1.- When the attacker assigns damage, does he have to assign as many points as necessary to KILL the defending unit, or just enouth to match the defending unit's HP?

2.- Troll vomit + King Kazador = Kazador dies?

3.- Moving damage means it's uncancellable damage, right? eg Valkia reassigning 1 damage token on her to a dwarf with toughness X(any), but only 1 HP, means the dwarf would go to the discard pile, doesn't it?

Well the answers for 2 and 3 are easy...

Troll Vomit does not target any units so King Kazador's ability is irrelevant.

Reassigning damage is not uncancelable. Any redirection of assigned damage still must go through the apply damage phase so can be canceled. Valkia however moves applied damage so it cannot be canceled by any existing means.

According to the new FAQ you have to assign enough damage to destroy the unit if able. Hmm.... that changes things somewhat.

Thanks.

So King Kazador

And now for the 1st question, anyone?

dormouse said:

On indirect damage the FAQ specifically says that you can overassign damage to account for toughness, but for combat damage it just says "the attacking player must assign enough damage to destroy each defending unit before any damage can be assigned to the defending players capital".

For consistency with the indirect damage rule, in my opinion, I would say that you would have to assign enough damage to defending units to destroy them, accounting for forced or continuous effects (like toughness or Warrior Priest's ability), before you can assign damage to the capital.

I would really like to know the answer to question 1 as well, because I've been playing that you only need to assign damage=hp of defender... the FAQ makes it seem I would have to put (hp+toughness) worth of damage on units before applying it to the capital.

Hurdoc said:

The rulebook was pretty clear about this point. So, I guess that if the wording within the FAQ is different, then the rule behind it changed.

I would play it the same way Indirect Damages are now handled (assign enought to kill the units after all the known Thoughness and damage cancellation effects, like "Steel's Bane").

The rule behind it has changed. You must now assign enough damage to destroy the unit, this means all remaining hit points plus any active cancels on it before you can assign any damage to the capital.

So now instead of a being against a 3 HP unit with Toughness 1 and being able to sign only 3 damage to it and then the capital I now need to assign 4 damage in total ?

Well thats different.

Yep, it is different. Will take some getting used to.

It certainly makes a lot more sense to me... Here I have this big tough armoured dude guarding my capitol, you have to go through him to damage the capitol. Just because he is weak on the inside if you do get though all that armour , you still have to kill him before you can damage my capitol.

One of the things I really like about this game is the rules simplification. Try explaining why toughness wouldn't count to a non-card-gamer.

kiss

Dragonmage and Gustav the Bear are loving this new ruling. 1 Dragonmage can suck 50+ damage by himself (three times even). Same for Gustav should opponent have any corrupted Units. Sure, Gussy may only have 3HP, but since all damage to him is cancelled and the cancelling is in effect at the time of damage assigning, nothing can get through Gustav.

Man, I was excited to see the FAQ finally out, but sadly, after reading it, instead of reinforcing my love for this game, it doused freezing cold water on it. Pre-FAQ, I was looking forward to more plays, now feels like will have to wait and see if the spark gets relit .

Dam said:

I feel the same way, Dam.

I still maintain that this is the wrong interpretation, and not consistent with the wording in the original rules.

"...the attacking player must assign damage equal to the number of hit points each defending unit possesses to that unit before any damage can be assigned to the attacked section on the defending player's capital. Note that more damage can be assigned to a unit at the attacker's discretion, in anticipation of the Toughness keyword or other damage cancellation effects, but a minimum damage equal to the number of hit points posessed by each defending unit must be assigned to each defender before any damage can be assigned to the defender's capital".

Crystal clear? Obviously not, or there wouldn't have been any discussion about it. But I think it's at least 95% clear, and I'll bet you this is the way the designer originally intended it to be played, and I'll be he had valid reasons for it. These crazy powerful card combinations are most likely the reason.

One reason this new ruling seems very strange is that I can't recall any threads where people complained/questioned Toughness and how it worked. If it's not broken, why mess with it? Touch up on issues that have caused problems, leave the rest as is IMO. Pre-FAQ Toughness and canceller applications didn't create any of these trouble combos (Gustav, Dragonmage, Sword Masters as well IIRC), but FFG changed the rules so the problem combos appear ? How weird is that logic? Clarifications that makes things more confusing? And if they eventually (hopefully) change back to the original interpretation, then what was the whole point of changing them in the first place?

Its broken they need to rewrite the rulebook and stop making up poor rules to vover poorer rules.

no, the faq will evolve with time, this is only a fisrt "draft" ...

it quality will improve with time

I feel that poeple are jumping the gun here. Play some games and get a feeling for how the game plays with the changes, before letting your flames gets doused. I don't think the rules change the game as much, as i think, you think it does ( ).

