Taunt only affects attacking. You don’t have to target the Squad Leader (or any other patroller) first when using spells or abilities.
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Spells don’t interact with Taunt. Flagbearers interact with spells per the text on flagbearer cards.
Further clarification of exhausting cards. A card such as Voidblocker causes cards to become exhausted when it is attacked. Arrival fatigue does not prevent this, a newly played unit can be exhausted as part of the attack on a voidlbocker. Another example is Skeletal Lord, who can use skeletons that have arrival fatigue because it does not use the exhaust symbol in the card action text. The word exhaust on cards like these indicates that you do not have to worry about arrival fatigue. You do have to worry when the exhaust symbol is used.
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Sorry if this question seems a bit obvious but I just wanted absolute clarity 
Spark says “deal 1 damage to a patroller”. Does that mean direct damage ignoring armor, or do the basic combat rules come into play and the damage goes into removing one armor?
Armor isn’t about combat, it is about damage. Armor blocks chits of damage, 1 armor blocks one chit, regardless of source.
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Sorry for the bump, but I’m still wondering how Indestructible units interact with Obliterate, Death Rites, and further something like Doom Grasp. Is Indestructible taken literally, i.e. “not able to be destroyed”, and the only way to bring it down for a moment is to reduce it to 0hp?
Hmm, we appear to have lost sharpo’s reply on the matter due to the old forums demise, but the gist was that abilities that don’t target and try to destroy things based on criteria such as weakest unit, will skip things that can’t be destroyed. Doom Grasp can hit an Immortal because it is a targeted spell, and the only limitations on Doom Grasp targeting are stateed by the spell, specifically it can’t target Tech 3 Units, Upgrades, or Building cards.
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Yeah, that hasn’t made it into the official rulings anywhere though, so I’m not sure if that was an oversight or if it was since changed.
It isn’t in the google doc, but I think the ruling follows from “do as much as you can.” If an ability is trying to destroy things, and some things can’t be destroyed, then in order to do as much as you can, you would need to skip the indestructible ones.
@sharpobject
Some sort of clarification should probably be added to the obliterate keyword and various relevant spells and units. Pestering Haunt can’t be sacrificed but it can be destroyed so Sacrifice the Weak skips it but obliterate and hooded executioner don’t because they use the word destroy. Gilded Glaxx can’t die outside of combat damage so pretty much everything skips him as well as Hardened Mox and Immortal. Targeted destruction can still hit anything that is targetable.
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Just got my order. Yay! A couple of questions:
Is an add-on a building, i.e. can wrecking ball target it? We ended up on yes, but confirmation would be nice.
Do heroes enter at level 1? If not, do they still have access to their first band abilities?
Thanks for any help. Looking forward to playing more.
[quote=“Flikery, post:274, topic:146, full:true”]
Just got my order. Yay! A couple of questions:
Is an add-on a building, i.e. can wrecking ball target it? We ended up on yes, but confirmation would be nice.[/quote]
Yes. Add-ons are buildings and can be targeted by Wrecking Ball
Specifically, they are a sub-type of building and are specifically excluded from a couple effects ( Detonate, Assimilate ) which can target other types of buildings.
[quote]
Do heroes enter at level 1? If not, do they still have access to their first band abilities?[/quote]
Yes, all Heroes enter play at level 1, and immediately have access to their Startband abilities. ( Unless something like Free Speech is preventing them from using those abilities )
Thanks Rabid!
I just recalled one more add-on related question we had:
When tech buildings are destroyed, you can rebuild them again for 0 gold (assuming you still meet the pre-requisites to build it). Do add-ons also have this feature, or would you have to, for instance, pay another 5 gold to rebuild a supply depot that was destroyed?
To build (or rebuild) a new Add-on, you have to pay the cost again.
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Bear with me, I’m gonna argue against the previous, now-lost ruling pretty hard here, because that ruling is not consistent with existing rules and also bad for game balance.
Firstly, Indestructible units can totally be hit by “destroy” effects. Indestructible does not mean “this ignores anything which would destroy it”, and any claim pretending that Indestructible works that way is not based on sound reasoning.
So let me reference the actual rules:
I literally cannot see how it is possible to parse the interaction between those as anything but "Obliterate effects the entire set of {X lowest tech units} at once by destroying them, then Indestructible’s “if this would” clause triggers overwriting the destroy effect with an exhaust effect.
For gameplay balance reasons, I personally support interpreting “gone” in the Obliterate text to mean that if the exhaust overwrite from Obliterate sidelines an indestructible patroller, that makes it “gone” from the patrol zone and the the attacking unit can select a new thing to attack after the sidelining happens as per the Obliterate text - but that part is a highly subjective interpretation.
It’s also obvious that the “You can’t sacrifice this” clause in Indestructible means that Indestructible units are unaffected by Sacrifice the Weak, at which point a ruling is needed as to whether Sacrifice the Weak skips Indestructible units or fizzles and does nothing in the case where it would hit an Indestructible unit. In either case, a clarification is needed in database of specific card rulings - and until such a clarification is placed there it does not exist and is just the best guess of random strangers on the internet.
The potentially problematic interaction is between Garth’s Ultimate Death Rites and Indestructible, where an opponent’s units are destroyed one at a time and not in a set of X at once – meaning that a single low-tech indestructible unit such as Hardened Mox or an inactive Gargoyle turns an Ultimate spell into a “just exhaust a weak unit” effect. But I personally find that to be less of a game balance issue than the issue of a Patrol zone with Immortal in Squad Leader backed up by Heroes being immune to attacking Tech III units with Obliterate. It’s not like the game doesn’t already include many ways to render various other ultimates very weak - by denying opponents maxband heroes, casting free Speech, having armies that are untargettable due to Nebula or Lord of Shadows, placing flagbearers carefully, etc
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Corollary: You can destroy your own addon to make room for a different one, paying the cost of the new one and dealing 2 damage to your base.
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I understand your argument, and a lot of it makes sense, but it fails to address the rule “do as much as you can.” This is a core rule of the codex game design. If a card’s text, not the player, has to make a choice between exhausting a unit and destroying another unit, the “do as much as you can” clause would mean that you destroy the unit.
Immortal is very much intentionally neutering Obliterate, just as Abomination neuters Moss Ancient. There are answers in Tech 2 for certain Tech 3 plans.
Who has Obliterate? Zarramonde relies heavily on it, but within black both Plague Lord and Lord of Shadows can work around immortals. Blues tech 3s all fly, as does Gunship, so they’re less effective but not neutered. TRex has overpower so again, less effective but not neutered. The Duck is hurt but still has its attacks ability. Guargum can turn Immortal into a squirrel. None of Whites T3s fear Immortal.
But Oblitterate isnt making a choice between exhausting and destroying. Oblitterate doesn’t know what is going to happen to the things it affects, it just picks the defender’s X lowest tech things, and then {mumble mumble}.
“Do as much as you can” just means that if you oblitterate 4, and the defender only has 1 thing, you still affect it.
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I appreciate what you’re saying, but as already mentioned in the thread, this has been discussed and a ruling has been made. When the discussion took place, the points you’ve raised were made. I agree that the ruling doesn’t follow the rules as written, and at the time I pushed for making both Death Rites and Obliterate use sacrifice language also, as that seemed to be the most elegant solution. However, we had already passed the point where card text could be changed, so we’re stuck with the cards as they are written.
If the ruling hasn’t been added to the database yet, I’m sure Sharpobject will get round to it eventually.
Anyway, this is why I was hoping we could get this officially settled.