OK, So I am speaking from about 11 scenarios worth of experience, but I find large base monsters a pain to use. They are hard to spawn, hard to maneuver, and cannot mass swarm a character. Their numbers and powers really don't amount to a decent offset to the problems. I mean I take the classic spawn card Overlords use as their staple: choose spider, skellies or beastmen.... spiders blow! Skellies good for using terrain and range and beastmen great for mass slaughter of characters. Heck I'd rather drop a beastman than an ogre. And if I can drop more than 1, the choice is even more pointed towards the small based figs. Give me sorcs over nagas, give me beastmen over ogres, etc etc... How do you guys feel about this?

I agree to a point. I've never liked Spiders or Nagas much, but Ogres can be nasty.

Demons are really tough, especially in RtL with a Eldritch upgrade.

By far, my favorite large base monster are Trolls. The One Shot Tank Killers.

Big Remy said:

Nagas are pretty good, especially the Masters and especially in RtL (maybe the stats are different?). Command + Sorcery translates to very high damage indeed (a Diamond Master Naga has the highest damage potential out of any monster excepting Bash, although a Diamond Master Dark Elf can do more if the target's armour is at least 9), and they are reasonably tough (and have grapple, so no acrobat/fly past them).

But in general, yes, large monsters are not as useful as small ones.

Significant disadvantages that you have not mentioned include inability to go up or down stairwells, difficulty of spawning, inability to avoid or get past obstacles and awkwardness in getting through other monsters (or vice versa) when trying to conduct hit and runs.
Advantages include excellent cover from trees, more possibilities when on higher ground (ie one corner can be on the table counting the whole monster uphill, while shooting from a further corner closer to the target and able to target spaces not visible from the table itself) and a greater ability to blockade corridors.

I like them for two reasons- the stronger ones can actually last long enough to get a shot in before dying, and they are excellent for blocking a path. Kill my spiders? I don't care, but it will take you that much longer to get down this hall.

Oh, and as I was looking through the first quest to WoD, I thought how webbing up a hero would pretty much spell certain death for him.

I find it hard to believe that that scenario could be won.

If we're going for an exhaustive list, the ability to ignore smaller pits, mud, lava, and ice deserves to be mentioned (depending on how you act on the horribly confused FAQ ruling); also resistance to Knockback. An ogre in a room speckled with lava can potentially knock heroes into it without being hindered by it; of course, mud, lava, and ice are all expansion obstacles and thus generally scarce. I think there could stand to be a trap card that creates lava.

I'd agree that being large is more often a liability than an asset. I'm not sure it's enough of a liability to make large monsters less valuable than small ones with worse stats, though the combination of large size, low speed, and melee attacks is often fairly debilitating.

Spiders suck for the most part, but they're cheap, their speed CAN overcome their size and I do like poison. Web just owns in Vanilla (or on a runner in rtl) since you only get that one die and sometimes surges just don't happen. Their range is crap, though.

Demons are just sick, but since you can't spawn them and only get them when they are part of the quest, not really worth discussing. Nor are dragons, ice wyrms, giants, or chaos beasts, I suppose.

Ogres tend to be worthless for anything other than slowing people down. That being said, a master ogre can take awhile to bring down only to un-die..which is generally not cool for a hero. If that ogre spawn were a master, it might be worth it.

Trolls. Trolls. Trolls. What can I say about possibly my favorite monster in the game? I put a "guiding forces" (event power that makes any attack you want aimed for 2 threat) into my deck for that troll quest in AoD. Quest 4, I think. You get to pop trolls out as an interrupt, and at one point I used a dark servant to get sweep and basically tpkd a party right before they went after the boss. God, that was awesome! Sorry, trolls are fantastic and I hate to admit that I agree that Lone troll is WAY overpowered as a spawn given it's treachery cost. Trolls were probably responsible for half my Nanok kills in our last campaign.

Nagas are probably too weak in non-rtl settings, but grapple is great for stopping that acrobat/Zyla.

Manticores are pretty cool with quickshot and a rage. Master manticores with posion are even cooler. I really think poison is pretty underrated. In rtl, with soar...they can be very nice in outdoor encounters.

I'm not sure if we're talking about hellhounds, blood apes, or wendigos, so I'll leave them out. They all have the ability to be decent, though..outside of vanilla/copper hellhounds.

All in all, other than Lone troll, I can't think of a big monster spawn that's really worth it's threat or treachery cost relative to other cards. I would generally want Dark priests, skeleton patrols and Beastmen war parties. Or even better yet, Legions of the dead and Elite beastmen...

My thoughts are you make the best of the bigs you get, and shy away from spending treachery to spawn them unless they have a function in that quest (like 3 master banes in that first WoD quest) or your playing rtl and you have that monster type upgraded.

I think the movement problems associated with large monsters could be overcome if the designers could just get past the "You're in a 10 foot wide corridor" D&D cliche. All the hallways and doors are 2 spaces wide, which means even joining 4 large pieces you have major choke points for large creatures that a single rubble token can make impassible. More rooms like the huge ToI tiles and maybe the option of larger hallways in the future could provide interesting options (albeit with limited compatibility with older tiles).

OK glad to see I'm not alone with this opinion and missing out on some obscure advantage. As for blocking hallways, give me 6 kobolds over 2 spiders any day. And dual bases such as hell hounds aren't bad, and the breath is a nice offset making them worth while.

