Initiative
The first part of every turn is to decide on Initiative order. As SSUA will often feature more than one villain and hero team, one character must be nominated from each team to roll Initiative; any character that is not Henchmen can make the roll using either Mind or Agility (player's choice), but keep in mind that some Powers/Abilities will affect Initiative, most commonly as a re-roll, so the highest number may not always be the best. I'll also mention that sometimes it can be more fun to choose a character who makes more "sense" as the leader, such as Cyclops being a more sensible leader for a team of X-Men than Wolverine, despite Logan having a better Agility.
Take your dice pool, roll it and count up the goals, whoever has the most gets to Activate a member of their team first. Play follows Clockwise around the table from there, with each team Activating a character in sequence until all characters have Activated. Note that play ALWAYS flows clockwise from the team that won Initiative, so coming second in Initiative is meaningless, no bouncing around the table!
Activation
Each character can only Activate once per turn, though can do so whenever the player chooses, meaning Booster Gold can Activate last on turn 1, but first on turn 2, assuming the Initiative falls that way. As always, some characters will have Powers/Abilities that may override this, so make sure to read the card.
If there is a character on your team that you don't want to activate, you may "Pass". Play moves on clockwise as normal.
Each character will have a pool of Action Points "AP" marked on their card. A character may spend these points to perform actions until they run out. AP are restored at the start of each Turn. A character is under no obligation to spend all of their AP. Sorry if this seems a little too much like repetition of the SS3/4 rulebook, but there is method to my madness.
Most of the AP costs remain the same from SS4, 1 AP= 1" move (unless charging), but rather than tell you all of the exceptions, here is a (fairly) comprehensive list of AP costs. Please keep in mind that some characters will have different AP costs because of their Powers/Abilities; for example, The Flash doubles the AP value when Moving, i.e. he moves 2" per 1 AP and charges 4" per 1 AP.
Movement: 1 AP per 1", may charge 2" per 1 AP. After completing a Charge move, a model may only make a Melee Attack, though may do so without spending AP.
Flying: 2 AP to take off or land, can move 2" per 1AP whilst flying. All flying models are assumed to be 18" in the air when measuring range from models on the ground. When flying, models ignore terrain when measuring distance (even if terrain is over 18" tall) and a flying model can always attack another flying model in melee combat.
Swimming: This should be rare, but models spend 2AP to move 1" when in (or under) water.
Attacking: All attacks (both melee and ranged) cost 3AP unless otherwise stated. A model may only attack once each turn. Melee attacks at the end of a charge move are free.
Interacting with a tabletop object costs 2AP per attempt. This can be anything like speaking to a witness, pressing a button, hacking a computer, picking a lock and many more. Basically anything a character needs to do that isn't covered specifically will typically cost 2AP.
Picking up an object (to carry, throw or use as a club) costs 2AP.
Most characters that are "driving" will be part of the same model as their vehicle (think Ghost Rider or The Haunted Tank), but should a character get into a vehicle and start to use it (such as Ted Kord hopping in The Bug), that Character must spend 3AP per Activation to operate the vehicle, then the vehicle must spend its own AP. Again, this will likely not show up all that often, depending on what kind of games you want to run.
That'll do for now, next time, let's look at game planning and terrain rules.
No comments:
Post a Comment