Public Enemies and Hazardous Terrain

[Sagrit]

So, is it legal to kill yourself with Hazardous to prevent Bounty Tokens for an opponent?

Let's say my model have 1WD (let it be Hard to Kill result). I can't attack this model with my other models, because of Public Enemies wording. I can't rely on Conditions for the same reasons. I can't take a Walk  or other move to fall down from High Terrain because of rulebook wording. BUT i can walk into Hazardous terrain (let it be Yan Lo's aura) to kill my own model and prevent Bounty Token?

Let me be honest - for me it sounds silly  

[Adran]

4 minutes ago, Sagrit said:

So, is it legal to kill yourself with Hazardous to prevent Bounty Tokens for an opponent?

Let's say my model have 1WD (let it be Hard to Kill result). I can't attack this model with my other models, because of Public Enemies wording. I can't rely on Conditions for the same reasons. I can't take a Walk  or other move to fall down from High Terrain because of rulebook wording. BUT i can walk into Hazardous terrain (let it be Yan Lo's aura) to kill my own model and prevent Bounty Token?

Let me be honest - for me it sounds silly  

Its allowed

I do agree it is slightly against the spirit of the intention, but there are only so many loopholes that you can close before the rules get hugely unwieldy. Its probably also the reason a lot of hazardous effects don't effect friendly models, so if you are worried about this then don't get Ash ascendant for your Yan lo to allow your opponent to kill their own models in a way that doesn't give you bounty points. Its very hard for someone to build a crew to deny you those bounty points if you don't help them. Its not impossible, but its going to be rare.

 

I can offer a fluff explanation if you want, but that will only help it make sense in your head and there are holes in it. Its too hard to retrieve the body from the hazardous terrain to claim the bounty

[Sagrit]

It's not just about Yan Lo of course. There are plenty of Hazardous sources in all factions and im not even talking about Terrain itslef
You are absolutely correct about holes in the rules, but it's very easy to fix with FAQ, really  

We already have questions 8 and 9 that clear the simillar situation with Conditions, Burry and Fall damage.

If Wyrd want it to work like you said (no Bounty Token) - it would be awesome to just add it to #8 - "(such as End Phase Condition Damage, being Burried at the end of the Game, or being killed by Hazardous Terrain)"

If Wyrd want it to work in opposite way - it would be awesome to add it to #9 - "If a model is killed from falling damage, or by Hazardous Terrain, who is treated as killed by?"

We can play in both ways, it's not a problem. And both ways could have fluff explanation of course. But now it's just not clear and looks like a hole that someone forgot to bury  

[Maniacal_cackle]

Given the other hazardous issues, I suspect hazardous will be errataed to work like falling damage (the model who generated the move gets kill credit).

[Adran]

38 minutes ago, Sagrit said:

It's not just about Yan Lo of course. There are plenty of Hazardous sources in all factions and im not even talking about Terrain itslef
You are absolutely correct about holes in the rules, but it's very easy to fix with FAQ, really  

We already have questions 8 and 9 that clear the simillar situation with Conditions, Burry and Fall damage.

If Wyrd want it to work like you said (no Bounty Token) - it would be awesome to just add it to #8 - "(such as End Phase Condition Damage, being Burried at the end of the Game, or being killed by Hazardous Terrain)"

If Wyrd want it to work in opposite way - it would be awesome to add it to #9 - "If a model is killed from falling damage, or by Hazardous Terrain, who is treated as killed by?"

We can play in both ways, it's not a problem. And both ways could have fluff explanation of course. But now it's just not clear and looks like a hole that someone forgot to bury  

I would argue that currently it is clear. Models killed by hazardous terrain don't count as killed by any model in particular. It is spelled out in the rules (Page 25), just like condition damage is.  It might lead to a few strange outcomes. FAQ 8 was already clear in the rules as far as I was concerned. That doesn't stop the question coming up, but it was something I thought was clear.

If Wyrd wanted to close the "loophole" it is easiest to do in Gaining grounds 2 when it arrives by either altering the wording of Public enemies to include hazardous as they have included Condition damage, or removing it as a strategy entirely.

How often is it actually coming up in your games? Many more crews are capable of killing by conditions, which is why I imagine that case was stopped.

Are you designing crews full of hard to kill and hazardous terrain effects to deny bounty points? Or is it just the rare occasion that it came, up and you went "Uh, that seems strange?"

[Sagrit]

In our current meta (mostly online because of COVID) the first question when choosing a master and thinking about roster is : how do i score Strategy. And the second question: how i deny scoring for Opponent. All other things like how to score Schemes, what synergy do i want in crew etc - it's following questions, not the main.

For example for Public Enemies it's a common idea to hire Minions only cheaper than 6SS and all models hire than 6 must be good protected and must have a really good reason to be hired (read it like be pretty good in killing).

