For a lot of reason we're not playng at the Sob champain very ofthen, so we have not many pratice with sea comvbat and the island.

There's some question about it

1) When a hero use the captain's wheel, he 's compelled to move of the exactly range showed on the dice, or he can choose a lesser movment?

2) if monsters are aboard the vengance during a sea encounter, can they use it's station point like the captain's wheel and the anchor? in other word, can the monster make the vengance flee or crash? and during an island level?

3) how many times a cannon can be used in the same turn?

4) When using a rope, the heroes must make an horizontal move or they can chose every direction?

5) Dungeon 60 - the hide(i think) have a master naga boss having as special rules command skill 1 and fear 2. i think there must be an error. master naga always had Command 1 skill. What your card says?

6) how exactly the kraken works? if an hero is grappled by a tentacle, and the head of the kraken move far the 3 square from that tentacle (ex 5 square away) the tentacle is moved automaticaly in the range of the head as free actions, or at his turn he must move in the right range. in both case, what happen to the grappled hero? he will be moved with the tentacle or he will be free from grapple?

7) the treachery power card "laziness"(dont have the original name), from WoD, make the party lose 1 Vp every time one of the heroes use a teleport glyph to move in town. How it work on the Advance champain?

Enogh for now, i guest

1) When a hero use the captain's wheel, he 's compelled to move of the exactly range showed on the dice, or he can choose a lesser movment?

He can move fewer than what is shown.

2) if monsters are aboard the vengance during a sea encounter, can they use it's station point like the captain's wheel and the anchor? in other word, can the monster make the vengance flee or crash? and during an island level?

Monsters can man the ship during an encounter. There is a FAQ update that prevents them from manning it on island levels.

3) how many times a cannon can be used in the same turn?

Once.

4) When using a rope, the heroes must make an horizontal move or they can chose every direction?

He must move directly out as shown in the example.

5) Dungeon 60 - the hide(i think) have a master naga boss having as special rules command skill 1 and fear 2. i think there must be an error. master naga always had Command 1 skill. What your card says?

Ranked abilities stack, so Command 1 on a creature that already has Command will increase their rating by 1. So if beasts are copper or silver the master will have Command 2. If they're gold or diamond he'll get Command 3.

6) how exactly the kraken works? if an hero is grappled by a tentacle, and the head of the kraken move far the 3 square from that tentacle (ex 5 square away) the tentacle is moved automaticaly in the range of the head as free actions, or at his turn he must move in the right range. in both case, what happen to the grappled hero? he will be moved with the tentacle or he will be free from grapple?

I'll leave that to wiser heads, as that guy confuses the hell out of me.

7) the treachery power card "laziness"(dont have the original name), from WoD, make the party lose 1 Vp every time one of the heroes use a teleport glyph to move in town. How it work on the Advance champain?

That's a good question. A strict reading would have it take away their Conquest but not their experience. Even if it takes their XP though, my advice would be to avoid it. It's completely in the control of the heroes to decide when it triggers, it's a very minor change in conquest so it's not likely to slow the progress of the campaign towards the final fight very much at all, and XP is generally not what the players are lacking when they want upgrades so losing a few points isn't a big deal. There's better things to do with 2 purple treachery.

3) Cannons may be fired an unlimited number of times per round - the only requirement to fire a cannon is to spend an attack. Some players may misinterpret cannons as stations - these can only be manned once per round. But cannons are not stations.

5) The card says "Rigol has Fear 2 and Command 1" - there is nothing to stack there. So even if beasts were upgraded, it still has only Command 1 - might be an oversight, though. Probably one for the FAQ/Errata.

6) The Kraken and tentacle rules are a complete mess, so that cannot be answered properly. We hope that we clean it up in the next FAQ.

7) Wasn´t there a general rule that whenver the heros lose conquest in the base game, the OL gains that conquest in an AC? I would apply that here is well.

