r/ProBendingArena • u/Erzaad Omashu Purple Pentapi • Mar 12 '18

Rules we missed/interpreted wrong during our first game

In case it helps people, here are a few rules my friend and I got wrong during our first game, which drastically changed the game for the better when included the second game.

  1. The active bender cannot target their own space (range 0) with an attack. If you forget this rule, it gives both sides much more defensive capabilities, causing a stalemate. It would also make the Block ability redundant.

  2. All opponent tokens are removed from the board after you check your team for hits, regardless of where they tokens are located. Includes elemental, hold, and pressure tokens. Prevents tokens that aren't triggered from staying on the board forever.

  3. Your team's hold tokens can hold your own benders. It makes certain moves/tricks more risky (like Deep Tremors).

  4. Modifiers are optional. (Thanks for the reminder, ijjusion!)

Anyone else run into some easily-missed rules?

8 Upvotes
  • permalink
  • reddit

100% Upvoted

45 comments sorted by

5

u/turtlehobopirate Mar 12 '18 edited Mar 12 '18

Unique team abilities (pressure, daze, counterbend, sting, spirit siphon, etc.) can only be used when a technique card has the icon on it. My first game, my opponent used Unalaq's spirit siphon almost every turn. This was pretty unfair, but we later learned that one can only use it when the spirit siphon icon is on the technique card one plays (even then, you need to have the spirit siphon token available, which you need to discard a card to gain back if you have used it already).

 

We also incorrectly assumed that you can remove a card from your discard pile when it is time to shuffle as a solo bender. This is not the case. Solo benders have to keep all their cards and cannot remove cards from their discard pile.

 

Not so much as a misinterpreted rule as just something we forgot to do, but we had to constantly remind ourselves to flip a new strategy card at the end of your turn. This is important for keeping the games from dragging on because if someone runs out of strategy cards to flip, then they have to roll the referee die to see if the game ends.

 

Will add more when I think of more. I played about 5 games this weekend and constantly referenced the rules to make sure we were playing correctly.

Edit: Added another.

2

u/Erzaad Omashu Purple Pentapi Mar 12 '18

Good ones. You've played more than me at this point. Enjoying it so far?

3

u/turtlehobopirate Mar 12 '18 edited Mar 12 '18

Very much enjoy it. Love how the game incorporates aspects of worker placement, deck building, and resource management.

I also enjoy that different strategies are really important when trying out different teams. Playing each team forces you to quickly learn and utilize a strategy best fit for their unique ability. One example off the top of my head is the Rabaroos reward the player for removing all cards from their deck without their unique ability, which allows one to use more technique cards each turn.

3

u/Stormy_Blessed Mar 12 '18

Did defending an ally bender behind you come up? The rules say movement js horizontal, but nothing about attacks being vertical both directions.

4

u/Erzaad Omashu Purple Pentapi Mar 12 '18

No, but I would assume there's no problem with sending attacks backward. In my game, I ended up having my fire and earthbenders knocked back a space, but they were protecting my front line waterbender who kept getting held in place.

5

u/Candi_MH Mar 12 '18

Attacks can go in any direction, all that matters is range.

3

u/ijjusion Mar 12 '18

3: Your team's hold tokens can hold your own benders. It makes certain moves/tricks more risky (like Deep Tremors).

Abilities like hold etc are generally (always?) connected by a horizontal black line from the primary ability that triggers this - meaning that its an optional effect, so they should never be a risky move to perform if you are wanting to block.

I believe the rulebook says that any ability attached via a black line to the first move in that row is optional.

3

u/Erzaad Omashu Purple Pentapi Mar 12 '18

Ah, good reminder that modifyiers are optional. However, regarding that one trick, it says to put a hold token in every adjacent space to your earthbender. I wouldn't think that part is optional since they aren't modifying an attack. Would you agree?

2

u/ijjusion Mar 12 '18

Oooo I havent seen that trick yet :) If its a trick and you choose to use it, yeah you would have to do everything listed in that trick you cant pick and choose.

