1 minute ago, Budgernaut said:

I have to laugh at this part of the tournament rules:

"While the organizer can mark the required play area on a table with tape or another simple method, providing playmats or a similar material in 3’ by 6’ dimensions to create friction and prevent figures from sliding out of place is strongly recommended."

I wouldn't consider FFG playmats as providing enough friction to make a difference compared to a plastic table. Most plastic tables would prevent slipping even more than an FFG playmat.

You're omitting that plastic tables look lame and don't score FFG those sweet $80 for the 2 mats.

6 minutes ago, Willange said:

You're omitting that plastic tables look lame and don't score FFG those sweet $80 for the 2 mats.

I absolutely agree. But those aren't the justifications they listed. The idea that an FFG mat will increase friction and reduce slippage is laughable, though I laugh in friendly "that's silly" sort of way. It's not something I'm upset about. And I totally intend to get two mats eventually.

Noticed they didn't give a ruling on threat for a unit being flanked that has lost a tray.

1 hour ago, Darthain said:

I read that as I could assign damage as long as it doesn't cause the split with that damage. So I feel they did not clarify anything on that one (everything else was oddly well written for FFG). Per that I could assign the first wound, but not the second to the golem if it split it.

I read it as two separate instances. If the unit has 2 or more ranks you can target the front line unit, since that is covered by replacing a tray from the back rank.

Once the unit is down to its last rank (the front rank) you can't target the front line unit as that would split the unit.

3 minutes ago, backupsidekick said:

Noticed they didn't give a ruling on threat for a unit being flanked that has lost a tray.

what is it they need to clarify about that?

So out of faction units can only use neutral upgrades? Harsh.

5 minutes ago, TallTonyB said:

what is it they need to clarify about that?

There is question of what threat should be for a unit that is being flanked once it has lost a tray. You are supposed to ignore any partial ranks, but can't ignore the front rank, so is threat automatically 1, or is it the number of trays touching, or the number of ranks on the side that is being flanked? If you remove a tray on the side being flanked does the threat go down by 1 or does it stay the same until the whole rank is removed. I'll edit and put the link to the conversation here.

EDIT:

Also the objectives and deployments are seasonal like imperial assault and you build a terrain deck. Also letting ppl bring custom terrain is interesting.

1 minute ago, backupsidekick said:

There is question of what threat should be for a unit that is being flanked once it has lost a tray. You are supposed to ignore any partial ranks, but can't ignore the front rank, so is threat automatically 1, or is it the number of trays touching, or the number of ranks on the side that is being flanked? If you remove a tray on the side being flanked does the threat go down by 1 or does it stay the same until the whole rank is removed. I'll edit and put the link to the conversation here.

A clarification would be nice, but I don't think it's 100% necessary if we go off the main definition for threat:

82.1 "When performing a melee attack, a unit’s threat is equal to the number of trays that comprise the contacted edge."

This rule is very straightforward. The confusion came from one of the "clarifying" bullet points.

"If the contacted edge is shortened by a partial rank, calculate the number of trays as if the partial rank was not present."

This rule is fine for side flanks, but it is problematic for rear flanks. If a 3x3 unit is down to 8 trays, so it is missing 1 tray from the back rank, how much threat does it get on attacks out the back? The first part of 82.1 unambiguously declares it will be the number of trays on the contacted edge, so it would have 2 threat. Then the bullet point says you ignore ranks if the rank is partial. Well, this would mean ignoring the 2 trays in the very back and getting a threat of 3. My opinion is that the bullet point causing contention was written with only side flanks in mind. If we just focus on the main definition of a unit's threat being equal to the number of trays on the contacted edge, there is no confusion.

3 minutes ago, Budgernaut said:

A clarification would be nice, but I don't think it's 100% necessary if we go off the main definition for threat:

I'll just say I think the large majority of my local meta has no idea how it should be ruled due to the line you referenced. Also, one could argue further that you should ignore the rank that is shortened (the one missing 1 tray) and count the next rank which is a full 3 trays to get a threat of 3, not 2. The issue is when it says you can't ignore the front rank, so then to calculate threat, you should ignore the side rank that has 2 trays, but not the front rank, which is only 1 tray, which leaves a threat of 1 for a side attack.

