This seems weird to me. The placement can be so that you could not hope to win a battle. Is there a reason for this?
Are you concerned about "random placement" in general, or just how they chose the spots in one gladiator map (I'm guessing: Plog Kneechopper)? They use random placement in various modules, and usually it just adds some "organicness" to the feel of the setup. For the arena, well, have you played all the maps? They get even worse. It seems that this is just the type of challenge they want you to face here. Though I do wonder: "no hope?" At all? What happened? I'm used to it being "bad," but not hopeless.
I had a similar issue with this campeign module. The game liked to plonk my squishy wizard directly next to the ogre (or whatever it was that was playing 14 damage melee cards) and a zombie, and then decide my other characters should be in a corner on the opposite side of the room. I can see how this odd placement could be very frustrating.
