Hellbrute crazed rule and necron lighting field

[Dr_Ruminahui]

A rules combination came up in my last game with my friend's necrons, and I'm seeing if you guys have any wisdom to add.

 

I was playing chaos space marines.

 

My hellbrute was in close combat with his command barge, which had the lighting field rule (I think its an artifact).  The lightning field allows it to potentially inflict a mortal wound on each unit in melee with the barge, at the begining of the fight phase.

 

The hellbrute has the Crazed special rule, which, when triggered, allows it to shoot or fight in close combat "as if it were" your shooting or fight phase.

 

So, the question that came up, if Crazed is triggered to allow my hellbrute to fight in cloas ecoambt "as if it were the fight phase", would that trigger the lightning field?

[Mr. Shine]

No. You only treat it as the Fight phase for the purpose of piling in and fighting with the Helbrute.

[Dr_Ruminahui]

Could you give your reasoning for that?  Because I don't think my friend would find my resolution to this issue being "there is a guy on the internet who agrees with me" to be very convincing. :)

[BlackTriton]

The phases of the game happen in a specific order.

Some rules allow you to activate outside your regular phase allowances, but they do not change the phases timing.

In your case, you fight as if you where in the fight phase, you do not begin a new fight phase just for you.

Therefor, acting outside of regular phase does not trigger abilities base on a predetermined timing. 

[NTaW]

Lightning Field triggers "at the beginning of the fight phase". Units attacking "as if it were the fight phase" don't reset the whole phase, they just get an attack out of sequence.

[Dr_Ruminahui]

Thanks.  That makes sense - I'll run it by my friend.

[Mr. Shine]

Could you give your reasoning for that?  Because I don't think my friend would find my resolution to this issue being "there is a guy on the internet who agrees with me" to be very convincing.

 

Because you're told a couple of relatively specific actions the Helbrute can take as if it were the Fight phase.  It doesn't say that a mini Fight phase takes place, so there's no start of the Fight phase with which to trigger Lightning Field.

 

I find in these scenarios that usually an easy way to figure it out is by asking, "If it actually were the point in time where I was taking the actions in question, would I be able to do this other thing/could this other thing happen as well?"

 

In this case you couldn't, because piling in and fighting (which is specifically the action we're asking about) happen after the start of the Fight phase.