More questions for people to chime in on:

1. Card #8, Dwarf Cannon Crew says, "FORCED: After this Unit enters play, search the top five cards of your deck for a Support card with cost 2 or lower and put it into this zone, if able. Then shuffle your deck."

Q: Does this mean that the Support card placed into that Zone via Dwarf Cannon Crew's power is FREE (of any costs)?

2. Card #120, Infiltrate has two powers listed on it - both are FORCED and the top one says that you discard a card from an opponent's deck at the beginning of the turn for every resource placed on this Quest. The second power which is also FORCED (as mentioned above) says to place a Resource on the Quest at the beginning of the turn if a Unit is questing there.

Q: What is the resolution order for these 2 Forced powers. I ask this because say I put Infiltrate into play with a Unit questing on it in my first turn. At the start of my next turn, which resolution would happen first - if I get to put the Resource on it first, then I can discard a card immediately that turn BUT if I have to attempt to discard a card first, it would fail, since no Resource had been put upon the Quest yet.

3. Say a card gets a boost to its power from its own text (like the Orc Unit "Boar Boyz" which gains 2 power (iirc) when damaged. If that Unit was in your Kingdom when it received this boost, do the extra "gained" power count towards gaining resources in my Kingdom phase or are they considered to not apply towards that?

4. Do Scout units work if Combat never happens - say you go to attack your opponent with a Scout card but he craftily declines to defend with a Unit and just takes the damage to the Zone instead - did the Scout successfully survive or was there never any combat to begin with? I'm leaning towards the latter.

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Wytefang said:

Let me see here

1. Yes. I figure they are like the "put into play" effects from Mr. Lang's other LCGs.

2. I would say "Yes." Until a FAQ entry clears this issue up a little anyways.

I remember thinking: why are quests structured so that the forced effect for resource token accumulation happened after its main ability activation. Now your question got me thinking on that issue again and I would say: the forced effects should take place in the order they are mentioned (from top to bottom).

3. Yes, why not.

4. Yes, I agree with your reasoning.

Wytefang said:

1. Yes, cards PUT INTO PLAY are free of costs.

2. You can actually have several FORCED effects that trigger at the same time. Therefore, I believe it is up to the ACTIVE PLAYER to choose the order to resolve these effects. Until confirmed in the FAQ this is a House Rule.

3. Yes, power boosts are effected no matter what zone the card is located in. Therefore, it also counts towards gaining resources in the Kingdom zone and drawing cards in the Quest zone.

4. When there is an attack, there is always combat no matter whether there are defenders or not. Both players are also able to take Actions after no defenders have been declared. Therefore, the Scout keyword always applied.

The definition of the "Scout" rule from the rulebook reads:

After combat damage is applied, the controller of any surviving participating unit(s) with the scout keyword forces his opponent to discard one card at random from his hand for each of his participating units with scout that survived the combat.

This leads me to believe that the unit must participate in the combat in order for the action from the keyword to be activated.

Also note: since they refer to combat damage and not indirect damage or direct damage, this only happens after a combat and not from a tactic such as Flames of Tzeentch which states: Play during your turn Action: deal X damage to one target unit. (where X was the tactic card's cost).

I appreciate the viewpoints here (of course nothing is official without word from the developers, which, knowing FFG, will only come much later in the form of a FAQ that probably won't address every burning issue). Sigh. LOL

I agree with everyone for Question 1 - cards put into play are free, that's the whole point.

I agree with Ruvion about having to play the order of Forced effects based on how they're listed on the cards - in lieu of no other rules explaining timing, that makes the most sense to me.

I also agree about power boosts working in the Kingdom & Quest zones for purposes of getting resources and drawing more cards.

And finally, I agree with Ruvion and Murdernater that without a defender, you simply cannot have "combat" thus Scouts would not work.

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Maybe someday FFG will allow their devs to answer quick rules questions in the forums. How cool and useful would that be?

RE #4...I'm sorry to say that it was wee hours in the morning when I read your (Wytefang's) querry and I thought you were stating scouts worked even when defenders decline to engage in battle.

