I'm going to stake a claim here: a main cause of the confusion of the new rules, is that the game has never had any tool for measuring VP during skirmishes.

The only way so far, has been if you happen to have won one of those scoring dials that were included in a few of the tournament kits. I've seen the book-keeping done with anything from the threat/round dial to objective tokens, to strain tokens, to a piece of paper, or a phone app.

The reality is, though, that there are so many things that add and subract victory points in the game, that it is getting harder and harder to represent the points with anything but a piece of paper or the app used (or the elusive dial). If there had been some sort of component for book-keeping in the base game, we wouldn't need all sorts of spurious ways of keeping track of them - strain on deployment cards for reinforced figures here and singular points from On A Diplomatic Mission there, or points from Pickpocket over there. Instead the rules would just tell us to X number of points to your tracker.

This is exactly correct.

And to add further, the tournament rules specifically restrict taking notes, which puts pen and paper scoring in a hazy grey area.

Score Dial or Phone App is the best way. It should be official. Mind you the prize kits dials are horrible.

The threat/round dial is the clearest and easiest "semi-official" way.

The rules forbid not only taking notes, but also 'consulting outside material'. Players can only 'reference' 'official rules documents' and 'game components containing non-hidden information'.

Since neither a scoring dial or a phone app is a 'game component' ('game components' are spelled out to be models, cards, dice, tokens and map tiles), it is just as illegal to use them as it is to take notes.

Which locally we all had a collective laugh about, declared it amusingly idiotic and continued to use dials, notes, phone apps and dice result cheat-sheets at tournaments.

Interestingly, even the damage tracking sheets they were including in tournament kits were technically illegal until they added a paragraph about 'alternative indicators' a while ago. We all had a chuckle about that as well.

You are allowed to record points on paper.

And you're really doing your opponent and yourself a disservice if you don't.

You aren't. It specifically says no note taking.

Locally we allow it and make sure everyone agrees before a tournament starts, but the rules clearly forbid it.

There's no distinction between scoring and note taking.

The bigger issue here, is that there's no official way to track points.

It's always been "defeated groups" and mission tokens/crates that you've claimed or turned in.

Now there's all sorts of ways to earn and lose VPs and that old method doesn't work any more.

It's also why they started giving out score dial prize kits.

But it's still a messy system. Score dial or paper is the best way of course, but it's hard to allow paper scoring but forbid note taking. the rules terminology would be more annoying than this recent blunder.

Yes, you are allowed to record score. I did it at worlds.

It should be obvious what note-taking means in this instance.

What, do you think you can't use score dials because it is taking notes? What about placing damage tokens? That's taking notes of how much damage each unit has.

I'm going to stake a claim here: a main cause of the confusion of the new rules, is that the game has never had any tool for measuring VP during skirmishes.

The only way so far, has been if you happen to have won one of those scoring dials that were included in a few of the tournament kits. I've seen the book-keeping done with anything from the threat/round dial to objective tokens, to strain tokens, to a piece of paper, or a phone app.

The reality is, though, that there are so many things that add and subract victory points in the game, that it is getting harder and harder to represent the points with anything but a piece of paper or the app used (or the elusive dial). If there had been some sort of component for book-keeping in the base game, we wouldn't need all sorts of spurious ways of keeping track of them - strain on deployment cards for reinforced figures here and singular points from On A Diplomatic Mission there, or points from Pickpocket over there. Instead the rules would just tell us to X number of points to your tracker.

This is exactly correct.

And to add further, the tournament rules specifically restrict taking notes, which puts pen and paper scoring in a hazy grey area.

Score Dial or Phone App is the best way. It should be official. Mind you the prize kits dials are horrible.

The threat/round dial is the clearest and easiest "semi-official" way.

The rules forbid not only taking notes, but also 'consulting outside material'. Players can only 'reference' 'official rules documents' and 'game components containing non-hidden information'.

Since neither a scoring dial or a phone app is a 'game component' ('game components' are spelled out to be models, cards, dice, tokens and map tiles), it is just as illegal to use them as it is to take notes.

Which locally we all had a collective laugh about, declared it amusingly idiotic and continued to use dials, notes, phone apps and dice result cheat-sheets at tournaments.

Interestingly, even the damage tracking sheets they were including in tournament kits were technically illegal until they added a paragraph about 'alternative indicators' a while ago. We all had a chuckle about that as well.

The prior final round of world Paul Heaver had a little pad a paper keeping score in front of all of the judges at the FF center. There is your precedent. Just use a little common sense.

You are allowed to record points on paper.

And you're really doing your opponent and yourself a disservice if you don't.

You aren't. It specifically says no note taking.

Locally we allow it and make sure everyone agrees before a tournament starts, but the rules clearly forbid it.

There's no distinction between scoring and note taking.

The bigger issue here, is that there's no official way to track points.

It's always been "defeated groups" and mission tokens/crates that you've claimed or turned in.

Now there's all sorts of ways to earn and lose VPs and that old method doesn't work any more.

