July/August/September - Rulings

Have been otherwise occupied or busy last few months (likely to continue for another few), and the game has been cruising along on Season 2 in the meantime. In the interest of continuity, here are a few choice rulings/clarifications from the past 3 months:

1.  MOV penalties that apply to base-move will affect out of activation movement, like Get Over Here!:

• http://forums.steamforged.com/index.php?/topic/34929-get-over-here-vs-movement-penalties-and-bonuses/&page=2

The example given is Scum being affected by Caught in a Net, thus having a base move of 2"/4", and only dodging 2" towards Friday.

2. Scatters off the pitch are measured to the scatter point, even if off the table:

• http://forums.steamforged.com/index.php?/topic/34802-goal-kick-scatters-off-the-table/&page=2

This is an exceedingly long discussion about semantics and cornercase issues, but the idea is that the edge of the pitch is not impenetrable, so the ball can scatter off the pitch, then you measure the ball path using that point. 

3. You can Counter charge friendly models currently under the effects of Lure, or Puppet Master, or similar:

• http://forums.steamforged.com/index.php?/topic/34637-puppet-master-and-counter-charge/

The model being forced to jog remains a friendly model to the user of Lure/Puppet Master until after the advance has ended. Counter charge trigger occurs as the advance ends. 

4. You can counter attack a counter charge:

• http://forums.steamforged.com/index.php?/topic/34451-can-you-counter-attack-a-counter-charge/

Pretty straight forward. Let's say you get counter charged while charging, the counter charge and the counter attack are both resolved (in that order) before the initial charge is resolved.

5. Siren's Beautiful ability can reduce character plays to Range 0":

• http://forums.steamforged.com/index.php?/topic/33916-beautiful-vs-range-4-or-less/

Effectively the range becomes 'base to base'.

Season 3 coming in late November - woo! 

June - Rulings

After the Season 2 rules have had some time to settle in, here are a few highlights from the preceding month: 

Death effects while temporarily under control of enemy:  

• http://forums.steamforged.com/index.php?/topic/34074-puppet-master-and-vps/

Essentially, if your player gets Puppet Mastered or otherwise controlled and is taken out (ie. via parting blow) during the duration of that control, it counts as taking out an enemy model.

Examples:

1. Obulus Puppet Masters Sakana to jog away from Kraken. Kraken takes a parting blow and takes out Sakana. The Fish get 2VP for taking out an enemy player.
   
2. Obulus Puppet Masters Salt to jog away from Kraken. Kraken takes a parting blow and takes out Salt. The Fish get 2VP for taking out an enemy player, and the Morticians get Loved Creature for the duration of that turn.

Active vs Passive Character Traits:

• http://forums.steamforged.com/index.php?/topic/33965-honorharmony-after-scoring/&page=2#comment-78962 
• http://forums.steamforged.com/index.php?/topic/34045-clarification-of-active-vs-passive-character-traits/ 
• http://forums.steamforged.com/index.php?/topic/33978-back-to-the-shadows-scoring/

A few interesting clarifications here. The starting point is that Season 2 makes a distinction between Passive Character traits (are triggered automatically or voluntarily in response to a specific trigger - ie. Tough Hide vs playbook or character play damage) and Active Traits (more or less equivalent to free character plays ie. Bag of Coffers, Magical Brew).

The ruling is that abilities like Linked (ie. Honour/Harmony and Zarola/Fahad) are Passive trait that trigger on the end of activation (outside activation), but you can choose to either use it or not unlike most other passive traits.
This same logic applies to the Hunters' Back to the Shadows trait.

vSiren errata:

• http://forums.steamforged.com/index.php?/topic/33933-escaping-fate-on-parting-blow/

Basically they added in 'except while advancing' into the text, so you can't trigger it on a Parting Blow (much like Glutonous Mass, Clone, etc.)



Now here are a few to fuel the  #nicerulessteamforged meme (1):

Fillet timing of bleed AoE: 

• http://forums.steamforged.com/index.php?/topic/33853-fillet-pain-circle/

Because the active player chooses the order of simultaneous effects, you can choose to trigger the Bleed condition on Pain Circle before the [1] DMG part during step 2.6 of the Attack Resolution. As such, you can get the 1" dodge from Blood Dance as the result of single Pain Circle, even if your target was not bleeding. Not so intuitive without looking at the resolution chart.

Note that if Smell Blood (+1 to Playbook DMG against bleeding enemies) did apply to Character Plays (which it does not), you would NOT get the +1 DMG, because damage modifiers are worked out during step 2.4 of the Attack Resolution. This is relevant for example to Stoker's Burning Passion and Flame Jet.

There is possibility that this would be amended in the future given the lack of intuition around having simultaneous effects consequentially affect each other, but at present, that's how it is.

Passing during kick off:  

• http://forums.steamforged.com/index.php?/topic/34197-passing-during-kick-off/&do=findComment&comment=80801

Some muppet decided that passing to your own team during kick off and then using the One Touch Football plot card to kick it back into the enemy half was the greatest play of all time.
It's not.


And finally, everyone's favourite:

Damage Sponge not usable vs Charges, Parting Blows or Counter-Attacks:

Damage Sponge
Requirement
An enemy model declares an Attack
against a friendly model.
Reward
The friendly model gains [+1] DEF for
the duration of the Attack.

