Anyone notice that Ettins surge abilities seem backwards for the two Acts?

Act 1 minion Ettin: Surge allows +2 wounds, Act 2 minion: Surge allows +1 wound.
Act 1 master Ettin: Surge allows +3 wounds, Act 2 master: Surge allows +2 wounds.

Health, attack dice, and defense dice scale with the Act and are not listed here for brevity. Only the surges seem wrong. This has not come up in our game play yet, but I noticed it while comparing critter stats. I tried thinking why that might be, but came up with nada. It's easy to transpose the changes with a marker but I want to do some research first. Opinions? Possible errata?

hi,

recently i noticed the same. it seems to me that the cards were misprinted, a typo imho. we use the act 2 card for act 1 and vice versa.

greetz!

Disappointing… Just once I'd like an FFG come up that didn't have misprints…

Cipheron said:

I thought I read somewhere that the Act II Ettin has an extra attack die, if that's the case that would be horribly overpowered if used in Act I.

jjcole said:

Which is why they probably did the surges that way. Since you have an extra attack dice, you have an extra chance to get a surge.

I seem to remember one of the conversion kit monsters also having something weird going on with better surges for Act I. Don't remember off the top of my head though.

wootersl said:

Except that every other large monster from the base set gets the extra attack die and a stronger surge (Merriod & Shadow Dragon). Weaker monsters get 1 or the other although sometimes they do get both ex. Cave Spiders minions go from BY die +1 surge to BYY die +2 surge. It's pretty hard to argue that's it's unbalanced for the ettins but not for everything else. Act II monsters just flat out get a lot stronger.

Ettins are literally the only monster (from the base set) which has a declining value so most likely the surge values got switched.

It's not a typo. You have to consider that Ettins are getting +R die (also of note: their defense goes from G+G to G+B). The previous example gives a + Y to Cave Spiders. Yes, +Y also adds +surge dmg because Yellow power dice are surge-heavy while red is heart-heavy. It seems to me the reduced surge bonus is fair considering guaranteed damage. IMO the card scales just fine. You're getting one whole Red die and one less surge dmg. The Merriod follows this upgrade path as well: +surge dmg and+Y. The shadow dragon increases BUT don't forget they have reduced mobility due to their size. Look at Blood Apes: only the minion gets +1 additional dmg on surge AND a +Y while the master gets NO surge addition BUT gets +R. Each monster scales up differently; some have much more health than average, but no surge bonus. Others get some combination of surge and power dice bonus, while still others increase defense and others get bonus actions and even bonus movement (Kobolds). There is no typo - each monser has unique strengths and I think the designers did quite well fleshing out just how each monster advances. Play on!

Rico said:

Shadow dragons also get +R die and an extra heart in fact every stat increase is identical between ettins and dragons the except that the surge gets weaker for the ettin and stronger for the shadow dragon. Even in your example the master blood ape scales better then the ettin. He get's a R die ettin gets a R die and a penalty (-1 surge). That's before counting the fact that blood ape scales better with damage increases (leap attack lets him use that extra R die against multiple targets).

A far as the yellow with +1 surge vs. red die with -1 surge your estimating the increase wrong. A yellow die with +1 surge increases damage more then a red die with -1 surge. Yellow die do 1 less damage which is more then made up by the 2 pt surge differential since it has a greater then 50% chance to get at least 1 surge with 3 die. If the monster has two good abilities to spend surge on then adding a yellow die is much more effective then adding a red die.

Ratcur said:

Wow. All this algebra is hurting my head. Wouldn't it just be better, instead of fighting about it (since every seems determined they are right) that you just pose the question in the sticky post and have FFG settle the matter? Until then, play it however you want to. But, chest thumping is not solving anything.

I think trying to compare monsters on a one-to-one ratio is just awful - maybe Ettins are clumsy and this is represented in the choice of upgrade, who knows. Some are much more powerful while others only slightly so. (By the way I edited my previous post to say that the Shadow Dragon lacks the mobility of the Ettin). If you feel that the Ettin is a typo feel free to contact FFG. I don't have an issue with it and looking through all the CK cards it feels fine to me.

Let's really hurt people's heads.

Doing the math, I come up with average damage for the Act I Ettin (blue & red) of 3.14 and the Act II of 4.94 (blue & 2 reds). Working out the odds of at least one surge (my math might be off a bit here) times the damage bonus, I get 3.97 for Act I minion, 4.39 master, 5.43 Act II minion, 5.92 master.

If you reverse the surge numbers between Acts I & II, the Act I monsters are nerfed to 3.56 & 3.97, and the Act II Ettins are now doing 5.92 & 6.40.

In all, the difference between a minion & a master is roughly 10%. The difference between the Act I master & the Act II minion is ~25%. By reversing the surge bonus, that difference becomes almost 50% -- a big jump.

I assume FFG did this on purpose to temper the addition of a second red die to the Act II version, and that the surge bonuses should be left alone.

Adding a yellow die in place of the red die drops the average base damage to 4.11, almost a point. If you kept the same surge damage bonus for the Act II Ettins, they would be doing 5.36 & 5.99 on average -- almost identical to what they are doing with the decreased bonus with the extra red die.

Triu said:

HAPPY FRIDAY!