Dune/docs/MORITANI_ASSASSINATION_SNEAK.md

Terror Assassination and Sneak Attack: source boundary

Reviewed 15 October 2026. Bounded follow-up to MORITANI_TERROR_RULES.md and MORITANI_ENTRY_TIMING.md. This note distinguishes printed instructions from explicitly provisional product composition; the original research phase made no runtime edits.

Direct Terror instructions

Assassination selects a random leader from the entrant, kills that leader and awards spice; Zoal expressly awards 3. It supplies no exceptional-custody pool definition. The p. 14 captured-leader answer concerns the separate advanced Assassinate Leaders ability, not this token. GF9 Ecaz & Moritani, pp. 5, 14

Sneak Attack sends up to five Moritani reserve forces into the triggered territory, free, obeying storm and occupancy restrictions despite Aftermath. Moritani's starting reserves are expressly off-planet. The effect does not say it spends the ordinary shipment or movement allowance. Its operative verb is “Send”, without a separate rule expressly classifying this entry for other powers. GF9 Ecaz & Moritani, pp. 5–6

The proposed core behavior—bounded reserve transfer, no spice charge, no ordinary action consumption, restricted entry, specific Aftermath exemption—is consistent with that text. Zero performs no force arrival; it should not create an extra advisor/income trigger merely because a token was spent. This is ordinary composition of the quantity bound, not a retrieved zero-force FAQ.

Sneak Attack and other arrival powers

Interaction	Applicable primary rule	Conclusion
Spiritual advisor accompaniment	BG may make a free reserve shipment when another faction ships from off-planet. Advanced advisors may accompany into the same territory. Base rulebook, p. 18	Positive Sneak Attack transfers explicitly off-planet reserves onto the board. Calling that a shipment is a supported interpretation; no direct Sneak Attack/accompaniment ruling was retrieved. Free cost by itself is not an exclusion.
Intrusion	BG fighters may become advisors when another faction ships or moves into their territory; the FAQ requires that choice immediately and also includes worm rides. Base rulebook, p. 18, November 2020 FAQ, p. 4	The same shipment interpretation supports Intrusion. No explicit Sneak Attack exclusion or paired ruling was found. Exact ordering still inherits the unresolved arrival-timing boundary.
Heighliners	Income triggers for off-planet shipment except when only Guild ships. The printed token limits its working phase; payment is not required. Income accrues once and is collected at phase end. Ixians & Tleilaxu, p. 5	If classified as shipment, positive Sneak Attack in Shipment & Movement can trigger this income; do not grant another payout if already triggered. A Spice Blow worm-ride reaction is outside that token's working phase.

Therefore neither “Sneak Attack definitely bypasses all shipment reactions” nor “a specific FAQ explicitly orders all these reactions” is supported. An implementation may adopt the shipment composition explicitly, or gate affected combinations pending a ruling. It should not accidentally adopt one by calling or omitting a generic shipment helper.

Adopted shipment classification, 7 October 2026

The engine now adopts the shipment composition explicitly for the Heighliners token: a positive Sneak Attack in Shipment and Movement calls the same techIncome(g, 'heighliners', entrant) helper used by ordinary off-planet arrivals, so the token owner accrues its once-per-turn income and collects it at the phase boundary. The token itself still enforces its working phase, its printed Guild exception and one accrual per turn, and a zero-force resolution calls nothing — the earlier phase-5 guard is removed rather than left as a duplicate check.

This is an explicit implementation interpretation, not a retrieved publisher ruling: the printed verb is “Send”, and the classification of that off-planet reserve transfer as a shipment is the supported reading recorded in the table above. A Spice Blow worm-ride Sneak Attack stays outside the token's working phase and accrues nothing.

Bene Gesserit reactions are now composed under the same interpretation. The committed Terror entry resolves first — the Moritani forces are placed and the entry closes — and the Bene Gesserit reactions then run exactly as they do for an ordinary off-planet shipment: an eligible Intrusion choice (Advanced, when Bene Gesserit fighters stand in the destination) carries the spiritual-advisor follow-up, and declining it still offers the free one-to-two-force advisor shipment, whose own arrival keeps its existing territory and storm validation. A zero-force resolution opens none of these, because no force arrived. This selected order is an implementation interpretation, not a located ruling; it is recorded here and in the pending-interpretation registry.

