ore Rulebook and Tournament Doc Changes

POSTED ON JANUARY 16, 2023 BY KYLE DORNBOS

This article will cover the primary changes from the new Core Rulebook (CRB) and
Tournament Document which were posted today by Atomic Mass Games (AMG).

You can find the actual documents here:

Core Rulebook

Tournament Document

I’m going to try and just quickly hit the changes and what they mean for you, and
keep my opinions to a minimum (for now), because there are a lot of them. Note
also this won’t include things that are obviously going to get fixed (like being able to
activate units twice).

Feel free to comment if I got something wrong or missed anything big.

We’ll divide this into core rule changes and keyword changes, the OP doc changes,
roughly in order of how big the changes are.

Core Rule Changes

Line of Sight (LOS)
All units now use Silhouettes to determine line of sight to and from, and line of
sight is reciprocal, which means if unit A can see unit B, unit B can also see unit A.
You draw line of sight from any part of the attacker silhouette to any part of the
defender silhouette to determine if the attacker can see. Silhouettes are shaped
slightly differently depending on the unit type, as below:
Small base troopers: same as before (there is no size in the rules doc but it looks to
be the width of a trooper base). The fact that it’s a cylinder and not a flat template is
slightly different, geometrically speaking, and has some implications for line of
sight, particularly from elevation.

Notched base troopers: now use a standard template. Unclear exactly how large it
is supposed to be, but you can probably extrapolate from the small base silhouette
template.

Ground Vehicles: Create an imaginary cylinder from the base to the top of the hull
(ignore sticky out bits like antennae and crew members). Ground vehicles
now block line of sight according to the size of their cylinder (!).

Repulsor vehicles: Create an imaginary cylinder from the bottom of the hull to the
top of the hull, ignoring the clear peg and any sticky out bits.

Cover
To determine cover, you no longer use the center to center line. Now for a
defending mini to get cover, it just needs to be obscured from any part of the
attacker’s silhouette, and for a unit to be obscured it just needs any part of its
silhouette to be blocked by a piece of terrain that gives it cover (not super clear on
how you do that, I couldn’t find the 50% pregame height rule anywhere). In case it
wasn’t super clear in the actual rules, here is a helpful forum ruling on this
point: https://forums.atomicmassgames.com/topic/8723-cover-determination/
Basically, this translates to “defender chooses the point you look from,” which is
nearly always going to be somewhere on the base of the attacker, since that is most
likely to cause the defender to be obstructed by intervening terrain. Essentially, you
can just draw a laser line across the table from attacker to defender, and if it
crosses terrain, the defender gets cover. Sorry Eye of Sauron AT-ST, this is heavy
cover now for these Rebel Troopers:

Yeah, that’s heavy cover.

For those that have been around awhile, this is actually similar to how Legion was
when it first came out, with just drawing lines across the table… for about a month.
Then they created the two step process where you needed both to be true to get
cover (center line crosses terrain and vision obscured from top of mini).
You can sort of still do the Eye of Sauron thing with speeders (especially T-47s) since
their silhouette doesn’t start until the hull, which is way up in the air.

Another way to think of this is that cover is now also reciprocal; in order for the
defender to be in the open, the attacking unit leader also has to be completely in
the open, unless it is touching the terrain piece in question.

This is also cover for the Rebel Troopers:

Courtesy of PCGamerPirate
Note that vehicles don’t have nearly as generous of treatment on defense; 50% of
their silhouette must be obscured to receive cover at the time of attack (this is on
pages 37-38). I’m not super clear on how you decide which point to look from to
decide whether it’s 50% or not… if that’s the same “every to every” process that
could get really weird, especially if the pregame “50% height” discussion is gone as it
appears to be.
Panic
Suppression tokens work basically the same, but the rules for panic have changed.
Now, if a unit has enough tokens to panic after its rally step, it does nothing
(replacing the previous “flee to table edge”), drops objectives (they always did that),
stays in place, and then loses suppression equal to their courage. Panic is also a
constant check, which means any time a unit has suppression tokens equal to
double its courage, it counts as panicked which is relevant for the next part:
panicked units cannot score objectives and any objective tokens they hold are
worthless. Basically this means if you can accumulate enough suppression on a unit
after it activates, it is ignored for objective purposes. Note that units that become
“panicked” after they activate will not drop those tokens; they’ll just hold onto a
worthless one.

For those looking for the citations here: explaining what panic is can be found on
page 15 of the CRB, the losing actions bit is on page 22, and the scoring bit is on
page 19.

Terrain
Terrain is now split up into three different types: Scatter, Area and Obstacle, and
three classifications thereof: Open, Difficult, and Impassable.

An Obstacle taller than a silhouette cannot be moved through, but can be climbed
through (if not Impassable). Trooper minis cannot end movement overlapping an
Obstacle, they must be fully within/on it (no hanging bases). Impassable really
means it now. Nothing can move through Impassable except the Jump X keyword
and Repulsor Vehicles. Climbs cannot move through Impassable terrain.

