Fully Grounded #10: Giant Stone Face (Patreon)

 This is part of the terrain series, other entries can be found at the contents page here.  Terrain from Emporium Miniatures. 

Link: https://www.etsy.com/shop/EmporiumMiniatures 

• Number: 2 
• Size: 2x3
• Passive: Yes
• Activate: Yes
• Obstacle: Yes
• Classification: Benefit

Easily one of the most powerful, useful and important pieces of terrain, the Giant Stone Face (GSF) turns up more often than most other terrain due to its inclusion in several fights and the ability for Strategists to "tutor" it up (and the option to Sculpture Strategist) means that you can have campaigns with this in every single showdown (another reason Protect the Young isn't strictly worse than Survival of the Fittest). Also having Strategist gives you access to the Gregalope fight, which is bizarrely worded to give you not one, but two GSF's during the fight.

The terrain itself is a smorgasbord of treats, it provides cover from FoV based attacks. It allows survivors to make a 'mini move' by activating the stone face (you can 'hop' very quickly from one end of a stone face to the other if you do this). It can also be thrown around by Lion Gods to create the Sinkhole and smash the faces of your survivors, plus the Hand likes to stand on top of this terrain and mock your survivors endlessly.

But, the most significant and common use for this terrain is to provide a large accuracy/range boost for what is already the most powerful type of weapon in this game. Ranged. Having +2 accuracy and +2 range for any survivors using ranged weapons on top of the GSF is a boost that cannot be overlooked or sneezed at. And that is why I think Protect the Young settlements should keep their strategist safe until they have Sculpture, then put Strategist onto Sculpture and concentrate on having 1-2 bows for their DPS survivors.

A final, less obvious use, is to draw the monster over as a tank. Because you are always visible to the monster, everyone else can hide from line of sight and the tank can then present themselves on top of GSF to draw the monster over. If that doesn't immediately work, dropping your pants and mooning the monster while taunting it always does.

Great terrain, but at its best when you are using ranged attacks. So it's worth having a ranged attacker in every party (if possible) so you can maximise the benefits when it does turn up.