The Book of Eilan Sidhe

[20BlackPearls]

THROUGH THE GREEN
Before taking a turn with the Eilan Sidhe, all Eilan Sidhe you control adjacent to a tree or bush may use Through the Green. To use Through the Green, place the Eilan Sidhe on any unoccupied space adjacent to any tree or bush within 4 clear sight spaces of that Eilan Sidhe. If an Eilan Sidhe is engaged when it uses Through the Green, it will not take any leaving engagement attacks.

So is this card saying you can choose a tree 4 spaces away from the Eilan and move anywhere adjacent to that tree.

Yes.

Or pick a tree and move 4 spaces from your current space adjacent to that tree?

Yes.

Both conditions must apply. What's happening here is magical movement from one tree/bush to another, so there must be adjacency at both ends. It is, you might say, situationally useful.

The target tree or bush must be, as the card says, within 4 clear sight spaces of the moving figure, not the vegetation next to that figure.

Does that help?

Yes! That helps. So I may move very far depending how big the tree is, because I can move to the other side of tree as long as the tree itself is with in 4 spaces?

 

[Dad_Scaper]

Not only that, but it's *before* taking a turn, and it's *all* of them. So it's very powerful, on the right map. On the wrong map, of course, they'll be sad.

 

[Muskie]

Looks like these are no longer available out there. Is there a proxy?

 

[AndreThaGiant]

Looks like these are no longer available out there. Is there a proxy?

I reached out to @Sgt.Erock regarding this, so stay tuned to his Thingiverse!

 

[SharkRider1]

@coachmuskie Reaper Bones also has a sculpt called Drys, Dryad that is a solid proxy for these - pretty much the same size and posed very similarly, although it is unpainted. There should be a direct link to it in the Alternate Sculpts thread Dad_Scaper put together, I believe, but if not I can find one for you.

 

[Muskie]

@coachmuskie Reaper Bones also has a sculpt called Drys, Dryad that is a solid proxy for these - pretty much the same size and posed very similarly, although it is unpainted. There should be a direct link to it in the Alternate Sculpts thread Dad_Scaper put together, I believe, but if not I can find one for you.

I'll check that out!! I have no problem painting!

 

[Just_a_Bill]

So is this card saying you can choose a tree 4 spaces away from the Eilan and move anywhere adjacent to that tree.

Yes.

Or pick a tree and move 4 spaces from your current space adjacent to that tree?

Yes.

Both conditions must apply.

FYI, I think that second "yes" and the "both" are agreeing to a limitation you didn't mean to state. Based on your later response, I'm understanding that the figure is not actually limited to 4 spaces from its current space, since it could actually move up to 7 spaces by going to the far end of a multi-space evergreen.

The question arises because the text is a bit ambiguous on whether the "within 4 clear sight spaces" constraint applies to the adjacent space or to the tree or bush. Anyway it seems an R&C would be helpful here, since one can read the limitation as applying to the space or to the tree/bush (and hence probably why 20BlackPearls asked the question in the first place).

Speaking of bushes:

THROUGH THE GREEN
Before taking a turn with the Eilan Sidhe, all Eilan Sidhe you control adjacent to a tree or bush may use Through the Green. To use Through the Green, place the Eilan Sidhe on any unoccupied space adjacent to any tree or bush within 4 clear sight spaces of that Eilan Sidhe. If an Eilan Sidhe is engaged when it uses Through the Green, it will not take any leaving engagement attacks.

NATURE'S PROTECTION
When an Eilan Sidhe rolls defense dice while adjacent to a tree or bush, one shield will block all damage.

There actually is no such thing as a "bush" in Heroscape terminology. There are three official pieces that represent vegetation:

1. Evergreen Tree
2. Palm Tree
3. Underbrush

If we write "tree" then we mean #1 and #2. If we write "Jungle Piece" then we mean #2 and #3. If we write "bush" then we mean none of those, because that term does not exist. In fact, if "bush" appeared by itself it would also be ambiguous since we wouldn't know whether it was intended to mean only Underbrush or any Jungle Piece.

With that in mind,

• If these powers are intended to work with exactly the three canonical terrain pieces above, then they should probably say "Evergreen Tree or Jungle Piece" as does the Quasatch Hunters' JUNGLE TRACKING.
  
  
• If they wanted to include other future trees (and apply to everyone's current custom trees), then they could probably drop the Evergreen reference and just say "tree or Jungle Piece" (noting the lowercase "t").
  
  
• If they wanted to work with all possible future/custom vegetation (which would seem to be thematically appropriate), then I'd recommend adopting a new term that means just that. Perhaps "any vegetation piece" or something.

But in any case "bush" is undefined. I can guess it was supposed to mean (at least) an official Underbrush piece, but I don't know if it should apply to a future hedge, climbing vine, mossy outcrop, whatever. Seems like it should either be (a) clearly open-ended or (b) clearly limited to the three official pieces, and thus use official terminology.

