I have a little experiment for those who have their figures handy nearby while reading this column. Go into your pool of Alliance characters and look for what you consider to be the 10 or 12 best minis in terms of playability relative to cost. Moonshadow should be near the top of your list, along with perhaps Dizdemona, Elendril, Ryno, Marlowe, Ruby, Irana, Phadalus, and maybe a few others. Then, take those 10 or 12 miniatures and place them in a bag—one of those plastic bags you get from supermarkets (that end up forming a plastic island in the Pacific Ocean the size of Texas) will do nicely. Shuffle them around a bit, close your eyes, and pick three out at random. Voila! You have developed a party that is probably as good as BIG. There’s been a bit of talk lately about BIG coming back into the metagame, as Hunters and physical damage parties have grown more common. Here are 10 reasons you should resist the urge to revive BIG:

1) 24 Honor

2) Poor Armor/Resist synergy for a defensive party. Irana is vulnerable to physical damage, while the Paladins are vulnerable to magic.

3) Erratic and inefficient damage output. Damage can swing a lot based on Bolvar’s crit, and the party has few ways to finish a figure with low health without using a high-tick attack

4) Extreme vulnerability to Warlocks. Things like Fear and Santurias are very difficult for the party to deal with.

5) If you want to play an epic, better ones have been released in Spoils of War—epics that can do better than a 3 for 5 attack.

6) Every serious player has a plan against it.

7) Flamestrike. The party relies on adjacency.

8) With two Paladins, it should be very good against Hunters. It isn’t.

9) As a party built to win on endurance, the time limits of tournaments work against it.

10) Did I mention that it’s 24 freakin’ honor???

All right, if supporters of BIG haven’t gotten annoyed and stopped reading, I will be honest—I’m overstating the case to have a bit of fun. BIG isn’t terrible. It can be an entertaining party to play, and it will do fine in your local game store or against your friends, which is all most people are looking for. BIG is a perfectly respectable tier 2 party, of which there are many. World of Warcraft Miniatures is a well balanced game, meaning that there are a lot of parties that are playable, and they are fairly close to the best parties in the metagame. And there are ways we can improve BIG, but first we have to understand what initially drew people to the party.

Let’s take a look at how BIG came about and what is the best way to play it today. This is still a relevant exercise, since it’s a party you still may face at a big event, and one that can still be dangerous if it’s rolling well. Here are some of the principles the party is based upon, a bit of a counter to my 10 reasons above:

1) Survivability. Two tank Paladins, two great healing Action Bar cards, and Graccus’s damage absorption makes it hard to kill anyone unless you have a plan to deal with it.

2) Damage dealing variety. The party has a blend of magic and physical attacks, including the potential for two good AOEs.

3) Maximizing Bolvar’s deadly crit. To have a chance of doing a mega-damage strike with Bolvar, you need to have damage on your team without dying too fast and without Bolvar getting killed. Graccus’s damage absorption and healing accomplishes these goals.

4) Maximizing Bolvar’s Action Bar. Even today, Bolvar has arguably the most efficient Action Bar card in the entire game. Irana maximizes it by allowing you to play it twice.

All of the above makes BIG a hard party to beat with if you aren’t prepared for it or if you are experimenting with stuff that isn’t very efficient at dealing damage. The band was developed on this website by Siggie, who has spent much time experimenting to find the most synergistic Alliance parties. It was extremely popular at the San Francisco Darkmoon Faire, where this was a typical Action Bar setup (almost identical to Siggie’s initial recommendations):

Avenger’s Shield

Blessing of Kings

Bolvar’s Retribution

Cleanse

Flash of Light

Hammer of Wrath

Counterspell

Polymorph

Flamestrike

Everything here shores up a weakness or enhances a strength: Blessing of Kings supported survivability, Hammer of Wrath was there to give a fast attack option in order to finish off an almost dead character, and so on.

San Francisco was widely viewed as a debacle for BIG, as six people took the party to the final day and only one of them won their first round match. While this wasn’t a good showing, it’s worth remembering that some of these same people qualified with BIG, which wouldn’t have happened if the party was that bad. Then came Spoils of War.

Spoils of War and the new cards and figures therein didn’t bury BIG. In fact, Spoils offers some opportunities to make the party a bit better, or at least give it a more offensive attitude:

Blessing of Might

Bolvar’s Retribution

Cleanse

Flash of Light

Sulfuras, Hand of Ragnaros

Arcane Flux

Flamestrike

Polymorph

Spellsteal

The most significant difference is the addition of Sulfuras. In a metagame where high-honor parties abound, let’s go whole hog and make it 28! In all seriousness, cards like Sulfuras, Blessing of Might, and Arcane Flux can give a serious boost to the damage output of the Paladins, and Sulfuras’s autodamage infliction dovetails nicely with Blessing of Sacrifice.

Others such as Siggie have suggested more radical changes for the party, including replacing Graccus with Savin. I tend to feel that Savin’s better attack and Blessing of Wisdom are balanced out by losing Blessing of Sacrifice and the ability to heal/Cleanse. And besides, “BIS” just doesn’t have the same ring to it.