Fair. But it’s also weird for anyone who came afterwards because while wargaming may have been second nature to anyone playing in those really early days, and so it was assumed one would bring Chainmail or their favorite wargaming rules to the table, once D&D became its own thing, there were no actual rules for wargaming in D&D until Battlesystem in the mid 80s!
It's interesting in the way it gives you insight into the mind of the author, but I can't say as I ever played that way. But then I never liked what has become known as the OSR style. I feel like in 5e WotC have finally caught up with how I was playing 42 years ago.
The animal lords might be the titans of the beasts?
There is a CR20 stat block for Iggwilv in the current rules. Of course she is medium, but there isn’t much point in being huge if you use magic in combat.
To be clear, Titan is a tag for a monster created by the gods. It is not necessarily about size. Both the Atropal (undead titan) and Empyrean (celestial titan) are Huge size.
Possibly rules for bigger monsters in the new MM? I have experimented with various ways to do bigger creatures.
Possibly, but I highly doubt it. They had an opportunity to experiment in that arena with both Fizban's and Bigby's and didn't. I can't imagine they would take them on in the MM which doesn't a have a focus on gargantuan monsters.
It's not just because of a lack of options and opponents, but also because the game becomes wacky. Or at least, the balance changes in ways that are hard to deal with, and where just throwing bigger numbers at PCs doesn't really help. 5e makes the game math work longer on account of bounded accuracy, but it still gets weird because of strange abilities.
