Squad Goals, the 3-man marvel crisis protocol team tournament wrapped earlier this month. I was there as a color commentator and judge. During the event I had 2 very interesting rules questions that I want to talk about here, so strap in because we are diving deep into the rules for this one.
First I got to experience a team tactics card I had never seen played. Trial by Combat. This card is from the warrior falls rivals pack that features killmonger usurper and King T’challa.
The card allows you to turn off the leadership of your opponent’s leader. You both roll dice equal to your current health and the one that rolls fewer successes loses their leadership. It’s a cool and niche card.
The rules question that was asked of me was “Can this card be played on a dazed character.” My gut reaction to this is no, but the players wanted to know why the answer was no. I responded with dazed characters can’t be affected by team tactics cards. The player playing trial by combat said “that’s not what dazed says in the rule book.” So here we go time to dive deep into the rule book and forums on a quest to resolve an incredibly specific rules question.
Let’s look at what the rule book says about dazed models.
The most important part is “…[can’t] be affected by special rules or super powers. Dazed characters can’t make attacks or play Team Tactics Cards…” it explicitly says they can’t play Team Tactics Cards but not that they cannot be affected by them. So now the question becomes are Team Tactics Cards special rules?
Ugh. Not an answer, another question. Let’s take a different tack. Is this answered on the rules forum?
No help here, all the rulings are about trial by combat versus servants of the apocalypse not being affected by the card.
Ok we need to move this event on, I’ve been at this table with clocks paused trying to resolve this ruling for over 5 minutes let’s just get this game to move on. I end up ruling that he can play the card. He rolls his dice and gets zero successes failing to turn of the opponent’s leadership.
Unfortunately I am wrong…you cannot play Team Tactics Cards on Dazed models.
The precedent is best set by the rulings about Deal with the Devil and the First One.
These cards cannot be played on dazed characters, and while the rules forum moderators have railed against using one ruling to justify another I am confident that this works due to Negoldar stating “Team Tactics Cards are special rules.” As well as the same ruling being applied to multiple Team Tactics Cards.
The Second difficult rules question was about how the toward and away movement work. We have Bullseye backed into a corner, base to base with a truck. He Lives through an attack and would like to use Parting Shot to put some distance between himself and his attacker.
Unfortunately you cannot climb when you are granted a movement only when you are using a movement action and without wall crawler or flight bullseye is trapped. Or is he?
The Bullseye player would like to place his movement tool outside the away angle then move back into the away angle and land in a spot that would be legal if the truck wasn’t there. Is this allowed? Let’s start with what the toward and away section of the rule book says.
Ok so the character can’t cross the line. Easy, I rule that he can’t do it. And look at that I’m wrong.
When advancing a character the character does not technically move along the movement tool the way they would on a push or throw. Instead they teleport from their starting location to somewhere else on the stick.
When speaking with other players at the event about the ruling I found that nearly every player who got the rules question correct were brotherhood players. This stems from a very similar ruling with the Team Tactics Card Deception.
Since Deception allows you to move an opponent’s model their full speed situations where the model needs to maneuver around terrain will naturally come up more often leading brotherhood players (who run mystique as their leader) to know the rules interaction better than most.
Squad Goals was a very successful event for us 24 teams of 3 players. 72 players is a very large event by Marvel Crisis protocol standards. But even though I have been very successful in organizing events it doesn’t mean that I don’t make mistakes when judging these events. I hope that your takeaway from this article is that anyone can run events and you should get out there and not worry about making mistakes. Instead, get out there, host more events and make this community awesome!
I am Vincent Curkov if you want more insights like this article you can find me on my Youtube channel or on Alfredo’s Size 3 Taco Truck: a Marvel Crisis Protocol Podcast. I am involved in 2 other great events. CarlCon which is in Sacramento in September and still has tickets for sale and Second Wind in Chicago which is currently sold out but the waitlist is very short. Until next time don’t forget that fun is a finite resource.
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