Reform legality

By Parakitor, in Runewars Rules Questions

We all know that you MUST execute the actions you reveal on your command dial: March, shift, attack, etc. Reform is interesting because your unit doesn't move much at all. One thing I've seen a lot is people waiting to see their opponent's moves by dialing in a Reform, wiggling the unit back and forth a bit, and then more or less leaving the unit the way it was originally oriented. I don't have a problem with this. Sure, it can be perceived as gaming the system a bit, but you can literally rotate less than a millimeter, and it's still legal.

Here's the question: if you are engaged and dial in a reform, are you required to change your orientation? I'm thinking the answer is "yes." If you don't rotate around your center or the center of one of your trays, then you really haven't performed a reform. Do you agree with my interpretation?

(P.S. This came to my mind as I looked at the Wraiths dial again. Sure, you can dial in the yellow melee and use a morale modifier at initiative 4, but if you aren't sure if you're going to be flanked or not, it's almost always better to dial in reform + melee so you can be sure to get your full threat. If you guess wrong, and they don't flank you, though, I think you're stuck reforming away from optimal alignment, and put yourself in a bad position. Unless I'm wrong.)

The reform action says to pick up, rotate, and place back down in any direction.

To me that "any direction" includes the same direction that they started in. Being engaged doesn't change that part, just that you have to keep contact with the same edge.

I would say that you can perform a reform that results in no change to orientation whether that unit was engaged or not.

Yeah I agree with @Xquer . For a reform since it's pick up and drop as you like, if that essentially is 'no move' that's allowed. First paragraph 68 in the Rules Ref FWIW.

Hm. Interesting. My concerns have been allayed. I'll be dialing in Reform + Melee quite often in that case.

A couple of caveats though. You have to remain engaged and you must reform about the center.

So for instance unit X reforming while engaged to unit O from:

O to O

XXX X

X

X

would not be a legal reform becasue that would change the location of the center of the formation.

11 minutes ago, flightmaster101 said:

A couple of caveats though. You have to remain engaged and you must reform about the center.

So for instance unit X reforming while engaged to unit O from:

O to O

XXX X

X

X

would not be a legal reform becasue that would change the location of the center of the formation.

Right. When engaged, the center of a tray would also be legal. Eg:

O O

X reforming to X X X
X
X

In this example, if unit X reformed about its center, it would no longer be engaged with O, so that reform is illegal. It's only legal option is to reform about it's left tray.

1 minute ago, Parakitor said:

Right. When engaged, the center of a tray would also be legal. Eg:

O O

X reforming to X X X
X
X

In this example, if unit X reformed about its center, it would no longer be engaged with O, so that reform is illegal. It's only legal option is to reform about it's left tray.

Yes, exactly both conditions must be met.

20 minutes ago, Parakitor said:

Right. When engaged, the center of a tray would also be legal. Eg:

O O

X reforming to X X X
X
X

In this example, if unit X reformed about its center, it would no longer be engaged with O, so that reform is illegal. It's only legal option is to reform about it's left tray.

Umm. Perhaps I'm not parsing this right, [edit] this is legal due to 68.2 which is kinda wild in that you can rotate around any of it's individual trays.

Edited by tgall
On 4/13/2018 at 11:22 AM, tgall said:

Umm. Perhaps I'm not parsing this right, [edit] this is legal due to 68.2 which is kinda wild in that you can rotate around any of it's individual trays.

FAQ page2:

The first paragraph of this section should read:
“Reform (?) is an action. When a unit performs a reform (?)
action, that unit can be picked up, rotated, and placed on the
play area facing any direction as long as the unit’s center point
remains in the same position and the unit does not overlap or
touch any obstacles it was not already touching.”
The second bullet of section 68.2 (page 17) should read:
“The active unit cannot be touching any new enemy units or other
new obstacles.”

In @Parakitor 's example the units center has changed, i.e. the location of tray X2 has changed position.

Edit: Ok so the diagram wont work either way you interpret it really so I'll go through both interpertations (this is mostly due to the paragraph spacing of my text for some reason)

O O O X1 X1 X2 X3 X2 X1 X2 X3 X3

Ok so you have a single tray unit (O) and you have our 1x3 unit X consisting of X1, X2, and X3. Case 1 X1 is in contact with O. A reform action is dialed in.

Case 2 is illegal becasue X2 (the center of the unit) has changed positions on the table.

Case 3 is illegal becasue while X2 is in the same position, you have now disengaged with tray O.

Edit 2: Ok I cant make the spacing work, so image it does :blink:

Edited by flightmaster101