I am new to this game and had a few questions about skirmishes.

1. Say I have organized two skirmishes as the attacker. I win one of the two skirmishes and the defender wins the other. Do we then proceed to a third skirmish with our remaining unit or am I as the attacker forced to retreat? The rules lead me to believe that the initial skirmishes that are setup by the attacker are it and it is a loss if the attacker does not win ALL skirmishes.

2. I have entered into a skirmish with one FLU and a supporting unit as the attacker. The defender has one unit. The defender wins the skirmish. What happens to the supporting unit? Is he destroyed, forced to retreat, or forced to engage as a FLU?

1. The attacker is forced to retreat.

2. The supporting unit is forced to retreat.

In point of fact, if any non assist defenders survive any of the skirmishes (after any splash damage has been resolved), then the attacker must retreat with any surviving units.

If the defender is completely eliminated, or has only assist units remaining (after any splash damage has been resolved), then the attacker has won, and any defending assist units must retreat.

Also some people confuse assist units and support units as the same by definition. They are different kinds of units.

Thanks for the fast replies. We played the game already and luckily we guessed correctly.

EMELT said:

Actually, I may have erred slightly here. What I meant was that a support unit isn't nessessarily an assist unit. Assist units are most commonly in a position that is not a front line unit, thereby being a support unit of a kind. Another kind of support unit is a unit with a support value that is in a skirmish but not in the front line. Also in the case that there are only assist units on one side of the combat, one assist unit is in the front line (and in this case has no direct ground attack or direct air attack capability).

In the case where the assist unit becomes the frontline unit...what actually occurs? My group of players assumed that the person with only the assist unit plays a card, using the inner attack and health values. Twice my friend had only a High Templar as a unit.

MathusRayn said:

That is exactly what happens. You play a card which uses the minor values. What is important though is that in this case the assist unit has no direct ground attack or direct air attack capability, so the attack value is pretty pointless as the unit will not be able to affect any enemy ground or air units based on that value. The important value of the minor values is the health that the card would grant the unit. Quite often splash damage is only triggered if an enemy unit dies in the skirmish, so Psi storm and irradiate wouldn't be triggered by a lone templar or science vessel. Note that the Queen and defiler do have abilities that don't require an enemy unit to die first to trigger: namely Spawn Broodling (which technically isn't a splash card), and Plague (which auto triggers regardless of a kill happening).

Thank you. I think I have a pretty good grasp on it now.