So we played out our final battle last weekend and had a great time (although it took us way too long) but there were some things were not quite sure about and would like to clarify as we go into our next campaign.

1. Victory Tokens

on page 15 it says each team takes turns placing victory tokens on the table, but in the next paragraph on page 16 it contradicts that and says each of the assaulting teams players place their victory tokens then each of the defending players place victory tokens with the grand admiral placing a final victory token. We decided to go with the latter rule that all the assaulting tokens are placed first, but again the wording is ambiguous in both sections.

2. Commander Sato

The rules say that all ships and squadrons are friendly to each other within a team with the exception of commander abilities. Specifically says "a commanders 'friendly' effect can only be resolved by ships and squadrons of that players fleet." The Sato player argued that since it's the ships resolving Satos ability and not the squadrons, Sato could count any friendly squadron in the entire fleet for his ability. Is that the correct way of interpreting that rule?

18 minutes ago, Tvboy said:

So we played out our final battle last weekend and had a great time (although it took us way too long) but there were some things were not quite sure about and would like to clarify as we go into our next campaign.

1. Victory Tokens

on page 15 it says each team takes turns placing victory tokens on the table, but in the next paragraph on page 16 it contradicts that and says each of the assaulting teams players place their victory tokens then each of the defending players place victory tokens with the grand admiral placing a final victory token. We decided to go with the latter rule that all the assaulting tokens are placed first, but again the wording is ambiguous in both sections.

2. Commander Sato

The rules say that all ships and squadrons are friendly to each other within a team with the exception of commander abilities. Specifically says "a commanders 'friendly' effect can only be resolved by ships and squadrons of that players fleet." The Sato player argued that since it's the ships resolving Satos ability and not the squadrons, Sato could count any friendly squadron in the entire fleet for his ability. Is that the correct way of interpreting that rule?

1. Without a direct quote - Is not contradiction.

"Teams" take turns placing. As in, One Team Places, and then the other Team Places. Then the Grand Admiral of the Defender.


2. Now, this one is ambiguous and contentious.

The question is wether the Squadron is part of the resolution, or merely party to it.

Personally, I think the intention of the rule is to consider the Fleet Commanders to have a small addenum that basically replaces "Friendly..." with "Their Fleets..." Ergo, its Sato's Fighters and Ships that are trained to coordinate together, so they work together - it doesn't work with any other Admiral's Squadrons.


By the sheer letter of the rule, it can be argued the other way - that the Ships are doing the Resolution, and the "Friendly Squadron" is merely a check to that.

Its one that can be argued two ways (unlike Dodonna, which, although often argued two ways, is worded in such a way that only one really matters.)

For the Sato part I would strongly believe that any friendly fighter would cause the ability to trigger, meaning any friendly fleets fighters not just your own fleets. Again the ability only affects the ships from Satos fleet, so his ability is not being passed to any other team mate, only the qualifier for it.

Fighters can already be shared team wide (with the owners consent) as part of the rules for the all out assault so I don't really see why that would be a problem. Maybe if I stare at the rule book for a while but from memory sounds legit.

12 minutes ago, Drakkars said:

For the Sato part I would strongly believe that any friendly fighter would cause the ability to trigger, meaning any friendly fleets fighters not just your own fleets. Again the ability only affects the ships from Satos fleet, so his ability is not being passed to any other team mate, only the qualifier for it.

Fighters can already be shared team wide (with the owners consent) as part of the rules for the all out assault so I don't really see why that would be a problem. Maybe if I stare at the rule book for a while but from memory sounds legit.

It is a legit interpretation - but so is the other - so there's really... Its a hard path to argue for either, without getting into the horrible grey area of intent .

Its a Boost to the Sato player to let them do that.

Ask your gaming group if you feel they need it

3 minutes ago, Drasnighta said:

It is a legit interpretation - but so is the other - so there's really... Its a hard path to argue for either, without getting into the horrible grey area of intent .

Its a Boost to the Sato player to let them do that.

Ask your gaming group if you feel they need it

Our Sato player was insistent on interpreting it that way, but like you said I feel it is ambiguous and could be interpreted either way, depending on how you interpret how effects are "resolved" and how the rule in CC applies to that.

I'm okay with Sato working either way, it still only applies to Satos ships, so I don't find it nearly as egregious as Dodonna whose ruling is much clearer but also clearly an oversight by the developers if their intent was to limit commanders abilities to their own fleets.

38 minutes ago, Drasnighta said:

1. Without a direct quote - Is not contradiction.

"Teams" take turns placing. As in, One Team Places, and then the other Team Places. Then the Grand Admiral of the Defender.

It sounds like your saying one team places all their tokens and then the other team places all their tokens (like we did). That's not what taking turns means. If I said each team captain takes turns choosing players for their teams, that doesn't mean captain A chooses all of his players and captain B chooses all of her players. I'll quote the book after work, but you can just look at the paragraphs I mentioned at the end of late 15 and beginning of page 16.

If I had the book on hand, I'd quote it, to be sure - but heaven forbid I make a joke on the Rules Forum and it doesn't get taken as one

1 hour ago, Drasnighta said:

If I had the book on hand, I'd quote it, to be sure - but heaven forbid I make a joke on the Rules Forum and it doesn't get taken as one

Sorry, didn't realize your entire answer to my first question was a joke, your first paragraph had a smiley face but the second part seemed pretty matter-of-fact, and I guess I wouldn't expect someone to make their entire answer into a joke. Sarcasm doesn't come through so well in text [\s].

Thanks for trying to help. I don't really have time to type out two paragraphs of rules while I'm at work since FFG doesn't want to give us a text PDF, maybe when I get home.

Oh look I forgot I had a scanned PDF on my phone, here's the exact sections of the rules that seem to contradict

http://imgur.com/a/V7KXB

No worries.

But here's the disappointing nitty gritty:

Reading it directly - it can still be interpreted as "no conflict" as such... The Teams do take turns, but the turn is encapsulated as "the team"... Rather than, for example, "The Players on Each team take turns", where the onus would be on switching between Players.

Read things as literally as possible. Without any reference outside of the rules that you are envisioning (which is why, for example, I will always look for Armada provisions rather than "that's how they do it in X-wing" for example. Yes, that has come up in the past.)

Ergo, even from the direct quote "The teams take turns" rather than "The players of the teams take turns", you are still left with

Assault, Assault, Assault, Defend, Defend, Defend, Defending Grand Admiral.

I do foresee plenty of responses that are along the lines of "But that's common English". And the answer to that is: "It may be colloquially so, but this is how its done in rules ."

Rules are the sort of thing that have to set out that there's a difference between "Within" a distance and "At" a distance, even though they can quite rightly be used interchangeably in colloquial english.

And I see no reason beyond that as to have it any other way, either. In a "Kill them all" battle, all of the advantage is lumped into the first player - as they will automatically have initiative. Armada as a game always has a mechanic to place some advantage back to the 2nd Player, because the 1st player activation is considered huge... Giving them an additional token is one - letting them place their tokens after 1st player places theirs is another... Even in the flow of the game (having played an All Out Assault as a Defender) - really... Its not a huge bonus, but you take everything you can (we still horridly lost).

And Final Caveat.

Entirely possible its supposed to be the other way, and just poorly articulated. Nothing any of us can do about that, other than waiting for clarification and/or errata.