The only good thing about a Goblin is, they’re so predictable!

Thunder Under Mount Silence is easy to play solo as the Goblins can be assigned ‘roles’ and are then controlled by following a priorities chart. In solo mode it is up to the player what order the enemy models take their turns in.

On the layout map for each adventure, the icons showing where the Goblins begin the game are coloured to show their ‘role’. This is one of four types- Marauder, Guard, Sentry and Agent, the four modes used when playing solo. Each mode has a ‘priorities’ flow chart which is followed to determine the actions they take in their turn. We’ve set the game up so a solo player takes control of the Gnomes but if you’d rather play as Goblins you can experiment with assigning suitable roles to each Gnome model instead.

When following the chart simply start in the top box and work your way down, checking each of the criteria and taking the ‘yes’ or ‘no’ branch until you are told what action to take. If you are instructed to Evaluate then go back to the top of the chart and start again.

A couple of separate boxes at the top of each chart shows what the model will do in a fight and when it comes up against a closed door. The Fighting box contains a ‘preferred Attack’ the model will make when it Takes a Swing. This is simply the order of preference for choosing leftover Attack Dice to inflict on an opponent. For example, if the preferred Attack was 6, 3, 2, 4, 5, 1 then if the remaining Attack Dice included a 6 this is what would be chosen. If it didn’t but there was a 3 this would be the next choice and so on. The Fighting box always takes priority, so generally if a model can Take a Swing it will. However, not all roles are combat focused. If the Fighting box doesn’t say the model will Take a Swing if it can then even if it could Take a Swing follow the rest of the chart instead.

With all roles if there is a choice of which model to attack the closest model will be picked first (this seems irrelevant now but will come into play later), followed by any model in the space directly in front of the attacker, followed by whichever model has the lowest current Endurance. If there’s still any doubt then you may pick or roll a dice to decide which model is attacked.