Our wonderful and friendly discord has a channel designed to take your questions! Sometimes GW’s FAQs are slow to be updated, and rules are either unclear or simply not phrased well for non-English speakers. To that end, we have an excellent team of lawyers on hand to interpret the rules and answer questions you might have.
Below are the questions that were asked over the last 7 days from our discord server and the answers provided by our legal department*:
Q: Is “at the start of the battle” explicitly defined?
A: There is no hard rule anywhere in the core rules or season rules that states when the “start of the battle” is. The generally accepted practice is that the start of the battle happens after deployment, but before the first start of turn phase.
This is why, as an example, a unit that moves outside of its deployment zone in the deployment phase doesn’t count as a Scout unit for the purposes of Scouting Force. Also, if you null deploy, your opponent automatically scores all of the Intercept and Recover targets, although this is such a niche case that it should be clarified with your TO.
GW very proudly talked about how they had split all of the abilities in the game into actions so they could have a standard language. This is a case where they abandoned that standard language in favor of allowing their players to argue about something. See also some vagaries on when a unit is using an ability vs. when the player is using an ability, but that is generally clearer cut.
Q: Can I declare the retreat ability and then not move?
A: The generally accepted RAW would be that no, you do not need to move after declaring the Retreat action. This will likely be clarified in an FAQ or Errata by GW, because it makes a huge difference in the Attuned to Ghyran strike tactic. Declaring a retreat with two units while not moving them out of combat would allow you to score that tactic while still allowing the units that Retreated to fight and/or contest any objectives they might have been sitting on.
The wording of Retreat states that a unit can move after it suffers the mortal damage. If you had to move it would say that the unit must move. This will likely cause some arguments with your opponents, since the last sentence implies that the unit cannot end that move out of combat, but if you aren’t required to move then that last bit can be ignored.
Again, this is a case where you should ask your TO before doing it. Some TOs will use RAW, and some will use RAI, where the intent would seem to be that the retreating unit must end the action not in combat. You don’t want to grind your game to a halt because of some odd wording of a rule.
And that’s all we had for the week! We hope you found this helpful. If you have questions of your own, feel free to join our discord and ask away!
*Please note that the “legal department” is a joke. None of these people are lawyers, cannot provide real legal advice, and are not representing themselves as lawyers. This shouldn’t have to be said, but US law is dumb so there’s the disclaimer. Don’t come after us.