Due to the fact that I have my favourites (such as mr troll lover in this thread), my players are begging me to mix it up a bit more. They look into the monster box and are astounded how little table time some figs see. They even suggested I swap the powers or buff them if I need more incentive to put them into play. We'll see if that would sway me, depends on what mods would be done.

My group and I haven't gotten to RtL yet, but it seems to be the expansion of choice with the majority of peeps on this forum. We will get there soon enough though, since we really do enjoy this game.

Just got the game (jitd) yesterday but haven't played yet.

I had assumed the large monsters would be the most feared but perhaps this is wrong for many of the reasons already pointed out above.

What about giving large monsters (4-6 squares) the ability to remove (crush, scatter, whatever) obstacles?

Or possibly in addition to removing them, they could move them? This could obviously lead to some serious blocking issues which would have to be prevented.

This ability does seem like a natural fit for the large monsters but I have no idea of all the possible implications.

Just throwing it out there...

If im not mistaken, large monsters can move over obstacles, just not ending their movement on them? And as far as i know the heroes wont be placing any rubble anyway, atleast not in vanilla.

I generaly have the same opinion as you guys, i mean, a master beastman do more damage than almost anything. A red+green+3 is worth blue+green+green+yellow+yellow+black if you consider the chancefactor, considering damage.

when we play, the beastmen are having alot of warparties! Fun for them!

Dr strangle said:

You are mistaken. Impassable is still impassable. Only acrobat/flying can move over impassable obstacles.

Hazardous and beneficial terrain have different affects on large monsters according to the abortion that is the Large Monsters and Terrain ruling on pg 2 of the FAQ. But that ruling does not cover Impassable terrain.

Nothing says pain like a Troll with aim. Demons can be down right nasty. Golems can be effective hallway blockers.

That reminds me about a question I had about Bash:

From the Rulebook:

Bash
When making an attack with the Bash ability, the figure
may roll up to 5 power dice with the attack. If any
of the power dice roll a blank, it is treated as though
the figure rolled a miss result. Otherwise, the attack
proceeds as normal and has the following ability:
“: +5 Damage and Pierce 2.” The figure never
has to roll any power dice when making a Bash attack,
regardless of other effects.

So does the last sentence mean I can choose not to use any Power Dice and still get the benefit of Bash? Or does it mean I am not required to use Bash even if the monster has it?

Morgaln said:

You can absolutely not roll any power dice and still bash. It's just that adding power dice drastically increases your damage/chances of getting surges while also increasing your chances of a miss. You may or may not get 2 surges and you may not do THAT much damage even if you do. On 5 power dice, you should usually get 1-2 surges and if you get 1 or 2 more on your main dice, you could have +10 damage and pierce 4! I have had luckier rolls with +15 damage and pierce 6. Pretty much the only way to one-shot Nanok in rtl. However, your chance of rollling at least one miss on 6 dice (since there's the red and 5 powers) is technically 1/1...(6 x 1/6=1), so...putting an aim on it means you probably won't miss the attack and you'll probably end up doing some pretty harsh damage. If it's a sweeping master troll...look out! TPK city!

Feanor said:

Actually, the chance of rolling no misses on 6 dice is (5/6)^6, which comes to .335, pretty much a 1 in 3 chance of hitting. When you put on aim, the chance that any one die misses is now only 1/36, so your chance to hit goes up to (35/36)^6, which is .84. HUGE increase there. 1 in 3 chance of doing massive damage isn't bad in the first place, but put on aim, and you're up to about a 5 in 6 chance of doing massive damage, right about the same as your chance to hit on an unaimed bash with no power dice.

Trolls are viscious, and Orges and Giants will likely to good damage while slowing the party down quite a bit for you to generate threat during. And a Manticore with Rage (or the newer Enraged) can frequently take down any party member they choose, even a melee tank. Nagas and spiders are pretty weak, but spiders can appear in fairly large quantities, and serve as a decent meatshield in hallways for your ranged creatures if you are up against something like Landric + Prodigy + Sunburst.

So what expansion is the troll from? Seems broken, keep hearing about it. What stats?

shamalamastreetman said:

Trolls are from Altar of Despair. They sound viscious because Bash is awesome, but the down side to Bash they we have neglected to mention I think is that if even one of those power dice comes up blank...whole attack fails. So Bash is really a luck move, unless you have an Aim card handy then its less so.

Bash increases your odds of missing to a ridiculous number without an aim. Even with an aim, it's still rough going if you decide to pump him up to full dice.

So every surge is +1 damage? how many black dice?

shamalamastreetman said:

Oh no no no...

1 Surge = +5 Damage and Pierce 2. And you roll up to 5 black dice. If all of those hit surges, you get +25 Damage and Pierce 10 without even factoring in what you get on the primary dice.

That's why Trolls are so evil.

Big Remy said:

Isn't it 2 surges for that effect? not that it isn't still horribly deadly when it hits. Which is why it is pretty key to have an aim handy to give you a good chance to hit. I worked it out earlier in the thread, and an aimed bash has about an equal chance to hit as a normal unaimed attack. Brutal

2 surges per +5 damage and pierce 2, but with that many dice, you usually get at least 4 surges..and I've had more. Aim=yes. I've yet to fail an aimed bash, and it's the only way I can think of to tpk with a single attack (master).

Hammerdal said:

Oh yeah, DUH. Two surges. My bad.