It's effectively ignore partial rank, refer to first full rank. That's your threat (either front to back, or side to side as appropriate)

3 hours ago, Asmo said:

I read it as two separate instances. If the unit has 2 or more ranks you can target the front line unit, since that is covered by replacing a tray from the back rank.

Once the unit is down to its last rank (the front rank) you can't target the front line unit as that would split the unit.

Exactly what I said, they didn't clarify it properly for either of us, except saying I can do anything that doesn't split it, therefore, I can do that, not sure why I would want to though.

7 hours ago, Parakitor said:

Yeah, that limit on the total occupancy of all terrain on your 4 terrain cards to 6 completely took me by surprise. So if I bring that Elevated terrain with capacity 6, then no terrain on any of my other 3 terrain cards can have any occupancy for trays. Interesting.

This strikes me as... very odd. It makes it impossible to play in a tournament using only the terrain in one starter; you need to either buy your hero or a second starter. Won't be a problem for our playgroup, but definitely not something I was expecting.

7 minutes ago, Zetan said:

This strikes me as... very odd. It makes it impossible to play in a tournament using only the terrain in one starter; you need to either buy your hero or a second starter. Won't be a problem for our playgroup, but definitely not something I was expecting.

Yeah. Definitely weird. I've been giving it some thought, and I'm pretty sure the reason for the limit on capacity isn't about, well, capacity at all. It's about size. I haven't tested it out, but I'm guessing that there is a way to set the first two capacity 6 Forest/Stone Terrace tiles so that the 3rd one never fits. This fundamentally changes the game because every deployment card specifies 3 terrain tokens. However, it doesn't explain why they didn't just leave it at "3 unique terrain cards". (If I'm wrong, and there is no way to set two Stone Terrace/Forest such that a 3rd cannot be legally placed, please tell me. I think it may be possible for some deployments, and impossible for others).

By the way, I just realized that total for any two terrain cards cannot exceed 6. For some reason I thought the total capacity in your deck could only be 6. So you could have, for example,

- 2x Crumbling Wall/Swamp (Capacity 2)
- 2x Blighted Ground/Graveyard (Capacity 2)

The total here is actually 8, but any combination of two terrain cards doesn't exceed 6. But here's the real kicker: you don't choose your terrain; you draw from your deck of 4 terrain cards. This means there is no guarantee that you will get your vaunted Stone Terrace for your 3x2 of archers to occupy. It's random.

So now that makes me wonder, why on earth are there limited Objectives/Deployments for each season? The idea was to decrease the random factor, but the fact that you draw terrain from your deck (which is either 2 or 1 card, depending on whether or not you're first player) adds a bunch of randomness to your "tailored" deck. I don't know. Seems like a lot of effort to create a random-but-not-that-random kind of situation. I'm left scratching my head a bit over this.

Size is almost certainly the main factor... even if you can legally place them, placing objectives legally becomes a lot harder with 3 large terrain elements on the board.

I think we'll most likely use the "Use Existing Terrain" rules at the tournaments I run; our store has a massive amount of terrain for other games, and I think enough of it can be made to work with Runewars that we can set 3 elements at each table that will work well together. Then everything is predetermined and non-random, and we don't have to worry about people needing to collect cardboard terrain from lots of sets.

But then right now there are not going to be any forest in the tables unless you have 2 cores.

Since there is a 6 capacity element on core (forest), one two capacity and 2 zeros and the heroes expansions are all two capacity, even with all the options of a single copy I can't choose the forest since we don't have more zero capacity options.

I just read and re-read the terrain bit of army building in tournament doc, and there is no unique limitation. So taking the 6 and three 0 capacity cards is fine. Other than the single core/essentials box limit that is...

I think I figured out the reasoning behind this rule. Each player is going to have 1-2 terrain elements on the table. If you bring a 6 and a 2 (and they get picked) and your opponent brings a 6, you'll end up with a lot more terrain than a usual out-of-the-box game. Probably an amount that's likely to cause problems.

