How much control does the first player have when placing multiple monsters?

Question

When drawing multiple monsters and placing them is there a choice in which monsters go to the outskirts?

Do we get to pick what monster goes on what gate?

Answer 1

Just for reference...

For normal gate openings, on Pages 9/10:

The first player draws a monster marker from the cup at random and places it on the location. If this would bring the number of monsters over the monster limit, the first player places the monster in the Outskirts instead (see “Monster Limits and the Outskirts,” page 18)

Exception: If there are five or more investigators playing, then draw and place two monsters instead of one.

For monster surges, on Page 9:

The first player draws monster markers from the cup at random and places them on each location with an open gate. When placing monsters, they should be divided as evenly as possible among the open gates, with no gate having more monsters placed on it than the gate where the monster surge occurred this turn. If there are more monsters to be placed than allowed by the monster limit (see “Monster Limits and the Outskirts,” page 18), the players should decide where monsters will be placed. The players must make this decision before monsters have been drawn from the cup. If the players cannot agree where the monsters are to be placed, the first player decides the placement

You are right, the rules don't explicitly say anything like draw and place monsters one at a time, though most everyone I've seen discussing this on the Fantasy Flight AH forum and the BoardGameGeek AH forum agree that hand picking which monsters get to go where is against the spirit of the game.

What would that mean thematically anyway? That the investigators can somehow allow two Cultists passage into Arkham but force the Gugs into the outskirts? The Mythos Phase is virtually completely free from investigator influence (save for things like the Psychic and Arcane Insight) and allowing the players to choose which specific monsters end up where on the board gives them a large degree of control that it doesn't make sense to have.

For monster placement, I just draw and place one-by-one, so it's pretty unambiguous which monsters are the ones the go over the limit. For surges I just draw monsters from the cup one-by-one and place them around the board going clockwise-ish starting at the surging gate. Any monsters that would get places but are over the limit go to the outskirts and I don't worry about fine tuning the placement in that instance.

That said, there's absolutely nothing stopping you if you feel like manually choosing the end locations for the drawn monsters.

Answer 2

Monsters are placed randomly in the outskirts and on the gates. You cannot choose to place the toughest monsters in the outskirts.

During a monster surge, follow these steps:

1. Determine how many monsters will be placed (subject to the monster limits)
2. Divide the total monsters placed by the number of open gates. Each gate will get at least this number of monsters.
3. If the division is uneven, the first extra monster will be placed at the initial location
4. If there are still extra monsters to be placed, the players decide which gates will get the extras (no gate can receive more monsters than the initial location, if the players cannot agree the first player makes the decision)
5. Now draw the monsters one at a time declaring before you draw them which location the monster will be placed in.

This is summarized from the rules, on page 9.