Defender’s Choice
Every so often when playing BattleTech you stumble upon a rules question that contradicts years of belief in how the game works. It doesn’t happen often but when it does, you have to shake your head and smile. Who knew the game worked that way the whole time? Just such an event occurred at GenCon 2012. It happened at the annual Battle the Masters event no less. And it wasn’t the game developers who righted the rules question but a persistent Catalyst Demo Agent thanks to a inquisitive and stubborn player (kudos to Mark Erikson!).
Defender’s Choice
Examine the following scenario for a moment. Here we find the state of the game directly following movement and before attack declaration. The Ballius, piloted by one of the Masters, Paul Sjardijn, has made a daring flanking manuever intending the use partial cover to its fullest advantage as only a quad ‘Mech can do. The Nova Cat (being proxied by a MadCat) has flip arms and intends to do his best to put the pony down.
Both ‘Mechs are on level 2 terrain with the level 3 terrain on the line between them. The Nova Cat is in a bit of a predicament. If he takes the partial cover he has to take the shots into the rear arc. Taking into account the Balius’ weapon load out it would be far too risky to allow the rear shots. His best option is to take the shots on the left side where his armor is more sufficient. Everyone at the table agreed it was the best tactical decision.
So the question is, what happens when two attackers want different line of sight?
My reaction and the first reaction of both the Masters at the table was that it was always defender’s choice. No matter what.
Unfortunately we were dead wrong. Thanks to the persistent questioning of one of my fellow fan player’s we wrangled Demo Agent Charlie Tango into the argument who promptly and decisively laid a Total Warfare size smack down with thunderous implications.
The Rules
TW page 99 for those following at home.
If the LOS passes exactly between two hexes, the player controlling the targeted unit decides which of the two hexes lie along the LOS. This choice can also affect the attack direction for incoming attacks (see Attack Direction, p. 119). The chosen hexside is used for all attacks between those two units for the remainder of the turn (see Line of Sight Between Two Hexes diagram on p. 101).
Since the Balius declared his attack first the Nova Cat is the first defender and his decision to NOT take the partial cover (and take the hits to his left side) affects both of the units. The situation is clarified further by the Line of Sight example on page 101.
Paul Sjardijn, Lauren Coleman, and myself were all dead wrong and never saw it coming. It just so happened that that Balius would see his demise that turn and the game quickly turned in favor of the fans as they whittled the Master’s ‘Mechs into scrap before the night was out.
It just goes to show that there are always new things to learn even in a game with so much history. I’m by no means a rules expert but this was a rule I thought I knew cold. Maybe I’m just out of touch. I’d love to hear in the comments from my readers if you were surprised by this rule.
Keep an open mind out there and keep those dice rolling!
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To add a bit of context: I think I’d run into this type of situation once before, and vaguely remembered that ALL the fire had to be on the same side of the hex edge. I also had heard a GM say the same thing earlier in the day over at the canon event, so that idea was fairly fresh in my mind.
When both Paul and Loren said it could differ each direction, I was surprised, but assumed they knew the rule better than I did. Since CharlieTango was walking by, I figured I’d ask him to look it up, if only so I knew the exact wording for future reference. As it turns out, that was a good thing :)
And yes, the funny part is that it didn’t even wind up affecting the course of the turn, as the Hellbringer blew out the Balius’ side before my Nova Cat even had a chance to fire.
Nice timing on the picture, and very nice writeup.
I have to say it is exactly this sort of thing that I find tedious in a game. That is that the rules are so complex that one has to take time out to read rule books to get an answer. It just feels very gamey to me. YMMV on that of course,
IMNSHO a random dice roll would have been a far more elegant, for definitions of elegant that simulate Murphy’s Rules, for this situation, and given the level of play (one-on-one combat) allowing both firers to have a different firing solution too, would have been a good thing.
Not balanced, not fair, but quite “real” like life can be. Again YMMV.
Yeah, that moment hurt my feelings almost as much as it hurt the Balius. ;)
What the rule means is that the same LOS applies to everyone that entire turn. No more 2 separate lines. And that’s a good change. And it is a change/clarification compared to how the rules phrase the issue in BMR and before. Funny part: back in the days of TW playtesting, I was one of several people who pushed for such a change, but as I had the (mistaken) belief the issue did not change in TW, well, there you go…
I obviously would’ve elected a more conservative move with the Balius if I’d properly appreciated the situation. And yeah, the Hellbringer finished me before we got to resolve the Nova Cat, but that was a bit of a fluke. It seemed more probable that it’s survive the Hellbringer’s salvo, and then get crippled or even killed by the Nova Cat. That 50% filter quads get from Partial Cover is huge.
Honestly, I think it’s amazing (in a good way) that after playing the game since 98, there’s still stuff to learn or improve on.
Resolving stuff with dice rolls should only happen when the rules aren’t clear. There’s plenty of random stuff in the game already, the more can be left up to skill of the player, the better.
So yeah, I guess my mileage varies about 100% with PiP. =) I suppose my advice would be to check out the Quickstrike rules on p.400 of StratOps, they might be closer to what you seem to prefer.
Final note: despite the huge disappointment of seeing the Balius meet its end due to an error on my part, the game was still fun, and it was a pleasure to have had the 4 gamers we did. I still feel really bad about that fluke Sensors critical on turn 1 or 2 that just crippled the Longbow before it even got to do anything. That had to suck a huge chunk of the fun out immediately, so props for hanging in there.
You guys worked hard, and definitely earned the victory.
Don’t like quick strike, not because they are not good rules, but because they no longer feel like BattleTech to me.
I’m all for less random stuff, as too much random stuff means the games boil down to just the luck of the roll on the dice.
We always had a house rule. It was the lesser of two evils. We figured if you wanted that back shot you were gonna earn and make the LOS unquestionable and to where it fell. In a case such as this we would of went with the leftside and no partial coverage. But then that just always seemed fair to us.