I have a problem with my heros and large monsters. I have these answers from Justin Kemppainen; Creative Content Developer

"As such, a monster would not suffer any damage from "expanding" into lava spaces, and it is not subject to attacks from the Knight's Guard ability if "expanding" to become adjacent."

Its absolutely clear but…my heroes ask me that if so, why are they going to buy skills like Guard or Caltrops (and the wildlander basic Nimble) if there is too easy to ignore them…and the are right

I only have to stop my large monsters movement 2 spaces away of the heros, then expand my monsters and attack them…and according to the answer if I do that they cant use that skills so…

I thought that skills like Nimble was very powerfull cause the wildlander can use it to avoid attacks, but with that new rule, he cant avoid only 1 space miniatures…cause against all of large monster he cant do nothing with that skill…

And also, in our adventures its more frequent to choose large monster with the "free groups" so…with that answer skills like Nimble, Guard or Caltrops lose A LOT of power…and can be use only rarely…

Also, they say that large monster have a lot of power cause:

1) With expanding they dont suffer damage from lava spaces

2) When they interrumpt their movement (to attack or to do another move action) they gain movement points (cause you can expand and choose other point to move)

3) If the heros could use that abilitys (Caltrops, Guard or Nimble, that would be rarely), they interrumpt the monster turn so the monster have to expand…and that would give MORE movement points to the monster…

What can i tell to them? any help or i can destroy caltrops guard and nimble cards xDD

nobody can help my with this?

Then I think that i have to assume that nimble, guard or caltrops are absurd cards

We play a mix house rule that includes a bit of Large Monster movement from Decent 1ed.

They can only expand into spaces that they have already moved through (or expand backwards probably describes it better).

Sorts out most of these exploit issues.

First of all thanks for the answer.

The problem is that i dont like to play with house rules, cause i think that i have to adapt to the game, not adapt the game to me.

Thats why I am asking…with that rules, why is anybody going to spend 2 experience buying caltrops or guard, if they are going go be use rarely…Nimble, ok, its a basic skill so maybe it can be balanced, but guard or caltrops…i cant imagine someone buying them if large monsters arent affected…any more opinion? any way to use them properly without using house rules?

So I assume that nobody have problems with caltrops or guard? any hero have bought it? how can I use them properly? its worth to buy them? any help?

That sentence you posted sounds quite confusing out of context. But just going from the rules on the cards, and from the rule book, large monsters still have to expand into an adjacent space to attack. Basically, you DON'T attack unless you choose to expand into those spaces, because those spaces are the spaces adjacent to it. And as soon as you expand into those spaces, Caltrops or Guard would take effect. That being said, Overlords could still pick a large monster with the Reach ability to avoid these pit falls.

As for the shuffle movement of a larger creature, I think you're kind of misinterpretting this as well. There is a portion in the rulebook that says "The monster is only considered to have entered the one space in which it ended its movement…" So yes, it does shrink down and expands again, but you have only entered that one space, not all of them. I believe this to be the conclusion your looking for. Otherwise an overlord player could technically just slinky across a whole map expanding and dissolving, and that does not appear right.

When my group plays, we always expand down to the same tile in a Overlord turn. At the start of the next activation, he can choose a new area to shrink down to, but that will be the area designated as his front foot forward.

Hope this helps some! The area is tad bit vague. The difference is the very careful wording of "Moving" & "Enter"

Cheers,

-Mitch

For the most part, I think those skills are still going to be valuable throughout the game as a whole because you are more likely to be stopped by an Overlord using a bunch of single space minions to force you to spread out your actions removing instead of focusing on one target. While there are the problems that you could use one piece to take up a whole hallway and block the heroes, and abuse the movement system so that you chose to move to a square that is just outside of the range of one of their abilities, you'll have that in games. In the games I have played, both as OL and heroes, that question has arisen. The answer in our group has always been that more often than not the ability will work in the hero's favor. I guess what you would want to do as the hero team is position yourself such that the available spaces for the Overlord to expand his monster require at least one of the squares that he moves into before expanding is the one adjacent to one of the characters with the ability in question. Again it all depends on how much you want to play a chess game with the pieces on the board and play area denial.

Our players tend to be more tactical with movement and setting up "blockades" for the Overlord, or in the case of the Overlord setting up the "blockades" for the heroes. I have never seen caltrops played in one of our games, but the use of defend and nimble has saved the hero teams more than once even in the same encounter.

Hopefully that is a coherent enough post, but I guess that is my two cents.

Mitchuation said:

Hi Mitch, thanks for the answer but i think that you dont understand Justin Kemppainen answer

He said that: "

As such, a monster would not suffer any damage from "expanding" into lava spaces, and it is not subject to attacks from the Knight's Guard ability if "expanding" to become adjacent"

So its absolutely clear that "it is not subjet to attacks from the knight's Guard ability if "expanding" to become adyacent"

The only way to use that abilitys is that the large monster become adyacent with the movement action, not expanding, and thats why I said that that abilities lose a lot of power cause the overlord can easily ignore them.