Parathion said:

I agree with Parthion's assessments here, except 5).
The dungeon card is a source of special abilities, it does not restrict Rigol to 'only' the special abilities on the card (unless it says so) - she still has Grapple for example (therefore she still has her original Command X). The monster card is also a source of special abilities. Abilities with Ranks from more than one source explicitly stack. Therefore Rigol's Command 1 from the dungeon card stacks with her Command X from her base monster card, giving her Command X+1.

+1. Well said Corbon!

good to know.

So the only thing left, is the Kraken and hes tentacles. I hope i should found a good solution for it

By the way... the one fist's special attak can be spent to fire with cannons?

Jack and THE Hammer said:

Of course not. One Fist's special attack is speified with dice and as a melee attack. How could that possibly translate to cannons, which use different dice and are not melee?

Parathion said:

Cannons may be fired once per round.

From the SoB rulebook p.26:

Weather a cannon attack hits or not, place a fatigue token on the cannon like a ship's station that has been manned. Remove fatigue tokens from cannons at the same time they are removed from ship stations.

And where does it say that a cannon with a fatigue on it may not be fired?

I repeat: Cannons are not stations, so the manning rules do not apply, although the cannons use a similar mechanic.

Radir said:

But a cannon is not a ship station. It says that you must place a fatigue token (for heat results), but every hero can replace one of his attacks with one cannon attack, like Corbon and Parathion said.

gran_orco said:

Until now, we also played that cannons can be fired only once per round. Per RAW we might have been wrong to do so; however, I'll list a few reasons below that make me think that the intent of the designers was to allow them to be fired only once per round.

1) The rules text on p. 26 is at the very least misleading. Place a fatigue token on the cannon like a ship's station that has been manned could be interpreted that not only the action of placing a fatigue token is alike, but also that its effect is alike to those of ship stations, i.e. that the object on which a fatigue token has been placed cannot be used again that round. Why write "like a ship's station that has been manned" if it actually doesn't work like a ship's station that has been manned? Why not just write "Place a fatigue token on the cannon . [period]" without the misleading ending?

2) Thematically, it seems strange that cannons, that take such a long time to reload in the real world, could be fired like machine guns in Descent. I agree that the thematic argument isn't worth much in Descent and that the cannons are magical anyway, but still.

3) It seems to me that it would reduce sea battles to 1-2 rounds of cannon shootings, often in favor of the OL btw: with a little luck, a bunch of skeletons and a single cannon could sink the Revenge in the OL's first turn. I know sea battles do not work well anyway, but having cannons fire multiple times a turn seems to add to the problem.

For these reasons, I propose to add the question of whether a cannon can be fired multiple times a round or not to the FAQ.

So, how is a cannon supposed to ever explode if it is fired only once per round and then cools down at the start of the next round?

Ispher said:

Me too. Can you do the question in the faq proposal section?

Parathion said:

When fired, a canon doesn't cool off the following round, but the round after the following round. Rules p. 26:

At the start of the round, any hot cannon that doesn’t have a fatigue token on it (and therefore hasn’t been fired that round) is flipped back over to its cool side.

"That round" is certainly a typo and should be read as "the previous round", since a cannon can't yet have been fired at the beginning of the round. Here is how it works the way we understood it in our game group:

Round 1: a cannon is fired, gets flipped over and gets a fatigue token. Round 2: the fatigue token is removed but the cannon still is hot, as it had a fatigue token at the beginning of the round. Round 3: the cannon is flipped to its cool side if it hasn't been fired in round 2, as it had no more fatigue token on it at the beginning of the round. If the cannon is fired in round 2 however, it can explode.

The cannon needing 1 round to cool off would make sense, both in thematic and game balance terms.

And what in the rules makes you think that the fatigue removal is done after the "cool down?" check? Both are to be done "at the start of the round".

Sorry but you are going too far in interpreting some rules, while ignoring others: to fire a cannon you need to be adjacent to it and spend an attack - no further requirements that I can find are in the rules.

Parathion said:

?

I do not think that and I did not write that. Quite the opposite, in fact: I wrote that the fatigue removal is done before the "cool off".

