AoS Realmshaper Engine - Let's Crack It!

It looks cool. I'm gonna keep mine just as part of a display board or something.

If you didn't have to place it on the table, i'd use it in my list. Honestly, it's a little lame but i'm not too broken up about it.

 

I thought about setting a shattered temple at the opposite site of the table. It has +1 Cast und is deadly (which doesn't hurt coalescent).

(Is there any rule how to use the RSE in tournament play, when the tables are set up by the to?)

 

Disclaimer I have no experience. But from the sounds of it
TO do not allow the use of the terrain rules (at least the ones outlined in pitched battles in GHB2019 where you designate primary and secondary terrain).
This I imagine is from the headache of having to spend time constantly moving and adjusting terrain on the tables (which is normally provided and pre-placed). If I was a TO I defentily wouldn't want to deal with that and would make a blanket ruling to not use those terrain rules.

IF they were allowed though it would probably vary tournament by tournament with no set standard.

 

Sorry for beeing too vague.

I asked for the general rule of placement of the RSE in tournament Play. (I know you can't bring your shattered temple to a tournament.)

 

Look at the OBR phallic bone pile. It will likely be placed in a similar manner by tournament organizers ruling.

 

According to RAW in battletome, 6" from the edge of the board & 6" from objectives. Before the rest of terrain is placed, and before territories are rolled for.

If you are asking for what has been ruled in previous tournaments, you can thank the pandemic for lack of info for our specific case, however...

The OB have a similar piece of terrain in terms of rules,

"Bone Tithe Nexus:
When terrain is set up for a battle, any BONE-TITHE NEXUSES must be set up by the player whose army they are a part of, before any other terrain features are set up, more than 3" from any objectives and more than 6" from the edge of the battlefield. Set up the rest of the terrain as described in the core rules "
VS
"Realmshaper Engine:
When terrain is set up for the battle, any Realmshaper Engine terrain features are set up, more than 6" from any objectives and more than 6" from the edge of the battlefield. Set up the rest of the terrain as described in the core rules"

I haven't been able to find any official tournament FAQ about the Bone Tithe Nexus though.

Seems like organizers are just forced to come over and move terrain.

Edit: asking my tournament friend, when Bone Tithe Nexus was placed, both players didn't want to bother the organizers so the OB player just placed it after terrain.

However, ours is much more restrictive, with the additional 3" from objectives so I can't imagine too many viable spots remaining if we just set it up after terrain.

 

I decided to go ham and try and make my images more accurate/useable.



Above is the standard 4by6 board,

• BLUE/RED: indicates deployment zones,
• WHITE: indicates middle ground lines and territory lines when applicable to the scenario
• GREEN: indicates objectives range of capture (with a 1" sq representing a potential marker), secondary rings indicate that the range of capture is different however this does not affect the minimum range we can place our terrain feature (6")
• ORANGE: indicates the distance from the table edge that we are allowed to place our terrain feature (6")
• PINK: indicates our terrain feature footprint.

Note: You will notice two grids in the background, I set it so the larger grid is 5" and the smaller grid is 1" this should help you when counting distances/calculating moves.

Below is the same image, however it is scaled correctly for a 3by4 board. Deployment zones, objectives & their control radius, territory restriction, and terrain piece distances have been scaled based on the ratio of 1.5. This was agreed on by my game group to help scale our games. the 1.5 was gathered by finding the ratio between our long table edge by a standard board (6/4 = 1.5 [prettier math & measurements this way] vs short, 4/3=1.333). Measurements were determined by "standard-measurement" / "ratio" (6/1.5=4 ie of foot-long edge, and objective control radius).

Note: This time I actually went through and made the measurements 100% accurate to eliminate guesswork and rounding errors)



To be updated on pg1 from pg7 (altered from pg6).

Edit: Gah I just noticed I missed the center objective on one of the standard images.... I'll make sure I correct it when I update the front page.

 

Thank you for this - very helpful!

 

But why though? The rules for garrison says specically that you can deploy inside of it at the start of the battle, if the terrain piece is within your territory. Im having a hard time finding clarification for the rules of garrisioning a terrain piece. It is honestly rather rare - It came up with KO, but those ships are models that they can garrison, not a terrain piece, so it makes sense the rules are different here.

 

I agree RAW indicates that if you deploy into a garrison the only stipulation is that the garrison terrain is WHOELLY within your territory, not your deployment zone.