To further elaborate...I believe that combat takes place whether your defenders engage in battle or not. Even in cases where you don't mind taking a few hits before the the true storm of chaos...err battle, you may want to put forward defenders to kill off thoses pesky scouts. It seems it's gonna be hard trying to use the scout's ability while defending the Kingdom/Quest zone...perhaps a missed opportunity?

As of right now I'd say that Scout works whether there are defenders or not. Damage from combat is any damage created by a units attack or defense. That is all combat is being used to designate here. Therefor Scout kicks in as soon as damage is applied from attacking units, even if there were no defenders.

I understand why you want to say combat only counts if there are units on both sides, but there is nothing to support that. I bomb the hell out of a building using my F117 that is considered combat, I get combat pay, I get a campaign ribbon, the whole nine yards... it doesn't matter that there were no antitaircraft batteries firing at me or defending planes chasing me. You not defending is not a defense against the Scout keyword.

For further insight look at the section entitled "Non-Combat Damage" it references damage dealt outside of combat and includes Counterstrike as non-combat damage, which strongly implies that combat damage is any damage assigned and applied during the Battlefield Phase during steps 5 and 7 respectively.

I am with Ruvion here, I understand the Combat Damage / Non - Combat Damage argument, but for me the stronger argument is that it seems 'more wrong' to be able to avoid a penalty by doing nothing to stop it. Until clarification is given I would argue that a good rule of thumb to follow is that logic should trump semantics.

I missed out completely on that combat damage angle dormouse brought up. Good catch!

I've given this some more thought, and was looking at Mr. Lang's previous designs to get behind the designer's head so to speak. I could find a similar situation in AGoT where you make an Intrigue challenge versus your target. If you win an Intrigue challenge, you discard a number of cards equal to your plot's claim from your target's hand. Now in this situation it is clearly spelled out that if one cannot or intentionally neglect to defend against this challenge, he or she WILL suffer the consequences.

To some, Invasion's Scout ability is rather clearly spelt out. To others it is not. If the above discard mechanic example is any clue as to how this particular discard mechanic took shape, then I believe one should not be rewarded for turning tail and running from an attack or an invasion.

kevinsmith121 said:

That would, if I may say so, be a big mistake. Deductive reasoning, or even true logic always is trumped by game logic which is revealed in game semantics.

Even when it is right, it is right for the wrong reason. FFG and many other gaming companies have ruled in the past things that seemed to defy normal logic, deductive reasoning, intuitive understanding, and standard grammar. If it can't be sussed out in the rules, using the terminology given in the rules, it is best sent to Nate. Coming up with a House Rule when there is no rule that can be applied to the situation is obviously preferable to no ruling at all, but if there is disagreement or it seems like it is against the designers intent, but the rules say something then stick with that and set aside logic (I really hate typing this, you can't possibly realize how much I hate typing this).

In this case at least, everything is pointing to the same answer, which makes explaining it easier other than, "because Nate said so."

For what it is worth, FFG has been able to be convinced that a ruling in one direction is not good for play or ease of understanding and future rules have clarified the issue, or in some rare cases, the rule has been rewritten/re-evaluated and changed, or specific cards have been received errata to work properly. Your pleas won't fall on deaf ears hear, they just won't always rule in your favor.

Jumping in on this late and cribbing off someone else's suggestions a bit, but...

Rulebook, p. 12: "Attacking an opponent requires engaging in combat, which is broken up into 5 steps... ... 5. Apply damage"

Even if there are no defenders, I think we all agree that damage is applied to the capital zone being attacked. This occurs during the 5th step. At this point, the full combat cycle is complete, and units which were present participated in it.

So if we look at the conditions, broken down:

- After combat damage is applied: This is step 5, and hitting the city counts. Check.

- any surviving participating unit(s): The Scout almost certainly survived if there were no defenders, so this is easy to verify. Check.

- for each of his participating units with Scout that survived the combat: The Scout was present through the all 5 combat phases, delivered whatever damage he could, etc. The survival has already been checked. Looks like we're good here.

I'm not sure what the potential issue is here, except for an over-reading of the term 'combat'. But the rule seems pretty clear that combat is the 5 phases listed, NOT an attacker bashing on a defender.