As far as MY game is concerned, I currently have seven different types of monsters.
It is a Fantasy game where the main enemy are the legions of Undead plaguing the land. Think Myth: The Fallen Lords, but instead of ranks of soldiers fighting off the baddies, you have your typical Fantasy hero types. Fairly cliche, I know, but it's a good place to start for my first actual working game.
My seven monsters include various minions and tougher enemies, as well as a couple of mini-boss types.
Is this a pretty decent number to keep things fresh as far as a boardgame would be concerned?
Would you add more, or take a few away. Perhaps have set numbers for every difficulty tier of enemy? Are two mini-boss enemies too much?
Those are the kinds of things I'd like to know!
The way I'm working it out allows for different combinations of the creatures to form different kinds of combos and strategic possibilities for the Undead Player. For instance, the most basic type of enemy is pretty pathetic on its own, but it has an ability called Strength of the Horde, which increases two of its stats by 1 each for every other TYPE of monster in play. Then there is another enemy type that is much tougher and also serves as a sort of Healer, having the ability to reanimate up to three fallen Undead in something I call the Recovery Phase.
With mechanics like that, again, I just want an opinion on what a well-rounded number of monster types would be.
My game is definitely more focused around combat, and I intend for there to be sort of a wave mechanic for the monsters, or more likely, spawning areas so that there will be a constant stream of things to combat, because the heroes special abilities will allow them to tear through groups of monsters with relative ease depending on what kinds of weapons they have or what kinds of magic they cast.
This isn't to say that the game focuses ONLY on combat as there are definitely different types of quests that will require players to do different things. My favorite idea so far has been a sort of village protection type of mission where the heroes start in the middle of a small town and attempt to protect the civilians there, and for every civilian that dies, an enemy of some kind replaces it, and a certain amount of civvies have to be alive by the end of the game or the players effectively lose.
Other things would include crossing the board from one side to the other, attaining a specific item, taking on a Major Boss, and probably plenty more. I like the idea of having a campaign option as well so anyone who would be interested in doing a marathon run could essentially play out an entire story. I also intend for most everything to be fairly randomized, right down to the setup of the map.
Meh, there are plenty of ideas buzzing around in my head for things to balance the game out a bit more so it isn't SO combat oriented, but considering the combat will probably be the main thing in the game, I suppose from what you've said, the current amount of monsters is an ideal amount. Maybe one or two could be added down the road if the amount needs to be tweaked.