Hi Masque! Let me start by saying this was EXCELLENT work!
I didn't make it all the way through the 2.2 version the FAQ and now we're up to 2.3. These comments are from 2.2 but on a quick skim still apply to 2.3 and I thought I should post them before it's too late.
Special orders are declared before the movement phase by choosing a vessel, declaring the order and rolling leadership, repeating this over and over until a vessel fails its leadership check or all desired vessels have their special orders.
What is the reason for the change to the rules as written? The printed rulebook, the .pdf, and reference sheets all make it pretty clear that you issue orders for a ship/squadron then move it then repeat for each ship/squadron in your fleet.
This was a blooper on our part. We’ve been working on this since April, and it was supposed to be reworded several iterations ago to answer a specific FAQ question and was inadvertently forgotten. GREAT CATCH!! Fixed!
When escort squadrons are braced or on any special order that halves firepower, the whole squadron adds its firepower and weapon strength together and divides it in half (rounding up).
Why does this rule specifically apply to escort squadrons? A very similar but more complete rule is already in the Shooting section on page 3.
Because of all the problems and abuses with shooting with escort squadrons, it seemed pertinent to put this in both the shooting section and the section concerning being braced. I changed this tp put the better explanation on p.2, and I simply referenced it in the Shooting section.
You cannot split weapons batter or lance fire of any type at a single target!
"batter" = "battery"
Good catch. DONE!
Ships with multiple lances in a given fire arc may split their weapon strength between two or more targets but must still make a leadership check to fire on any target besides the closest.
Why mentions lances but not batteries? Why mention this at all? Splitting fire of lances and batteries are both clearly allowed by page 21 of the rulebook.
It is allowed, but this rule has been misinterpreted, which is why it was clarified here. I will re-word it to include all shooting weapons.
Ordnance is launched at the end of the shooting phase as opposed to the beginning of the ordnance phase. This means if a given carrier already has attack craft on the table at the beginning of the ordnance phase, it cannot launch any more attack craft that turn unless it recalls markers currently in play and launches new markers from the ship’s base, even if it has successfully reloaded. This prevents a carrier from attacking a target to expend its attack craft in play and then launching a new attack craft wave in a single turn. Ships and defenses that may launch up to twice the number of launch bays they have on the table are not restricted in this manner as long as they do not exceed the number of allowable attack craft markers in play.
This scenario implies that attack craft launched by a certain carrier prevent that specific carrier from launching again until they are removed. I always thought only the total number of bays and attack craft on the board mattered. The last sentence would seem to disallow a carrier from launching more craft if it had even a partial wave left on the table. I would assume it could launch another partial wave as long as the total craft on the board was not more than it had bays.
You are absolutely right- you can launch another partial wave; that is actually addressed separately in the same FAQ. The intent of the rule is specifically to prevent someone from moving ordnance already on the table to expend it in attacks, then launch a full strength of new ordnance, potentially getting two sets of attacks in a single ordnance phase. If you understood what I wrote here to mean you may not be able to do that, I have to re-smith it.
Opposing Resilient Attack Craft: If two markers that both have a 4+ save attack each other and both remain in play, they stop movement and remain in contact until the next ordnance phase. However, if any marker that saves is attacked again in the same phase, it (along with the marker that attacked it) is automatically removed. This save is used one fighter at a time. Following is an extreme example:
1. If two Thunderhawks are attacked by two Eldar fighters, and the first fighter attacks the first Thunderhawk and they both roll a 4+, both markers must immediately stop all movement and subsequent attacks but both remain in play. If the second Eldar fighter now attacks the first Thunderhawk, the first Thunderhawk is automatically removed. If the second Eldar fighter now rolls a 4+ save, it may remain in play but the Eldar ordnance phase is now complete because both ordnance markers used their save and can no longer move or attack.
2. It is now the opponent’s ordnance phase. The sole remaining Thunderhawk may now elect to move away from the two Eldar fighters, or it may elect to attack them. If it does, both it and the Eldar player again roll their 4+ save because it is now a different ordnance phase. Regardless of the outcome, all ordnance markers still surviving after this exchange remain in place until the next player turn because both ordnance phases have already taken place.
Overall I'm very happy with the resilient attack craft rules, but I think this example is incorrect. Since the first Thunderhawk temporarily loses its fighter status after surviving against the first Eldar fighter shouldn't the second Eldar fighter be forced to fight the second Thunderhawk as fighters should always be attacked before other attack craft according to the main rulebook?
Thunderhawks don’t “lose†being fighters, what they lose is their 4+ save. They are ALWAYS assault boats that behave as fighters. However, they only get to use their save once per ordnance phase. For example, Ork fighta-bommas are bombers that are ALWAYS fighters (except that they don’t get a save), which is different from Tau Mantas, which are bombers that get a 4+ save against fighters but are NOT fighters in and of themselves, meaning they ignore torpedoes and assault boats like other bombers do. You are probably not the only person thinking this so I will add it to the FAQ.