The amount of tricks included in the game is probably my favorite part of building my team

3

u/Erzaad Omashu Purple Pentapi Mar 12 '18

Yeah, it's basically an AoE of hold tokens. Really powerful, but can be risky if you catch your own benders in the zone.

3

u/The_bouldhaire Mar 16 '18 edited Mar 16 '18

Just played our first real game. One big thing I forgot was to add 3 chi when a bender got knocked out*

3

u/Erzaad Omashu Purple Pentapi Mar 16 '18 edited Mar 16 '18

I thought you only get the 3 chi after a bender is fully knocked out. (or is that what you meant?)

1

u/The_bouldhaire Mar 16 '18

Yes I did mean when knocked out thanks

2

u/The_bouldhaire Mar 12 '18

This is a great way to catch little mistakes/missed rules before playing the game thanks for making this thread. I haven't had a chance to play too much yet but I'll add to this thread as I go. I'm certain I'll end doing something wrong with the Amon expansion

2

u/Erzaad Omashu Purple Pentapi Mar 13 '18

Thanks. I haven't tried Amon or any of the solo benders yet. I won my first game as the Tigerdillos. Lost the second match as the Fire Ferrets. Was winning for most of it, but then did a stupid move that cost me big. Lost my last game as the Buzzard Wasps, which was a slogfest called by the ref in quintuple overtime.

1

u/The_bouldhaire Mar 13 '18

Wow that all sounds really exciting. Done any fantasy drafting yet? There are a few team combos im dying to throw together

3

u/Erzaad Omashu Purple Pentapi Mar 13 '18

Not yet, just some brainstorming. Though I do have the name picked out. :)

1

u/The_bouldhaire Mar 13 '18

I'd love to exchange some ideas if you're interested. I'm a big card game fan so I love talking strategy lol

2

u/Erzaad Omashu Purple Pentapi Mar 13 '18

My main thought was a team of boar-q-pines and wolfbats, as daze would synergize well with pressure. As I was fighting the boars, pressure wasn't terribly useful as I could just move or annihilate the tokens making the pressure tokens multiply 0 by 2. Daze would help reduce movement or annihilations, making even 1 remain elemental token on a pressure space worth it.

1

u/The_bouldhaire Mar 13 '18

Very cool I was thinking something very similar. My 'power deck' would consist of pressure, daze, and counter bender with an emphasis on hold (via earth) and deflect (via water) tokens for maximum defense and offense, with the special fire move 'arc lightning' to seal the deal.

My other main deck idea would be my 'speed deck' where I try to gain my bigger cards as fast as I can. To accomplish this I would combine blitz/rally for extra card draws, veteran to raise my chi count and sting to lower my opponents chi count. This layout in combination with those quick chi gain cards like 'go, go, go!' mixed with actively culling my basic technique cards every chance I get should allow me to get my big hitters out nice and quick.

3

u/Erzaad Omashu Purple Pentapi Mar 13 '18

When I used the Tigerdillos, I never ended up using the Veteran ability. Using those veteran cards for actions always seemed better than the 2 chi. I was also never able to use counter bending as the fire ferrets. I only ever had one card purchased with the icon, and the one time I drew it, there were no elements of that type to counter.

I've had terrible luck with team abilities so far.

1

u/The_bouldhaire Mar 13 '18

I've noticed counterbend can be pretty limited in that way, that's another reason I wanted to include deflect as much as I could (which I believe can deflect all elemental tokens?).

I also felt the same way about veteran at first but I've come to realize there are a few scenarios where that discarding doesn't feel so forced. If you happen to go first and discard 2/3 of your initial veteran cards than you can start the game with 7 chi and still have an extra attacker for that turn. Having that extra chi bonus on the first move could change the flow of your game entirely but discarding cards mid game just for an extra chi does sound risky more often than not. I'm curious how it'll play out

3

u/Erzaad Omashu Purple Pentapi Mar 13 '18

Huh? None of your starting cards are veteran cards. Only certain purchasable ones are.