The logic is that the card triggers on the declaration of an Attack, specifically, rather than on declaration of something which includes an attack.

As a matter of illustration, if a passive trait gave you +1 DEF against attacks, then it'd work against charges/parting blows/counters since they all include attacks. Key phrase is the declaration of a specific thing, not the thing itself or its component parts.

And I leave you with a link to the latest Collected Clarifications thread.



(1) No Skornegy, only options.

March - Rulings

1. While this is intended to be clarified under Season 2 rules (out next month), Legendary and Heroic plays have been clarified to not be actions. Legendary plays can thus be used mid movement (very useful for pulse effects), while heroic plays cannot because they require spending momentum.
The one exception is Blackheart's legendary, because he is a douche and shouldn't get douchier things.

2. Similar to the above,  the Lawyer's Guild have ruled ahead of the Season 2 rules that goal-kicking the ball behind your own goal line will no longer allow you to generate momentum, as if one of your players had dumped it there.

3. Clarification around Get Over Here!, namely that you can trigger it mid-movement and before making a charge attack. I've always played it that way anyway.

4. More interesting follow up to the above, it also affects Magical Brew, so Hemlocke/Stocker can get KDed mid charge and stand back up using Magical Brew to continue their charge. Pro stuff (at least for the next two weeks....)

Season 2 book and an updated version of the core rules comes out in a little under 3 weeks so we should have a whole glut of new clarifications and errata, as is the case with such things. As such I've kept the above reasonably light in the face of the incoming rules drama storm. From a technical rules perspective, one of the most valuable introductions will be the Timings Sequences, which you can see a preview HERE in regards to Tower's Heroic.

February - Rulings

Another month, another set of rules changes.

1. With the re-release of Season 1 cards with the Season 2 design (playbook and character plays on the front), Steamforged took the opportunity to issue a mini-errata addressing some of the leftover outliers from Season 1, namely Blind and Gutter:

• Blind has been changed from RNG 6, AoE 3, -4TAC/MOV to RNG 8, AoE -, -2 TAC/KICK/MOV 
• Gutter's Chain Grab has been changed to 4" RNG, down from 6".

There was also the clarification to Captain Rage's Heroic/Legendary (both work as intuitively expected), as well as a couple of clarified wordings (some with gameplay consequences, see below) and some terminology changes around tokens and posts.

2. Technically a December ruling that resurfaces recently: Tower's "Defend the Ground" and Stoker's "Burn the Floor" rendered VERY situational/ borderline useless by the clarification that models within 1" of a terrain piece ie. obstruction+ obstacles are not within that terrain piece despite getting the cover bonus, and the clarification that rough ground and fast ground are ground, and not terrain (see p.63)

3. Along with a few rewording/clarifications of abilities with the card reprints, Ghast's Fear ability has been reworded to increase the cost of the ability by [1] influence (as opposed to previously, where you basically threw away 1 influence to do anything to him).
A result of this is that character plays which trigger Fear have their dice pool increased by one, effectively a Bonus Time! with influence rather than momentum.

4. And a stealth buff for Casket - Ghostly Visage is no longer once per turn.

5. Clarification re: takeouts as a result of pushing an enemy off the field. It works as you'd expect re: momentum, Loved Creature, Vengeance plot, etc.

6. Minor change to Lure (Siren, Cosset) that makes it a straight Jog (like Puppet Master) instead of a non-typed reposition at base move. This means you can Parting Blow the lured model, if you wished,  it gets affected by terrain, etc.

There are also a couple of things in limbo, mostly about interactions between Ratchet and Pin Vice abilities.

January - rulings

1. The goal is a barrier. Missed goal kicks can also be intercepted:

A commonly missed rule that the goal is a barrier, meaning it's impassable and blocks all movement (including the ball). Scatters treat it like a barrier ie. if the ball path from a missed shot scatter takes it across the goal, the ball stops, rather than going through and behind the goal. This ruling may appear a little unintuitive at first, but think of it sort of like hitting a post or a net in football.

This does mean that if you get a model in b2b with the goal token, you can keep shooting until you score as long as you have influence/momentum, since the ball will stop at your feet and snap back every missed shot (assuming nobody is contesting the snap).

2. Midas' legendary play errata-ed (but not in the errata - yet):

Pseudoepigraphy (LP):

Each Inf spent (up to 3) after using this play generates 1MP
 

This is in the clarifications thread but has not made it to an errata  - the wording in the card strongly leads to the interpretation of straight converting influence to momentum, but this errata allows him to use the influence on actions/plays in the process, thereby potentially generating additional momentum (effectively a buff in the majority of circumstances).

3. Kicking at a goal means you target any spot of the goal token, and centre the kick to that spot. Passes between players are still centre to centre:
This is also a little unintuitive, but one has to remember that the goal is NOT a model, but essentially a terrain piece. It also makes jamming the front of the goal with low impact models like mascots or Greede slightly less powerful.

4. Furious! can be used as a free sprint if target model is out of range.

Similar to the use of a free charge in Warmachine, this makes models like Rage, Boar and Minx even more efficient! Some may be upset from a representational point of view, but from a legal standpoint it just saves adding "and may sprint without spending influence" or equivalent.