Colossus!

Colossus! is a free boardgame pitting giant monsters fighting each other on the tabletop. The game is presented as a generic ruleset, all players need is available using components they can build themselves or from other games and toys - most players won't need to buy anything they don’t own already.

The game lets players build giant monsters, called colossi, using three types of Power Cards: Abilities, Attacks and Specials. Abilities represent the inherent skills and characteristics of the colossus. Specials are the unexpected and unique moves which colossi can perform in battle. Attacks and Attack modifiers represent any weapons and ways of fighting that the colossus might have including claws, teeth, horns, laser beams, rockets, atomic breath, a sharp beak, fireballs, etc.

The game is played on a 1/600 tabletop with no hexes or squares. There are 6 types of terrain: cities, hazardous, wet, high, tricky or industrial parks. Given the huge size of the colossi, these are little more than nuisances to their inexorable advance.

The game is played in turns broken in 8 phases: Air Strike Planning (determine where they land - random), Orders (draw Orders Cards and assign them to colossi under your command), Movement (move colossi based on Order Card), Ranged Attack (use Ranged Attacks if any), Close Attack (use Close Attacks if any), Tinies (move the human defenders towards closes colossus and attack it), Air Strike Attack (roll for damage on colossi under air strike coordinates), End (remove markers, check if somebody won, etc). The game ends when a side's colossi have all been knocked out or when a scenario's victory conditions are met (the rules come with 6 scenarios)

Colossus! comes with its own setting called The Zillium Wars which is featured in little snippets across the rules. This story-world has been deliberately left vague and open to the player’s imagination. A range of possible colossi are suggested as starting points, but players are free to come up with their own concepts and model them using the cards available... or even invent their own cards! Hopefully there will be enough active players out there feeding back on the rules and how they use them so I can keep improving and expanding Colossus!