MONSTER SPEED DATING

We asked Alex Hall to put together his top five monsters from the game.

THE GREAT JAGRAS

“I can’t not put him in there. I think all of the monsters work really well within the video game. I think a really fun challenge with Jagras was he is ultimately your tutorial monster, so making that work and making sure it’s engaging and shows off the mechanics is key. So he’s got like some stomping around attacks. He’s got some ranged attacks, he’s got some attacks where he just kind of stands in one place and rolls around and he’s kind of encapsulates all that into one.”

JYURATODOS

“Any Monster Hunter fans that read this will think that’s really weird because he’s generally not seen as a favourite within the video game, which is part of the reason he’s on the list. I think he’s really cool in the board game then I think there are there’s things I’ve found when doing the development on bosses, where I do think you can make things that are maybe not that interesting in a video game, really interesting in a board game”

DIABLOS

“He’s a big scaley beast. I guess if you imagine a triceratops, but it’s got two legs and wings and burrows. That one was just an interesting one because, within the video game, he’s all about straight lines. It just kind of runs backwards and forwards and straight lines. That’s his thing. Representing that straight line movement within our system was another really fun challenge to have to overcome.”

RATHALOS

“He’s like the mascot of Monster Hunter. Anyone that’s super into Monster Hunter loves Rathalos, so he had to be in there. He’s a great fight. It’s really fun. He’s one of the harder miniatures in the core box. It’s just a good fun fight. Very varied.”

NERGIGANTE

“The big dog. All of the elder dragons have some additional mechanics on top of the kind of usual combat rules to give them a bit of extra flavour because most of them have some very unique mechanics within the video game. And his was one of that representation of how he works in the video game onto the board game and how well that worked with the systems. Very often you find when you’re trying to make something work, you don’t want to break your own rules and sometimes have to. Whereas he just slotted in perfectly with the groundwork that was already done within the core game.”