Beasts of War game 1 : Rules mistakes

I'm not sure exactly how useful this will be, but I spotted a few omissions in today's BoW let's play that might be worth pointing out. I could be wrong about these, in which case at least I'll have a better understanding of the rules!

Around the 30:15 mark, Benoît uses an AoW card to search his deck, then immediately activates Medusa, which is his second activation that turn. Wouldn't an extra AoW be required to allow him to activate again? Leo does the exact same the following turn.

At 1:02:50, Leo uses an AoW to activate Aeacus and unpetrifies him (again, this is his second activation that turn) without paying the AoW to unpetrify.

There may be more that I missed, but those are the ones that stood out to me. Hopefully this helps someone remember to count their AoW next time they play!
This was very enjoyable to watch, and I cannot wait to see more MBP action.

MaxC wrote:

Around the 30:15 mark, Benoît uses an AoW card to search his deck, then immediately activates Medusa, which is his second activation that turn. Wouldn't an extra AoW be required to allow him to activate again? Leo does the exact same the following turn.

I noticed the same. And Benoît forgot the +1 attack with his Lion when it was on the cliff.

So a question was asked on Youtube in regards to full zones.

The Nemean Lion moves off the cliff adjacent to a full zone. As he has -1 Movement, that was the limit of his move, however he still is able to attack into a full zone, as if he has moved into it?

Cryocat wrote:

So a question was asked on Youtube in regards to full zones.

The Nemean Lion moves off the cliff adjacent to a full zone. As he has -1 Movement, that was the limit of his move, however he still is able to attack into a full zone, as if he has moved into it?

I'm not sure what the exact wording is in the current beta version, but when a zone is full, units in adjacent zones can melee attack into that zone as if it were in the crowded zone. This doesn't apply in the opposite direction, though.

Regardless of if they have the ability to move into the zone or not?

Orword wrote:

I'm not sure if that's what potential means here, but I thought  the bonus only applied if you couldn't move into the area because it is full, not because you have no more movement points.

There does seem to be some wiggle room for interpretation there. To be fair, Benoit did ask if he should play dirty early on. "Do him like a kipper" was the response. This seems like an edge case where trapping for the exception(Does the adjacent figure have the movement to engage in melee?) isn't worth modifying the rule.

"It might break the flow of the game to fix it", is what I'm getting at here. Streamlining the rules for faster play was a design consideration for this version of Mythic Battles. They said that's why power points were dropped from the earlier game. I suspect this slightly non-intuitive situation may fall prey to the same desire for a simple and fast game.

Cryocat wrote:

Regardless of if they have the ability to move into the zone or not?

Not quite sure what you are asking here? I will make quick definitions for this response. Crowded = multiple units on in a single territory but NOT full. Full = the zone is at its max capacity and no other unit may enter it. If the zone is full, an adjacent unit may attack it as if it is in the zone with a "melee attack" (range 0). If that unit has a range of 1, it can choose to do that normal range 1 attack instead as well. If that unit is being affected with -1 range and has its dashboard range reduced from 1 to 0 therefrom, then it must make the melee attack from the adjacent zone, rather than the range 1 attack.

Now if the adjacent zone is just crowded and not full (as in the unit can still move in there), the unit must move in to make a melee attack (range 0). If it normally would be able to make a range 1 attack from an adjacent zone, but has been affected with -1 range, it must then move into that crowded zone to make a melee attack, it cannot make an adjacent range 1 attack and it cannot make an adjacent melee (range 0) attack if there is still room to move into that zone.

The errors MaxC points out are why I make a case for having something on the table to record the game state. QW has stated it's easy to keep things like troop status in your head. Here we have two guys with more experience playing MB:P than anyone on earth, making errors because they are super focused on the moves they are taking.

The game can obviously be a brain burner. I'm going to look into designing some things that will help players remember turn status. When your brain is smoking a problem, you might need that crutch to lean on.

There's also a mistake on Cerberus' Three Headed Bite attack on Hera's zone. The wording of he attack is that it makes 1 attack on up to 3 different targets. It should not have targetted Hera twice.

KerenRhys wrote:

There's also a mistake on Cerberus' Three Headed Bite attack on Hera's zone. The wording of he attack is that it makes 1 attack on up to 3 different targets. It should not have targetted Hera twice.

Leo was very specific about that attack. I'm left wondering if a change has been made to Cerberus that we aren't in the loop on yet. It's that or both Leo and Benoit missed it. I hope BoW edits in correction notes for these battles.

I went back and watched the draft section. You are right KerenRhys. The dashboard they used said "different targets". Good catch!

Im now wondering what Benoit had left in his hand, since he most likely wouldn't have been killed by Cerberus and could have potentially retaliated or even killed Hera.

