This happened today and I just wanted to hear from the experts as I have a tendency to interpret things incorrectly.

Does my War Hydras action activate only in the battlefield phase right after damage assigned or can its action kick in to stop the damage by the War Machine Emplacement played after I had nominated my Hydra as an attacker?

Was upset we said it was probably dead as I was hoping it could hang around abit longer. I fear WME and its damage is dealt in the earlier window it was activated.

http://deckbox.org/whi/War%20Hydra

http://deckbox.org/whi/War%20Machine%20Emplacement

thanks

As far as I see it, the War Hydra can be used any number of single times in any action windows, up to its limit of resources. In this instance, after the War Hydra is declared an attacker, the War Engine can kick in once. The War Hydra responds with 1 action to remove 1pt of damage, the War Engine player may then respond with another action, followed by War Hydra 2nd action to cancel the 2nd damage. The outcome would depend on what other actions each player does in the sequence. Assumming no other, the War Hydra has lost 2 of its resource tokens but its player has gained 2 resources, while the War Engine player has lost 2 resources. War Hydra survives but is a little closer to running out of tokens. Cheers!

No. Your hydra died before cancelling damage. Here is the process on battlefield turn :

- Declaring attacked zone : let's say Quest zone.

- Action phase : both players don't play anything here.

- Declaring attackers : Active player declares War Hydra.

- Action phase : the Empire player pays 2 ressources to deal 2 damage to War Hydra, and succeed to kill it, jsut because War Hydra could use its action to prevent damage before or after the 2 damage dealt. If it is before, then it has nothing to cancel, and if it's after, it's too late to cancel.

IMO, War Hydra need an errata, because their effect is only useful in pure combat, without anything that deals damage, because they need an action phase between the assign phase and the apply phase.

Budmilka_fr said:

Yeah, I agree, WH needs to be able to do its Action as response to any normal Action.

Please explain to me as well, why the damage from the War Engine is different from other non-combat damage which, according to my rulebook, is assigned then applied just like combat damage. Is this another case of the original rulebook being changed in its basics? If you are arguing that the damage says it is 'dealt' and therefore misses the 'assigned' part, then Toughness would get bypassed as well. Surely common sense dictates that the War Hydra gets 5 chances to stop 'uncancellable' damage. I used to find this game very straightforward, but it looks like it is going the way of so many lcgs that expand, complicate and change out of all recognition. Cheers!

Rashley said:

During combat, you have an Action Window between Assign and Apply Damage Steps, with non-combat, there is no Action Window between those.

Combat:

Assign Damage

Players may take Actions (trigger WH to cancel assigned damage)

Apply Damage

Non-combat:

Play Action that deals damage (can respond to this, but with the current wording, I don't think the WH works in response)

Assign Damage

Apply Damage

Take Action

Rashley said:

This is actually how it has always worked. Its not a rulebook change.

Toughness isn't an action. Its more like a triggered constant effect, so it doesn't need an Action window to do its work (like Dam's diagram shows).

War Hydra ends up just being not very good because they worded it wrong to begin with. The recent errata that changed "damage dealt" to "damage that would be dealt" on redirection cards wasn't needed for most cancellation cards. War Hydra was sort of an exception. If they'd made that similar change for cancellation effects though, then War Hydra would say something like "Action: Remove 1 resource token to cancel the next 1 damage that would be dealt to War Hydra. Then, gain 1 resource." This would have fundamentally changed the card, allowing it to be used as a resource battery. You could just pull 5 resources out of it, whenever you wanted, at Action-speed. Making it a very strong 0 net-cost card.

Dam said:

amen to the errata. Its a 5 cost with 1 hit point and if im right in thinking there are quite alot of non combat actions out there that take out low hit point units without any effort at all.

I want to play the game the correct way but may have to house rule this card to help keep my huge monster around for abit longer

thanks for the input guys, appreciate the help

sorry double post

It looks like I have been playing this game incorrectly from its release. When I read the rule about non-combat damage being similar to combat damage, I assumed you could respond with actions. I can think of many other situations where I have been allowing actions in response to non-combat damage. From a personal point of view, I think that new ruling stinks as it makes non-combat damage almost unstopable. Only automatic, non-actions effect it. I shall continue to play the game the way I see it, but must again add it to the ever increasing discussions with players I may play with outside my normal groups. I would be completely at a loss in tournament play. I assume there must be a flow chart in a FAQ somewhere that shows there is no action window for non-combat damage, which must be why they said it was 'similar' to combat damage and not the same. Thanks for the heads up, but I may have to stop using these forums as it is spoiling the game for me. It just confirms how flawed this game must have been for me to have misinterpreted so many of the - what I thought were - simple but effective rules. Must be getting old. Cheers!