It's also why they started giving out score dial prize kits.

But it's still a messy system. Score dial or paper is the best way of course, but it's hard to allow paper scoring but forbid note taking. the rules terminology would be more annoying than this recent blunder.

Yes, you are allowed to record score. I did it at worlds.

It should be obvious what note-taking means in this instance.

What, do you think you can't use score dials because it is taking notes? What about placing damage tokens? That's taking notes of how much damage each unit has.

Now you're just being purposely obtuse.

I'm just quoting the rules, since that's what this whole topic is about.

Score dials (be it a tournament prize or the threat/round dial from the core box) are official game material. As are tokens.

A pen and paper is not a game component. Placing a damage token is not "taking notes". You're twisting language to fit your narrative.

I've already said multiple times that everyone does it and no one complains about it and FFG is fine with. All I'm saying is that "TECHNICALLY THE RULES FORBID IT". I'm not sure how much clearer that can be.

Just because FFG don't enforce it doesn't mean the rules shouldn't be fixed to allow it.

The problem is, if you allow pan and paper officially then it becomes difficult to distinguish what is and isn't note taking. That's why it's worded that way. It's the same in lots of other games (FFG and otherwise).

The prior final round of world Paul Heaver had a little pad a paper keeping score in front of all of the judges at the FF center. There is your precedent. Just use a little common sense.

Common sense and "legal" rule wording are not synonymous. That's my point. FFG needs to properly clarify that.

If they don't enforce it, they should say so in the rules and make it official. It's not hard to say that pen/paper or app based scoring is allowed"

You are allowed to use pen and paper to record score.

I verified this via rules query and asking judges and playing at worlds.

I made sure of the rules because I used to record command cards after seeing them with Blaise. But you're not allowed to due that.

It is very easy to distinguish notes from score.

You're making an issue out of something that is not an issue.

Now you're just being purposely obtuse.

I'm just quoting the rules, since that's what this whole topic is about.

The prior final round of world Paul Heaver had a little pad a paper keeping score in front of all of the judges at the FF center. There is your precedent. Just use a little common sense.

Common sense and "legal" rule wording are not synonymous. That's my point. FFG needs to properly clarify that.

If they don't enforce it, they should say so in the rules and make it official. It's not hard to say that pen/paper or app based scoring is allowed"

I think the meaning of note taking and keeping score is clear, but if you are that unsure just ask the judge at the event you are at if you can. Case closed.

All I'm asking is for FFG to clarify it. I'm not sure why I'm the bad guy for trying to make rules clearer.

Just because they told a select few people at worlds doesn't mean that filters down officially to everyone else world wide. Is it so bad to want proper wording in a tournament rules document?

Of course not. I don't think anyone could disagree their rules lack clarity.

But at the same time, you are allowed to record the score, because recording the score is not the same as taking notes.

I also don't think anyone is making you out as the bad guy. They are just disagreeing.

But checking your score on a piece of paper is referencing material that is neither 'an official rules document' nor 'a game component', and as such is made illegal by the tournament rules like I pointed out earlier.

No one is disputing that writing down score or using a points dial is allowed. No sane person would argue that.

What we're pointing out is that the wording in the tournament regulations pack is ridiculous because when read word by word, it expressly forbids you to do things that no sane person would forbid you and that we know for a fact are not forbidden.

If rules text is universally ignored by everyone, including the people who wrote it, because it does not align with the most common sense, it says something about the quality of the company's ruleswriting. That is the only point myself or Inquisitor are making.

I was getting worked up. My bad.

But I think it's an annoying precedent for FFG to make some rulings at tournaments, tell the few people who where there, and then expect everyone else world side to know about it.

A great example is the Zillo Gencon ruling which (I believe) was an official FFG judge and it was the wrong ruling. It had a big impact on our Australian Nationals because it happened just before.

I totally agree that pen and paper are great, but at the same time, I write documentation, specs, standards and procedures at work as an engineer. I know the importance of wording and when to be specific and when to be vague.

I'd much prefer some official points tracking method than a pen and paper.... even if it's purely because of the "official game material" rules.

This new "put a strain token on a deployment card" thing is just another example of that. You wouldn't have to do that if there was a proper easily available points dial. It's a strange band-aid to an easily fixable problem.

I'm curious as I haven't heard of the Zillo controversy. What was it about?

At Gencon a ruling was made that the "reduce Pierce 2" was supposed to happen before surges were spent. Which completely changes how the card was played and was contrary to how 90% of players understood the card.

TO decided to follow the gencon ruling despite most players disagreeing.

Ultimately, it's a level playing field so it doesn't matter much but it's annoying and shouldn't be handled like that.

Ah, yes that is a suprising ruling - but also fully on par with my general impression that the whole issue of attacking in IA is far more confusing than it needs to be.

There are seven stages to performing an attack, but for some reason - likely to conserve space on cards and not to overwhelm players - six of them (2.-7.) have been lumped together in one wording "while attacking"(or "while defending"), while the seventh, which is actually the first, of "declaring an attack" has kept a separate wording on cards and abilities.

