Where There's War, There's Gold

[cadmachine]

In the KO book there are a number of very poorly worded and formatted rules, one of them is one of the articles from the Barak-Urbaz sky city.

Given the way the rest of the book is written and formatted, its my belief that its intention is that those are two seperate effects.

If your unit is within 3 inches it can pile in, this is because it has to be to make a pile in move, this is just reinforcing that there is a 3 inch limitation.

OR you can choose to select a unit and shoot as if it were the shooting phase.

My friend is saying that the 3 inches is for either scenario but that makes no sense for a number of reasons.

My question is, is there an official or even semi-official answer to which way it is?

A tournament or a white dwarf article etc that plays it one way or the other?

[Somanlius]

As a KO player myself I have to lean toward the interpretation that you have to be within 3" to shoot. Doesn't make much sense sure, but alot of stuff in our book doesn't make much sense.

[konijnebijter]

I think you should read it as: Once per battle a unit can attack as if it's the shooting phase or attack as if it's the combat phase. So the 3" range is not required to shoot.

[Isotop]

17 minutes ago, konijnebijter said:

I think you should read it as: Once per battle a unit can attack as if it's the shooting phase or attack as if it's the combat phase. So the 3" range is not required to shoot.

I think the grammar of the rule does not really support your interpretation. The problem lies in the connection between "one of your units" and "within 3"". The two of them are really fused together here, are they not? By subdividing the sentence, we get:

 

(1) Once per battle, in your hero phase,

(2) one of your units within 3" of an enemy can

(3) pile in and attack as if it were the combat phase,

or

(4) shoot as if it were the shooting phase.

 

Maybe we should rather write (3) and (4) as (2.1) and (2.2), since both are relying on (2) to make sense. Your argument on the other hand fuses (2) and (3) together - if I am understanding you correctly. After this, we are left with "shoot as if it were the shooting phase". The problem I am seeing here is: Who can shoot? We allready used up the "unit" part by fusing (2) and (3) together - so there is a missing reference when we try to use (4) to operate.

I hope I made myself somewhat clear. I am not a native english speaker, so I might be completely off here. I would welcome any correction and discussion.

[Somanlius]

13 hours ago, Isotop said:

I think the grammar of the rule does not really support your interpretation. The problem lies in the connection between "one of your units" and "within 3"". The two of them are really fused together here, are they not? By subdividing the sentence, we get:

 

(1) Once per battle, in your hero phase,

(2) one of your units within 3" of an enemy can

(3) pile in and attack as if it were the combat phase,

or

(4) shoot as if it were the shooting phase.

 

Maybe we should rather write (3) and (4) as (2.1) and (2.2), since both are relying on (2) to make sense. Your argument on the other hand fuses (2) and (3) together - if I am understanding you correctly. After this, we are left with "shoot as if it were the shooting phase". The problem I am seeing here is: Who can shoot? We allready used up the "unit" part by fusing (2) and (3) together - so there is a missing reference when we try to use (4) to operate.

I hope I made myself somewhat clear. I am not a native english speaker, so I might be completely off here. I would welcome any correction and discussion.

You said it much more eloquently than I could have. This is my thinking exactly.

[amysrevenge]

The way you have to decide how much of the sentence the "or" refers to, you have to divide it into two complete sentences that make sense.  It pivots around the "can".  Both of the "or" clauses have to make sense with the same sentence structure (and, in fact, you should be able to swap the order of the two clauses and it will still say the same thing).

The only way to parse it is like this:

a) Once per battle, in your hero phase, one of your units within 3" of an enemy can pile in and attack as if it were the combat phase.

b) Once per battle, in your hero phase, one of your units within 3" of an enemy can shoot as if it were the shooting phase.

There's no other way to divide this one up so that the "within 3" only applies to one "or" clause or the other.  You can't get to "Once per battle, in your hero phase, one of your units can shoot as if it were the shooting phase."  You can't just skip over words because you want to.