Just got the game, and am looking forward to playing it for the first time. Until then I have to be content with reading and re-reading the rules!

I have a question about damage resulting from "early hits" or "beginning of battle" effects. The example in the rulebook has Blood Frenzy scoring 2 hits on a GUO, not enough to kill it, but saving up those hits to be added to regular damage later in the combat round.

My question is this: If no further hits were scored, are the 2 hits already scored wasted, even if another figure could have been a legal target for that damage?

I guess the 2 conflicting rules here would be:

1) "A player may not assign fewer hits to a figure than are necessary to kill it"

Versus

2) "A player who has legal targets for rolled hits must assign them."

In other words, if no more hits were scored after the first 2, the GUO is no longer a legal target for those hits. If another legal target exists, damage must be assigned to it. But can the target be changed to another legal figure before damage has been assigned?

And if the other target is legal and gets assigned the damage, shouldn't it be taken off the board immediately because it should have been killed before regular combat began? A sort of retro-active early hits killing? If this is the case, then it's combat dice shouldn't be resolved either, since it should already be dead, but had to wait until regular combat to see if the GUO would take the hits or not, correct?

I'm leaning towards the 2 hits being wasted, because a player shouldn't be allowed to change targets after results have been determined. Do I have this right? What's everyone else's resolution of this situation?

Thanks for the help!

Wasted. You made a tactical choice to assign them to the GUO, so if you faIL to roll further hits later, tough luck.

I'd say reassignable - as has already been noted by the OP, it's not possible to waste damage by giving it to figures that aren't killed.

Right, in the case of non-pre-battle effects - but it's given as an example in the book. Battle Frenzy and Khorne upgraded bloodletters have to assign their damage before other Khorne units and ARE combinable with other Khorne units.

However, different PLAYERS cannot combine hits to kill something - it has to be from one source.

The example on page 18 of the rulebook, kind of shows this situation. There's Khornes prebattle dice vs a plaguebearer (upgraded) and a GUO. In the example they decide to take out the PB, but mention they could assign the hits to the GUO. Using this information it would seem to me that the allocated hit's from the cards dice would not be able to be reallocated if you failed to produce enough hits to remove the GUO.