If the other six hadn't been squeezed together, we would have had much more precision and less confusion when it comes to timing conflicts during attacks.

And especially because the seventh has kept its distinct wording, it leaves you with the impression that it really doesn't matter when you trigger any ability linked to the other six stages of an attack.

There will always be special exceptions and a time will come when stuff has to be cleared up and consolidated because there are too many exceptions. I don't think we're there quite yet and FAQs are fine for now.

The complexity of the attack sequence can be cleared up with a proper timing sequence chart like X-wing got, but that's probably another topic for another day.

Speaking of missing components (such as score trackers for skirmish), this game could really do with a small reference card for the players in the core box. Something summing up the round, your possible actions, and - last but not least - the seven stages of an attack. Would have fitted in well with the five existing reference cards and probably more relevant than some of the information on those.

I still don't think this is totally resolved. the new rule states "If a defeated figure is placed back on the map, the owner places a strain token on that figure’s deployment card to track the previous defeat." and "When a figure is defeated, the opposing player scores victory points equal to that figure’s figure cost (see “Figure Cost” in the “Rules Updates” section of the FAQ)."

I still am sticking with my original interpretation: Reinforcements doesn't undefeat a figure. It just comes back on the map as a figure that has been defeated. You have to track it so when you kill it again you know you don't get points for that one. You also don't lose points when it comes off the deployment card.

The strain token is a placeholder for a defeated figure. Ergo it contributes points. It doesn't say anywhere that the new trooper is "free". It's still a figure and it still generates points when defeated just like any other figure.

If I kill 2 troopers. You have 1 on the board and 2 on the card.

If you reinforce twice (over two turns). You now have 3 troopers on the board and 2 strain tokens on the card.

The strain tokens still count as defeated troopers and I keep the 6 points I scored for them when they died.

The 3 troopers on the board are still full scoring figures too. If I kill all of them I get another 9 points (for a total of 15).

Same goes for Endless Ranks. If I somehow manage to bring back 5 troopers during a game, each one leaves a strain token on the card and each one counts as points.

It make sense because the only thing you have to track is how much died.... which is no different than tracking points from objectives or whatever. It's exactly how we do things now (except that its per figure not per deployment card).
It would be far too annoying to have to keep track of which trooper is a zombie and which one isn't.

Actually looking at it again it says to put the strain on the card not on the figure, so I guess you are right. If it was my interpretation you'd put the strain on the figure.

You may think it's unclear, but it's really not.

For each figure you defeat, you score that figure's VP points. If you defeat four snow troopers (one was reinforced) you will score a total of 12 VPs (4x3). You score the points as each figure is defeated, which will be important for mission and figure effects of some types or possibly ending the game at 40 points when combined with VPs from mission goals.

It's as clean and simple as that.

I'll reiterate, it's clean and simple.

And it matches up with the idea of what reinforcements actually would be in a real combat situation - a new fighter coming from somewhere else to join the battle - not a zombie trooper coming back from the dead.

The command card has to say "defeated trooper" because if it didn't you could potentially bring in some other trooper (say a regular heavy trooper instead of an elite stormtrooper) or potentially a 4th stormtrooper into a currently 3 trooper strong deployment (which would be more like real world reinforcements but they had to keep it from being completely broken

But with points for kills/defeated figures, this makes the most sense as to how reinforcements would be dealt with - you defeated the first trooper. You get the vp's. Enemy reinforces, the original kill is tracked by placing a strain counter on the deployment card (I'd say placing the reinforcements cc on the deployment card would have worked well too), and when/if this "new" trooper to the combat is defeated, you gain points again for defeating another figure.

And as for the train wreck of how this was communicated - I'm leaning towards the Organized Play needed to update all the regs for all the games, this rule was in the works already, OP wrote it into their tourney regs, and it just didn't get communicated well, so the Designers stepped in to help fix it.

Guess what, it proves the they look at the forums - or at least they pay attention to their twitter

You may think it's unclear, but it's really not.

For each figure you defeat, you score that figure's VP points. If you defeat four snow troopers (one was reinforced) you will score a total of 12 VPs (4x3). You score the points as each figure is defeated, which will be important for mission and figure effects of some types or possibly ending the game at 40 points when combined with VPs from mission goals.

It's as clean and simple as that.

I'll reiterate, it's clean and simple.

If it was, they wouldn't have needed to change it, would they?

Smugness only works when you're right, and it's not a positive character trait even then.

Speaking of missing components (such as score trackers for skirmish), this game could really do with a small reference card for the players in the core box. Something summing up the round, your possible actions, and - last but not least - the seven stages of an attack. Would have fitted in well with the five existing reference cards and probably more relevant than some of the information on those.

Actually, I had worked on something like that for myself, but then I was told that it probably wouldn't be legal at a tournament. lol!

Matters related to the sequence of resolving steps in an attack are something that truly does come up a lot.