Sure, I expect a lot of folks will house rule this, myself included. Still curious what FFG's intent was, though.

Sure, I expect a lot of folks will house rule this, myself included. Still curious what FFG's intent was, though.

As many people have stated it's pretty obvious that the intent was for cleave to be used on melee and blast to be used in ranged weapons. This is evidenced by the fact that this is the only loop hole around that set up. It was probably overlooked in campaign testing they can't catch anything. If we had any skirmish or deployment card of a ranged weapon with cleave or melee weapon with blast I would believe otherwise but I really think the intent is quite obvious. I mean think about the word cleave, does that really apply to a blaster bolt? And the word blast, does it make sense with a melee weapon?

Even if he is allowed to cleave at range how many would actually do it? This is just one of those things I dislike, when you use a lophole to game the game. It is obvious to everyone I think that cleave is meant to be melee only, using it for range is just wrong, I would never play this way.

I agree if my rebel players start doing this I may punish them severely for it when my open group choices in the next mission.

I think the card is Ferocity and not Wookiee Loyalty.

Ferocity indeed.

I just got a response from FFG on this. Their email footer forbids me from pasting it here without permission (which I've requested), but in the mean time, the gist of it is:

Yes indeed, Gaarkhan may cleave when making a ranged attack, and the cleave damage can hit something that's nowhere near the original target. However, the cleave target must be within the accuracy range that was rolled for the original ranged attack, and he can't switch weapons -- so if he makes a melee attack, the cleave target has to be another valid melee target (possibly with reach), even if he has a ranged weapon on-hand.

It's bizarre, but there it is. Kind of hoping they change that in the next FAQ so that cleave is melee-only an blast is ranged-only, but until then, it's fair game.

EDIT : By permission, here's the verbatim response from FFG:

There’s a couple different possible scenarios here. In each scenario, the restriction to Cleave is that the figure that gets hit by the Cleave damage must be an eligible target for the attack that you are performing.

So, if Gaarkhan performs an attack with a ranged weapon and triggers cleave, the cleave damage can be dealt to any figure in line of sight and within the accuracy results of that attack.

If Gaarkhan performs an attack with a melee weapon and triggers cleave, the cleave damage can only be dealt to someone you could target with that weapon (adjacent if normal, within 2 spaces if reach), regardless of whether Gaarkhan has a ranged weapon with him.

Thanks for posting.

Looks like we came up with the same thing in this thread that ffg ruled on....

Well, at least you have to roll accuracy for it. That prevents some of the worst abuse.

The ruling is fairly straightforward, it seems weird that a shot at one target can hurt a target in the opposite direction, but that's that.