Combat

A turn is one action. The board tells you what each one would do before you commit.

Move or fire, never both #

Each turn a single unit does one thing: move (chess geometry; a move onto an enemy is a melee capture), fire (weapon geometry), reload, or use a skill. Firing does not move the unit; moving does not fire.

Melee #

A move onto an enemy square captures it, exactly as in chess. Pawns capture diagonally forward, knights jump onto their target, everyone else slides. Melee is always certain and always legal geometry-wise, subject only to the CheckFire rule.

Reload #

The queen's SMG empties when it fires; every skill but Shield Slam empties the unit that used it. An empty unit can still move and melee, but it cannot fire or use a skill until it spends a turn on RELOAD. An Ammo Pack or Resupply Drop reloads without spending the turn (see supplies).

Cover and obstacles #

Kind	Colour on the board	Movement	Fire
Obstacle (one tile: wire, logs, drums, rubble)	blue	blocked	passes
Cover (two tiles: walls, sandbag lines, wrecks)	orange	blocked	blocked, except grenades
Bunker (2×2)	solid	blocked	blocked
Objective props	solid	blocked	comms tower: passes (an obstacle) · laptop crate and ammo dump: blocked (cover)

Knight grenades ignore all of it. Units block movement and ordinary fire for everyone; only grenades and drone strikes go over a unit.

A rook fires east past a crate obstacle to hit a pawn, while a wall of cover on the a-file blocks its shot at a knight — Fire passes the one-tile obstacle and stops at the two-tile cover.

Shields #

A slate shield pawn: a bishop's shot from the front is blocked, a rook's shot from the flank hits — The shield covers the front and its two diagonals. The flank is open.

A pawn's riot shield stops ordinary shots that arrive from its front. It does not stop grenades, the Shotgun Decree, a drone strike, or melee.

Mines #

A knight's Hidden Mine (and the Mine Kit supply) plants a mine on an empty square. It is invisible to the enemy until a unit ends a turn next to it; a unit that steps onto it is lost. Once revealed, DISARM is an action for any adjacent unit. Your own units never step onto your own mines. A Shield Slam that pushes a unit onto a mine triggers it.

Reading the board #

A board mid-turn: move squares in green, a target marked with the red reticle, cover and obstacles tinted orange and blue — A turn in progress: moves in green, the target under the reticle, cover in orange, obstacles in blue.

Gold square: the selected unit. In King of the Hill the zone is fenced, gold while empty and green while you hold it.
Blue and orange: obstacle and cover, as above. One tile is an obstacle, two tiles are cover.
Red: fire, threat and danger. The status line under the board goes red when a sector can be lost.
Laser line: the shot you are about to take, with its hit chance in the HUD.
HIT / MISS callouts: the outcome, so you never have to guess what the roll did.