Monster Pit - Combat Explanation with Designer

About Monster Pit, from BoardGameGeek:

Monster Pit features tableau building, dice drafting, and hand management in a fully co-operative, fantasy adventure game. During the game, loyal Captains must rally their forces to defend the Citadel against the emerging threat of a creature from the deep. Think Gandalf rallying the forces of Minas Tirith in Return of the King. This is not a tower defense game, but blends several mechanisms including dice drafting (there are custom dice and rolls can be mitigated), tableau building (the player boards are extra large to organize the various cards), and worker placement (in terms of the various buildings your Captain will visit). Your Captain's tableau will include soldiers, wizards, heroes, mounts, and wyverns. Some of these characters are for offensive purposes (attacking the Monster etc) and some for defensive purposes (building your resources including your dice pool). During the game player will also complete quests for the King, buy items from the Town Hall, ride a Mount, fight creatures in the streets of the Citadel, upgrade their Captain at the Armoury, visit the Dwarven Grotto for gold, and find helpful trinkets in the Fountain. The game supports "true solo" (a solo player need only control one Captain), fully co-op multiplayer against the Monster, one vs one (one player controls the Captain, the other player controls the Monster), or one player (controlling the Monster) vs up to four Captains. All play modes feature long or short variants. There are five monsters included in the game (Dragon, Enchantress, Behemoth, Vampire Queen, and Orc War Chief) both featuring "A" and "B" sides for greater challenge and variation. The game engine can be further adjusted with Difficulty Tokens. -description from the publisher