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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Manbearcat" data-source="post: 6173066" data-attributes="member: 6696971">Great suggestions in this thread.  This is one of my favorite parts of 4e, to be honest.  The versatility of swarms, auras, and minion rules makes running dynamic, large scale combats a cinch.  I'm not sure exactly what you're doing but what I've done plenty of times is:1 - Make Elite Swarms for the enemies of large or huge or gargantuan size depending on what I'm doing.  For what I think you're doing, I would probably make up your encounter-specific large swarm for both the good guys and the bad guys.2 - Big passive damage aura with CA for any enemies that end their turn in it.  Swarm Trait.  MBA * 2 = Low-damage expression weapon attack that targets AC and slides the target into the Swarm; here you are creating the catch-22 of making the PCs want to get out of the aura to not suffer the damage and CA while they risk a low damage OA (so not too punitive such that they deem it not worthwhile to attempt to get out and the fight becomes a slog) in the attempt to use a move action to get out of the Swarm (and its difficult terrain)...but the swarm wants to keep them there, hence the slide effect.  Move Action Encounter Power that is a Shift + Trample effect.  3 - Bloodied condition = break out the swarm into 2 (bloodied) standards and 2 minions of the same encounter budget.  Obviously you'll need to stat those out.  This creates a great opportunity for one of the standards to be a leader (or the leader if that is part of your trope) that generously force-multiplies the other 3 bad guys and a climactic finish for the PCs with a notable antagonist.4 - Give the PCs their own Swarm (statted again for ease of use; minimal mental overhead) on a card with the breakout of their standards/minions and let them control it.  I'm not sure exactly what you're doing but perhaps its 2 Elite bad guy swarms versus your PCs and their single swarm.  Just narrate (or let the players narrate) each successful attack as taking out a swath of bad guys (or good guys) in some fashion consistent with your genre expectations.  The guys broken out after bloodied are always the tough, plot-relevant guys (with a couple mooks of course!).** Almost forgot.  As always, give them plenty of clear, explicated terrain features and hazards for the PCs to interact with (stat them up pre-fight or just adlib with 4e on a business card/p42) that change the battlefield afterward (creating encounter-long difficult terrain or worse).  With Swarm fights, its especially fun to invoke AoE attacks that Swarms are vulnerable to and that are narratively provocative against mass groups of creatures; eg falling chandeliers, stalactites, loose joists/rafters, large braziers or cauldrons of caustic liquid/acid to upend, pools of lava or necrotic ichor, firepits, etc.</blockquote>

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