What I wrote is that if there is a fatigue token at the beginning of the turn on a hot cannon, that fatigue token is removed and the cannon does not cool off yet that round. If there is no fatigue token at the beginning of the turn on a hot cannon, it cools off.

Well, then it is easy:

First check: Fatigue on Cannon? Yes: Remove Fatigue - No: No action specified.

Second check: Cannon on hot side; Fatigue present? Yes: No action specified - No: Flip cannon back to its cool side.

-> Fatigue will always be removed the round after the cannon was fired, cannon cools down, can never explode. According to your statements, that is, of course.

Parathion said:

Not exactly. Here's how we play it:

Second check: Cannon on hot side; was Fatigue present at the beginning of the turn ? Yes: No action specified - No: Flip cannon back to its cool side.

Sorry if you misunderstood. It might be that I didn't explain it well enough.

If I understand well, the way you play it (cannons that can be fired multiple times per round and always flipping to the cool side at the beginning of each round), the rule that tells to put a fatigue token on a cannon is completely useless: you could just flip it over to its hot side after the first use and then flip it back to its cool side at the beginning of the next round.

Why would FFG write a completely redundant line of rules?

I perfectly understood what you meant, I just wanted to show you the flaws in your interpretation of the rules, sorry for not making that clear enough.

There is no evidence that you have to remember or even bother whether there had been a fatigue on the cannon the same round by the time you decide whether to flip it to its cool side.

If you check the FAQ proposal section, you´ll notice that we think that there is indeed a typo in the rules, namely that the cannons are flipped back to cool at the END of the round, if there´s no fatigue on it.

The way the rules are written render the fatigue mechanism completely useless, our suggested erratum will fix this - of course only if you apply the rules correctly and let the cannons be fired multiple times per round.

Parathion said:

Since something is wrong anyway, why not suggest in the FAQ proposal to have the fatigue tokens on cannons work like those on ship stations, i.e. prevent heroes (or monsters) from using it more than once per round? It wouldn't be an errata, just a specification (that some people, like our group, inferred even without it being explicitely written out). It seems to me that this is the way FFG intended to make cannons work.

It would solve the rules uncertainty too, and, in my opinion, in a better way because the sea battles wouldn't just be a flurry of cannon shootings (I am more afraid of the monsters' power level than of the power level of the heroes).

gran_orco said:

Done.

Parathion said:

Actually, it is your interpretation of the rules that seems to be flawed:

Parathion said:

You seem to think that the removal of fatigue on the cannon and its flipping to its cool side are treated as separate effects, one of which can be chosen before the other, following the rule that says that players can choose the order of things that happen at the beginning of their turn.

The problem is: the fatigue removal or cannon flipping is stuff that happens at the beginning of the round, before it is anybody's turn yet . So who would choose? The OL? The heroes? If it should be the heroes (maybe because it is their cannon?), which hero?

The fatigue removal / side flipping of cannons is clearly outside the scope of the "I choose the order of things that happen at the beginning of my turn" rule for the very simple reason that nobody's turn has started when it happens. The only rational way of playing it (that I can think of) is to consider them as mutually exclusive events: if a fatigue is removed from a cannon, it doesn't flip. If no fatigue is removed (because there isn't any), a hot cannon flips to its cool side.

Besides, that is exactly what the rules tell us to do (p. 26): "At the start of the round, any hot cannon that doesn’t have a fatigue token on it (...) is flipped back over to its cool side ", which implies that any hot cannon that does have a fatigue token on it at the beginning of the turn is not flipped (but has its fatigue token removed, according to the rule (also p. 26): "Remove fatigue tokens from cannons at the same time they are removed from ship’s stations" ).

The rule is clear and easy to play. The only thing which is unclear, depending on whether fatigue tokens on cannons have the same effect as those on stations or not, is whether cannons can be fired multiple times a turn or not - hence my proposal to add that question to the FAQ.

