Beginner Questions

By gavinwatson, in Warhammer Invasion Rules Questions

Hi Guys,

I've been playing WHI for quite a while. However, when introducing the game to someone new they asked some questions that I couldn't answer, at least not confidently anyway. I was hoping someone here could help out?

The questions were:

- Why do the cards say the 'target unit' and not just 'a unit'. Do these cards mean the effect can only happen on a unit targeted during the battlefield phase?

- Some card effects cause a target unit to loose hit points, such as Lokhir Fellheart where he causes a unit to loose hit points (based on how many developments are in his zone). If you choose a unit that only has two hit points and you can reduce it by two, is that unit removed from play as defeated? Or does it simply not need any damage applied to it in combat to defeat it? Why say 'target unit looses x hit points' and not just 'you may cause x damage to a target unit' ?

The Dark Elf night raids quest seems immensely overpowered, in just three turns you can increase every unit's power by 1 !? When we played last I had this card and my opponent had no way of killing the unit which was questing, so after three rounds I was basically unbeatable, we decided that we must be reading it wrong.

Hoping you guys can help,

Thank you for your help,

1) You don't target units in the battlefield phase unless a card effect tells you to. Maybe you are misunderstanding something regarding combat?

In practice, there's often not much of a difference between saying "target unit" and "a unit", but it allows to differentiate between targeted effects and not targeted effects. Targets have to be picked at the time an effect is triggered, and can't be changed later. So if you pick a target unit, and in response it leaves play or becomes an illegal target, you can't just pick a different unit, but the effect is cancelled.

While it may seem unnatural to speak of a target unit, think of it as a necessary concession to make the rules work and more precise, and save on card text.

2) Damage tokens stay, a hit point reduction only lasts until a certain point, such as the end of the turn. Damage can be redirected or cancelled, hit point reduction not. So there is a difference. A unit is destroyed when it has at least as many damage tokens on it as it has hit points. If it has zero hit points, it is destroyed even if it has zero damage tokens on it.

3) Something like this entirely depends on how big your card pool is, how strong your decks are objectively, and how good you are as players. Night Raids is not a card that shows up in competitive decks, because it is comparatively expensive for what it does, it's slow, and the effect isn't THAT strong. The Dark Elves also aren't good at protecting units, so usually it's not that difficult to remove the questing unit. If you regularly find this card too powerful, try to think of ways to deal with it, but I'm sure your perception will change over time if you keep playing and expand your card pool.

gavinwatson. It's really not so difficult to deal with units in quest zone. Obviously if you are just thinking destroy a unit in combat with damage than you can have difficulties even units on any of the other two sections too. Empire can move units to different sections, chaos and dwarf can damage them directly or indirectly. High elves can turn them into development. Even dark elves can reduce their hit points to 0 or take control over them. Orcs I am not sure, but does need any trick with orc decks? :) "Smash them all!"

Edited by JudJackalTom