Hello all,

Just looking for a quick explanation with the hell hounds and dragon's breath attack (currently I only have the core game and 1st expansion). On the monster cards it reads that the hell hound has breath and pierce 3. When I read the instructions about breath it says that "If the attack does not miss, it deals full damage to each figure affected by it." (being the breath template)

Now my question is if the breath attack deals full damage, then why does it have pierce 3 (for the hell hound)? It's a bit confusing in the wording where my group and I figure that it ignores armor in this case. Especially in the case of the base hell hound rolling only a blue and yellow and the max damage only hitting for roughly 4 wound tokens. If they breath attack does ignore armor, then why does the dragon have pierce 5?

Any help with this situation would be greatly appreciated. Thanks a lot everyone.

Breath attacks do NOT ignore armor. The "full damage" comment is just indicating that each affected figure takes the same amount of damage as if it was the only affected figure (as opposed to, say, splitting up damage between the targets).

Hmm yeah, thats what I figured once my group of heroes encountered a dragon for the 1st time last game and I saw how much damage each player would have initially taken if I still went with ignoring armor, which I didn't and actually used the pierce 5 instead to make it more fair (at that point).

Breath is so annoying, when the heroes can use it; I'm playing the OL in the advanced campaign and the mage character(Landrec the Wise) has acquired a copper weapon that gives his attacks the breath ability.I always have to play extra cautious with Landrec in the vicinity, or else my poor un-upgraded skeletons and beastmen die in packs.

Coldmoonrising said:

Pierce 5 is actually just as good as ignoring armor a lot of the time. It's rather uncommon for a hero to have more than 5 armor. The fact that it's Pierce instead of "ignores armor" means that you can use shields against it, though.

zealot12 said:

I know what you mean. I have the same weapon and am playing Runemaster Thorn. WOO-HOO good times....for me

Nevron said:

Our Runemaster Thorn in SoB has both that weapon and the blast one, and just upgraded to 5 fatigue. He likes to declare an Advance, port to a good position, blast or breath, then spend 5 fatigue to port back out of harms way. *Really* painful on the island map.

-shnar

shnar said:

The player who is Runemaster Thorn is using him incorrectly. Thorn may only use his ability ONCE per turn. It says so right on his hero card. However having 5 fatigue is still good for him as it will allow him to do a battle action and still have 5 movement points to teleport.