The Awful Green Things from Outer Space - Monsters Shrinkange

[mkanoap]

The rules are pretty clear what happens when there aren't enough tokens for awful green things to grow. Only some of them grow and the agt player chooses which ones, up to the token limit.

But what happens when there are not enough tokens to account for a shrink effect? For example, if there are a lot of babies on the board and a stack of adults are shrunk, how do you deal with missing baby tokens?

When this came up we saw three possibilities:
1) the excess adults just pop out of existence (crew player is happy)
2) the excess adults don't shrink (crew player is very sad)
3) the difference is made up by adding fragments or (if those run out) eggs.

We compromised on 3 yesterday when this came up, but that's only a stopgap. If it were babies being shrunk and there were not enough eggs, this solution wouldn't work.

Clearly one answer is "just don't use an untested area effect weapon on a big stack" but if you are the last crew member trapped in a fuel pod, it's time for desperate gambles.

[LordArach]

I've always gone with #1.

[PK]

I'd go with #3, personally. IMO, the AGT should still shrink if possible, and it's more fair to say they shrink "twice" than to say they're destroyed.

[mkanoap]

Option 3 works for adults, but what happens when babies have to be reduced and there are not enough eggs?

[GranitePenguin]

Well, if there aren't enough counters when growing, the Monster player gets to choose which ones grow.

I would expect the reverse for shrinking, but which monsters shrink would be decided by the crew player. That way, there is a balance between the two situations.