Since Swordmasters cancel all combat damage, and an attacker must assign enough damage to all units to kill them taking into account damage cancelling before assigning damage to the Capital, does defending with a Swordmaster guarantee that the Capital cannot be assigned damage? (assuming nothing uncancellable removes the Swordmasters first)? And for that matter, Dragon Mages who haven't taken damage yet?

Yes. I recommend corrupting them, blasting them with Flames of Tzeentch, forced marching them out of the battlefield or one of the other zillions of ways of dealing with them.

They are pretty good though.

Swordmasters of Hoeth only cancel damage assigned to that unit.

JayDe said:

But then again, you only need to declare 1x SoH as defenders and nothing goes through to capital (though declaring more let's you hit back with more and are less prone to them dying/leaving) . Well, that's assuming SoH don't die or leave in the Action Window after declare defenders, but that's why you have Disdain I suppose.

Sorry, i mis-read earlier - the specifics of 'assigning enough to kill' is that you have to assign equal to HitPoints, so Swordsmen only negate 4 damage in combat. So just do >4 damage to get through to something else.

JayDe said:

If the defender defends with SoH and normal units, you can assing freely to normal units. Most of the time there is very little reason to defend with normal units if you have Dragonmage and/or SoH (in BZ) to defend, especially given the straw-like durability of HElves.

But the BZ with SoH defending won't be getting damage assigned, even if you have 20 dmg to assign and opponent defends with 1x SoH (3HP), since you can't kill them. That is barring uncancellable damage of course.

I've only had 2 situations come up where I wanted to defend with more units than just the Sword Masters when they are available to defend your battlefield. In fact, your opponent won't normally attack into them unless they are a beginner and don't realise what they do, so if they do attack your battlefield you should be waiting for a trick.

#1 - you are playing around removal like Flames of Tzeentch or Pilgrimage, where it would be bad if your Sword Masters suddenly leave play and they were the only blocker. Note that the Sword Masters only prevent combat damage and can still get hit from non-damage sources like Flames.

#2 - you want to actually do more damage to the attacking units and want to trade defender(s) for damage on the attacker(s).

I can see other possible cases where adding more defenders is the correct play too but they seem unlikely.

But you don't HAVE to kill them to do damage to the capital, just assign damage equal to their health (3 or 4) so in your example - you WOULD do 16 damage to anything other than them, the capital if there are no other defenders.

JayDe, you are wrong. You are right according to the core set rulebook but the rules have changed since then. Read the official FAQ available on the support page. You must assign damage sufficient to destroy all defenders before assigning damage to the capital. Since you cannot destroy the Sword Masters, they "soak up" all the excess damage. All continuous damage prevention effects (like toughness and Dragonmage's ability) also work the same way.

Mmm, page 6 of the PDF of the Errata&FAQ says 'attacking player must assign enough damage to destroy each defending unit before any damage can be assigned to the defending player's capital'. That is a big of an enigma since you cannot destroy them in combat, but on the grounds that you cannot attack the capital until you destroy units - you guys are right.

So i guess you need to deal uncancellable damage (in combat) to hurt them? Or out-of-combat damage...

There are also various effects that prevent cancellation of damage (Mob Up, Bloodthirster). Also, there are many cards that might kill a unit without dealing damage at all.

RM

Issue resolved, please ignore or delete.