We thought there was some ambiguity about this in the rules:
During Ravage, the Invaders attack the land and then attack the Dahan.
Let's say I use a power that defends 2.
1. Do I get to defend 2 against the attack on the land, then defend 2 against the attack on the Dahan? (I.e. does the defense reduce the power of the attack?)
2. If no, must I use all the defense on one of the two attacks? Can I assign some blocking points to the land and some to the Dahan?
1 is correct. Defend is against all invader damage that turn.
G+ games: I am part of the 100%
It is not really correct to say that the Invaders attack the land and then attack the Dahan. The invaders deal damage once, but that damage affects both the land and the Dahan simultaneously.
It's mostly a semantic difference, but considering ravages in this manner makes things like defense a lot clearer. Defend protects both the land and the Dahan because there is only one instance of damage to be reduced. And Vital Strength's sacred sites will protect the Dahan even if the ravage causes blight to destroy your sacred site, because the damage to the Dahan was dealt (and defended against) is the same damage that blighted the island.
"Do you not know that a man is not dead while his name is still spoken?"
- Terry Pratchett, Going Postal
See the FAQ at http://is.gd/sifaq under 'Ravage' for pointers to some more discussion.
The simultaneous vs sequential distinction does make a difference if the damage to the land would destroy a Sacred Site from Vital Strength of Earth. I don't know of other examples yet.
Thanks for the clarification!
This is where we got into trouble, because that's almost exactly how the rulebook phrased it! Attack the land, attack the Dahan. So we weren't sure if we were putting a Sentinels "-1 damage dealt" token on the Invaders or if we were gaining a Tactics blocking die to reduce a single point of the total damage.
Well, it sure matters to the number of Dahan that survive.
Yup - Defend is phrased slightly ambiguously, and somewhere along the line the Ravage section lost the word "simultaneously", which combine to make it somewhat unclear how things work. I'm keeping the searchable FAQ updated.
Eric, it's amazing that you're maintaining a FAQ like that right from the get-go. Thanks! It'll be my first stop for questions from now on.
There should probably be a thread with a link to that searchable FAQ stickied to this section of the forums.