Hi experts,

Regarding the refugees the quest Dead or Drowning reads:

...

"Place 8 villager tokens as inclicated. These are refugees."

...

"Refugees block movement and line of sight. Heroes treat refugees as friendly figures, and at the end of each overlord turn, the heroes may move each refugee up to 3 spaces. However, a refugee on a tile with I or more monsters cannot move."

...

"Each time a figure enters a space containing a shortcut char is faceup, the figure gains 6 movement points and char shortcut is flipped faced own. At the scare of each overlord turn, flip each shortcut faceup. "

The question is: can the refugees use the shortcuts? Or they are not considered figures to all effects and only for the heroes and monsters movement?

The same would apply to infected refugees.

Thanks in advance

It looks like they can use shortcuts and spend the movement points gained.

It feels odd to me, since they are figures (though neither hero nor monster) and they never activate or perform actions. But I see no reason why they couldn’t.

12 hours ago, Lightningclaw said:

It looks like they can use shortcuts and spend the movement points gained.

It feels odd to me, since they are figures (though neither hero nor monster) and they never activate or perform actions. But I see no reason why they couldn’t.

Sorry Lightningclaw but from where do you understand that they are figures?

Because for example for Tyrus the quest reads "Tyrus is treated as a hero figure". So the token of tyrus is clearly a figure but for the refugees they do not say so, they just say that it blocks movement and LoS and that heroes can treat them as friendly figures. I understand that last part like a way to explain how heroes interact with them but not a confirmation that those tokens are considered figures because in that case I wouldn't understand why they don't just say "Refugees are treated as hero figures"... All the complex explanation they do is for me a way to actually confirm that they are not figures.

That's my opinion but I would like to hear others.

This is a tricky question. However, I tend to agree with pan82 here. Essentially, the " Heroes treat refugees as friendly figures " just allows heroes to move through refugees. Refugees are not considered to be figures for other purposes and, in my opinion, cannot use shortcuts.

Disclaimer: I have not read nor played this quest at all ... further, it is a ***LONG*** time since I have played a game of Descent.

Having said all of the above, it truly startles me how much some people over think things when it comes to Descent's rules. I realize in many cases it is somewhat necessary, due simply to FFG's complete lack of consistency with terms, and their seemingly inability to make simple statements that are concise and clear.

I just don't think that is the case here. The statement:

"Heroes treat refugees as friendly figures" is very precise and clear to me. The Refugee is a figure. It is friendly.

How can anyone interpret this in any other way?

No where does it say "just for purposes of moving through", or any other clarifying text, that is being referenced by others. It seems clear to me that this statement should be taken as is, at face value. The more you attempt to read "intent" into things when it comes to FFG's games and rules, the more you are led astray in my opinion.

These rules are a bit convoluted (my initial post was a reasonable conclusion based on the rules for refugees I think, but it didn’t feel right for them to use the secret paths)

I just read over the quest again and I noticed two things which confirm that I was wrong.

This quest also contains “infected”, which follow very similar rules to refugees:

“Infected block movement and line of sight. Monsters treat infected as friendly figures, and at the end of each overlord turn, the overlord may move each infected up to 3 spaces, before or after the heroes have moved the refugees.”

And this excerpt of text from the Reinforcements section indicates (at the very least) zombies can be placed in spaces containing refugees.

“At the end of each player’s turn, the overlord may place zombies up to the group limit. Place each of these zombies on the Chamber or in a space containing an infected ”.

The infected is discarded afterwards, but that seems to indicate that infected (and by extension, refugees) are closer to mobile blocked spaces, since a figure can never occupy or be placed in a space containing another figure, the plague worms’ Burrow aside.

I’m perfectly okay with the refugees and infected not being figures (I think the use of “figures” in the secret paths is probably intended to allow monsters, heroes, and Tyrus to all use the paths anyways), that’s just the way it seemed to read to me.

Thanks for all your answers. And good point @Lightningclaw

I agree that it is a little ambiguous and that the quest was not written so we could get a 100% confirmed answer without the intervention of the game developers.

Still, I see that in every quest that a token is a figure the quest say: "Treat XXX as a hero figure" or "Treat XXX as a monster figure". Again having this one not saying so clearly as it does with Tyrus makes me think that they are not.

Also, do we have any other example in Descent of figures which are not monster or hero figures? Because I cannot think of anyone although I have not played every expansion...

Because if we assume that a figure can only be hero or monster figure in the game then refugees nor infected refugees are for sure none as it is not said in the quest.

I wouldn't come to the conclusion to not treat them as figures. From my point of view they are figures and the heroes treat them as friendly. It would have been stated if they were excluded from using the boost.

They are no hero figures because than abilities and cards could be used on them.

On 4/25/2019 at 11:38 AM, pan82 said:

Also, do we have any other example in Descent of figures which are not monster or hero figures? Because I cannot think of anyone although I have not played every expansion...

Miners from Gold Digger (Lair of the Wyrm) ? ...

On ‎4‎/‎23‎/‎2019 at 1:55 AM, pan82 said:

"Refugees block movement and line of sight. Heroes treat refugees as friendly figures, and at the end of each overlord turn, the heroes may move each refugee up to 3 spaces. However, a refugee on a tile with I or more monsters cannot move."

I agree with any2cards that rules should not be overthought too much.

In this case, the rules say that heroes may move each refugee up to 3 spaces. That's it. Nowhere does it say that heroes can use additional movement points if the refugees gain them somehow.

"Heroes may move each refugee up to 3 spaces." Nothing more is written = Nothing more is allowed.

If Refugees movement is 'up to 3 spaces' and the shortcut things add movement points then they my interpretation would be that they don't do anything for the refugees, since moving spaces is not the same as using movement points.

Good points too @Ispher and @Xyphistor

On 4/26/2019 at 5:00 PM, Felin said:

Miners from Gold Digger (Lair of the Wyrm) ? ...

Could you please paste here the text about miners in that quest? I don't have that expansion with me

5 hours ago, pan82 said:

Could you please paste here the text about miners in that quest? I don't have that expansion with me

Quote

MINERS
Miners are treated as figures that can only be attacked by (or
affected by attacks from) Valyndra or Valyndra's Shadow. When
defeated the Miner is removed from the map. When the last
Mliner is defeated replace its token with Jorem's Discovery
(the white objective token).