I'm planning to play Thorn for my 2nd solo game but ran into a few questions.

1. Thorn's hero abiliy gives a surge to teleport 2 spaces. It says 'each of your attacks gain:'. Does this mean that Thorn has to roll a surge during an attack? Or is no surge is rolled the ability still kicks in?

Terracall has to be exhausted, which costs a hero one of his actions, in order to allow a Summoned Stone to attack. At the start of my hero's next turn Terracall un-exhausts again so no attack allowed by a Stone at that time.

2. So if I want to attack with a Summoned Stone familiar in the hero's turn I have to first activate the hero and use one action with the hero to exhaust Terracall. If I only want to move the Stone than it can activate before or after teh hero's activation for the turn

Terracall 1 of my Summoned Stones to peform an attack.

3. Does the hero require Line of Sight to the Summoned Stone? Can the Summoned Stone only make 1 attack or activate twice to perform 2 attacks?

4. Terracall only mentions 1 Stone can attack so 1 Stone can attack, not multile. I read somewhere that with 2 Stones on the board both Stones can attack hence the question.

5. Not sure I got it right but if my hero use Terracall to attack through its Summoned Stone the hero ability of Master Thorn can activate?

Thx. for the help.

1 - You have to roll a surge and spend a surge on it, so it cannot be spend anywhere else. Choices must be made.

2 - You can attack with stone only after you used terracalls. No use of it, no attack, only moves stones.

3 - When Terracall is use, you can perform an attack as if it was the hero but instead using 1 of your stones. so trace line of sight and calcul distance from the choosen stone.

4 - Stone is like a familiar. So, familiar can only move once before or after all actions of the hero occurs. Then, sometimes, that particular familiar can do some other things, like attack. So, no "double actions", never ever !

A move, and sometimes, an attack, That all ! (folks)

5 - This one is a bit tricky, but, since it's the stone who perform the attacks and not Thorn, it cannot be used. Same applies for the free surge added by stone. Since it's the stone who is attacking, and no "you", so Thorn in that case, the attack through the stone would no gain a free surge, even if the stone is adjacent to the target.

But in case of Molten Fury, as rules are stated, you can, since it's "you" who perform the attack but tracing line of sight and range from any stone.

Cataclysm is a bit unclear on this one ...

Hopes it helps !

1 - You have to roll a surge and spend a surge on it, so it cannot be spend anywhere else. Choices must be made.

2 - You can attack with stone only after you used terracalls. No use of it, no attack, only moves stones.

3 - When Terracall is use, you can perform an attack as if it was the hero but instead using 1 of your stones. so trace line of sight and calcul distance from the choosen stone.

4 - Stone is like a familiar. So, familiar can only move once before or after all actions of the hero occurs. Then, sometimes, that particular familiar can do some other things, like attack. So, no "double actions", never ever !

A move, and sometimes, an attack, That all ! (folks)

5 - This one is a bit tricky, but, since it's the stone who perform the attacks and not Thorn, it cannot be used. Same applies for the free surge added by stone. Since it's the stone who is attacking, and no "you", so Thorn in that case, the attack through the stone would no gain a free surge, even if the stone is adjacent to the target.

But in case of Molten Fury, as rules are stated, you can, since it's "you" who perform the attack but tracing line of sight and range from any stone.

Cataclysm is a bit unclear on this one ...

Hopes it helps !

1) Right. It's kind of like all of your weapons have that surge ability written on them (only when you use them, not when they're used by your stones.)

2) Right. The stone's activation is normally only 1 move action (each stone you have can perform 1 move action- and only 1.). If terracall is exhausted, one stone can also perform 1 attack action. Stone's can't perform other actions, except perhaps things like an action to discard stun. Since your stones activate AFTER your start of turn, the card will be refreshed if you wait until your next turn (so no attack).

3) You do not need LOS to your stone for it to perform the attack. The stone attacks on its own using one of your weapons- you are not performing the attack through the stone. When the stone performs an attack, it does not get a free surge for being adjacent to a monster. When you perform an attack, you get a free surge if at least 1 stone is adjacent to at least 1 monster.

4) Right. (see #2).

5) Right. If "you" (Master Thorn) are performing the attack, you get the surge for stone adjacency, and can use your (Master Thorn's) hero ability. If the stone is attacking, you cannot. Anywhere on any hero sheet or hero skill you see the word "you", read the text as if "you" was replaced with the name of the hero. So, Thorn's ability reads,

"Each of Master Thorn's attacks gains: [surge]: After resolving this attack, Master Thorn may choose a space within two spaces of Master Thorn and place Master Thorn's figure in the chosen space."

Thx. for clarifying. Particularly the familiar one. I viewed some vids and was under the impression familiars had a double action.

Looking at the rules, right, only activate once but additional actions are possible when noted on the familiar card. Probably took that wrongly from the vids as a double action but techically/mechanically its not.

Thx. for clarifying. Particularly the familiar one. I viewed some vids and was under the impression familiars had a double action.

