brought his fun assortment of original monsters to the table and buffed out the card list to double its original size.
Described as happenstance, the meeting between the two resulted in a trading of cards and books snowballing into an expansion for the Kaiju Assault game and team. This also helped to motivate Mr. Kroll. Not only did it encourage him to work on and finish projects, but also it inspired him to reconsider bringing back characters due to how well the KA team were able to visualize them.
To the creators out there with a project out on the market. Mr. Phillips was able to lay out a set of guidelines that can get you on the way to working with them.
“…If you have a comic book, a novel, a movie, a short film, whatever your content is. If we are licensing it, it has to be circulated in a way people can attain it. It can’t be like your fan comic that you stash, and you just only are the one that gets to read it. It has to be available for people to experience. Once that has been clearly established, whatever it may be, then it needs to find its way to us, either Alan or myself…
…Alan and I would say when it comes to dealing with licenses, we have to have the content, easily understandable and in two stages:
One, the content. If it’s a novel, we need the novel. But then, I kind of would like a cliff notes version of what the powers and abilities you are thinking that they have. I will interpret them. Alan will interpret them. But we need to know what we’re looking for, because if we don’t have any of that information, we not only have to read the whole novel, which we tend to love to do anyway, but then we have a lot of interpretation that we have to do, and it may take us a little bit longer.
Once we figure out what we would like to do towards the presentation of the card, we send it over to the creator of the original owner of the creator, rather. And we let them kind of have a right of refusal if they like our interpretation or they don’t like our interpretation.”
This allows for the creator to have both a say in how their work is interpreted, and for the KA team to ensure the product is faithful but balanced for the players.”
The Future
With G-FEST just around the corner, so too is new Kaiju Assault content. The team has had content for 2025 already prepped since last year and there seems to be no stopping them. Fans returning to pick up the new expansions have helped keep up interest in KA, as has the licenses they have worked with. Brandon, Jack, Alan, and Dane are all hard at work, expanding their social media presence and coming up with new and exciting cards for us to play with. If you are interested in supporting this game and helping it grow further, a link to their website and social media will be provided at the bottom, along with a video containing the quotes used and some further comments and stories about this amazing kaiju project.
Links
Website – https://kaijuassault.wixsite.com/kaijuassaultcardgame/shop-c1iz
Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/KaijuAssaultCardGame/
Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/kaijuassault/