I'm sure, that lot of us remember that it was pretty common in M2E to kill your own models (or a whole crew) to deny opponents scoring. Now it looks the same - with Public Enemies i would look for a way to finish off my models so opponent can't do it. I can't say that it happens in every game, but i would definitely use such option. It's just doesn't feel right.... I mean, it's pretty similar to die from fall damage - make a suicide jump is pretty similar to make a suicide step in't fire. But one case is covered by rules and FAQ and other is not, that what make me feel that it's some kind of mistake, not a design.

[Adran]

17 minutes ago, Sagrit said:

In our current meta (mostly online because of COVID) the first question when choosing a master and thinking about roster is : how do i score Strategy. And the second question: how i deny scoring for Opponent. All other things like how to score Schemes, what synergy do i want in crew etc - it's following questions, not the main.

For example for Public Enemies it's a common idea to hire Minions only cheaper than 6SS and all models hire than 6 must be good protected and must have a really good reason to be hired (read it like be pretty good in killing).

I'm sure, that lot of us remember that it was pretty common in M2E to kill your own models (or a whole crew) to deny opponents scoring. Now it looks the same - with Public Enemies i would look for a way to finish off my models so opponent can't do it. I can't say that it happens in every game, but i would definitely use such option. It's just doesn't feel right.... I mean, it's pretty similar to die from fall damage - make a suicide jump is pretty similar to make a suicide step in't fire. But one case is covered by rules and FAQ and other is not, that what make me feel that it's some kind of mistake, not a design.

I don't disagree with your points on crew construction, I even remember the first edition rules that allowed you to sacrifice your own crew to gain soulstones, and how that made so many schemes trivial to deny.

I understand it might not feel right, but I will still say the difference between Hazardous and Falling, is that 1 of them is explained in the rules to not count as anyone killing the model, and one of them needed to be clarified in the FAQ who it counted as being killed by.

I am saying is that it is much much harder to build a crew that can use hazardous terrain to deny bounty points, than it is to build a crew that can use conditions to deny bounty points, to the extent that they  specified killing with conditions will still earn you bounty points. There are 3 choices - Firstly the board has hazardous terrain, in which case both players can try and use the tactic.

Secondly -You create Hazardous terrain - I think there are 5 ways you can do that in a way to hurt your own crew - Pit Traps (spread over 3 factions), Von schill (land mines), Drowned, Mysterious Emmisary and Ice Golem.

Thirdly, your opponent creates hazardous terrain/auras. This is outside your control.

Even after you have created the Hazardous terrain you need to be able to use it to kill yourself, so you need to not be killed by the enemy attacks. And the ways you can create hazardous terrain to kill your own crew can also be used by the opponent about as easily.

Maybe I'm wrong and it really is trivial to kill yourself in way to deny public enemy points, but I don't think that anyone has demonstrated that it is common or easy to do. Its probably easier to make sure your model is outside of LOS of any enemy models, which will also deny those bounty points, than it is to do it with hazardous terrain.

 

 

[Maniacal_cackle]

I think the biggest issue is it makes certain abilities unplayable - if ice golem turns on a hazardous 2 aura, all the enemies near death can suicide to deny points.

So you may end up in situations where models are unplayable in an unintended way.

[Sagrit]

15 hours ago, Adran said:

I don't disagree with your points on crew construction, I even remember the first edition rules that allowed you to sacrifice your own crew to gain soulstones, and how that made so many schemes trivial to deny.

I understand it might not feel right, but I will still say the difference between Hazardous and Falling, is that 1 of them is explained in the rules to not count as anyone killing the model, and one of them needed to be clarified in the FAQ who it counted as being killed by.

I am saying is that it is much much harder to build a crew that can use hazardous terrain to deny bounty points, than it is to build a crew that can use conditions to deny bounty points, to the extent that they  specified killing with conditions will still earn you bounty points. There are 3 choices - Firstly the board has hazardous terrain, in which case both players can try and use the tactic.

Secondly -You create Hazardous terrain - I think there are 5 ways you can do that in a way to hurt your own crew - Pit Traps (spread over 3 factions), Von schill (land mines), Drowned, Mysterious Emmisary and Ice Golem.

Thirdly, your opponent creates hazardous terrain/auras. This is outside your control.

Even after you have created the Hazardous terrain you need to be able to use it to kill yourself, so you need to not be killed by the enemy attacks. And the ways you can create hazardous terrain to kill your own crew can also be used by the opponent about as easily.

Maybe I'm wrong and it really is trivial to kill yourself in way to deny public enemy points, but I don't think that anyone has demonstrated that it is common or easy to do. Its probably easier to make sure your model is outside of LOS of any enemy models, which will also deny those bounty points, than it is to do it with hazardous terrain.

