soldier, general, units and banding

i am going to clear up some confusion.

any PERSON who is a living entity usually has an attack and a defence in the upper right hand corner.

this is called STRENGTH and LIFE.

in the family edition there are SOLDIERS and GENERALS.

each has a specific function to attack the opponent and to defend against attacks.

some soldiers (like roman republic gladiators) act as pseudo-generals. you may read the card to see  the differences.

you will also come across fortresses that do not have sentience like a person does, but these are considered soldiers in the family edition for ease of  play.

this game is already complicated enough for some.

there is also something called a UNIT.

a unit is a grouping of soldiers or generals in a BAND or a fortress.

one unit can consist of  as many soldiers as you would like unless limited by the card.

the three HUN WARRIOR cards are each soldiers but are limited by unit band number ("may band with any other horde card up to five"). so the unit becomes a total of five cards.

in the egyptian empire, if you band, let's say, twenty cards inside of a fortress (giving it X+20 strength and the life of X) then you still have one unit in play. that unit is the base card that the rest of the cards banded to.

so if i have a tactics card that says to discard a UNIT, then if that fortress is chosen, the opponent will LOSE ALL TWENTY ONE CARDS.

this could be the game changer.

so, i hope all is clear now.

***a note on STACKING (double banding)***

if you are playing a multi-empire deck using egyptian empire and the huns banded all of your hun warriors together (five units of four) and tried to place all five units inside of a fortress, this can not work. this is called STACKING and is not allowed in E&G.