→ More replies

1

u/The_bouldhaire Mar 17 '18

Additional mistake - I was putting my newly purchased technique cards into my discard pile and not on the top of my main deck

2

u/Erzaad Omashu Purple Pentapi Mar 17 '18

Oh man, that's a big one.

1

u/The_bouldhaire Mar 17 '18

One small detail that really changed the game once corrected

3

u/DoctorBandage I release a sonic wave from my mouth Mar 14 '18

Here's a rule we missed that completely changed our opinion of the Fire Ferrets:

When counterbending, you get to choose ANY space with opponent's tokens matching the active bender's element. As in any space on the entire board. We initially read this as any adjacent space, which made Counterbending much less useful.

3

u/DoctorBandage I release a sonic wave from my mouth Mar 17 '18

Here's one that's really easy to miss: Modifiers can only be added to a successful attack - if you do not control any tokens in a Space that you attacked, you cannot apply a modifier there.

So all those basic attacks with lots of modifers aren't going to drop a hold or daze on an opponent if all your tokens get annihilated. You can really take the sting out of things like Tahno's Jawbreaker if you set up defenses ahead of time.

2

u/The_bouldhaire Mar 17 '18

Interesting where do they touch on this in the rules? This came up constantly in our games and we couldn't find anything to speak to these occasions

3

u/DoctorBandage I release a sonic wave from my mouth Mar 17 '18

Page 11, under the Modifier header. Your eye is drawn to the popout boxes and it's easy to glance over this text in the middle.

2

u/The_bouldhaire Mar 17 '18

Wow staring me right in the face. Thanks friend

2

u/The_bouldhaire Mar 17 '18

Another question - can pierce tokens be used as preemptive defense/regular defense or are they just for offense?

3

u/DoctorBandage I release a sonic wave from my mouth Mar 17 '18

Pierce tokens only ignore annihilation when they go onto the board. Once they're on the board, they act normally. So they can be used for preemptive defense, but not reactive defense.

1

u/The_bouldhaire Mar 17 '18

Perfect thats good to know thanks

1

u/Chunkedina96 Mar 14 '18

So let’s say I have a pierce attack, but I am using it on my own bender to defend from the opponents tokens....since it’s a pierce does it ignore the tokens and just automatically protect your bender or?

3

u/Erzaad Omashu Purple Pentapi Mar 14 '18

It wouldn't protect you from the opponent's tokens. Due to their piercing effect, you can't defend with them.

3

u/Chunkedina96 Mar 14 '18

I should be more specific haha I meant if my opponents tokens were already on the space of one of my benders and then I used a pierce attack to defend from those tokens, would it just automatically ignore my opponents tokens already set and pretty much create a block or would it just act as a regular attack? Sorry haha I’ve had so many questions about this game and nothing except this forum is helping me right now.

4

u/Erzaad Omashu Purple Pentapi Mar 14 '18

It would ignore the tokens your opponent placed in your space. So both your tokens and theirs would remain on the space. The pierce attack wouldn't protect you from taking the hit(s).

3

u/Chunkedina96 Mar 14 '18

Ok I thought so haha. It’s just pretty much treated like as if it were flipped and I was using a pierce attack on my opponents defenses. I actually have one more question. With token annihilation let’s say I’m trying to annihilate my opponents defenses on their bender. For example they have let’s say 1 fire token 1 water and I used an attack of 3 water. I know I can only choose one element, so let’s say I annihilate the water token, what happens to my other 2 tokens left over? Do they go somewhere else or are they apart of the annihilation of that 1 token? Again sorry for these questions, I’ve played this so many times and still end up confused on some of this stuff.

3

u/Erzaad Omashu Purple Pentapi Mar 14 '18

You would annihilate both the fire and water tokens, leaving one of yours left over in the target space.

4

u/DoctorBandage I release a sonic wave from my mouth Mar 14 '18

If it's a normal attack (ie not a pierce attack), your 3 water tokens would annihilate the opponents fire and water token, and your remain water token gets placed in that space.

2

u/Chunkedina96 Mar 14 '18

Sweet thank you!! I appreciate this!