 

 

Sure Adran, you are right that it's not a common issue. I don't think it's smart to actually plan such thing as creating Hazardous for your own models. I'm just saying, that it looks like  hole for me and when we are talking about holes in the rules it doesn't really matters how often can they be used  It's again same with Falling - you can't plan a falling damage in Public Enemies, you actually can't create something high enough and you can only rely on original Terrain on the table. So for me it looks even more rare than Hazardous. But still it was clarified  

[Adran]

13 minutes ago, Sagrit said:

Sure Adran, you are right that it's not a common issue. I don't think it's smart to actually plan such thing as creating Hazardous for your own models. I'm just saying, that it looks like  hole for me and when we are talking about holes in the rules it doesn't really matters how often can they be used  It's again same with Falling - you can't plan a falling damage in Public Enemies, you actually can't create something high enough and you can only rely on original Terrain on the table. So for me it looks even more rare than Hazardous. But still it was clarified  

 Falling was clarified because the rule book doesn't actually tell us who would count as killing you if you die to falling damage. You can infer that it was the person that controlled the action or ability that moved the model that has the claim, but it wasn't spelt out. (And other things don't follow the same logic, so claiming that my push killed you from the fall is hard to convincingly argue when the rules clearly say that if I pushed you into a pit trap I didn't kill you, and if I set you on fire I didn't kill you).

It is spelt out who counts as killing you if you die to hazardous terrain. No one counts as killing you.

This isn't just public enemies related, this will apply to anything that cares about who killed someone, so matters for vendetta and turf war as well for example. (Except in those cases Condition kills don't count either, so you could deny Deliver a message by burning yourself to death.)

 

9 hours ago, Maniacal_cackle said:

I think the biggest issue is it makes certain abilities unplayable - if ice golem turns on a hazardous 2 aura, all the enemies near death can suicide to deny points.

So you may end up in situations where models are unplayable in an unintended way.

This seems a poor argument. If you hire certain models, and then use certain abilities, and also don't kill enemy models but just leave them badly hurt and able to activate near a certain model, then they might be able to restrict your ability to score bounty points (but not fully deny you the possibility of scoring, just make it harder).

I've made 3 choices in that process before I've even given my opponent the chance to reduce my ability to claim bounty points. (Hired the model, activated the aura and attacked and not killed a model near the aura that can still activate to kill itself).  And I can still score the strategy point in theory that turn. It might be harder but its not denying it.

The model may be  a poor pick for a certain game, that isn't automatically a bad thing.

[santaclaws01]

11 hours ago, Adran said:

You can infer that it was the person that controlled the action or ability that moved the model that has the claim, but it wasn't spelt out.

I would argue that you can't infer it from just the rules text, for the reasons you said. That FAQ answer is very much adding something to the rules rather than clarifying it.

[Mycellanious]

On 8/26/2020 at 7:39 AM, Adran said:

I would argue that currently it is clear. Models killed by hazardous terrain don't count as killed by any model in particular. It is spelled out in the rules (Page 25), just like condition damage is.  It might lead to a few strange outcomes. FAQ 8 was already clear in the rules as far as I was concerned. That doesn't stop the question coming up, but it was something I thought was clear.

If Wyrd wanted to close the "loophole" it is easiest to do in Gaining grounds 2 when it arrives by either altering the wording of Public enemies to include hazardous as they have included Condition damage, or removing it as a strategy entirely.

How often is it actually coming up in your games? Many more crews are capable of killing by conditions, which is why I imagine that case was stopped.

Are you designing crews full of hard to kill and hazardous terrain effects to deny bounty points? Or is it just the rare occasion that it came, up and you went "Uh, that seems strange?"

I dont think that p. 25 is very helpful, because it is also listed on page 25 that the model that generates the Action or Ability that kill a model gets kill credit. A Hazardous Aura / Marker is both an Action generated by a model, and Hazardous Terrain. The rules contradict themselves. Not only are both of these rules from the same page, they are part of the same damn paragraph so it's not like we could say that one is a general rule and one a more specific rule. 

[Scoffer]

2 minutes ago, Mycellanious said:

I dont think that p. 25 is very helpful, because it is also listed on page 25 that the model that generates the Action or Ability that kill a model gets kill credit. A Hazardous Aura / Marker is both an Action generated by a model, and Hazardous Terrain. The rules contradict themselves. Not only are both of these rules from the same page, they are part of the same damn paragraph so it's not like we could say that one is a general rule and one a more specific rule. 

For me it's pretty clear, that "the action/ability that kills a model" is the action/ability that says "model suffers X damage" or "kill the model/model is killed". 

Walk action doesn't say anything about damage that's why it can not kill anything even if it's a walk in hazardous terrain. Abilities and Actions that generate Hazardous terrain also don't say "models within (aura) suffer X damage". 

