A minis base may not overhang off a ledge.

By Digimortal, in Rules

2 hours ago, Caimheul1313 said:

The new RRG update that goes into effect in a few days does specify that if the tool leaves the playing area, or the base would leave during the movement, then the unit is destroyed.

Oh good. "End their movement" was used to justify it, in another thread.

2 hours ago, Caimheul1313 said:

Honestly, I'm mostly annoyed with vehicles crashing into things that would otherwise be ignored just because they end their movement on that position.

Yes. It's a complete abstraction that seems to serve no good purpose, except perhaps neutralizing some other abstraction instead of dealing with it head-on? But I can't see what that would be in this case. If it is what's happening, that's always a bad road for rules to go down.

I could see a rule restricting a model from overhanging if it would fall off without someone holding it. Or an exception for notched bases. Or something.

1 hour ago, TauntaunScout said:

It's   a complete abstraction  that seem  s to serve no good purpos  e

I would guess it is meant to reflect pilot error i.e. scout troopers crashing their bikes into trees. It also rewards great piloting. A better pilot can keep their repulsor vehicles alive longer. But that is negated by opponents being able to better telegraph your movement and basically gives someone who doesn’t need to worry about skillfully piloting the overall tactical advantage.

I think it’s worth noting that Boba Fett doesn’t have the same issues despite having Speed 3. Now if he had a huge base, that would severely limit his effectiveness.

3 hours ago, TauntaunScout said:

Oh good. "End their movement" was used to justify it, in another thread.

Yeah, that was legit until they updated the RRG to v1.2 last week. Now it's explicitly anytime during movement, not just at the end.

2 hours ago, smickletz said:

I would guess it is meant to reflect pilot error i.e. scout troopers crashing their bikes into trees. It also rewards great piloting.

It must not take a very skilled pilot indeed to coast over a low, flat, building at a consistent speed. But that's what the rules do.

7 hours ago, Caimheul1313 said:

Yes it is dense , and the problem isn't just being large enough, your movment has to end perfectly on the top of that building, not a hair forward or back. So if the compulsory move would end with the barest mm of your base hanging over, you can't land there.

A few of the players in my area LOVE making terrain, and much of it is dense urban terrain. Almost all of the terrain features vertical components at Height 1-2, of various sizes.

Well I for one am glad they are finally nerfing the op T-47 and bikes!

Oh, wait no...

I meant to say this rule is hot garbage and invalidates a ton of terrain people have been building and collecting over the last year!

Edited by CaptainRocket
9 hours ago, smickletz said:

I would guess it is meant to reflect pilot error i.e. scout troopers crashing their bikes into trees. It also rewards great piloting. A better pilot can keep their repulsor vehicles alive longer. But that is negated by opponents being able to better telegraph your movement and basically gives someone who doesn’t need to worry about skillfully piloting the overall tactical advantage.

I'd buy that for stuff at a height the vehicle could reasonably be travelling along, such as with speeder bikes, but it's a bit of a stretch for a T-47 to take damage because of a low building, barricade, or objective token. As well, in my opinion if the base is going to determine whether or not a repulsor vehicle can be in a particular location, then it should always count for cover. If the T-47/speeder bike is flying low enough to crash into a set of rocks, then why can't they get cover?

This new rule (pg40) desperately requires clarification. They use the term "ledge" without defining what this means.

Does this prevent a repulsor vehicle from stopping in the center of a large piece of terrain if the surface below where it would like to stop causes the base to overhang something like a small crate or rock? There are countless other strange situations where a repulsor overhangs a "ledge", but I'd need to post pics to convey them.

We tried playing with this new rule, as interpreted above, and T47s were almost unusable. Almost all of their moves resulted in their base overhanging something that could be considered a ledge. Were these "ledges"? Who knows? If they were the T47, and probably speeders too, are not playable.

Really really poorly described rule and if the intent is to play it as above, its a horrible rule I'll never use again.

Edited by Thraug

@Thraug I think that is a bit of the crux of the issue. Is a ledge defined by FFG to be any flat surface on a piece of terrain, or just bits jutting out from the side? We now know that "measuring from base to base" was meant to be the flat 2 dimensional distance between the two models rather than direct distance (meaning if your unit is on a Height 2 building, and a Range 1 weapon is at the base of the building, you are in range), which is not a "traditional" definition of base to base measuring.

