Lakes and roads

[aadamm]

Hey everybody,

I've got a couple of quickie questions I don't see in the faq.

1) I'm confused by all the talk of the spring and whether the farm wraps around it.  What I don't get is all the talk about the spring, with no mention of the lake.  Is the lake supposed to separate the two farms?  We were playing as if it functioned the same as the spring.

2) My girlfriend is quite adamant that the tile with the four roads all ending in little houses might not separate the farms, since the green of the field continues uninterrupted between the little houses in the artwork.  I say she's bonkers, that it's clearly supposed to be four farms.  Who is right?

Cheers and thanks...

OH, I'm gonna slip in a third:

3) Since you can capture the pig and the builder, if you do an exchange of captured followers, and your opponent has more than one type of yours, who chooses what gets returned to you?

[Tobias]

1. The farm wraps around the lake.

2. She's bonkers. 

3. As far as I know Pigs and Builders doesn't count as followers and thus can't be captured - that's how we play it regardless

Edit: Typo

[aadamm]

Re: 3, the faq at this site says they can be captured.

[Tobias]

Re: 3, the faq at this site says they can be captured.

Well, then it's the owner who decides

Edit: Although the annotated rules does say pigs and builders can't be captured.

[aadamm]

Hmmm?  There's another rule set that contradicts the FAQ?  Can you point me to it, please?

[mjharper]

I agree with Tobias:
1) It wraps around - the lake and the spring are totally different
2) She's bonkers ;-) Actually, the rules/FAQ say that any building or crossing on a road divides it. Even if there aren't any buildings at the junction!
3) You can't capture pigs and builders anymore.

Hmmm?  There's another rule set that contradicts the FAQ?  Can you point me to it, please?

Yup, the latest set of rules is to be found in the Big Box edition. If you head over to the downloads section, you'll find the Annotated Rules PDF, which contains all the latest rules, and footnotes detailing where they may have changed. You'll need the password - check on your profile page: you'll find it towards the bottom.

So, you have to be a little careful with the FAQ (I really should put this clearly on the front page as a warning). Basically, the FAQ contains all the questions we could find, including those which are no longer valid. Problem is, that many people use different rules: HiG old, HiG new, RGG old, RGG new, and so on. The trick is that if the question says that it is INCORPORATED, that means it has been included in the latest HiG rules, and so it isn't really an FAQ anymore - it's an official rule. If it says that it has been DEPRECIATED, then the latest rules have changed, and that FAQ is no longer valid. Avoid these.

The builder/pig situation is one of the principal changes - in order to avoid weird stuff happening, such as being able to deploy a pig to the top of a tower, HiG decided to simplify the rules and say that builders and pigs aren't followers anymore. The only similarity, I think, is that they can be eaten by the dragon…

I'm a bit busy at the moment, but when I have a bit more time I'll finish adding the extra notes to the FAQ pages, so that this stuff is a bit clearer. Sorry  :

[aadamm]

Thanks muchly!