[Adran]

6 minutes ago, Mycellanious said:

I dont think that p. 25 is very helpful, because it is also listed on page 25 that the model that generates the Action or Ability that kill a model gets kill credit. A Hazardous Aura / Marker is both an Action generated by a model, and Hazardous Terrain. The rules contradict themselves. Not only are both of these rules from the same page, they are part of the same damn paragraph so it's not like we could say that one is a general rule and one a more specific rule. 

1 is a general rule and 1 is a specific rule. Being in the same paragraph doesn't matter.  One sentence talks about things in general, and the other gives specific cases. 

In General if your action or ability results in the model dying then you get credit for the kill. 

But models that are killed specifically by conditions or by the Hazardous terrain trait do not count as being killed by the model whose action or ability caused it. ( I would guess in part because of the issue of tracking the information as well as the argument over if it was the model that created the hazardous terrain or the model that created the move that gets the credit for the kill). 

 

[Mycellanious]

1 hour ago, Adran said:

1 is a general rule and 1 is a specific rule. Being in the same paragraph doesn't matter.  One sentence talks about things in general, and the other gives specific cases. 

In General if your action or ability results in the model dying then you get credit for the kill. 

But models that are killed specifically by conditions or by the Hazardous terrain trait do not count as being killed by the model whose action or ability caused it. ( I would guess in part because of the issue of tracking the information as well as the argument over if it was the model that created the hazardous terrain or the model that created the move that gets the credit for the kill). 

 

No where is the damage from conditions equated to the damage from Hazardous. It would be nice if they were, but the Strat makes a distinction for Conditions specifically and not Hazardous, so we cant just treat them like conditions.

Both are general rules. "In general if a model dies to Hazardous Terrain no credit is awarded. If that terrain was generated by a model's Action or Ability that model gains credit" is also a valid interpretation of that paragrapgh

[Adran]

 

3 hours ago, Mycellanious said:

No where is the damage from conditions equated to the damage from Hazardous. It would be nice if they were, but the Strat makes a distinction for Conditions specifically and not Hazardous, so we cant just treat them like conditions

I didn't think I did treat them the same. I only mentioned them both because they are 2 things that are specified that don't cause credit for kills. I've already stated in this thread that if a model is killed by hazardous terrain then no one gets the bounty point. 

I don't remember if the specific rules rule is in M3, or if it's just an M2 carry over, but I don't think you understand the difference between general and specific. 

I think M3 talks in terms of core and special, and I agree the are both core rules. You can argue that your version is possible, but it seems much more convoluted and complex to justify than the other way. 

[Mycellanious]

1 hour ago, Adran said:

 

I didn't think I did treat them the same. I only mentioned them both because they are 2 things that are specified that don't cause credit for kills. I've already stated in this thread that if a model is killed by hazardous terrain then no one gets the bounty point. 

I don't remember if the specific rules rule is in M3, or if it's just an M2 carry over, but I don't think you understand the difference between general and specific. 

I think M3 talks in terms of core and special, and I agree the are both core rules. You can argue that your version is possible, but it seems much more convoluted and complex to justify than the other way. 

I dont have a way, I think that's its not really possible to tell one way or the other right now and I think it needs an FAQ asap

[santaclaws01]

7 hours ago, Adran said:

But models that are killed specifically by conditions or by the Hazardous terrain trait do not count as being killed by the model whose action or ability caused it. ( I would guess in part because of the issue of tracking the information as well as the argument over if it was the model that created the hazardous terrain or the model that created the move that gets the credit for the kill). 

You know, unless it's an action like Blood Poisoning where's it's both. Or they decide to follow the precedent they set with luring models to their death.

 

7 hours ago, Scoffer said:

Walk action doesn't say anything about damage that's why it can not kill anything even if it's a walk in hazardous terrain.

Except a walk action can kill something if it walks off a ledge.

[Adran]

10 hours ago, santaclaws01 said:

You know, unless it's an action like Blood Poisoning where's it's both. Or they decide to follow the precedent they set with luring models to their death.

Which I would say is the model being killed by the poison condition, so again would not count as a kill for the model doing the blood poisoning action.

EDIT- The rules cover this situation, thanks Scoffer, and they tell use that it counts as a kill by the action

You can lure a model to its death by falling to claim the kill, but you don't count as killing if you lure it into a pit trap.

[Scoffer]

56 minutes ago, Adran said:

Which I would say is the model being killed by the poison condition, so again would not count as a kill for the model doing the blood poisoning action.

This particular situation is already clarified in the Rulebook (p29 digital): 

If an Action would kill a model from damage suffered from a Condition¸such as an Action that states "Target suffers damage from the Burning Condition” the model taking the Action is considered to have killed the model