I have a rule question concerning a certain battle situation which is currently being discussed on boardgamegeek www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/369621

This is the single skirmish that occured:

Zerg vs Protoss, 1 single skirmish: Muta+Queen vs 2 Zealots.
Zerg plays:
- combat card Mutalisk 7/7 (+ ground splash for Marine, Zealot or Zergling)
- reinforcement card Spawn broodling, which says: End of the destroy units step: Your opponent must choose and destroy one of his Marine, Firebat, ..., Zealot, ..., or Zerg ground units in this skirmish.

Protoss plays:
- combat card Zealot 5/7
- reinforcement card shields, which gives +1 health

The attack of 7 for the Mutalisk is lower than the added health (7+1) from frontline Zealot

Possible Results:

1. One Zealot dies, no splash is applied because combat card does not trigger

2. Both Zealots die because the broodling reinforcement card kills one Zealot and therefore activates Splash from combat card.

See arguments in boardgamegeek thread.

What is the intended/correct outcome here ?

Regards,

Spooky

I totally agree with you. Because the combat card does not kill the Zealot the splash is not triggered. So only 1 Zealot is killed, and that is because of Spawn Broodling.

Boromir said:

Thanks for your support Well, the other guys argumented differently also referencing the manual.

I hope to see an official ruling on this (and of course that it is in line with my opinion )

Boromir said:

I totally agree with Boromir, Splash damages are not triggered.

In the french rules (with correction before translation), it precises that the card with the splash damage keyword must destroy at least one opposing unit, in order to trigger splash damages

I'm not sure what the intended use of the spawn broodling card interaction with the mutalisk splash is but I would guess from reading the splash damage keyword description on P.39 of the base game rules it seems pretty evident that splash would be triggered.

"In other words, if an opposing unit is destroyed during a skirmish’s resolution, each friendly card with the splash damage keyword is triggered."

Since spawn broodling would kill a unit during a skirmish (specifically at the end of the destroy units step of a skirmish), it seems obvious that if it kills then other splash damage cards from that skirmish would also be triggered, like the Muta's.

I think that we are just used to the Front Line Unit being the one that gets the 'initial' kill that would trigger splash damage.

Splash is only triggered when the FLU kills the other FLU. If you kill a unit in any other way, Splash is not triggered.

Stefan said:

This is how I interpret it as well. But with all the discussion going on I would like to see an official ruling in the FAQ for this.

IMHO this case is rather clear, but I won't hinder you

Stefan said:

Tell this to the guys who argued the other way in the bgg thread. I am with you ...

Stefan said:

I don't agree with you.
When your FLU has suffisant strenght to kill the opponent FLU but can't target it, another unit in this skirmish that could be targetted must be destroyed (I'm refereing to the "destroying a supporting unit" example p. 35).
in that case, splash damages are triggered although the opponent FLU is not destroyed.
tell me if I'm wrong

EMELT said:

You are not taking into account that sentence (p. 39 too) :

"Splash damage is triggered when a side with a Combat card bearing the splash damage keyword destroys at least one opposing unit during the “Destroy Units” step of the skirmish to which the card was played."

It is the combat card that must destoy an opposing unit... not the reinforcement card...

Threrefore, I'm with you spooky, it is case 1.

You are right, of course. I hadn't thought of that.

Could we please get an official ruling on this issue ?

• splash only if combat card is triggered, or
• splash if at least one opposite unit is killed in skirmish

Thanks,

Spooky

marcovitch said:

Technically both a reinforcement card and a standard combat card are quantified as a "combat card" (numerous references, if you're bent on looking I would probably start at P.27)

I have also submitted a 'rules question' with the following wording and will post the results here when I have a response (unless an admin answers here first)

"Lets say you have a skirmish where a zerg has played a standard combat card with splash damage for their Front Line Unit who is supported by a queen with a spawn broodling reinforcement card. The zerg Front Line Unit has insufficient strength to overcome the health value of the enemy Front Line Unit.

Question: Assuming there is an enemy unit in the skirmish that is a valid target of spawn broodling, will the spawn broodling card killing that enemy unit trigger the splash dammage effect from the standard combat card."

Hi all,

I'm the one who started all this crap on BGG , so maybe I should squeeze my opinion here too.

marcovitch said:

Im still not convinced.

As I interpret the rules, it says that if a side with a Combat splash card destroys at least one opposing unit during the "Destroy Units" step, the Splash is triggered. It doesn't have to be the exact same combat card that destroys the opp.unit, just the side with that card. So if Spawn Broodling kills the opposing unit during the "Destroy Units" step, the splash is triggered.

OK..

I admit it is quite ambiguous : "combat deck" made of 'standard combat cards" and "reinforcement cards"...

