Maybe its my poor english ;-) but I do not understand something. Please clarify.

Creatures Guide, page 8, upper picture: "putting it all togather"

There is Group Sheet for Greenskins, Black Orc and Goblin.
Why are there 2 special action cards combined with the set (mighty blow and disorienting strike) ?

Black Orc has 1 melee action icon on the card, for 1 special action (apart from basic actions everyone has)

thanks

skolo

anyone?

is the icon represents just additional action of that kind from all the cards maybe?

I asked a question some time back around the same discrepancy. The example certainly does not follow the rule guidelines. When we've talked abou this in the forums previously, the concensus seems to be to pick action cards for your monsters that deliver on the flavor of the encounter you want to create. The more cards you make available to the creature, the more potentially challenging the encounter will be.

The problem, of course, is that there is no taking into account what the action symbols on the cards are supposed to signify. I find this very frustrating. It's almost like the solution is left up to the GM creating the encounter, and you can just go ahead and igore these symbols, because they really don't mean anything.

I suppose the best extrapolation from the rules is that each creature in an encounter gains access to ALL cards with that creature's keyword on it (Greenskin, for instance), and if there is an extra action card symbol on the card, find another action card that matches that symbol and add it in as well.

As a GM for this game, I'd have to say that this particular interpretation is unweildy to the point of being useless. In the frantic swirl of events that occur during combat in a play session, the last thing you want as a GM or player, is for combat to get bogged down while the GM figures out which action of, say six available to Greenskins, should be used by an insignificant goblin in the encounter.

It gets more absurd when you look at, say priest or wizard NPCs that are doing battle with the players. That a Wizard has only two spell actions available to him makes no sense. However, if the NPC has all spells available to a wizard of his rank, plus two more provided by the special symbols on the card...well, there's no GM in the world that can keep all of those options straight.

In the end, as a GM, I just decided to followe common sense and make up my own guideline for monster/creature/enemy NPC action cards. Give each important NPC or henchmen group a selection of two or three of four cards that will make sense of the tone of the encounter (plan out beforehand!). If the creature card has a special symbol, throw in an extra "curveball" or "signature move" card that adds flavor and/or uncertainty to the encounter. Above all things, don't give yourself, as a GM too many options. Better to have a simple encounter than to let it bog down while your players are in the heat of the action.

But really...FFG...there should have been better guidelines provided to handle creature action cards.

I forget the specific wording from the Tome of Adventure but it's also added to slightly in the GM Toolkit IIR.

Basically each creature race has a selection of creature cards available to it. So for greenskins there are a handful of greenskins cards. Some are for all greenskins, some only for goblins, some only for orcs etc... The other symbols on the creatures are suggested other (common action card types) that those creatures may have if you want to represent a creature that's slightly better then the common stock.

This would be a little unweildy to all do on the fly, it's definitely better to prepare the encounters ahead of time if you want to make more advanced foes.