A Clear Set of Rules

I am a very logical thinker, which sometimes bites me because I think everyone should be a logical thinker. I can understand that not everyone thinks things through during casual conversation, but when I see a published rules set, I tend to assume it is internally consistent. Perhaps not the correct assumption to make, but I do not understand how to make a different one. If a rule says something, I assume it operates under that model. I cannot extrapolate from the text in a rule what the intention of the rule was. That is in the head of the designer. All I have to go on is what’s on paper. And when I seek clarity about it, I start to feel like a tool if my interpretation of the rule is something that weakens my opponent’s model from what they expected or strengthens mine.

I’ll give an example. There’s a particular model in Malifaux’s Guild army that can cast a spell called Inferno. Inferno has a range of “C” (Caster) and says “Models within 3” of this model suffer 3 Dg at the start of the Closing Phase. If this model is killed before the Closing Phase, immediately apply the effect and increase to 6 Dg.”

Most people looked at the ability and said, “Awesome, she blasts everything around her.” I looked at the ability and said, “Cool, she basically drops a fireball on top of her.” In the former, everything within 3” of her except her takes the damage. In my interpretation, everything within 3” of her including her takes the damage. Clearly the two interpretations are vastly different. So which is right?

I figured it came down to a simple question. Is a model within 3” of itself?

So I started scouring the book for anything that talked about models being within x” of themselves, or if an ability said, “Model’s are not considered within their own range” or something like that. Instead, I found two other rules – for Pulse and Aura, two terms that are sometimes put into the range of spells.

Aura: Represents an ongoing circular range of effect around a target, extending from the target’s base edge. All models within the effect’s number range, in inches, excluding the caster or effect originating model, are affected for the duration indicated in the effect’s description.

Pulse: Represents an instantaneous circular range of effect around a target, extending from the target’s base edge. It immediately affects all models, except the model using this effect, within the effect’s number range, in inches.

So here the game has created two terms that say, “Within x” except for the caster”. Which implies to me that the basic assumption in the game is that models are within x” of themselves. If they weren’t, they wouldn’t need that language in the ability. And if they wanted that language in the Inferno ability, they would have used the Pulse icon in the description, right? Or at least stated that the “within” doesn’t include the model, the same as they did with the Pulse and Aura descriptions.

The problem with that assumption is it requires me to assume that the people who wrote the rules are logical-minded too, and would be internally consistent. As the game is less than a year old and already has 14 pages of Errata, I know for a fact that the design team missed some things. The question is, is this one of the things they missed? And what do you do until official word is handed down.

I wish rule sets were fine when they were first crafted.