Dan and I have been playing quite a bit of Arena and we’re having good fun with it. There is, however, a rule we may have been getting wrong. It’s on P.7 of the Arena rulebook and relates to opening doors…
This is just a fragment from the Door rules, but it is a little confusing. My reading of the sentence is that the comma before the ‘or’ is very important! So, there are two things going on here:
- If you start the Movement phase within 1″ of a door, you may opt to open it (and an enemy within 1″ of the door may try to stop you on a 5+).
- However, if you move to within 1″ of a door that already has an enemy within 1″ of it you may not try to open that door.
It was the second part we were getting wrong, treating a model that moved up to a door as able to open the door, even if there was an enemy within 1″ of it.
It’s a weird caveat and definitely plays into a couple of things: large Kill Teams with chaff models will have an easier time blocking doors; winning Initiative is useful in this context; and finally I’ve found a use for Decisive Move!
Until next time,
Owen