Combat

The goal in Factions is to capture all of your opponent's locations. To reduce their control and make them your own, you need to attack them with units and characters. I will be explaining combat using an example, and then will expand on some aspects of it.

First, we have the participants in combat. These are generally just units and characters. Units are created using buildings and technologies, while characters are played from your Discipline Decks. Characters count as units, but units are not necessarily characters. All units that can engage in combat, meaning units without the 'Noncombat' text, have three statistics used when fighting. Attack, Defense, and Speed, abbreviated with A, D, and S respectively. Attack is the amount of damage the unit deals in combat, Defense is the amount of damage the unit can withstand, and Speed determines the order in which units deal damage. Units, but not characters are made using military buildings, like this one:

Infantry Barracks
Military Building – Barracks
Cost: 2 wood
Man at Arms: 1, T: 1/1/2, -1 support

You can pay 1 and use this building to make a Man at Arms, by somehow indicating that it has been used (I think this is how Spoils got around the patent on tapping). When you do this, you put a counter on the building to represent your unit. Some technologies with the subtype “unit” enable buildings to make more than one unit. In these cases you use the building as normal and put the unit counter on the technology instead of the building that created it. An example of such a technology is Swordsman:

Swordsman
Military Technology – Unit
Cost: 2
Build at infantry barracks
Requires: Blacksmith
Swordsman: 1, T: 2/1/2, -1 support

Time for an example: You have three men at arms and a swordsman. I have two men at arms and a character. Lets make the character this guy:

Ginda, Lightwalker
Security Character
Cost: 3
This is invulnerable to, and untargetable by, all things with set.
3/4/2

You decide to attack one of my locations with all of your guys. First we go to the highest speed. Since all units in this example have a speed of 2, they act at the same time. We each choose which units our units will be hitting in combat. I will have my men at arms fight your men at arms and my character will fight your swordsman. These choices determine where the damage my units deal is going. You have two men at arms fight my men at arms and your third men at arms will fight my character. There is an important rule to make note of now. When a character is in combat, its controller choses a unit type that they control in the same battle. That character cannot be assigned damage until each unit of the chosen type is assigned damage. This means that your units cannot gang up to take down my character until the two men at arms are dealt with. So, having chosen to assign the damage from two of your men at arms to mine, you have a swordsman and a man at arms left. You choose to assign the man at arms' damage to Ginda, and the swordsman's damage to the location you are attacking. You cannot assign damage to a location until damage has been assigned to all defenders.

Now, after all units at S2 have chosen where their damage will go, the damage is finally assigned. My men at arms and two of your men at arms trade damage. They each deal 1 damage because they have 1A, which is just sufficient to kill their targets with 1D. Two of your men at arms have traded with mine. Your third man at arms deals 1 damage to Ginda, which is not enough to kill her. Because she has 4D, it would require 4 damage to destroy her. Ginda deals 3 damage to your swordsman, which is more than enough to kill it. Your swordsman deals 2 damage to my location. Finally, we remove the destroyed units from play. Both of my men at arms, two of yours, and your swordsman, have all been killed so we take the counters off of the appropriate buildings and technology to reflect this. I put 2 counters on one of my locations to represent the damage.

Both surviving units, Ginda, Lightwalker and your man at arms, cannot attack or defend until the start of their controller's next turn. Indicate this in whatever way you choose that is mutually understandable (You might move the counters off of the card they belong to, just next to them). Ordinarily, you can attack on three occasions during your turn, at any time. Units generally cannot participate in more than one offensive.

If in the battle you had been attacking with a unit with higher speed, a 2/2/3 for example, you would have been able to destroy one of my men at arms before it had the chance to act. After every unit at a given speed value has chosen where it is dealing its damage, damage is dealt and destroyed units are removed from play before the next speed value is considered.

There are a few more considerations related to combat that I will present before I conclude. There are characters that have a unit type, like this one:

Godra, Squadron Leader
Kingdom Martial Character – War Chariot
Cost: 3 and 1 wood
When you make a chariot, this gets +1A this turn.
2/2/4

These characters have a few special considerations. This cannot be played unless you can make War Chariots. Also, when it comes to characters with unit types, you do not have the liberty of choosing which type of unit must be assigned damage before the character can be. It must be the unit type that the character is.

Another type of card, in addition to unit-creating structures and characters, that can have an effect on combat is the fortification. A fortification is a special type of building that you put on a location when it is built. The fortification has A, D, and S, and is counted as always defending that location. It may defend any number of times. An example of a fortification is:

Guard Tower
Fortification – Tower
Cost 1 and 2 stone
Range 2.4 (Instead of fighting normally in combat, this may attack dealing 2 damage at 4 speed. It cannot hit locations.)
0/5/0

There are two more types of combat you can engage in, in addition to simply attacking locations. The first of these is reinforcing locations. You may, after you have captured a location and before it has been dealt any damage, attack that location to increase its control from 0 (where you got it in order to gain control of it. Locations cannot fall below 0 control) to its maximum control. Units increase the control of the location by an amount equal to their A.

The other type of combat is attacking the enemy city. Normally buildings other than fortifications are safe and do not see combat. That is, until a player has a citadel. If your opponent controls a citadel, you may attack it. Combat goes normally, but instead of a location behind the defenders, it is their citadel. If you would deal any damage to the citadel with any number of units, the defending player must destroy one of their own buildings after combat. Even if lots of units deal a lot of damage, only one building will be destroyed. This is per attack though, so one can attack a citadel in each of the three attacks on their turn.