The biggest and most impressive looking model that I got with my
Resident Evil 2 Kickstarter set was the Giant Alligator. It is huge! Suffice to say, I wanted to get it painted asap, even though it takes no part in the basic core game. Also, at the same time, I painted the pair of Giant Spiders, which are also an optional expansion set. I have included my figure of Vampifan in these photos to give you a sense of scale of the monsters.
The Giant Alligator is a Boss level creature, meaning it acts differently to normal monsters in the game. It has three special abilities. First up is
Relentless. Before drawing a card from the behaviour deck, the Giant Alligator performs a move towards the active character. Second is
Scaly Hide. The Giant alligator cannot be damaged by attacks and does not use a health dial. Thirdly is
Driven Back. If the Giant Alligator is hit by an attack, reduce its movement from 2 to 1 for the remainder of the activation.
Instead of performing actions, each Boss has a unique behaviour deck which dictates how it moves and attacks. When a character is on the same tile as a Boss, instead of drawing a card from the tension deck, in their Tension Phase, they draw a card from the boss's behaviour deck and resolve the sequence on the card from top to bottom.
The Giant Spiders have a movement rate of 1 and 3 wounds. They have two special abilities. First is
Burn It! Damage caused by flames or fire against a Giant Spider is doubled. Second is
Poisonous Charge. During Arachnid Charge movement, the Giant spider moves through any square occupied by another character. Any character contacted suffers the Pushed and Poisoned effects.
An Arachnid Charge allows the Giant Spider to move 3 squares towards the active character. They are fast and deadly!
For painting the Alligator I referenced photos of real life alligators on Google Images. On my first visit to Florida, USA, my family and I visited a place called Gator World, which was full of these beasts, I thought they were cool, but my parents were glad to leave the place! To them it was too hot (being outdoors there was no air conditioning), too smelly (yes, they did smell) and they found the alligators too repulsive, whereas I thought they were fascinating. The colour scheme for the two spiders came from their character record cards that came with them. It is very striking! These creatures could appear in many a post apocalypse game, including
Judge Dredd and
Strontium Dog. I could just imagine the Giant Alligator residing in the Undercity of Mega City One and the spiders living out in the Cursed Earth.