 

[Scytale]

Spaces cannot be in "clear sight" of any figure, because clear sight requires actually seeing something from the figure's sight point. A "space" is more of a concept and has nothing physical to be looked at. "Clear sight" must be to a physical object, in this case a tree. Yes, an Eilan Sidhe can potentially move 7 spaces with this movement.

I agree with your analysis on "bush," but if memory serves, the use of "tree" and "bush" was us defining new terms to cover any new terrain pieces we might create. "Tree" currently covers Evergreen Tree and Palm Tree, and "bush" covers Underbush, without any real confusion. Any terrain pieces we make in the future would need to be classified as "tree" or "bush" if they were to potentially fit in those categories.

There was some push to give Wildwoods the species "Tree" to give them additional Eilan Sidhe synergy. It was shot down, in part because I wasn't comfortable with "tree" covering both terrain and a species. A clever thought regardless.

 

[Just_a_Bill]

Thanks for the quick reply. To keep things manageable, for now I'll just respond to the outside parts of your post and leave the more complex middle part for later.

There was some push to give Wildwoods the species "Tree" to give them additional Eilan Sidhe synergy. It was shot down, in part because I wasn't comfortable with "tree" covering both terrain and a species. A clever thought regardless.

I'd have to agree on both counts (clever, but structurally blurry), so thank you for your vigilance. My brain is kinda messed up by Shadow now being both a terrain type and a Species, and I hope the lines don't get blurred like that again.

Spaces cannot be in "clear sight" of any figure ... A "space" is more of a concept and has nothing physical to be looked at.

It seems you're saying that it would be impossible to interpret THROUGH THE GREEN like this —

• place the Eilan Sidhe on any unoccupied space (that's also adjacent to a tree or bush) within 4 clear sight spaces of that Eilan Sidhe

— because the concept of clear sight does not apply to unoccupied/empty spaces. That sounds reasonable on paper, but upon further scrutiny isn't that statement disproven by powers like Knockback, Summon Elemental, Summon the Rechets of Bogdan, and (Heracles' version of) Throw?

• Knockback the figure by placing it on any empty space within 3 clear sight spaces
• place one of your ... Elementals on an empty space within 3 clear sight spaces
• place all 3 Rechets of Bogdan on empty spaces within 6 clear sight spaces
• place the figure on any empty space within 4 clear sight spaces

These seem to make it pretty clear that an empty/unoccupied space which is about to receive a figure clearly must be able to support a clear-sight check against that figure. Otherwise the powers cited above would never work.

Thus, unless I'm missing something, I'm still forced to conclude that it was reasonable for 20BlackPearls to wonder which interpretation was intended, and that an R&C would be a reasonable thing to consider. (Or alternatively, perhaps a recast of the power text that does not allow the sentence to be parsed two different ways, but I'll wager that's less appealing to the Rules Team.)

 

[Scytale]

These seem to make it pretty clear that an empty/unoccupied space which is about to receive a figure clearly must be able to support a clear-sight check against that figure. Otherwise the powers cited above would never work.

There is a key difference between those powers and Through the Green. In all of those cases, clear sight is drawn from a different figure. That is, you can make a clear sight check from the original figure and the newly-placed one. This is, of course, impossible with Through the Green because a figure cannot be in clear sight of itself.

Even still, it's easily confused and could use an R&C. I'd normally run this by the rest of the Rules Team, but this won't be controversial.

Q: When using Through the Green, does the Eilan Sidhe need to be placed within 4 spaces of its original location?
A: No. The tree or bush must be within 4 clear sight spaces of the Eilan Sidhe. The new placement could be 5 spaces away (or even more, with the large Evergreen Tree).

 

[Just_a_Bill]

True enough. I had considered that (and knew you would spot it, too), and thus had written up a detailed response about how there are already situations in the game where we actually cannot perform a clear-sight check "by the book" (and how many of us probably handle clear sight in an approximate way anyway). However, in trying to make one of my typical wall-of-words posts less wallish and less wordish, I cut all that out and set it aside since it would only be of interest to the most obsessive among us.

On behalf of the strongly left-brained contingent, thanks for granting the R&C.

 

[Scytale]

True enough. I had considered that (and knew you would spot it, too), and thus had written up a detailed response about how there are already situations in the game where we actually cannot perform a clear-sight check "by the book" (and how many of us probably handle clear sight in an approximate way anyway). However, in trying to make one of my typical wall-of-words posts less wallish and less wordish, I cut all that out and set it aside since it would only be of interest to the most obsessive among us.

I won't pretend Heroscape, including original stuff, is perfect. Far from it. We could have worded this one more clearly.

 

[DanieLoche]

Imperfections are whats makes it human and gives some flavor to life.

Dan, being poetic this morning.

 

[Temple of the West]

Now available for sale here!
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