* Of course this wasn't a concern back in the day because the two markets were separate... the EU writers and the NA writers knew what each were doing but didn't care to keep continuity with one another, presuming most players didn't know about the other edition (and therefore try to fit them into the same continuity).
I also notice that all but the Ogre Lord under these stats goes down 1 combat die in defense. The Chieftain (or "Commander" as the card reads, I wonder if that's a French language thing or an actual name change?) gains two BP, and the lord (or King as some call him) doubles his.
The Ogre Mercenary is the new wrinkle as you say Vorimir... 8,4,4,4,1 (faster, weaker attack, lower BP). No icon on the card. Is it any available dark gray Ogre figure that can suffice here or what? We don't know how mercs are handled in this one but for all we know you cannot use ones from other packs. So maybe you can hire 1-2 of these and the wolf on your side and that's it for maybe 13 extra BP to the party (which is more than ROTDM, but less than FH remake edition). Or, as some others have suggested, maybe the Mercenaries are only usable in the Arena Tournament segments (or maybe that is where you gain them, and can use them in the later campaign? Maybe you get the "big healing potions" there too?).
You can make up whatever you like, but maybe there's some kind of breeding program or engineering experiment going on, like in LOTR where there are different Orcs with different abilities. Or maybe Ogres are more diverse than we might first imagine. Just because the outside world lumps them all together, doesn't mean they're all the same. Or maybe the "runts" don't get a chance in their society so they strike off on their own, and are plenty powerful for those jobs.
In our last stream I was talking about the Ogre in Battlemasters that fights on the side of Chaos. He's a BIG one, but there he's called an "Ogre Champion" (so making the Ogres extra large is still canon!). I was thinking maybe "mercenary" doesn't necessarily mean he fights for the heroes, BUT it does imply he's "for hire" so if they can meet his price (or maybe bribe him with some Grog from ROTDM) then he's yours... until the food runs out, or something.
I responded, but I feel like at this point we're just seeing that some of our suggestions got ignored, while others are being used, and like I said before I would expect the EU suggestions to get a priority on this one. Now it just remains to be seen what else is changed inside the book, and what fan mods will be made for the rest.
No spell tokens (it would have been a nice option).
No extra artifact/treasure/equipment cards (even if there are "invisible" quest note bonuses).
No variable Ogre BP (though if they are going with fixed, this seems okay, but they lowered the defense to compensate).
The two square ogre thing seems unnecessary (painters won't complain about the bigger canvases to paint on!) but then it also emphasizes the high BP. Others have pointed out that monsters with 6 BP have so far all been larger than one square... though a 2 square 10 BP monster kind of puts the now 4 square Frozen Horror to shame! He should have like 12 maybe 24 points if that's what it's about!).
Buuut, they still have the ability to introduce any last minute patches in the Companion App (whenever they next update that thing), and they could even do an "Into the Northlands" style PDF with some extra cards to print out, if they think people want something like that.
