Thursday, April 25, 2013

Lurkers: Am I doing it wrong?

So in a game of Hordes of the Things a couple of weeks ago, a question by my opponent got me thinking about Lurkers and how they're used in the game.

The rules state you can only deploy a Lurker element against an enemy element that was deployed or has just entered a bad going terrain feature on the previous bound.  I did so in the game pictured above, and the Spears element chased my Lurker skeleton from the board.  On my next bound, I was going to bring it back against that same element it fought previously, but the other player wondered whether I could do this, since his element had not just entered the terrain feature--it was still there from the previous bound.

I realized that all along, I've been bringing back Lurkers against some of the same units that drove the Lurkers off the table.  According to my new interpretation of the rules, I shouldn't have done that; instead I  should have redeployed them against new elements that entered some bad going.

So how do you deploy Lurkers in HotT?  In your games, can they pop back up to plague the same element that forced them to flee the battlefield in the previous round?  Or should they only be deployed against elements that have just then entered a patch of bad going?  I can't believe I've been doing this incorrectly for so long!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Your friend is more correct than you.
Page 14, first bullet says you deploy the lurker 'in the bound after that enemy element... entered that bad going feature.'

I'm sure I've played that wrong in the past (maybe under HoTTs 1.0). I've seen people try to justify it by letting the enemy move in the bad going, claiming it counted as entering "new" bad going and thus qualify for getting "lurked". It doesn't.

Kaptain Kobold said...

Your friend is right - the Lurker can only be redeployed against an element which has just entered bad going. The only difference between deployment and redeployment is that the latter costs more PIPs. The conditions under which it happens are the same.

Desert Scribe said...

Yeah, it took my buddy pointing this out to make me realize I had been playing incorrectly (and I didn't bring it back in that manner during our game).

Once the Lurker gets driven off, it stays off until a new enemy unit enters some bad going.