Looking at the rules, right, only activate once but additional actions are possible when noted on the familiar card. Probably took that wrongly from the vids as a double action but techically/mechanically its not.

Familiars work like a monster would. That's the best way to view it.

Thx. for clarifying. Particularly the familiar one. I viewed some vids and was under the impression familiars had a double action.

Looking at the rules, right, only activate once but additional actions are possible when noted on the familiar card. Probably took that wrongly from the vids as a double action but techically/mechanically its not.

Familiars work like a monster would. That's the best way to view it.

Not really, since that's the way he was looking at it to begin with. Familiars are a special case that gets a single action by default, a move. Treating them like a monster implies they get 2 actions, one of which can be an attack. That was the mistake the OP was making.

Thx. for clarifying. Particularly the familiar one. I viewed some vids and was under the impression familiars had a double action.

Looking at the rules, right, only activate once but additional actions are possible when noted on the familiar card. Probably took that wrongly from the vids as a double action but techically/mechanically its not.

Familiars work like a monster would. That's the best way to view it.

Not really, since that's the way he was looking at it to begin with. Familiars are a special case that gets a single action by default, a move. Treating them like a monster implies they get 2 actions, one of which can be an attack. That was the mistake the OP was making.

Familiars by default get a move and attack. Like the skeleton and the wolf. It's the exception that they can't attack - and the stones are an exception because it says it on the card.

Take a look at (I think it's p17) in the base game rulebook. First, you'll find a section on "familiars". It will tell you that familiars

-activate either before or after the hero controlling them does (but between that hero's start and end of turn)

-may perform 1 move action

-do not block movement or LOS

-treat special terrain (pits, lava, etc) as water (except obstacles)

There were no familiars fitting all of these rules in the base game. Since then, we have skye, and the shadow soul as good examples. Stones also fall into this category, but with additional rules (they're treated as obstacles, can be attacked, etc)

After that, there is a section on familiars TREATED AS FIGURES. These guys

-treat terrain normally

-block LOS, and movement (but are friendly figures to heroes)

-can be treated like a heo in limited cases (attacks, hero and monster skills and abilities, OL cards aimed at heroes)

This is the category the wolf and reanimate fall in. Even so, the ONLY reason they get to attack is because their card says they can.

The best way to think of familiars is not "As heroes, except..." or "As monsters, except" .

The best way to think of familiars is as nothing .

One of the first basic mistakes a lot of people do when they are starting out is to assume that familiars "Count as" something in general. You skim over the rules, and get to "treated as figures" and then you see that they're treated as heroes in this or that case, and suddenly you're there, playing, and you've started to think "Familiars count as heroes, right?" .

Don't. It's a total trap.

Familiars have very specific rules associated with them, and they never "count as" anything other than familiars. They can, however, be treated as if they are heroes (or figures) for certain effects and interactions, as specified in the rulebook. Unless they expressly can do something, they can't do it.

Unless they expressly can do something, they can't do it.

So much this. Might sound harsh, but the truth is most of the mistakes people do on this game is for assumming things or behaviours, or interactions not stated anywhere.

Unless they expressly can do something, they can't do it.

So much this. Might sound harsh, but the truth is most of the mistakes people do on this game is for assumming things or behaviours, or interactions not stated anywhere.

Thinking in 'theme' rather than in rules. But that is understandable, imagine reading Zaltyre's glossary in one go:p

Yeah, I don't mean to sound harsh either, and I do this all the time . Like the discussion about counting spaces and whether something is within a certain distance, I always counted "away" from the heroes because that's what made sense to me. And I absolutely used to think of familiars as "Counts as heroes, mostly" . The problem is that that form of thinking tends to be carried onward and then that "logic" is applied to other things in the game, because you assume that that's how it is. It becomes a form of genetic error, I suppose.

Kill it early on and kill it good.

Familiars are not so complicated when you don't forget some points :

Familiars are divided in 2 groups : the ones that are treated as figures (like wolf and reanimate), and the ones that are not (like shadow soul and skye)

- All familiars can only move once during their turn.

- If they are not treated as a figure, each "non usual space" cost 2 movement points instead of one, cannot attack or attacked, except it noted otherwise (for example, stones are "obstacles" so no hero or monster may move through it and is treated like a red space)

- If they are treated as figure, they treat spaces as normal, can be attacked and attack as stated on the familiar card/class skills, targeted and affected by Overlord cards, and other rules are specified on the familiar card.

- Remember that familiars are never affected by Quest Rules nor as heroes for gaining Threats tokens for Plot decks.

@ Slade:

When playing Master Thorn as a Geomancer, keep one thing in mind: The teleport provided by his heroic ability requires you to choose an empty space within 2 spaces ! In other words, you must be able to count spaces in order to do that. The summoned stones are however obstacles (block movement, LOS, counting spaces), so you can't teleport on the other side of a summoned stone wall using this ability. I guess you know this anyway, but just in case...