Husker949 thanks for your answer too. Its true that against 1 space monster they are usefull, but I think that most overlords tends to choose large monsters, like ettins, dragons, barghets, meriods, elementals…and in that casem abilitys that cost 2 experience are absolutely unless. Its true that as you said, abilities like nimble (basic) or defend (knigth 1 experience) can be usefull, but Guard or Caltrops…as I said i cant imagine a hero buying them with that official rules…well…I cant imagine a runemaster buying Break the Rune neither so i think that is normal…knights have some skills that are better…and some that are more unless…

Hey Varikas I think I found your answer.

At this link ;

http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/863073/adam-and-justin-sez-thread-potentially-official

I found this;

If the movement of a large monster is interrupted (e.g: with caltrops) and there is no space to "expand" it, how do you proceed?

You cannot interrupt large monster movement in a space in which it cannot expand.

So basically, if in an open field, Yes the large monster can avoid walking through the area of caltrops because it could technically just expand outwardly in the other direction, placing him not beside the unit. If the overlord wished to make him travel close to the unit then it would set off caltrops effect.

Does this make sense? Because if there are more spaces to expand the opposite direction, then why would the OL take that risk? Now keeping this in mind, you can use Caltrops or Heros Guard in tight corridors where large monsters could not move by without passing through.

For purposes of large movement, you do shrink down to a space, but the monster does not shrink down in size. It makes movement more versatile I believe to establish the fact that these monsters are big, and when required to move through a tight area, can either bulldoze or climb over certain objects.

The article this was taking from was also taking from the same gentleman you keep quoting.

Cheers,

-Mitch

Mitchuation said:

No, that's a completely different situation than what the OP is talking about.

In that example, there is not enough room for the large monster to expand anywhere, and the hero has dropped caltrops on it as it walks by. The large monster would literally hang off the board if it tried to "expand," so the ruling is you cannot interrupt a large monster unless he has enough room to expand first.

What the OP is talking about is a situation where the large monster DOES have enough room to expand, but one of the spaces it is expanding into is the space the caltrops are being used in. FFG's ruling in this case is basically that "expanding into a space does not count as entering the space" so abilities like caltrops will not trigger. The end result is that caltrops (and a bunch of other abilities) are useless against large monsters.

That said, I believe that caltrops CAN be used on a large monster if it actually moves into the target space. ie: the one space the monster is using to count movement is the space the caltrops are being fired at. The large monster may expand into various other spaces, but he still legally "entered" the caltrops space, so he's boned. If the large monster was forced to expand for some other reason, you couldn't throw caltrops at an adjacent space he "expanded" into, though. So caltrops are not entirely useless against large monsters, as long as you catch them while they're moving, and in an area where they have room to expand elsewhere. The same, sadly, cannot be said of all the other cards the OP mentions.

Varikas said:

I believe you have a solid interpretation of FFG's rulings in these matters. The unfortunate truth is that if the OL focuses all his efforts on picking large monsters whenever possible, then these skills will be underused and the heroes are best recommended to spend their XP elsewhere. This is a case of the tactics being defined by each player's style of play (in this case, the OL's.)

That said, I think there are lots of very useful small monsters, and the OL is missing out by always going for the big ones. Once the heroes adapt their tactics to always facing large monsters, the OL won't really be gaining too much by using them anyway. However, if that's the OL's style of play, there's not much use for these cards. Perhaps you could try rotating OLs in your group and then these cards may be more useful when there's an OL who likes using smaller monsters.

If NO ONE in your group would EVER choose small monsters over large ones, then I guess you can just tear up those cards and move on… =P

(Disclaimer: Steve-O would never seriously suggest destroying game components. That was sarcasm. =P Even if all they do is collect dust in the box, he would never do that himself.)

Steve you get my problem perfectly, but i dont understand why you said that:

"The same, sadly, cannot be said of all the other cards the OP mentions."

I can use Guard or nimble if the large monster moves into an adyacent space, like caltrops, that 3 skills are activated when a monster enters an adyacent space so i dont understand why you said that caltrops can have more uses than the other 2.

In the other things I am absolutley agree with you…our OL tends to choose large monsters, and I think than they are better cause most of times the OL have to block heroes, and for that propose its better large monster than small ones, cause with an explosion you can kill 2 or 3 small monsters but if they are dragons, or ettins, or giants…its harder. Also, we like to play with the max dificult level. Last day we play our first adventure of Act I (new campaing) that was a fat goblin and in the first encounter the OL chose giants…it was so hard, but with Astarra heroic feat, and a blocking strategy with the knight (nanok) with "defend" and the reanimate, we could block the giants and go on the objetives.

If the adventure is too dificult cause the monster selection…we have to do a very good strategy to win, and thats the way to become a better player i think