Wednesday, August 17, 2011
Diplomats and planetary invasions
As I read the rules Diplomats cannot prevent planetary landings only invasions. Which means that Diplomats must have defending units present with them in order to force the attacking player to undergo a Planetary Invasion rather than just a Planetary Landing.
The Diplomat rules state: "If a Diplomat is present on a planet about to be invaded by enemy Ground Forces during the Planetary Invasion step, the Diplomat may delay the invasion by one round."
The rules for Planetary Landings on hostile planet state: "A player lands unit on a planet containing one or more of an enemy player's Ground Force units. This will result in an Invasion Combat during the Invasion Combat step. If a player lands units on a planet that is controlled by an opponent, but does not contain any enemy Ground Forces, the planet falls without resistance. The invader simply removes the opponent's Control Marker and take the corresponding Planet Card form the opponent, placing it exhausted into his play area.
Obviously the term ground forces is outdated as PDS and mechanized units also force Planetary Invasion. However this still does not change the necessary condition to initiate a Planetary Invasion during the Planetary Landing step.
I'm not sure if anyone has been playing it wrong. But I am pretty sure that my group has overlooked that rule before and allowed for diplomats by themselves with no other units to stop planetary landings which is wrong. They can in fact only stop planetary invasions and only if they have units with them defending the planet.
What are your guys thoughts?
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You overinterpret. On the one hand, FFG is not very consistent with their wording in many cases, and on the other hand, it doesn't make sense theme-wise which is always a good indicator about whether one should use a rule or not.
ReplyDeleteMore to the point, however: the "Planetary Invasion" is a step of the Tactical Action, and while no Invasion Combat may occur, it is done nonetheless even when a planet simply changes hand by landing one GF there. So yes, the Diplomat can prevent a landing on his own too.
Thanks. I see that now. The wording is very confusing and had me doubting our original interpretation and use of that rule. Glad that I was wrong and it wasn't the case as it really wouldn't make much sense and would indeed go against the intention of the Diplomats special ability.
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