To be clear...

At 28:18 The lion is on a cliff attacking Hera in an adjacent area. It gets +1 Range and +1 Attack due to position. It does not get to use the Torment talent because the lion isn't in the same area as Hera.

At 1:04:00 the lion moves off the cliff adjacent to a full area. This condition gives him the right to melee (Range 0) attack units in the adjacent space as if the lion were in the space. So Torment works in this case.

OK. Got it.

For Torment ok WTFGamer. But,
At 28:18, Benoît didn't remember the +1 attack due to position. He rolled only 7 dices.
And at 01:04, the Lion didn't moves to a full area but in a zone adjacent to it.

WTFGamer wrote:

...as if the lion were in the space. So Torment works in this case.

This is clear, isn't it?

@Biel At 28:10 Benoit mentions the attack is going to be 8 dice. He gets distracted by the Torment discussion and actually rolls only 7. I was listing how it should have played out to be clear about how the rules for terrain granted +1 range melee attacks vs adjacent to full capacity area melee attacks work.

I understand the lion didn't have the movement to enter the space he melee attacks. My guess is this will be an edge case that's too conditional to create another rule for. This isn't a computer assisted game. It's a game they want to have tournament rules for. Benoit was true to his word and played dirty.

We'll know the answer when QW comments.

Does anyone have any insight on MaxC's first question regarding the need for a second AoW card after fetching an activation card? I noticed this issue too and was wondering whether or not I misunderstood the uses of AoW cards. Thanks all!

Leo said on stream today that at least some of the mistake people were pointing out were mistakes.

It is to be expected. The way the rules are formulated with how abilities are formulated create a lot of weird interactions, and every unit having up to 5 abilities makes it easy to forget to apply abilities; especially in the weird interactions.

When an area is full, you can imagine some units really close to the area limit, so i can do a melee attack from the adjacent area. Even if i can't move in, i can still hit units because this target area is full andunits could be closer to the limite =).

It seems that the three-headed attack from Cerberus has been changed recently (said by Leo to Peps, one of the scenarii writer) to allow multiple attacks on the same target.

The reasoning was that the power was not enticing enough for the cost of 1 AoW card. Except that I never saw any AoW cost on this power so I'm confused. Moreover, during the game Leo didn't pay any AoW card to use it either.

And Cerberus was already a really powerful unit, so why buff him even more? He has probably the best talent list possible, he's a really good defensive unit and his offense was fine as it was. I don't understand this change, even more with this AoW cost mystery.

KerenRhys wrote:

It seems that the three-headed attack from Cerberus has been changed recently (said by Leo to Peps, one of the scenarii writer) to allow multiple attacks on the same target.

The reasoning was that the power was not enticing enough for the cost of 1 AoW card. Except that I never saw any AoW cost on this power so I'm confused. Moreover, during the game Leo didn't pay any AoW card to use it either.

And Cerberus was already a really powerful unit, so why buff him even more? He has probably the best talent list possible, he's a really good defensive unit and his offense was fine as it was. I don't understand this change, even more with this AoW cost mystery.

+1 i prefere the actual power, no AoW cost and 3 DIFFERENTS enemy units in his zone.

Nice thread

Having played, recorded, and watched many games for publication or broadcast over the years, i can tell you that mistakes are almost universal. In print you can edit some of them out, but you still occasionally miss one. On film, with the extra pressure of trying to explain yourself to camera, it's even easier to forget a detail.

I think full areas are simple enough. Remember that each action is discrete, and finished before the next starts. So, I do my WALK. Then, once that's finished, I start my ATTACK. Beyond the fact that the previous action was short, so I have a short action slot available, nothing about the previous action ever matters. It could have been CLAIM, and the result would be the same.

The rules don't say that the attacking unit must be able to move into the target area because this is not a requirement

frch0603's summary is correct.

@WTFGamer - the problem I find with this sort of tracker, is that time and again I see people forget to move them. It's as easy to forget that as the thing you're supposedly tracking, plus it adds to the burden of things to remember, neither of which is good, or solves the original problem.

Cerberus - having tried playing the 3 headed bite as a 0 AoW cost power that gives you 1 attack against up to 3 different targets, we found that it was almost never used. It's especially weak when compared to the Hydra's attack.

So, rather than have a power that never gets used, we changed it

QW - I disagree, this power sure was situational but it was the only "weakness" of Cerberus. The comparison with Hydra is weird since if even if Hydra is better offensively than Cerberus, it's the opposite defensively. So, for the same cost, it doesn't seem logical to try to put them at the same level of offense. Was it really necessary to buff a unit that was already as strong as Cerberus and often considered as a mandatory first pick by a lot of players who played the game a lot? They also seem confused by the necessity of this change (by their comments on Tric Trac).