You arbitrarily decide that both checks must happen simultaneously and completely independant from each other - alas, this is nowhere stated in the rules. Of course it is the only reasonable way to play it as you wrote it, but that´s just interpretation.

I never incurred to use the "choose the order of effects at the start of a turn" rule, since we are dealing with rounds rather than turns, but thanks for assuming that for me.

Finally, the only thing absolutely clear in the rules is that you can fire the cannons multiple times per round, yet you keep doubting that based on mere thematic grounds or maybe because you desperately want it to be like that for whatever reason.

There is nothing in the rules that says a cannon with a fatigue can´t be fired, or that they can be fired only once per round. The requirement to spend an attack to fire a cannon even indicates multiple uses, since it is plain obvious that any hero or monster can have more than one attack in his turn, piling up to numerous possible attacks per round - don´t you think they would add such a rule openly and clearly if they intended to limit the cannon attacks to a tiny fraction of all possible attacks? Instead they chose to use an unclear and obscure fatigue mechanism just because they already have that installed for manning the stations? They even avoided to say that a cannon is a station which would have conveniently saved them all the rules trouble? You can´t be serious about that.

I know the Descent rules are flawed in a couple of instances but this is too much in my opinion.

Parathion said:

You use a language that's not used in the rulebook, so I can't comment on that. I can only comment on what is stated in the rules, that is: At the start of the round, any hot cannon that doesn’t have a fatigue token on it (...) is flipped back over to its cool side [and therefore isn't flipped if it has a fatigue token on it]. So when there isn't a fatigue token on the cannon we flip it (if it is hot), and when there is a fatigue, we don't flip the cannon and remove the fatigue. We don't interpret nothing, we just do as it is written.

There is nothing written about "checks", simultaneous or not. Why are you making it more complicated than it is written?

Parathion said:

Sorry for misunderstanding but I thought I understood what was wrong. Now I am clueless again.

Parathion said:

Check this thread: I am not the only one who thought cannons can be fired only once per round (there was James), and I am not the only one who wants the question asked (there was gran_orco). I am not the one who is righteously clinging to his point of view here; I just want a question asked for the FAQ . Is it too much to ask to have a question asked by multiple persons included in the list submitted to the FAQ?

Parathion said:

Um... They did. Rulebook p. 26: A figure that is adjacent to a cannon may spend one of its attacks to fire the cannon .

Parathion said:

The fatigue mechanism isn't unclear and obscure for me, and I don't see many other people having a problem with it. Stations require 3 movement points to activate; cannons do not. I guess that because of that, cannons could not be labeled as stations.

I also would be surprised if the cheapest cannon in the game, the Coldsteel cannon, could be fired like a machine gun without ever risking to explode.

The whole uncertainty of the rules lies in the interpretation of this one little sentence: place a fatigue token on the cannon like a ship’s station that has been manned . If "like a ship's station that has been manned" means "like the act (but not the effect) of placing the fatigue on a ship's station", then a cannon can be fired multiple times per round. If it means "like the act and the effect of placing the fatigue on a ship's station", then a cannon can be fired only once per round.

After reading through this thread I would say that Ispher's explanations make very much sense:

1. turn1 - cannon is fired once and a fatigue token is placed on the cannon. A cannon with a fatigue token can not be fired again.
2. turn2 - fatigue token is removed at the beginning of the turn from cannon. If cannon is overheated then it can explode when fired. If cannon is not overheated (like coldsteel), it can be fired without the fear of explosion
3. turn3 - if there is no fatigue token on the cannnon at the beginning of the turn then an overheated cannon is flipped back to normal and can be safely fired again

It does not make any sense to be able to fire a single cannon 16 times per turn. I think it is stupid and irresponsible to say "you can do something because the rules do not forbid it". This is not a serious argument.

By using common sense it is clearly understandable that cannons are meant to be fired once per turn and that some of the cannons are prone to explode when fireing every turn (the overheating rule).

Using the above there is nothing to doublecheck or re-read the rules or to be asked from FAQ. There is no ambiguity with the usage of the fatigue token. Everything works a per rules.