Always Striking First vs Always Strike Last

[draaen]

So it has been an interesting discussion with very little consensus among my gaming group. Largely due to the rare rules interactions  which basically say if you are under the effects of you always strike first  and you always strike last then you operate as though you were under the effect of neither. I was curious of how other people have interpreted the rule. 

For simplicities sake I'll call the activation groups like this
1. Chargers - Active player selects unit first
2. Regular - Non-Active Player selects first
3. Last - Active player selects unit first


I'll go through some scenarios as I see them working out

Scenario 1:
Gaunt charges while under the affect of paroxysm. The gaunt would activate in the last phase as he does not have always strike first and is under the effects of always strike last

Scenario 2:
A toxicrene minding his own business is charged while under the effects of paroxysm. The toxicrene would activate in the regular phase as he is affected by strikes first and strikes last so he operates as though neither were impacting him.

Scenario 3:
A toxicrene charges while under the effects of paroxysm. The toxicrene would activate during the chargers phase as as he is affected by strikes first and strikes last so he operates as though neither were impacting him. However he is still charging and a unit which does not have always strikes first can still activate in the charger portion if they charged which the toxicrene has.



So that seems fairly straightforward to me. However the counter argument I get is that always strikes first and charging are interchangeable. So a charging gaunt affected by paroxysm would activate during the regular phase and the toxicrene affected by paroxysm would always activate in the regular phase. Which seems wrong to me.

Am I looking at this wrong? It seems to me like conflating the charging bonus to allow you to strike first and always strike first is reading in something which is not called out.

Thanks in advance!

[yoritomo]

You are not correct. Charging is an always fights first ability. Therefore charging would interact with the always fights last ability and would cancel.

In scenario 1 the gaunt would strike with normal units as the strike first from charging cancels out the strike last from paroxysm.

In scenario 2 the toxicrene strikes with normal units as the strike first from his toxic lashes cancels out the strike last from paroxysm.

In scenario 3 the toxicrene strikes with normal units. This is because there are no rules that I know of that deal with stacking abilities that let you strike first. Because the rules don't stack to my knowledge they all get canceled out.


The only other way to look at this is to treat charging as a separate sub-phase of the fight phase where only charging models fight. If that was the case then the order would be charging models fight (regardless of anything else), then strike first models fight, then normal models fight, then strike last models fight. This obviously isn't the case due to how the strike first rules are written.

[No One]

So, yori is...sort of right (probably). Namely, charges is not a fight first ability, since those are only departures from the core rules on datasheets. Charging being a core rule...cannot be that. However, the rare rule doesn't say ability, as with all of the 8th ed fight first/last stuff, it says rule. Which charges fighting first is...probably: something to talk out with opponents/TO. On the one hand, it's part of the fight phase rules and thus is a rule (or at least, part of a rule). On the other, the rare rule does seem to distinguish them:

Some rules allow a unit from your army to always fight
first in the Fight phase, even if they didn't make a charge
move this turn.

If it was just discussing rules that let you fight first and charging was one of those, the 'even if they didn't make a charge move' wouldn't be needed (though it could just be there for clarification). Personally lean towards the former RAW, no idea RAI, but haven't seen or heard anyone play it the former.

Also makes interactions with mass hyp weird, since that explicitly says that you fight last even if you charged.

I believe there might be some indication on this in some of the 9th ed FAQs (though whether they're just copy+paste errors from 8th or how GW actually intends rules to work, not sure): I've heard that the pre-Codex SW FAQ clarified this (and from memory it was 'charger fights last still'), but...I don't have access to that.

yoritomo said:

In scenario 3 the toxicrene strikes with normal units. This is because there are no rules that I know of that deal with stacking abilities that let you strike first. Because the rules don't stack to my knowledge they all get canceled out.

This I disagree with. Leave aside chargers fight first: lets say a locus (always fights first) has stim (always fights first), and parox (always fights last) cast on it. What does the rare rule say?

If a unit is under the effects of both a rule that always
lets it fight first in the Fight phase, and a rule that says it
cannot be selected to fight until after all other units have
done so, it instead fights as if neither rule is affecting it.

It is under the effect of a rule that lets it fight first (quicksilver strike), and a rule that prevents it from fighting (parox). So it fights as if neither rule are affecting it. So it fights first, because it is also being affected by stim. Rules never go away: they always stack (or at least 'stack') unless they're the same rule/specifically say otherwise. Sometimes the fact that you're affected by both doesn't matter (e.g. 2 sources of rr 1s): but since the rare rule only refers to a rule for fight first/last, and they cancel without any impact on any other rule, you fight first still. It doesn't say 'fight in normal fight order' or anything.

[niiai]

Look all of this is not very well written. Both from Raw and Rai.

By Raw you can not tell what happens when you mix several fight first and fight last. It is not clear.

By Rai I am thinking of how useless 'always fight first' work. Because it does work. It just works very very poorly. And the damn stratagem makes it worse.

The new SM can not be selected to fight until X is worded very well though.

[infornography]

I realize this isn't how the rules are written at all, but I just like to treat it as every strike first rule adds a 1 to your initiative. Every strike last rule subtracts 1 from initiative. Everyone starts at 0 initiative. The unit with the highest initiative after applying all the rules strikes first. In case of a tie the rules handle the situation fine as is. I just find it tidier and more fair than trying to discern RAI from the mess GW wrote.

[niiai]

Dec 10, 2020 15:24:55 GMT infornography said:

I realize this isn't how the rules are written at all, but I just like to treat it as every strike first rule adds a 1 to your initiative. Every strike last rule subtracts 1 from initiative. Everyone starts at 0 initiative. The unit with the highest initiative after applying all the rules strikes first. In case of a tie the rules handle the situation fine as is. I just find it tidier and more fair than trying to discern RAI from the mess GW wrote.

That would be swell. Another good thing would be a template on how wordings work. Mtg introdused this and it is wonderful. While you might not know all the mtg rules there is one right awnser.