I just finished my first game of DA (solo). I think I have a pretty good grasp of the rules but I have a couple things I am not certain about.

1) Brother Zael's flamethrower attack says to ignore all skulls rolled and instead kill the number of genestealers shown on the dice. Is a skull still needed to hit or can he wipe out 5 genestealers at once on a lucky roll? O_o

2) I mostly get shifting I think. The game only says shifting is done when a space marine is slain, but what about when a space marine is put back into play because the event card rescue marine? I had this happen to me when I had one marine left and he had two terrain pices on his left and one his right and was surrounded by genestealers. It just didn't seem right that the space marine re-joining the fray would not change the formation so his battle brother was no longer so overwhelmed.

3) How are terrain and genestealer swarms handled when there is more than one terrain cards on a single side in a position? Do the terrain cards "stack" or do they remain separate? If not, when a swarm moves to an adjacent position because of an even card, which terrain card does it "land" on and do swarms on different terrain pieces merge or remain separate?

4) What's the point of the artefact terrain card? It seems kind of pointless since it has such a low spawn rate.

5) When the door card is in play and travel which genestealers are killed ?Does the current player just pick whatever swarms he wants to kill or is there some kind of order they are supposed to die in?

Thanks, and don't forget to do it for The Emprah.

DoublePowerFists said:

To answer your questions:

1)Yes, just kill Genestealers equal to the number rolled. Zael's that powerful!

2)Shifting is only done when a space marine is slain. The instructions for the Rescue Space Marine doesn't mention anything about shifting terrain cards, even though it would make thematical sense to do so.

3)The terrains are considered to be in the same position, so all genestealers would merge at that position and become a swarm. In a sense, they aren't really on the terrain card itself. So if multiple terrain cards were in the same position, any genestealers spawning at that position would merge together.

4) Well, the artefact terrain card, once picked up, can be a very useful tool. This basically says that if you discard it, you can make an entire swarm's attack miss. But if it's in play as a terrain, it has no special effect.

5)While travelling, the door card can kill genestealers throughout the entire formation. I believe that you can choose whichever genestealers to die equal to the number of support tokens on that card. So you can choose from different swarms.

Long live the Emperor!

I had a question about Brother Zael's heavy flamer as well. Say I roll a 3; I could wipe out a swarm of 3 Genestealers. What if I rolled a 3 but there were only 2 Genestealers in the swarm? Would I still kill all of them even though the swarm's number isn't "equal to the number rolled?"

Aristocrap said:

Sorry for the double-post, but I didn't see an edit button. I've got another question: if I draw 'For My Battle Brothers,' do I have to remove a Support Token from a marine even if there are no Genestealers engaged with him?

Yes, a 2 or higher would kill the 2 stealers outright.

Aristocrap said:

No.

Destructor said:

I disagree. I think that yes, you do have to discard the support token, even if there's not GS to kill.

The language of the card is "pick a marine who has tokens" _not_ "pick a marine who has tokens and is engage with genestealers ". So if the only marine(s) in play with support tokens are not engaged with 'stealers, you still have to pick him (them). Then you follow the rest of the cards instructions, which involves discarding 1 of the tokens and discarding 1 engaged genestealer. But the wording of the card does _not_ give any indications that you must have a GS to discard in order to discard the support token. Nor does it indicate that the discarding is optional.

Here's the actual text of the card:

• "Instinct: Choose a Space Marine that has at least 1 Support Token (if able). Discard 1 Support Token from him and 1 Genestealer engaged with him (of your choice)."

Now compare that to the text of "Rewarded Faith", which does something similar:

• "Instinct: Choose a Space Marine. You may discard any number of Support Tokens from him to slay an equal number of Genestealers engaged with him."

Notice how Rewarded Faith uses "may" to indicate that it's optional? It also uses "to" to indicate that the death of the 'stealers is dependent upon and linked to the discarding of the tokens. For My Battle Brothers doesn't use either of these indicators, so I don't interpret it to be optional, nor do I think that the lack of a 'stealer to kill would prevent the discard of the token. There are, after all, plenty of cards in the game that remove tokens without any benefit to the marines ("Outnumbered" and "Stalking From The Shadows", for example).