Attacking Along the Spine

[Tywyll]

When you attack across the spine of a hex with a polearm or thrown weapon or whatever, and that spine touches two different targeting areas (front and side, or side and rear), how do you determine the 'facing' of the attack? Does the attacker get the benefit of the doubt or does the victim?

[Chris Rice]

Originally Posted by Tywyll

When you attack across the spine of a hex with a polearm or thrown weapon or whatever, and that spine touches two different targeting areas (front and side, or side and rear), how do you determine the 'facing' of the attack? Does the attacker get the benefit of the doubt or does the victim?

I give the benefit to the victim.

[Shostak]

As can be seen in the hex maps on Melee 9 and ITL 106, attacking along the spine privileges front hexes over sides, and (one can assume by extension), side over rear.

[JLV]

Originally Posted by Chris Rice

I give the benefit to the victim.

Yep. "Tie goes to the runner."

[Anaraxes]

My ITL PDF actually has one extra hex shaded in that diagram on p106. (The one four hexes SE of Tark, three hexes SW of Grath, right on the edge of the map, is grey in my ITL.)

Odd, since it looks like exactly the same art as the one in Melee. If I had to induce a rule from that one extra hex, it would be alternating between front or side. Which I suppose evens out the distribution (half the spine hexes will go one way, half the other), but it seems more likely that it's just a mistake in shading. Or maybe I need to update my PDFs...

[Shostak]

I think it is safe to assume the oddball shaded hex is a misprint rather than an obscure rules clue.

[Shoug]

I like to tie small idiosyncrasies like this to initiative. I like to do this because it makes flavorful talents like strategist that much more powerful, and makes rolling initiative less of a hassle because there's more drama/higher stakes. I also favor initiative in action order ties.

[Tywyll]

Originally Posted by Shoug

I like to tie small idiosyncrasies like this to initiative. I like to do this because it makes flavorful talents like strategist that much more powerful, and makes rolling initiative less of a hassle because there's more drama/higher stakes. I also favor initiative in action order ties.

Yeah, I was thinking of going that way as well. I was hoping that there was actually a rule call that I'd missed though.