 

So I dug a little deeper, and I can't actually find "deployment zone" anywhere in the core rules. I guess as gamers we typically read rules and then sometimes make up systems or terms to better remember them - The whole dicussion of the Bastiladon and how saves actually work is a pretty good example. The majority of people just remembered the rules as rend modifying the save.

From what I can tell, the deployment zone is actually a made-up thing and doesnt exsist anywhere, but is based on the actual battle plans. So deployment is in your territory as base, but each battle plan creates a restriction on where you can deploy within your territory, like 12" from enemy territory, hence creating a "deployment zone" which we usually refer to.

From what I gather, the Realmshaper Engine must be placed according to the battle plans, if you wish to deploy directly inside (and won the "correct side"). So if said battle plan says to deploy 12" from enemy territory, the entire Realmshaper Engine must be 12" away from enemy territory, and no part of it can be within 12", otherwise you break the deployment rules for the battle plan and cant deploy directly inside.

So on quite a few battle plans you will be 24" apart - If you place the Realmshaper Engine square on the 12" mark, your Kroak will under normal circumstances not reach with CD (10" base, +6 from Astrolith, +6 from Balewind = 22"), but the rules for the Balewind Vortex says that you may set it up within 1" of the caster. Hence you can set it up 1" away from Kroak (closer towards your opponent), effectively shuffle him a little forward, which will easily give you an additional 4" ish reach (since the Balewind Vortex footprint is much bigger, and you set it up 1" from Kroak, the point of measurement from the base is around 4" ish closer) and give you reach to the Realmshaper Engine, if your opponent has deployed something inside (assuming you lost the roll-off). So you can still easily nuke the opponent from turn 1.

Terradon Riders will have a rougher time, since if they sit square on the 12" mark away from enemy territory, and they fly 16", they have to complete an 8" charge.

 

As to where it would be ideal to place the Realmshaper Engine, it is really hard to map out, since I dont even know how we'll handle it at my local. Honestly it might depend on how the bigger tournaments handle it. The OBR terrain piece is different since they pretty much always want it square in the middle of the table.

When I play we usually slice the table in 6 quadrants, and in each of them there is 1 piece of terrain. They aren't exactly in the middle and will be pushed a bit around to make it look a little more "natural". This obviously heavily depend on how you play. With our terrain feature you will likely want it in one of the "deployment zones", which might be right next to one of the other 6 pieces of terrain.

I could imagine:
1) You remove and substitute the nearest terrain piece with our Realmshaper Engine
2) Since there is no restriction how close it can be to other terrain, only board edge and objectives, it might be a part of a tactical move to create a "wall" (depending on what kind of terrain the other piece is) by placing it right up against another terrain piece

 

Engine is deployed before sides are decided, and can be placed per the RSE rules. Where it's placed will just dictate how quickly it can be Garrisoned. If it's within 12" of your enemies territory (or alternatively 12" of yours) then yes, you cannot deploy within it, nor can your opponent, and have to wait until at least the first movement phase to Garrison it.

 

Question, since my grasp of rules is not great. It really only applies to tournaments which I don't participate in, since friendly matches would offer flexibility (and you would know who you face)

If you put a realmshaper in your official list - do you *have* to deploy it?

My thinking is that there are probably a few armies/builds that are too high-risk for deploying the engine. In these cases can you choose not to place it at all?

Also considering making a thread with battletome-specific tactica for the RSE, where we can theorycraft potential benefits/negatives of the RSE vs each faction, determine if it’s worth placing In a deployment zone, in the middle, or not at all.

 

The battletome says that it must be placed if it is included in your list.

As far as fun games go the FAQ or the designer's intent recommends you house rule to whatever is fun and fair for you. A note worth mentioning if you only play fun games, and only ever play with people who do the same. I mean there is an entire narrative game mode that frequently demonstrates the wonky-ness of the rules anyways.

My idea was to include such diversity of where to place vs who in this thread, but I might have underestimated general forum practices... lol

 

Ahhh I see. Well that kind of makes sense...

Yeah, this thread (rightfully) exploded a bit.

 

page 11 of the rules indicates it doesn't matter if its too close. the instructions specifically only dictate that it must be wholly within your territory.

 

Mind being more specific of what rules you are referring to? Page 11 on the core rule book that I linked to on the first post doesn't really have much on the subject. Although I could be skimming poorly.

 

https://ageofsigmar.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2018/06/AoS_Rules-ENG.pdf

 

also sorry its page 10 i was reading the rule with the pages half scrolled up and saw the 11 and had a brain failure lol