Rashley said:

You can, it all comes down to how you choose to interpret the damage dealt stuff, and how you choose to use conditional clauses for your own evil purposes!

Me, I look at it like this:

Non-combat damage

As per FAQ 1.3, All instances of "damage dealt/damage assigned/damage just assigned" should read " damage that would be dealt. "

So, if you take War Machine Emplacement (WME) and Warrior Priests (WP); and taking Dam's statement of actions for non-combat actions:

• Play Action that deals damage
• Assign Damage and subsequently Apply Damage
• Take Action(s)

The WME would fire its action and assign then deal its two points of damage to the WP. These points are damage dealt .

But as per FAQ 1.3, this damage is now " damage that would be dealt ". So, at this stage, this damage would be dealt to the WP. And will activate the redirect damage condition for the WP action.

("Redirect 1 damage that would be dealt to this unit to one target unit in any battlefield in any battlefield")

This can be played and resolved (which in turn could trigger further actions ad infinitum)

Regarding the War Hydra and WME

The War Hydra is a special case, and probably does need a clarification. IMHO the War Hydra plays it's Response action to the damage from WME.

Takith said:

Even though your Warrior Priests example is mostly correct, you left out the second half of the sentence in the FAQ. It says:

All instances of “damage dealt” and “damage assigned” and “damage just assigned” on cards that redirect damage should read “damage that would be dealt.”

This is why it doesn't apply to War Hydra. And, no, under the current rules War Hydra does not get to activate its Action in response to non-combat damage.

There are some glaring holes in the way Warhammer Actions work, with MANY of them having triggers that are met outside of an action window. The current designer (Lukas) is working to clean this up, but its a nearly unsolvable problem without drastically changing the rules or changing a lot of cards.

This topic alone is like pulling teeth! Not only do I dislike the idea of not treating non-combat the same as combat damage, but the inept fumblings of the designers to patch up what I thought was simple and obvious, have made things worse. I am still not sure about this FAQ stating that all instances of 'damage dealt','damage assigned' etc, are now counted as 'damage that would be dealt'. Doesn't that change War Hydras' wording of 'assigned' to 'would be dealt'? It just gets worse and worse!

Why couldn't it have been the much simpler 'all damage is treated the same way'? If you want an exception, state it up front like Counterstrike. To me the real problem lies with FFG for not being consistant with their wordings. A case of too many different people adding bits without reference to how it was originally done. It would be very interesting to hear what the designer of the War Hydra had in mind when they thought it up. We shall probably never know as FFG don't seem to follow these threads, but what is the betting on it being 5 chances to stop any type of damage? 80%? Cheers!

Rashley said:

Please read my previous post, not just Takith's. He left out a very important line from the FAQ that indicates why that recent revision doesn't affect War Hydra. Non-combat damage has NEVER been the same as combat damage. The v1.0 rules did not have an action window between assigning and applying non-combat damage. That much has been consistent.

The "damage would be dealt" section of the last FAQ was a very GOOD clarification to the rules. Previously, the rules were actually contradictory, with cards saying things like "redirect the next 2 damage dealt". This simply doesn't work, because damage is not "dealt" until after it has been applied. Once damage is applied, it is too late to redirect it.

You are probably right that War Hydra was not intended to be killed by non-combat damage with no chance to save itself. This will likely be corrected in the next FAQ.

I appreciate all the effort you have all put into this and I shall try to follow it all, but what do you mean by v1.0 rules? Are those the ones that originally came with the Core Set at the beginning, or the first FAQ? The only reference to non-combat damage that I can find in the original rulebook - now sadly virtually unrecognisable from current state of play - is the last paragraph on page 17 entitled:- NON COMBAT DAMAGE.

Outside of combat, some card effects also deal damage to units or to a player's capital. When these effects resolve, this damage is first assigned and then applied to the target in a manner similar to the way damage is handled in combat. The one exception to this rule is the Counterstrike keyword (see Counterstrike, page 16). Counterstrike damage is always applied as soon as it is assigned.

What did I overlook in this that led me to believe that non-combat damage is assigned - actions - then applied - actions - just like combat damage? Cheers!

FAQ 1.0, p7, about "non combat damage :

Non combat damage is always applied as soon as it is assigned before any other actions can be taken.

Rashley said:

I don't fault anyone for misinterpreting the early rules for this game. They were not very clear in many places, like the non-combat damage section you posted. It was unclear in the original rules what "similar to combat" meant, so the first FAQ clarified it, as Budmilka posted. This is what I meant by "its always been like this". I guess it just hadn't always been very clear that it worked like this.