FFG has also clarified "Limited Visibility" to require measuring range from each model in the unit rather than just the leader, which is different from the usual means of determining range, because the range determines LoS...

And as much as I'd like to ignore such rules, the vast majority of my games are either in tournaments or against opponents who have decent sized tournaments coming up, so tournament rules are the norm.

Yeah and it's not like the speeder bikes just randomly crashed because the scouts misjudged heights or something. Luke actively messed with them, ewoks lassoe'd them to trees, etc. Snowspeeders never crashed unless they were shot.

It doesn't reward great piloting, it punishes taking repulsorcraft. This same thing happened with my beloved dinosaur in Heroscape :( it was almost impossible to move effectively most turns cause of the rules for large bases.

I do get the sense that they want to limit the instances of repulsor craft to displacing minis. For instance, you could force snipers from a sniper nest with a compulsory move and put them into line of fire. Seems cheap. But not being able to overhang a ledge reduces the chances of that greatly, at least in my experience. Doesn’t mean I like the rule, though!

I think if they simply removed the rule that you get damage equal to your speed if you reduce your movement on a compulsory move, then none of this would matter. Or, just make it roll for damage, like clambering (or asteroids in X-wing). As is, the rules are far too punishing towards repulsor vehicles at the moment, in particular the T-47. Bikes have large bases so have many more options for movement.

4 hours ago, smickletz said:

I do get the sense that they want to limit the instances of repulsor craft to displacing minis. For instance, you could force snipers from a sniper nest with a compulsory move and put them into line of fire. Seems cheap. But not being able to overhang a ledge reduces the chances of that greatly, at least in my experience. Doesn’t mean I like the rule, though!

I think if they simply removed the rule that you get damage equal to your speed if you reduce your movement on a compulsory move, then none of this would matter. Or, just make it roll for damage, like clambering (or asteroids in X-wing). As is, the rules are far too punishing towards repulsor vehicles at the moment, in particular the T-47. Bikes have large bases so have many more options for movement.

If that is indeed the motivation it is patently absurd. In what universe does it make sense to punish the much maligned and seldom taken T-47 so that snipers and the like can be protected from displacement? Snipers are ubiquitous and extremely effective, as are generic troopers, the main targets of displacement. Let a T-47 displace them every single move in a given match, and it will still be a T-47 that won't make its points back...

I guess all I am saying is that this is a poor rule that made an awesome mini that already struggles to see playing time almost impossible to use. Someone must really hate the T-47. ☹️

Along with others, I will likely house-rule this out of existence, but that doesn't make the change stink less for those bound by tournament rules!

15 hours ago, Jedhead said:

I guess all I am saying is that this is a poor rule that made an awesome mini that already struggles to see playing time almost impossible to use. Someone must really hate the T-47. ☹️

Maybe a bunch of retired AT-AT drivers are on the rules writing committee.

16 hours ago, smickletz said:

I do get the sense that they want to limit the instances of repulsor craft to displacing minis. For instance, you could force snipers from a sniper nest with a compulsory move and put them into line of fire. Seems cheap. But not being able to overhang a ledge reduces the chances of that greatly, at least in my experience. Doesn’t mean I like the rule, though!

I think if they simply removed the rule that you get damage equal to your speed if you reduce your movement on a compulsory move, then none of this would matter. Or, just make it roll for damage, like clambering (or asteroids in X-wing). As is, the rules are far too punishing towards repulsor vehicles at the moment, in particular the T-47. Bikes have large bases so have many more options for movement.

I don't think it has much to do with displacement from a sniper's nest. After all, the only benefits the unit up high gains is heavy cover and a higher line of sight. Depending on the shape of the building, it's still quite possible to get a flamethrower or some other devastating weapon in range, since range doesn't include the height difference in calculation. :blink:

On 11/28/2018 at 10:41 AM, TauntaunScout said:
On 11/27/2018 at 6:48 PM, Jedhead said:

I guess all I am saying is that this is a poor rule that made an awesome mini that already struggles to see playing time almost impossible to use. Someone must really hate the T-47. ☹️

Maybe a bunch of retired AT-AT drivers are on the rules writing committee.

Don't forget how horrible this is for speeder bikes too!

Before this rule, we've had bikes dodging and weaving along the rooftops and over the walls of many a desert spaceport, dropping down into alleyways and popping up again out of line of sight ... you know know like that very first episode of Star Wars Rebels!