Crippling a vessel constitutes a permanent change to its turret value and thus the maximum number of attacks that can be gained by supporting fighters. A crippled Lunar will only have 1 turret and so you can only gain a maximum of +1 attack due to fighter support.
With the current turret suppression this rule makes no sense at all.
I understand your question, but it makes perfect sense- here’s why. The obvious question is, “why are fighters less effective when there are less turrets to defend against?†There’s no harm in explaining this further in the FAQ- you’re probably not the only person thinking this. In
game terms the point of fighter support is to defend against turrets (not attack the ship), and with less turrets, there’s less to defend against. In actual
rule terms, fighter support is to counterbalance the number of attacks bombers lose to turrets. Because the number of turrets go down when a ship is crippled, the actual number of bomber attacks (regardless of fighter support) go up. For example, four bombers rolling D6-2 attacks against a ship with two turrets only roll D6-1 against the same ship when crippled. The fighters offer less support because they are physically doing less to protect the bombers, but the total number of attacks is still increased.
As Battlefleet Gothic is a 2D representation of 3D space, a ship cannot attempt to ram more than one ship per movement phase, even if multiple enemy vessels are in its range of movement. The owning player must declare which ship it is attempting to ram before moving and cannot change this if the ramming ship ends its movement in base contact with more than one vessel.
Where a ship ends its movement has nothing to do with what it could ram. This should say that it doesn't matter how many ships the ramming ship moves over rather than ends in contact with.
You are right, and that's how it should have been explained. Done.
Teleport attacks can be conducted by capital ships that are on Lock-On or Reload Ordnance special orders. All other special orders preclude the use of teleport attacks.
This seems like an unneccesary change. Why mention capital ships specifically? Just to prevent Necron Jackals on Lock-On from using their portals?
Actually, this doesn’t have anything to do with Portals. Portals are a weapon system Necrons use IN ADDITION TO normal teleport attacks. That’s how Jackals get to make teleport attacks- they don’t break the rule prohibiting escorts from doing so, but they get a Portal, which is a weapon that does the same thing. That’s why Tombships can do four teleport attacks per turn, one normally and three more for its three Portals. This is explained in the Necron section of the rules so there’s nothing to fix.
While enemy ships can choose to fire on a hulk, they do not have to pass a leadership check to ignore one if it is the closest target. A player can fire on an enemy hulk if it is not the closest target, but it must make a leadership check normally.
This isn't really about this rule so much as that I've always been a little unclear on something. Does every single hit on a hulk cause another roll on the Catastrophic Damage Table? The rules are silent on this issue and I've never seen a FAQ concerning it. My group has always played that an attack against a hulk that scores at least one hit will cause another roll on the table, not one roll per hit. Maybe some clarification on this should be included or someone could at least clue me in on how they play it.
CRAP!! GREAT QUESTION!!! This was in an earlier FAQ and somehow got deleted. Andy Chambers told us some years ago that as stated on p.26 of the rules, “If a hulk suffers any hits, roll on the Catastrophic Table again.†What this means is if a ship is hulked, roll on the CD table. If you shoot at it and score two more hits, then you roll ONCE again on the table (NOT once per hit). Every time the hulk takes damage, you roll once again on the table. Because it’s turret value is zero, if you want the hulk to be dead, this is the one example where it is tactically prudent to separate a bomber wave and go at it with individual markers, for example.
When placing an exploding ship’s blast markers, they may not overlap with each other but may overlap or be stacked with blast markers previously placed (they may otherwise NOT be stacked). First place a single blast marker exactly where the ship was then place as many blast markers from the explosion as possible in contact with it, this should give you eight blast markers in total. If more blast markers were caused place them in contact with the ring of blast markers surrounding the first.
Why allow stacking in this one case? Why not just say place all the markers as close to the ship's previous location as possible?
Yet another good catch. When we re-wrote the blast marker rules to make it more congruent with (but not returned to) v1.0, I forgot to fix this section.
Once again, great work, Masque! THANKS!! If I was getting paid even a dime for any of this, I’d send you a nickel!
I won’t have the corrected FAQ posted until tomorrow. Everyone else, please keep in mind that except for the Errata and additions, the FAQ items themselves are intended to answer questions that have come up in unique and rare situations in game play. What may be obvious to some of us are not entirely so for others, and there’s no harm in making the FAQ as complete as possible, even if in the end this becomes a bit bigger than we intended.
Finally, someone suggested we break apart the FAQ items from the Errata items to make things easier to find and separate. That is a bit hard to do because the document is set up in the same format as the current rules in that all the Movement stuff is together, all the Shooting stuff is together, the individual fleets are in their own sections, etc. We would end up creating two separate documents if we tried to separate one from the other, each one similarly formatted and both of them functioning as addenda to the rules. As a compromise, I made a Table of Contents, and I included a few cross-reference line items in the rules. For example, for “Nova Cannons and Holofields,†we explained how Nova Cannon work against holofields in the Nova Cannon section, then left a quick note in the holofield section referencing the Nova Cannon section for how that weapon works against holofields. I don’t mind adding as much cross-referencing to this document as it needs to make it as easy to use as possible.
- Nate
