Ok, here's a situation :

in a skirmish, a scout is assisted by a high templar against a reaver. The reaver plays a big Splash card and the scout has an average card with psyonic storm.

The Scout destroys the reaver and the reaver destroys the templar because he is a ground unit in the skirmish.

Is any Splash Damage trigered? (there's another skirmish with ground units) The front-line unit (scout) is still alive... but a unit is killed...

What do you think?

pg. 39 of the rulebook says, "...if an opposing unit is destroyed during a skirmish's resolution, each friendly card with the splash damage keyword is triggered." The assisting Templar was in the skirmish and he died, therefore, splash damage triggered.

Just so. If the FLU is killed, Splash is triggered, regardless if the other one dies, too.

kk thanks

Railarian

Is there a restriction on the splash damage being limited to the uint's attack capabilities? Because in all my years of playing the pc game a Reever was never capable of taking down a scout no matter how much carnage it brought forth.

Never mind I answered my own question. It's specified on the card(s).

No. Splash Damage can only affect a unit that can be targeted by the unit that triggered the Splash Damage. Also, the unit would need a high enough attack value to defeat the health value of the opposing unit affected by the Splash Damage.

Agent Kennedy said:

None of this is true.

If it isn't true, then a Valkyrie that has triggered Splash Damage could potentially destroy a carrier in the same battle! That's too much power for one little Valkyrie. I have contacted the StarCraft support team for an official answer. They should be responding shortly.

As far as being able to target the unit potentially affected by Splash Damage, the combat card specifies Ground, Flying, or Ground/Flying Splash Damage. This corresponds to the unit's ability to target ground units, flying units, or both.

Agent Kennedy said:

You could've taken our word, or re-read the rules on pages 39-40 about splash damage (that don't support your theory at all) but let's wait for this answer then

As a matter of fact, being able to attack weaker units with your splash damage units and taking stronger units with them in the splash is one of the reasons why attacking is so much better than defending. Establishing skirmishes plays a major role in how battles will resolve. And yes, Valkyries are scary - but keep in mind, they cost just one resource less than Devourers, are way more fragile, and have just 3 combat cards and no "make them even more scary" tech.

Agent Kennedy said:

"Corresponds" is a dangerous word. Yes, for the units that both have ground and/or air attack capability and splash, the splash and the attack capability match. However, for example, if you have a Reaver supported by a High Templar with Psionic Storm, and the reaver destroys the enemy FLU, two kinds of splash damage will trigger: ground splash damage (assuming the Reaver player played a Reaver attack card with splash damage), and ground/air splash damage from the Psionic Storm. For the kind of splash damage that the Psionic Storm triggers, the Reaver's attack capabilities don't matter at all, everything that matters is whether the enemy FLU was killed in the skirmish.

If your theory regarding this would be correct, we'd have to check attack capabilities of the High Templar for deciding what Psionic Storm is able to hit (after all, it's the High Templar that does the splashing here), and since he has neither ground nor air attack capabilities Psionic Storm would suddenly be utterly pointless instead of one of the stronger techs in the game.

Reaver splash is ground only. So it's still triggered but there's nothing for it to destroy since the scout can only be killed by air splash.

Woah that's weird. When I posted my answer there were no other replies yet now I'm the 10th reply? I don't get it

I still haven't gotten an official response yet on whether or not Splash Damage can destroy an opposing unit with a higher health value than the attack value of the unit that triggered the Splash Damage...

Official answers can take time. Sometimes many weeks.

But I think you may find reading the sections on Pages 33-35 helpfull for understanding sufficient strength and the possibility of support units dying.

The possibility of triggering splash damage is described on page 39.

For the resolution of splash damage in the resolve splash damage step, the rule is described on page 40.

I will try to summarize it as best I can.

If the attack value of your FLU was higher than the health value of the opposing FLU, then you have sufficient strength.

If the opposing FLU is of a type (either of the air or of the ground) that your FLU is capable of affecting, and you have sufficient strength, then you destroy the opposing FLU and you also trigger splash which will be resolved later in the resolve splash damage step.

If the opposing FLU is of a type your combat capability can't affect, but you have sufficient strength, then you look to see if there is a supporting unit that can be affected by your combat capability. If there is a unit your combat capability can affect, then that unit is destroyed and splash is triggered to be resolved later in the resolve splash damage step.

If you have sufficient strength, but there are no units in the skirmish that your combat capability can affect, then you will destroy nothing, and your splash will not be triggered.

Sufficient strength is allways based on the Front Line Unit Values of the unit currently in the front line. There are never any different values used for supporting units, no matter what health range their cards normally are if the supporting unit were instead in the front line.

Also, nowhere is there a check for health in the resolve splash damage step. It is merely that for each triggered splash damage card, you appropriately remove from your surviving units (based on the type of splash damage):

1 Ground unit (of your choice) for each triggered Ground (only) splash damage card.

1 Air unit (of your choice) for each triggered Air (only) splash damage card.

And finally 1 unit of any type (ground unit or air unit, and again you choose from any of your now remaining units) for each triggered Ground / Air (Combo) splash damage card.

I realize that you may think it too powerfull that there is no check against health when resolving splash damage, but it appears that there being no check against health values in this step is the mechanic they chose to have.

Keep in mind that there are some splash damage cards that don't have actual attack values (like the Zerg's Plague, Protoss Psionic Storm, and Terran's Irradiate for instance). These would be useless as currently printed if there was a health check involved in the resolve splash damage step. There would be absolutely no point in having them in the game. It is simply the mechanic they decided to use.

So it does appear that a Valkyrie could possibly destroy a Carrier with its splash, but only if the player owning the Carrier decided that was the unit they wanted to destroy to satisfy the splash damage card, or if there were no other flying units available to destroy instead. This is a good reason to build Arbiters, Corsairs, and Scouts to use with your Carriers too. Arbiters would be the cheapest cannon fodder to bring along for the purpose of absorbing splash and they would allways be forced to act in an assisting role (unless Arbiter units were the only units left).

I hope you found this helpfull.

Very good post EMELT. I would just like to add a few points:

If you have sufficient strength to destroy a cloaked unit, even if the actual unit withdraws any Splash Damage cards in the skirmish are TRIGERRED.

Cloaked units withdraw before Splash Damage is resolved. (That suprised me!) So it might happen that a player may not apply his Splash cards because the remaining units withdrew because they were cloaked. (That makes cloaking a very good ability!) However if they didn't withdraw they are possible targets even if they are cloaked.

And, of course, heroes are immune to splash.

I see your point EMELT. I stand/sit corrected.