Help settling a situation that came up.

[ExeterOborach]

Hi everyone. 

So two friends were playing a game of 9th a while ago (Sisters vs Tau ) and a sketchy situation came up and wanted my opinion. Figured I'd get yours too. 

In Player A's Shooting phase they had their Exorcist in melee with Player B's Crisis Commander which had only 1 wound left. The Exorcist fired it's Rockets and Heavy Bolter into the Commander and both scored one hit and wound each. I guess 9th was different so Player B got to resolve the wounds from different weapons simultaneously. He set aside 2 dice and dedicated 1 to each weapon.  First he rolled the die for the Rocket and failed the save and so his Commander was killed thus nullifying the die for the Heavy Bolter.

Later, in the Fight phase, Player B realized that the Rocket could not have been fired due to it having Blast. Player A agreed that he should not have fired it and continued with the Fight phase. Player B then stopped him and said " I need to go back and roll for the Heavy Bolter because my Commander might still be alive to fight this phase." 

Player A said "No, it doesn't matter because he's still dead. You were only meant to roll one die anyway and you did. You failed the save that was truly meant for the Heavy Bolter." 

After a short debate Player B conceded and the game continued. 

Personally, I would have just let B roll it since he did dedicate a specific die for that save and could have potentially saved it. 

What do you think? Was that fair or bad sportsmanship? 

Thanks. 

[Karhedron]

There is no "right" answer when players realise in retrospect that a mistake has been made. I suppose since player A made the mistake, player B should have the benefit of the doubt.

 

Having said that, if the first save was a fail then I agree that they handled it the best way. The Commander would have died when he failed the first save, regardless of which weapon was firing.

[Grotsmasha]

If the dice that was rolled vs the missile would still have failed vs the Heavy Bolter, then I would have sided with Player A. However, since it was a game amongst friends, letting the re-roll happen would have also been fine.

[Domhnall]

Generally in whatever game I'm playing, unless it's special circumstances* it's generally agreed if a roll is made that later turns out to have been wrong/misrolled etc then whatever the result still stands. The issue is then resolved after the game if need be. Basically if nobody noticed something was amiss, and somebody wasn't intentionally cheating, then it's agreed to let it stand. I've had games go horibbly horribly wrong because of such a mistake, but hey ho, we're all friends. 

 

What it comes down to is you did the right thing in that both of agreed on the course of action and moved on. Going forward, agree beforehand what is to be done in similar situations and stick to that ruling. 

* - Sometimes it's allowed to be changed, but only if it's doesn't have a massive knock on effect to the rest of the game or we all realised that it was a massive boo-boo and would be better to be resolved at the time, and some other situations that I can't think of off the top of my head.

[Grotsmasha]

Additionally, GW suggests "having a roll off" in these circumstances to help quickly moving on.

[Firedrake Cordova]

From my point of view, the model had one wound remaining and was targeted by two successful (wounding) attacks. They rolled a save against the first wound which failed and resulted in the model being killed. If the roll would also have failed against the second attack (i.e. the save modifiers were the same, or they rolled a 1, etc), then the model would still have been dead, even if the first (and incorrect) attack had not been made - in that case, there's no real "wrong to right".

 

Having said all of that, roll-offs are helpful in this situation.

Edited February 16 by Firedrake Cordova

[Xenith]

3 hours ago, Grotsmasha said:

Additionally, GW suggests "having a roll off" in these circumstances to help quickly moving on.

 

Ya, this. At an impasse, say "on, on a 1-3, we do it your way, on a 4-6 we do it my way" and let the dice decide.

 

Either way, you would have been rolling one dice, and failed one save. On the other hand, the exorcist player would have had their missile rolls be for the bolters and probably done badly. 

[Rogue]

I wouldn't call it a house rule, but our general approach to this sort of thing is to decide in favour of the player who was 'wronged' - not implying intent or gamesmanship, just the player who's potentially disadvantaged.

 

In this scenario, the Sisters player made a mistake, so the resolution falls in favour of the Tau player - let him roll the save again if he wants to.

 

And as an illustration, if the Tau player had mistakenly rolled too many save dice, then any excess results would be removed from the 'saved' pile first - his mistake this time, so the resolution goes against him.

 

But I agree with others up-thread, that in your particular situation, where both players were happy with their solution, then it's a good solution.

[Emperor Ming]

Thunderdome?

 

Seems a fair way to settle disputes, with a hint of grimdark

 

[Moonstalker]

Amongst my group of friends, the house rule we settled on is, "No Time Machines."  It sucks if you've made a mistake in the past, but going back to re-litigate it generally slows the game down way too much, especially if you start trying to unwind more and more things that have happened since the error to try to make some alternate board state to reflect the way it should've gone.  Just play it out, learn from the mistake, do better next time.

 

This doesn't apply to a mistake you've made right now, and no models have been moved or anything.  But once you move on from something, the result stands.