Flush on Movement Template

By Tritoxin, in X-Wing Rules Questions

At a friendly tournament we had an interesting circumstance come up. When moving a ship, which is correct on final placement:

  • ship base flush with movement template with template in nubs
  • movement template within nubs (not always flush)

The reason this came up was because that 1 degree wiggle allowed a ship not to hit an asteroid. If the base was flush after the move the ship would have been on the asteroid. After looking through the rulebook we decided to roll a die to resolve.

When laying down the movement template the book says "insert it so that the end of the template is flush against the base."

When moving the ship base the book says "Then place the ship at the opposite end of the template, sliding the rear guides of the ship into the opposite end of the template."

Does this mean that the ship base does not need to be flush with the template after the move to be legal?

At a friendly tournament we had an interesting circumstance come up. When moving a ship, which is correct on final placement:

  • ship base flush with movement template with template in nubs
  • movement template within nubs (not always flush)

The reason this came up was because that 1 degree wiggle allowed a ship not to hit an asteroid. If the base was flush after the move the ship would have been on the asteroid. After looking through the rulebook we decided to roll a die to resolve.

When laying down the movement template the book says "insert it so that the end of the template is flush against the base."

When moving the ship base the book says "Then place the ship at the opposite end of the template, sliding the rear guides of the ship into the opposite end of the template."

Does this mean that the ship base does not need to be flush with the template after the move to be legal?

The ship needs to be flush against the template when you move the ship to the other end.

I'm pretty sure that it's got to be flush at each end. You can't wiggle it about within the nubs to avoid overlaps.

To put it another way there is ONE way to seat a template in the nubs for a maneuver and that is with full contact. There is no 'wiggle room' except that caused by worn components which probably shouldn't be used.

On your side movements (barrel roll/decloak) you still need the template flush with the edge of the base but in this case you can slide it around because there are no nubs to restrict it.

I fully agree that the ship needs to be flush at the end of the move. The issue is that in the rule book we could not find that exact statement.

The question is that does the rule book state if the move needs to be flush? That is the issue we had during the game.

I'm not looking it up right now but suspect the rulebook says something about placing the template against the base. To me that would imply 'maximum contact' as opposed to "just touching" which is what happens if you can wiggle the template around.

This seems like a case of "Does the rule book really need to mention this explicitly?"

Thats what I thought during the match.

If you were allowed any wiggle-room, that would be explicitly stated in the rulebook. The fact that it does state that the template must be placed flush at the beginning implies that it would need to be flush at the other end as well.

FFG assume that most players would logically come to the same conclusion about most things within the rules. If they had to explicitly state everything that might come up during a game, I would expect the rulebook to be a fairly hefty tome instead of what it is currently.

Edited by Parravon

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FFG assume that most players would logically come to the same conclusion about most things within the rules. If they had to explicitly state everything that might come up during a game, I would expect the rulebook to be a fairly hefty tome instead of what it is currently.

And it could be written in such a way that it would take an advanced degree to actually understand.

There is a reason some people are called rules lawyers.

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FFG assume that most players would logically come to the same conclusion about most things within the rules. If they had to explicitly state everything that might come up during a game, I would expect the rulebook to be a fairly hefty tome instead of what it is currently.

And it could be written in such a way that it would take an advanced degree to actually understand.

There is a reason some people are called rules lawyers.

And there's also just bad rules writing, which X-wing's Core Rules have in abundance. And while I'm pretty sure this one is obvious, are there any of us in this place that haven't been bitten on an "That's obvious!" rules call at least once?

It's not entirely explicit, but I do think there's actual evidence for "between the guides" meaning flush against the base. As pointed out above:

- Origin specifies between the guides and flush

- Destination specifies between the guides

But if we add the example in (page 7) it specifies only "between the front guides" for step 2, with no statement that it has to be flush. Seems pretty reasonable to me that this points to "between the guides and flush" is the same as "between the guides". Not conclusive for anyone who really wants to argue it, but anyone who wants to argue this so strongly probably has much better potential targets (like breaking ion cannon turrets).