With this limit, if there are two 6's on the board, the last one is guaranteed to be a 0. If there's a 6 and a 4 (presumably we'll get 4's at some point) the last one has to be a 2. The real cap for total terrain size ON THE TABLE is 12. And that seems like a good cap, since the most we've played with so far is 10, and even that is starting to get cramped.

8 hours ago, Parakitor said:

By the way, I just realized that total for any two terrain cards cannot exceed 6. For some reason I thought the total capacity in your deck could only be 6. So you could have, for example,

Thanks for highlighting that, @Parakitor . That's a very important precision.

45 minutes ago, Xargonaut said:

Thanks for highlighting that, @Parakitor . That's a very important precision.

I missed that one as well.

11 hours ago, Parakitor said:

By the way, I just realized that total for any two terrain cards cannot exceed 6. For some reason I thought the total capacity in your deck could only be 6. So you could have, for example,

- 2x Crumbling Wall/Swamp (Capacity 2)
- 2x Blighted Ground/Graveyard (Capacity 2)

The total here is actually 8, but any combination of two terrain cards doesn't exceed 6. But here's the real kicker: you don't choose your terrain; you draw from your deck of 4 terrain cards. This means there is no guarantee that you will get your vaunted Stone Terrace for your 3x2 of archers to occupy. It's random.

So now that makes me wonder, why on earth are there limited Objectives/Deployments for each season? The idea was to decrease the random factor, but the fact that you draw terrain from your deck (which is either 2 or 1 card, depending on whether or not you're first player) adds a bunch of randomness to your "tailored" deck. I don't know. Seems like a lot of effort to create a random-but-not-that-random kind of situation. I'm left scratching my head a bit over this.

And if you do take Stone Terrace, it could actually be a Forest depending on whether or not it gets drawn as a dangerous or defensive card. Further, all other terrain in your deck would have to be rocky outcrops/spikes. Granted, those work okay for wide archers (since they can just shoot around it and enemies can't charge through it), but it just goes to show that you really can't plan on too much.

Another interesting implication in all this, is that Terrain in and of itself sort of favors MSU (probably part of the reason why deploying no longer does). If the largest terrain I can bring is either a 6 and three 0's or a 4 and three 2's, then there are certain unit sizes that are more likely to have a hard time. I don't think this is bad. It's kind of cool that the units that lose their threat more quickly are the same units that can wheel and maneuver more easily through or around the terrain.

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned how the tournament rules have completely flipped scoring on its head.

Quote

Each player calculates their score by adding together the total army point value of their opponent remaining units—including upgrade cards equipped to those units—and subtracting that number from their opponent’s army’s total army point value, then adding the result to any additional points earned through objectives.

So now we're scoring based on enemy units destroyed (and roll-offs to settle ties) like in X-wing.

7 minutes ago, Contrapulator said:

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned how the tournament rules have completely flipped scoring on its head.

So now we're scoring based on enemy units destroyed (and roll-offs to settle ties) like in X-wing.

Yep. I missed that. Honestly, I think that's a good change. If score is based on how many points you have remaining, it encourages turtling and stalling. If you only score points by destroying enemy units, it forces you to get into the battle.

Just now, Contrapulator said:

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned how the tournament rules have completely flipped scoring on its head.

So now we're scoring based on enemy units destroyed (and roll-offs to settle ties) like in X-wing.

You know, I read that, but I was too distracted with other news to let that sink in until you highlighted that. This is another example where the rulebook will likely bow to the tournament document even in casual play. Which is a shame. There was something refreshing about focusing on keeping your units alive, rather than killing off your opponent's forces.

I think another quite different take on scoring is found under "Discarded Cards" on page 8. In the Rules Reference, discarded cards are deducted from your score, even if the unit survives. According to tournament regulations, your opponent doesn't score points for upgrades discarded until the whole unit is destroyed. Bring on the expensive figure upgrades!

This focus on "damage" though doesn't answer what happens when you Execute the middle golem, or when his upgrade card gets discarded?