by Drakim
The hero players in my group greatly favor mobility and will usually pick heroes with 5 speed or 5 fatigue, and heroic feats that allow them to suddenly turbo boost across the map when they need to. Mobility is power! Now, that's just an Overlord's lot in life, but, what I'd like to ask is tips and tricks in regards to monster placement on the map.Hero mobility advantages
• Since monsters can't fatigue move, you can very accurately calculate what their move+attack range is. If a melee monster has 4 speed, you can position yourself 5 squares away and be safe. The reverse is impossible because heroes can do a move+fatigue and still attack.
• There are several skills and heroic abilities that gives you greater mobility, like the Knight's Advance and Oath of Honor. Then there is Jain Fairwood's heroic feat and Syndrael's heroic feat
• The heroes can wield powerful ranged and reach weaponry to gain an even further advantage. The heroes in my group really love weapons like Crossbow for this reason.
These factors combined ensures that the heroes get the momentum and initiative against my monsters, often slaughtering them before they get to attack back.
For instance, in the next quest we are playing, Prison of Khhin, I will have a group of Cave Spiders to place in a hallway close to the Entrance. Whenever I'm about to place my monsters like this, I feel I have two choices:
Sandbag deployment - Place the Cave Spiders as far up as possible to block the hallway, but getting them slaughtered in turn 1 before I've even gotten to activate them.
Springtrap deployment - Place the Cave Spiders as far back so they can attack in turn 2 instead. But the heroes just spend turn 1 getting search tokens, and then positioning themselves 5 squares away from the Cave Spiders so that they can unleash their full furry on turn 2 without any risk.
Obviously both of these options are extremely unfavorable, rendering my Cave Spiders nearly useless, but I feel that this cold and calculating SWAT-team playstyle neutralizes my weaker monsters no matter what I do. Now, when a situation is hopeless, you don't give up but you sell yourself as expensively as possible. Some ways I've come up to try to deal with this is:
1. Deploy the spiders as far back as possible, and run away on the first turn, live to fight another day! Rather than dying for nothing, the spiders can go meet up with my other monsters and build a massive blockade. (Problems: the heroes might be able to do the mission objectives while being unopposed, and a Blast could wipe out that many monsters clustered together)
2. Double move past the enemy. When the heroes get ready to wipe out the Cave Spiders by standing just out of reach, I move my spiders 8 squares towards and past the heroes, forcing them to waste fatigue/actions on moving backwards to catch the spiders. Ignoring the spiders means they get them in the back the next turn! (Problems: Heroes might have ranged attacks, and don't need to move to attack)
3. Every turn when the Cave Spiders can't move+attack the heroes, move away instead, forcing the heroes to spend a lot of fatigue and heroic feats if they want to do coordinated collective slaughter this turn. (Problems: Map might simply not allow for this sort of evasion)
Does anybody else have any ideas for how to squeeze a little more value out of monsters in situations like this? I feel that there is so much potential and power being wasted when the monsters just end up being insignificant roadblocks in a hallway.
Overlord cards can obviously help the situation, but I ain't playing Dash on a spider so he can attack on Encounter 1.
