Combat

There are currently 2 ideas of how combat should work. The #Stack Based system is more elegant, but more or less untested. The #Special Event system is more traditional and is very similar to how combat is handled in Magic and other games.

Special Event

Combat occurs when characters controlled by different players are in the same area and any of those players wishes to enter combat. This check is made at the end of every stack (REWORD!).

If none of the players who control an undrained character on the area want to have combat occur combat does not occur. However if any player who controls an undrained character on the area wants combat to occur it does. A drained character does not allow a player to initiate combat.

When combat occurs each non-drained character deals its attack in damage spread as its leader chooses among the opposing characters. After combat each player may retreat their characters.

It works as follows:

1. The player with initiative assigns the damage of all his/her characters in one step.
2. Each other player does the same, proceeding in turn order.
3. The player with initiative becomes active and a fast action stack is played out.
4. All characters deal damage as they were assigned to.
5. Starting with the player with most total endurance on the area where combat occurred (computed as the sum of all the endurances of the characters controlled by that player) and progressing the order on decreasing total endurance, each player may choose whether or not to retreat. If any player chooses not to retreat then all other players must retreat. To retreat a player moves each of their characters at it's normal movement speed to another area. The players declare the retreats in the same way damage is declared (in turn-order starting with the player with initiative).
6. All retreat movement occurs simultaneously.
7. All characters involved in the combat are drained.

Stack Based

Combat is a handled as an implied ability on characters that reads:

: This deal its attack or less in damage distributed any way among any number of target characters, then this characters controller may choose to move this double its speed in any direction as long as the movement does not take this through an area on which there is an opposing character. Each target must be assigned at least one damage and the total must be less than or equal to this character's attack. The ability may only be played on a movement stack and has a range of 0 regardless of the range of this character. This action is called a combat action.

This is the entire system. These actions are handled exactly the same as any other action on the movement stack. The name combat action is only given to allow other cards to treat combat actions specially.

Discussion

The following are some of the interesting implication of this system. These are all results of the above rule combined with the rest of the rule set.

• Characters can "dodge" combat damage by moving off the area while the damage is on the stack. This could become a problem, if it is too easy to dodge. However by dodging you are basically giving up the area to your opponent so it could be counter acted by making area control more important. Also the damaging player could "chase" them if it had some way of moving. (Targeting rules are important for all this.)
• The retreat rules are very iffy to me. They need work. But the idea is to allow a player to run away after combat but not allow them to use it to use it to jump deep into enemy territory.

Note: This page needs to be updated to reflect changes in the game or need to be worked on for other reasons.

Sanity check and choose one of the ideas. Retreat rules.