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I like that it means that if you can be Exilii, then that's your only option. There is something straightforward about being able to look at a cohort's composition, and knowing without having to ask what ludus benefits they have (if they have any). Anum is the weird one here, since his Bestiae is the only school to overlap directly with another school, so that the same cohort has two different options for benefits. To avoid that, I guess Anum would have had to be an independent gladiator.

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He is so rad! Card, ludus and model all make me happy. Finally a reason to really mox up whoch models we use. Am I understanding Inscrutible right? You can counter attack him to stop him from hitting you, but if you win, you do no damage?

Yep, I think you understand it right. Cato knows that when he attacks people, he will never be damaged himself in the counterattack, because he is immune to all counterattack damage.

I was thinking of resurrecting the No Ludus Benefits thread to point out that No Ludus now has the option of being Exilii, but I guess we might as well keep the discussion in this thread.

Just as a reminder: Exilii gives the cohort the ability to remove fatigue from exhausted models during non-clear turns, it gives one free favor point during each clear turn, and it allows you to pay two favor to heal a model of three vitality if it has five or less vitality remaining.

My first thought about this could make a Gaius even more crazy as Last Man Standing. Normally, he heals two vitality from himself every turn when he is LMS. With Exilii, he also gains one free favor every turn, and if he can spend two favor, he can also heal an additional three vitality if he started on low vitality.

So: Imagine he has three remaining vitality at the start of his LMS turn. He starts out by gaining one favor and then spending two favor to heal himself up to six vitality. He then uses Regrowth to heal himself up to eight vitality. Now he has healed one of his vitality favor boxes, meaning that next time he is damaged, he will gain a favor, which he can then use in a future turn to heal himself again if he gets to low vitality. This could potentially go on forever.

Crazy stuff. I also like that if Ur-Kek pulls off his Smite-Heal move, then you can spend favor to heal him back up again, so he can go from three vitality to six vitality instead. Makes him much more able to stay in the fight.

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I stayed up way to late on Friday, and got my Cato built and painted in time for the tournament on Saturday. He is an absolute blast to play! I totally misread "No Fate," and played it as a tactic all weekend. Of all his benifits, I think the ability to flip exhausted to fatigued outside of clear turns was easily the strongest. I did a lot of double attacks, then brought models back down to fatigued the next turn. Got me to clear turns faster, which let me really take advantage of Gaius' heal, as well as take advantage of inciting living hazards. He does die easily enough though. It felt awesome when I got to roll 6 or 7 defense dice, but there were plenty of other times where my opponent only had 2 successes and still managed to get significant damage through.

I suspect that No Fate is meant to be a tactic. Since it doesn't say either passive ability or tactic, it could in theory be either, but since it costs favor, that makes it seem like a tactic to me...

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I'm not so sure - Thoth has a similar thing with his Necrosis ability. It just costs 2 favor to activate. With him, it's limited to only when Thoth activates, not sure we've see anything like this cohort-wide before.

That's exactly the difference. Necrosis costs 2 fatigue to use. Abilities that cost fatigue seem to, generally speaking, be meant to be alternative actions. Thoth can use 1 fatigue to attack, or he can use 2 fatigue to Necrotise. It is implied, I feel, that because it costs fatigue, you can only use Necrosis when you are activating Thoth. Same with Acerbus' Rampage. See the rules forum for discussion on that.

No Fate does not cost fatigue, it costs favor, which makes it seem to me to be similar to the other abilities in the game that cost favor, i.e. tactics. I feel like it makes no sense to say that it is an action since it doesn't cost fatigue.

You could say that it is just a completely unrestricted ability, since the card doesn't specify otherwise. But I just have a hard time imagining that that is the intent. I can't remember any other ability in the game that has no trigger or restriction at all, so you can just use it on any of your models at any time, including during your opponent's activations.

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I had Thoth's ability wrong at first glance - I read it as costing favor, not fatigue.

I would agree that it reads like it should be a tactic, wonder if that was just oversight. Maybe @RRG_walker can shed some additional light!

If you played No Fate as a tactic during the RRG tournament, and nobody corrected you (like pointing out that you don't have to wait for a clear turn to use it), then that also lends some credibility to the idea that that is actually what it is meant to be.

I do hope that Walker visits us again at some point with some nuggets of rules clarifications... he promised me that he would visit us in January, but he never did.

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So I’m wondering if this might become a trend: having a Ludus benefit based on taking a single qualifying model, the Ludus leader if you will, and then adding other models that wouldn’t otherwise qualify. Might be a way to add some variety without having to make a complete new faction.