Gustav the Bear shuldn't really be a broblem. Order has no coruption abillity, so you're verry much in controll over if you have corupted units. The dragonmage is powerfull, no denying that, but its expensive and thus slow to put out (especially in multiple zones), and there are still ways to deal with it. Caos has corupption, still varios sniping options and the bloodthirster. Orcs can easily burn one zone, then colect power for a big attack and do that attack with Mob Up (Its a bummer though, to have to dilute your deck with cards that is usless if the opponent doesn't play damage cancelaton hevy, but its not that bad yet). Humans have it a little harder, but i stil think they can manage with force march and the Verenna&elector combo. Dwarves... (i have a hard time coming up with good drwarf decks in general well it wuld not be to hard to snipe them with rangers i think. I'm not going to comment on the swordsmasters, since i don't know how the cardsmix looks when it comes out (but they do seem really really strong for their cost).

So i still consider decks that has dragonmages in them to be verry defetable. If you want to prove me wrong, i take any WHI chalanges.

So how much relliable cancelabillity are there in game anyway? Dwarvs have like what? 4 cards with thougness(a hero, a attatchment that only grants one, a unit you have to set up with developments, a cheap unit with not much staying power anyways), DE has 1, orcs have a unit that grants a thougnes to dammaged units, and if you have the latest expansion HE has a expensive unit with awsome cancelability. (please do correct me if ive missed something)

I have to say that after waiting so long for the FAQ to come out, I am very disappointed with them. I know that not everyone will agree with everything that is official, but changeing one of the least questioned aspects of the game is ridiculous. Must 'KILL' all defending units before damageing a zone is nonsense. Especially with the new 'invincible' units coming out. Luckily we can play it any way we like, but I shall have to avoid 'official' tournaments. I can see this game going the way of 'Thrones' and 'Cthulhu'. Starts off great, then gets overcomplicated, changed beyond recognition and all the money spent on the original sets has been wasted. Hopefully the 2 Elf races will reach me before it completely disintegrates. I really liked this game but can see the 'cancer' growing. Shame!

Considering that Thrones is selling out in countries around the world, I'm going to have say that most people disagree with you there.

mathulus said:

Point is, I played games (74 at last count) before the FAQ and Toughness never posed an issue. The goal was to burn 2 zones, now it's "kill all Units in a zone and then burn it, then do the same in another zone". I'm don't mind blood-letting, I'm all for it, but when it's not the goal (as in, the goal is not to see who killed most Units in a game), then you shouldn't be forced to do it. Units are focused on the objective of the opponent's capital zone, they aren't that bothered about killing off all Units. Once the opponent is down, go for the goal, so what if he recovers (Toughness) afterwards?

After playing a handful of games with the new rules, I'm very much in favor of them and I think Sword Masters of Hoeth and other units that can basically cancel an unlimited amount of combat damage will make the game more interesting. Under the original rules most decks within my gamegroup were very offense-centered, because it was simply impossible to build a defence in all three zones. Thus games often became a simple damage race and only rarely did we see decks succeed that didn't focus on the battlefield. Of course every player needs to adjust to the new rules and I can see why some people are upset with them, but IMO these rules demand more interesting play and deckbuilding decisions from each player, which is a good thing.

Dam said:

As i hinted on at the end of my post, the amount of cards acctually affected by the ruling is farly small, so saying that it turned the game beeing one thing to beeing another is a big overstatement. Of what i've played since the change, the game has felt just the same. The cancelation units felt like all the other units (that you do have to kill even in the old rules), insted of units where you had the option to cut corners (let live to do more damage to the zone). Since you didn't encounter them that often anyways, it doesn't relly feel that theres something lost from the game (at least for me).

The change isn't that units want wants to kill units insted of fuffiling their goal, it's that units don't go down untill they are dead (there is no exeptions to that anymore). Is it really your oppinion that the game turned in to "have to clean out all units to burn zones", just because you've lost the option of, letting live for a (often small) boost in damage to the capital, on a few units? If you really have to kill all the oposing units to burn the first zone, then i'm suspecting that your opponents are defending more often/with more units than they really shuld be doing...

BtW. It's a living card game, so things will change. We all knew that from the start (maybe not to what extent). But if it truly changes away from fun, im sure they will change those things back. But at least try the new things out in the meanwhile (preferably with an open mind).

I like the changes, always thought it was dumb that you had to kill all the units i defended with except the units with toughness. It was dumb and made no sense, plus took alot away from the Ironbreakers. Also, it makes Steeels Bane worth using now and Gustav worth his cost.

I think the rule change makes High Elves too powerful. Dragonmage with Archmage of Saphery is amazing. It really only has a couple weaknesses, Corruption (solved easily by Blessing of Isha, another High Elf card), and being moved away by an Empire deck. Steeles Bane and Greater Heal make them even more powerful.

If this rule doesn't change (or get clarified to mean what I think it really is), the game will be messed up when the High Elf board comes out. Right now it is held in check only by the necessity to splash the High Elves, with their high loyalty cost, in another factions deck.

I don't know what your waiting for, this has already been clairified by the new lead designer.