Example of new terrain: a building could be classified as Heavy Cover, Obstacle, and
Open now. For minis with silhouettes shorter than the building, they could perform
a Climb to move on top or through it.

Pass Rule
I’m going to just screencap this and then distill it, because it’s actually not that
complicated:
Basically, if when it is your turn, your opponent still has more stuff left to go with,
you can pass. One time per round.

This is a slight buff to fire support which historically would cost you some tempo,
but basically the upshot of this is: if you are down activations, it is still not great, but
less bad than before.

Movement Changes
Trooper movement
Small base troopers now don’t move along the template, they just go straight to
their end point. This is kind of “how people were doing it anyway.” Movement by
notched base trooper is not affected.

Vertical Movement
Climb
Basically, all small base troopers now have speed 1 jump; no more clamber check
or having to base terrain. You can move up to height 1 over obstacle terrain up to
speed 1 from your current position. This is a move action, which means
Relentless/Charge/Steady all work off of it. This also comes with some changes to
the various vertical movement keywords.

Expert Climber – Can climb up to Height 2

Scale – Can climb up to height 2, doesn’t slow down for difficult terrain. This is
basically now just grappling hooks + environmental gear.

Jump X – Exactly the same as before, can move up to height X at full speed with one
move. Note that you can still only do it once; if this wasn’t clear check the example
text on page 14 under card actions.
Speeder – Same as before, except you no longer suffer damage when “crashing.”
Basically if you would run into something you just stop; Speeders can now
essentially hover in place by running into a terrain piece they wouldn’t be able to
move over.

Winning the Game

Besides the panic changes, there is a nugget buried in here that is actually a huge
change:

Basically, blue no longer wins ties; whoever has a lower bid does. I know you are
thinking “how often does that actually happen?” Every game, actually. Every single
game starts out with a tie score. This has massive implications for how the tone is
set on a lot of objectives, especially Vaporators, but also Breakthrough, Bombing
Run, and Hostage. If you have the bid, you are the aggressor now, if the game
would otherwise be likely to tie.
Wound Allocation
Minis that cannot be seen can now suffer wounds, but the wound total is capped by
the “wound threshold” of what you can see. This is basically the “no scoping” rule,
though in practice it does a lot more than that (Reckless Diversion with a unit leader
poking out anyone?). This gets a little weird with wounded multi-wound units like
Wookiees, where you could potentially “overkill” into minis that can’t be seen since
it uses the wound threshold and not how many wounds a mini currently has.
Everyone’s favorite strike team unit leaders now have to die last, since you can wipe
the hidden model with any shot.

Note that you can no longer attack something unless your unit leader can also see
it, so while you can now “corner peek” with any normal old heavy weapon model,
you have to throw the unit leader out there too and expose two models instead of
just one.

Other nuggets
I’m going to quick hit these because they don’t really belong in any one spot:

 Speeders and hover units can no longer cohere on multiple elevations

(and neither can troopers after a climb)
 Can now leave the battlefield as long as you end up back on it
 No more donuts on unit abilities: if an ability has just one range displayed,
that is the maximum range for that ability. Range 1-4 super commando
mando rockets, anyone?
 When a transport is defeated, the transported unit now flips its token
facedown.
 Can no longer withdraw into melee
 Payload no longer ignores terrain when moving. RIP that objective, I guess.
 Units cannot be deployed touching objective tokens
Keyword Changes
Exemplar
No more standby sharing. Rip Padme.

Deflect
Can no longer be used at all in melee. For historical reference you could always
trigger the keyword (in melee or ranged) by spending a dodge to gain surge/defend,
but a unit only suffered wounds on a ranged attack. Now you can’t use it at all in
melee to get the surge/defend.

Note that deflect-like abilities that aren’t actually deflect are unaffected. Djem So
and Soresu Mastery always worked the same in ranged and melee (both did melee
wounds as a feature of their ability, Obi-Wan and Anakin being such accomplished
duelists). Yoda already has surge/block printed on his card. Weirdly, Block is also
not affected, despite historically being identical to Deflect except for the bit about it
sending ranged wounds back on surges.

Covert Ops
Can no longer be used if you don’t already have a spare commander.

Cumbersome
Can now move after attacking (but still not before).

Fire Support
Cannot fire support with Arsenal.

Arsenal
Can no longer split fire.

OP Doc Changes
Note that TOs of various events (notably Las Vegas Open and Worlds) have openly
said that if there is a conflict between this and the event packet, the event packet
takes precedence.

Tiebreakers
Strength of Schedule is now the official “first tiebreak,” followed by points
destroyed, then victory points earned, then random (if it somehow gets to that).

Note that a draw is also technically possible (between lists with the same bid) so
there is a way to account for those now in the scoring system; a Win is 3 points, a
Loss is 0, and a Draw is 1.

Battle Cards
Battle cards are no longer hidden information; I guess you’ll want to look at these
when you decide if you want to be red or blue.
Round Times

Yeah uh… I’m just going to leave this here. Round times by official format are now
both hidden and variable. Yay, fun? Note the above again about the event
packet/tournament rules conflicting where applicable.