So we ran into a situation where I had spawned some monsters already. The heroes revealed a new room and according to the booklet there were about 6 creatures in that room of which one was a master beastman. Having spawned earlier war parties, I did not have any master beastman figure in the box. I claimed that in this kind of situation I use replacement creatures and ASA I can use a real master beastman, I'll make the switch. My friend claimed otherwise, stating I could not spawn that creature there at all.

What's the official ruling?

To come to think of it, IMO I was right since let's say a big room is coming up with lots of...lava beetles as enemies. But since I had used many lava scout OL cards earlier, I can not spawn any monster in that area thus making it an empty room. Doesn't quite work that way, does it now?

Cheers,

Aamaxu

Aamaxu said:

Unforunately for you, by the RAW you are incorrect. You are limited, unless specified otherwise by that JitD insert, to the figures that comes with the game. Its right there on page 12 of JitD concerning spawning:

The overlord player may not place more monsters on the board than there are available figures. For instance, if all of the Beastmen are on the board, the overlord player cannot spawn an additional Beastman (although he could spawn a Master Beastman if any of the red Beastman figures are still available).

However, what you could have done in this case was use this rule in the JitD rulebook on page 12:

If the overlord player wishes to place a monster on the board but is already using all of his available figures, he may choose to remove a monster figure from the board to make that figure available for immediate placement. The overlord player simply removes the figure from its original space on the board and places it in a new space, following the normal rules for spawning monsters or placing monsters when a new area is revealed .

This covers exactly your situation. You can not substitute another figure and then make the switch when one becomes available, you would need to remove a Master Beastman from the board to use it to place on the map. This can actually work to your advantage, since if you have a bunch of trailing monsters that the Heroes have run away from, you now get take them and throw them in the Heroes path and they are fully healed.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I remember reading a rule, FAQ maybe, that said if the quest reveals (and that is not the OL placing) monsters and there are not enough Master figures for all of them they may be replaced with normal ones, just give him a counter to show this... Does this ring anyones bells ?!

The specific instances where substitutes are allowed are detailed in http://new.fantasyflightgames.com/ffg_content/descent/descentinsert.pdf

In general, they are only allowed when a single area calls for more figures than are available, or if the quest requires them such as in The Brothers Durnog (Quest 2 JitD).