I would like to put this out there cause it has come up in one of the recent games i have played. The issue is with the cards for Protoss Tassadar group, the cards are Leg enhancements and The hero card Zertul's special ability. The scenario where it came up was i had both these cards in play and i had just played a move order into my friends planets, into an area with a zergling and a ultralisk. I attacked with 2 zealots and Zertul thinking that both the ultralisk and zergling would die and would wont have to face anyone. Which brings up my issue, my friend reads the cards and decides to use zertul's ability on the zergling which canceled out my zealots leg enhancements so the ultralisk lived. which i disagreed with being feeled jipped out of a free space and the uselessness of having both cards in play.

my question is how should it be played out? Considering both say play at the start of a battle and both say the opponent choices which unit dies, we were at a stand still which way it should go. I completely understand both sides of the coin in this situation, where the attack would go with cause it says "must kill" it should follow air/ground splash rules as it kills as many as possible and the Defender sees as his choice which to kill off so choice the least amount of deaths possible to saved the more expensive units. Plus since this new expansion it seems that the game encourages attacking thus attackers are usually favoured thing also came up in the debate.

We ended up playing as in favour of the defender which didnt matter cause my numbers crushed the ultralisk and in the end its a game and battles are more fun then nit picking at every detail, but we still were interested to see what other would think on the subject.

I think you can use only 1 "start of battle" ability per battle.

oh well that makes sense, i guess we came across something like this before the expansion so we just skiped over that part. well thanks for the reply

You may use all of your "start of battle" abilities in a battle if you want and your friend was right, he could choose the zergling to be destroyed by Zeratul and that way leg enchantments canceled. Because the splash damage is the only ability which needs the most units to be destroyed.

Carnate said:

It depens which ability should be resolved first. However, we still don't know if such kind of skills can be used together.

According to rules, they can't be, but I simply don't believe that was the intention of game designers.

It makes such kind of technologies much harder to exploit.

Page 29 of the rulebook:

2. Use “start of battle” Abilities
Some special abilities use the phrase “at the start of a bat-
tle.” During this step, first the attacker, then the defender,
may each use one such ability.
Even if a player has multiple “at the start of the battle” abili-
ties, he may only use one of them for each battle.

So this is essentially a non issue because leg enhancements and zeratuls ablility can't be used in the same battle.

In the Original game, there were only event-cards, which provide a "at the start of the ballte"-ability.

In the Expansion this limitation would mean, I am NOT allowed to use "leg enhancement" for my zealots AND an event card with +2 Attack afterwards. That makes absolutly no sense to me.

But on the other hand, it is kind of extremely strong , when I may use 1. leg enhancement, 2. the special ability from dark templar hero and 3. an Event Card with an bonus. But if the other player has then really only ground units, it's his own fault ^^ - except, when you are on an ground-only-area - then you've got an problem ^^

I personally would say 1 Event-Card AND 1 other Ability (leg enhancement, charon boosters,...) is OK.

But OK, since the rules say that only 1 and NOT have been corrected in Broodwar, we've got to play it this way.

Luuna said:

That's not true. "Scanner Sweep", "Observers", "Consume" etc.also are used "at the start of the battle". However, in original game we have far less (and: less powerfull) of such cards.

Unfortunately, the limitation (1 per battle) can make some of those cards less worth of buying (because you can't use them very effectively, often because of some random events/decisions). Keep in mind that in most games you can't research as often as you'd like to.

cyb3k said:

oooops ... i'm sorry ... we used and still use them extremely rarely - so i forgot

in about 30 matches, scanner sweep 0times, observer 2-3times and consume 1time ^^ ... that somehow makes me ignoring these technologies ^^

blarknob said:

Rule confirmed:

" Are (...) technologies, activated "at the start of the battle" (...), considered to be "special abilities" (so that they can't be used together in the same battle with each other, or with some event cards) ?
According to rules, only one of special abilities can be used at the start of the battle.

Is activating Defend token also considered as "using special ability" ?

Only one card that uses the text: "at the start of the battle" may be used in each battle. This DOES include these technologies. The defend order does not count towards this limit.

I hope that this answers your questions!
-Corey Konieczka
Fantasy Flight Games
Design and Development"