Squaring the Circle

A Guide to Better Understanding Disturbing Presence

Another Community Service announcement on behalf of the House of Axebreaker

Over the last few weeks while watching the replays of FNF games on Cabalvision - it stuck me that the graphic Cyanide uses to represent Disturbing Presence [DP] can be quite misleading.

The DP rule states:

 "... any player must subtract -1 from the d6 when they pass, intercept or catch for each opposing player with Disturbing Presence that is within three squares of them, even if the Disturbing Presence player is Prone or Stunned."

Cyanide have chosen to represent the presence of this skill with a sickly green circle that has a hazy outline and looks like this:

But "within three squares" is actually a 7x7 square that is not at all well represented by a circle - especially on the diagonals. The true area-of-effect of DP in the above example is considerably bigger than that indicated by the graphic. DP actually covers the area shown below by the green square:

No doubt Cyanide would argue that it is not intended to be a hard-and-fast template, but a symbolic representation of the skill for aesthetic purposes only - just like other mutations such as Extra-Heads, Extra-arms, Tentacles, Foul Appearance etc are depicted graphically. And while this is a reasonably plausible argument -  it can, nevertheless, still be quite confusing. Especially in the heat-of-the-moment of a game where coaches have to make a whole bunch of decisions within the 2 minute time-frame. 

To further illustrate this - here is an actual example from a game played this week between the Disease of Drakenmoor  and the Erengrad Easybeats. 

The Easybeats thrower, #6 Helmut Rosulver, picks up the loose ball [1], runs down-field and attempts a Quick Pass [2] to #3 Seneschal Fentleberry [3].  Rosulver appears to be in the clear and well outside the hazy green circle of Disturbing Presence generated by the prone Nurgle Warrior, #1 Vlad Malaria [4].

Helmut Rosulver rolls a 2, but uses his Pass skill to re-roll, and rolls a 3. Enough for the pass to normally succeed (4+ modified by +1 for a Quick Pass) But (as shown below) a tell-tale blue Disturbing Presence icon appears above Vlad Malaria that indicates there was actually an additional -1 due to DP and the pass scatters.  

As illustrated below by the green square, the graphic depiction of DP by the hazy green circle was a poor indication of the actual area-of-effect of the skill. Had Rosulver moved instead to the square to the right (next to the sideline) and attempted the pass - it would still have been a Quick Pass and would have succeeded. 

So, the bottom line is, that while green circle and haze effects of the Disturbing Presence graphics might look good - it is not an accurate indicator of the area-of-effect of this skill. 

I recommend that you use the "G" hot-key to bring up the grid squares and manually count them off yourself if you want to try to pass or catch the ball anywhere near an opponent with DP. At least the graphic does give a clear indication that an opponent has the skill  - and that's a lot more than you get when facing other skills that can cut short your brilliant TD play - such as Pass Block or Diving Tackle etc. Conversely, I'd also recommend using the "G" hot-key if you have a player with DP and want to move him into the best possible position to seriously mess with your opponent's throwing game.

Dave

(aka Axebreaker)