Just now, CaptainRocket said:



you know know like that very first episode of Star Wars Rebels!

Bwahaha! No I don't know! My post-1998 SW ignorance runs deep and wide! It's pretty impressive I've managed to keep it this way for so long! Considering the time and money I spend in Star Wars, when it comes to New Wars, I'm downright rare in my ignorance, like an American shopper who's somehow never been in a mall. I saw TPM twice in theaters on opening day and once on VHS a few months later, then I saw the other prequels exactly once in the theaters. I saw Solo once, TFA twice, and TLJ I believe once in theaters. This is the sum of my experience with all post-1998 Star Wars other than Rogue One which I've watched times beyond counting. Other than 1980's ones, I've maybe seen a combined 30 minutes of any sort of Star Wars cartoon shows. I believe that I have read no novels or comics that date to later than 1999. Probably more like '96.

Speeder bikes were more popular for their points (and have a much smaller base) though so they at least can absorb the hit a little bit.

Good to see there are some supporting views of this, hopefully there will be some review of the rules regarding Repulsor and perhaps Ground Vehicles.

Right now I have Bunkers, Shipping Containers and Tattoine Huts which you cannot fully place a medium size base on without overhanging, this turns my 3 squads of speeder bikes which are already tricky to justify brining to the table with so many new trooper units hitting the game, It feels like the second casualty of this game after the T-47.

Repulsor vehicles are named as such because their engines repulse the vehicle from the ground, not because they just fly or float or something. They must have ground beneath them to gain and maintain altitude. If you get too far from the ground (Height 1/ 2 restrictions) or you don't have enough ground beneath you (base hangs over a ledge because the terrain is so small) you lose altitude. Both speeder bikes and t47s are low altitude vehicles so it make ssense to me the way the rules are right now.

On 12/22/2018 at 3:09 AM, Bruderfaust said:

Repulsor vehicles are named as such because their engines repulse the vehicle from the ground, not because they just fly or float or something. They must have ground beneath them to gain and maintain altitude. If you get too far from the ground (Height 1/ 2 restrictions) or you don't have enough ground beneath you (base hangs over a ledge because the terrain is so small) you lose altitude. Both speeder bikes and t47s are low altitude vehicles so it make ssense to me the way the rules are right now.

What about a small box, 5mm in (real) height? Why can't a bike end its move over that? Not enough Midichlorians??

9 hours ago, Thraug said:

What about a small box, 5mm in (real) height? Why can't a bike end its move over that? Not enough Midichlorians??

It CAN end its movement over that. You can end your move on top of objects as long as your base has less than a 45-degree angle to the ground and the model is stable on its own. Overhanging doesn’t matter in that case.

Now, where exactly do you draw a line between “object” (for lack of a better term) and “ledge”? That part is up in the air. Best to have a discussion and define ledges pre-game.

@nashjaee do you know if anyone has mailed FFG/Alex Davy about that "ledge" thing?

4 hours ago, YuriPanzer said:

@nashjaee do you know if anyone has mailed FFG/Alex Davy about that "ledge" thing?

None that I’ve seen.

20 hours ago, nashjaee said:

None that I’ve seen.

Maybe someone should ;) *poke, poke*

7 hours ago, YuriPanzer said:

Maybe someone should ;) *poke, poke*

Haha, I’m pretty sure they’re aware of the question. I’m patiently curious what their solution will be.

On 11/27/2018 at 3:52 PM, TauntaunScout said:

This same thing happened with my beloved dinosaur in Heroscape :( it was almost impossible to move effectively most turns cause of the rules for large bases.

Oh poor Grimnak...

On 12/27/2018 at 10:50 AM, nashjaee said:

It CAN end its movement over that. You can end your move on top of objects as long as your base has less than a 45-degree angle to the ground and the model is stable on its own. Overhanging doesn’t matter in that case.

Now, where exactly do you draw a line between “object” (for lack of a better term) and “ledge”? That part is up in the air. Best to have a discussion and define ledges pre-game.

Or an object that's still laughably small to stop a vehicle, but big enough to tip the base past 45 degrees. It's not REALLY FFG's fault. Vehicle rules are always hard to get right.

It's actually not hard to make believable vehicle rules. Or balanced vehicle rules. Or simple vehicle rules. But believable, balanced, simple vehicle rules... I haven't seen them yet.