We need an official ruling about that!

EMELT said:

EMELT has a very valid point, too.

Yes yes!

my previous post was not ironic!!

I am really in doubt now too!

EMELT said:

Yes, being precise it should be "non-reinforcement combat card" for option 1.

So, where's our best friend when we need him

I'm just re-reading the entire Starcraft rules again, and had to think of this thread when I got to Splash and combat steps.

Because splash is only triggered if the opposing FLU dies in the Destroy Units step of the skirmish, and Spawn Broodling destroys the enemy unit at (or after, since the wording on the Spawn Broodling card is just "end of") the end of the Destroy Units step.

I'd see little point in writing "end of" if it wasn't mean to happen after the actual Destroy Units step itself. It's certainly meant to happen after the regular Destroy Units step contents, so after units that die from combat values died.

So what it boils down to is these two questions:

• Is the end of the Destroy Units step part of the Destroy Units step?
• Does 'End of the Destroy Units step' on the Spawn Broodling card mean during the end or after the end of said step?

Personally, I'd take this as enough of a reason for not having it trigger Splash - since both those things don't seem to be clear by the rules themselves, and they would both have to have favourable answers ('yes, it is', and 'the card actually means "during the end"') for the Splash to trigger.

marcovitch said:

I disagree about this. It's a "combat card bearing the splash damage keyword" that the combat card comes into play with, grammatically speaking, not the destruction of the opposing unit.

Unless Yoda hire to write the rulebook they did.

Hm, after giving this some more thought (and playing two games against myself, due to lack of opponents - my favourites, the Zerg, won both times, what are the odds?) I'm yet again uncertain, since Spawn Broodling is an unit destruction and I guess that the reason why it's at the end of the unit destruction step is so no units that would be destroyed anyway can be taken for Spawn Broodling casualties.

So meanwhile, I'd think that the aforementioned exact time when Spawn Broodling destroys the enemy unit is still within the Destroy Units step, and thus Splash Damage would be triggered by it. But more than before, I think that the rules don't make this entirely clear

You have to kill a unit with a combat card that is bigger than the units health...even if it cloaks it causes splash damage, the condition is "Attack power > Health Value = Trigger Splash"

That's how I understand it, too.

StarBurn said:

That is true, but it is also an explicit exception to the way Splash Damage is normally resolved.

StarBurn said:

That isn't written like that anywhere, and if it were so simple, I'm sure FFG would have realized it and made the rules simpler than they are - the condition is, as we've read before: "Splash damage is triggered when a side with a Combat card bearing the splash damage keyword destroys at least one opposing unit during the 'Destroy Units' step of the skirmish to which the card was played."

Fluff-wise, there's plenty of thematic reasons both for triggering Splash and against - in the computer game, it would come down to how good the player is at micro managing his troops. So we can't take fluff as a guideline really.

What I did now was, I looked through the whole rules PDF and looked at the way "at the end of" was used in other contexts. "At the end of" and not "end of" because page 32, Timing of Combat Cards, clearly states that "end of" in italics is meant to be "at the end of".

• Page 4, First Player Token: the passing of it is clearly part of the game round, so "at the end of" is "part of" here
• Page 11, timing of the Regrouping phase: Clearly part of the game round
• "The End Draws Near" on page 16: This is somewhat inconclusive, neither clearly part of nor clearly not part of the Play Event Cards step
• Page 17, Normal Victory: "at the end of" is even used as "in", here
• Page 18, Special Victory: Just like Normal Victory, "at the end of" is even used as "in"
• Page 32, losing Resource cards at the end of the game round, it is a part of the Regrouping Phase
• Page 33, retreating units at the end of a battle is part of the battle (step 9 on page 29)
• Page 38, Cloaking, pretty inconclusive (withdrawing is neither clearly part of the Destroy Units step nor clearly not part of it)
• Page 39, Returning to Tech Deck - placing the card in the discard pile is described within the Skirmish rules, so it seems to be part of the Skirmish (7c in the combat rules, page 32), but somewhat inconclusive
• Page 39, Splash Damage is a part of battle, thus "at the end of" is, again, "as one of the last things in"
• Page 43, Team End Game Victory, just like the regular End Game Victory on page 16, not conclusive at all

So, overall, we have a few inconclusive ones, and many places where "at the end of" is clearly part of what it is at the end of. And, we have no single case where "at the end of" clearly is "after that thing has ended". In light of this admittedly presumptive evidence, I now change my mind and believe that the rules are in fact fairly clear, once we clarified what "End of" and then "at the end of" is supposed to mean in the context of the Starcraft rules.

Splash Damage, in this case, is triggered.

As usual FFG writes really nice manuals and tutorials but they aren't very good at writing clear and precise rules documents.