Movement and terrain

By DivisibleByZero, in Runewars Rules Questions

My friend and I played our first game with the full rules last night and we had a few questions regarding terrain.

1. If you do a march and end up on terrain, does your army stop dead in its tracks as soon as it touches terrain?

2. Is it possible to ever move through terrain? For example, when moving through friendly units you can do this as long as it's only a single tray that would collide. It seems that colliding with terrain causes you to waste 2 or 3 turns just to get back into position, which is pretty brutal considering there are only 8 turns. (I don't mean entering terrain and then exiting....my 9 trays of Spearman are far too large to enter the terrain I was colliding with, but it also seems strange that they wouldn't be able to move through the terrain when only a small sliver of the tray/terrain are touching)

Edited by DivisibleByZero

1. Yes. As soon as you touch the terrain your unit stops. If your unit is smaller than the capacity of the terrain you can choose to occupy the terrain though.

2. This is only possible if you are able to occupy the terrain and even then you would have to wait to the next turn to exit it again. The only unit which can do this at the moment is the new Flesh Rippers when there compulsory movement before they turn their command dial causes them to occupy the terrain and then their chosen action allows them to exit it.

9 minutes ago, stet2 said:

1. Yes. As soon as you touch the terrain your unit stops. If your unit is smaller than the capacity of the terrain you can choose to occupy the terrain though.

2. This is only possible if you are able to occupy the terrain and even then you would have to wait to the next turn to exit it again. The only unit which can do this at the moment is the new Flesh Rippers when there compulsory movement before they turn their command dial causes them to occupy the terrain and then their chosen action allows them to exit it.

Thanks for the replies. Colliding with terrain seems like a surefire way to make that unit worthless for half of the match then :-D

Edited by DivisibleByZero
1 hour ago, stet2 said:

1. Yes. As soon as you touch the terrain your unit stops. If your unit is smaller than the capacity of the terrain you can choose to occupy the terrain though.

2. This is only possible if you are able to occupy the terrain and even then you would have to wait to the next turn to exit it again. The only unit which can do this at the moment is the new Flesh Rippers when there compulsory movement before they turn their command dial causes them to occupy the terrain and then their chosen action allows them to exit it.

Entering terrain ends your activation. I'm not sure Flesh Rippers would get to perform their action if their compulsory movement forces them into terrain.

1 hour ago, DivisibleByZero said:

My friend and I played our first game with the full rules last night and we had a few questions regarding terrain.

1. If you do a march and end up on terrain, does your army stop dead in its tracks as soon as it touches terrain?

2. Is it possible to ever move through terrain? For example, when moving through friendly units you can do this as long as it's only a single tray that would collide. It seems that colliding with terrain causes you to waste 2 or 3 turns just to get back into position, which is pretty brutal considering there are only 8 turns. (I don't mean entering terrain and then exiting....my 9 trays of Spearman are far too large to enter the terrain I was colliding with, but it also seems strange that they wouldn't be able to move through the terrain when only a small sliver of the tray/terrain are touching)

You can only go over a friendly if the moving units is only overlapping a single tray. It doesn't matter how many trays are in the moving unit.

Just now, rowdyoctopus said:

Entering terrain ends your activation. I'm not sure Flesh Rippers would get to perform their action if their compulsory movement forces them into terrain.

But isn't the compulsory movement before their activation as their command dial hasn't been flipped.

Just now, rowdyoctopus said:

You can only go over a friendly if the moving units is only overlapping a single tray. It doesn't matter how many trays are in the moving unit.

Yeah I phrased that poorly I suppose. What I was trying to get at is that even if you are only clipping 1/100th of the terrain it stops every single one of your units dead in its tracks, which seems VERY punishing for a game with only 8 rounds.

1 hour ago, stet2 said:

But isn't the compulsory movement before their activation as their command dial hasn't been flipped.

I could see it going either way.

1 hour ago, DivisibleByZero said:

Yeah I phrased that poorly I suppose. What I was trying to get at is that even if you are only clipping 1/100th of the terrain it stops every single one of your units dead in its tracks, which seems VERY punishing for a game with only 8 rounds.

If all that hits are your connectors, you can "nudge" to avoid it as per March rules.

If your main tray body hits, you stop.

Runewars is a game of position and maneuver. If you position and maneuver poorly, it's punishing.

4 hours ago, stet2 said:

But isn't the compulsory movement before their activation as their command dial hasn't been flipped.

81.2 bullet 2 - The ruling is 'After a unit resolves all effects of entering the terrain, its activation immediately ends. If it had a bonus action or other game effects to perform, they are canceled"

Doesn't matter what action it is, you activated the unit, they did their compulsory movement, entered the terrain, and their turn ended. They can effects charge out of terrain though, which is quite difficult to do otherwise.

I'm with @stet2 regarding the Flesh Rippers. Rule 5.1 tells us that revealing the command tool is the very first step of activation. Since the mandatory movement happens before revealing the command tool, then I would argue its activation hasn't begun yet, and you therefore can't end its activation. Therefore, you would still get to reveal your command tool after the mandatory movement.

Edited by Budgernaut
5 minutes ago, Budgernaut said:

I'm with @stet2 regarding the Flesh Rippers. Rule 5.1 tells us that revealing the command tool is the very first step of activation. Since the mandatory movement happens before revealing the command tool, then I would argue its activation hasn't begun yet, and you therefore can't end its activation. Therefore, you would still get to reveal your command tool after the mandatory movement.

Yes, revealing the command tool is the first step of activation. "Activation" describes the entirety of the units actions over the course of its turn in the activation phase.

But you don't reveal the command tool and THEN activate... You choose a unit to activate, that unit activates, then you reveal the command tool.

Rule 5 says "When a player activates one of his units, he resolves the following steps in order". Following the precedent of the "when" timing word, this means that the activation itself must have happened (or be happening) for revealing the command tool to trigger.

Flesh Rippers don't say "Before you activate", they say "Before you reveal your command tool". "Before" similarly needs a trigger. You wouldn't reveal your command tool if you didn't activate.

So the Flesh Rippers text would need to read, "Before this unit activates, it must perform a speed-1 [march]." Then you would be able to do something after entering terrain. But as it is, you could lose their whole activation if you let them run into terrain. However, since entering the terrain is optional, there may be a benefit to choosing not to enter the terrain so that you can still do something with your unit. It's going to be a fun challenge getting a reign on these guys!