Evidence: tests/moritani-force-leader.test.ts asserts the Heighliners accrual, the once-per-turn guard, the unchanged zero-force resolution, the altered-sector rejection, the post-entry Intrusion offer and the full decline → advisor → placement chain; docs/COMPONENT_INVENTORY.md records the reduced boundary.

Assassination pool: adopted provisional composition, 15 October 2026

The selected product policy is effective current control, not native-array membership and not battle availability. It includes every actual living native disc still controlled by the entrant, its actual captured foreign discs and ordinary foreign Gholas, and the one canonical shared Duke when controlled by the entrant. A native disc captured or held as a foreign Ghola elsewhere is not in its native faction's pool. Harkonnen capture overrides a foreign Ghola's underlying Tleilaxu control. Dead discs never enter the pool. An ordinary native leader revived normally remains ordinary; its death history alone is not foreign-Ghola custody.

This exceptional-pool definition is provisional product composition, not a retrieved publisher ruling or a numeric decision supplied by the user. The printed Terror instruction supplies no exceptional-custody definition. The separate p. 14 Assassinate Leaders FAQ does not settle this random Terror pool, its visibility, or its bounty.

Battle availability and physical custody remain different facts. Harkonnen's restriction on capturing leaders previously used elsewhere that turn is a restriction on capture, not on Terror. A living usedAt disc remains eligible; importing captureCandidates would silently change probabilities. Base rulebook, pp. 10–11, 17

The focused server quote in game/moritani-terror-assassination.ts validates original native identity, name and strength, complete five-disc native inventories and unique physical custody. It preserves the original rosters: foreign discs stay in their native arrays, and Duke remains a separate Ecaz strength-six disc with no Traitor. The actual optional Advanced CHOAM Auditor is a physical sixth disc and is eligible while living; its capture and foreign-Ghola prohibitions do not grant immunity to random Terror. Foreign-Ghola Duke is forbidden by binding Ecaz-only revival, not treated as a new source. The quote reuses controlsLeader and server dukeController, returns original disc references in a fresh array, and performs no RNG, mutation or public projection.

Public victim policy: actual Terror assassination publicly identifies the killed disc, including a previously concealed captive, and clears that capture's concealment. This is an explicitly provisional public-effect interpretation. It does not change ordinary Harkonnen private execution or turn unrelated hidden captures into public information. Pay the killed disc's native printed bounty, explicitly Zoal 3 and Duke 6, never a copied battle strength or skill bonus. Kill once, remove the original dead leader's skill if applicable, clear battle-use history, and use original death/custody cleanup: a captured ordinary disc returns to its native or underlying Ghola custody, while the dead shared Duke is set aside in Ecaz's Tanks rather than restoring his former controller.

Empty-pool policy: revelation spends/removes the token even when the effective-control pool is empty; there is no victim, no bounty and no random draw. Continue the original committed arrival once. This is provisional composition, not a located empty-pool FAQ. Neither the offer nor public/private availability may depend on held or concealed leader state: do not project the pool, expose its size, or restore the former exceptional-custody/empty-pool availability gates. Structural physical-identity validation is not a player choice or a hidden-state-dependent offer.

Verification and limits

Read the relevant printed pp. 5–6 and 14–16 in /tmp/dune-rules/ecaz-audit.txt, the corresponding publisher-indexed expansion passages, base rules, and the Heighliners passage in /tmp/dune-rules/ix-official-mirror.txt. Targeted GF9/Future Pastimes searches used Sneak Attack with shipment/advisors/Intrusion, and Assassination with captured/Ghola/Duke. The designer's expansion page yielded no additional written pool or entry-classification clarification. No community answer or rule for a different Dune game was substituted. Lack of a retrieved ruling is a documented research limit, not proof that none exists.

Implementation and evidence boundary

The former ordinary-only checkpoint gated exceptional custody and empty pools; that policy is superseded by the provisional composition above. Pure behavior regressions cover effective native/captive/Ghola custody, capture precedence, canonical Duke/Auditor participation, used living discs, dead/empty pools, printed values and rejected altered/duplicate physical identities. The frozen affected22-file union passes 195/195, with types/lint/build. Original native play supplies a real Harkonnen-captured Duke and a later real paid shipment into the placed token. Actual styled390px GameTable reveals the original token; a scoped original random permutation selects captive Duke, kills him once, pays six, removes the token and resumes the original arrival. It does not fake an effect or put a target in the client action. No overflow or browser errors were observed. The empty-pool engine/API boundary spends the token without bounty/RNG and resumes a genuine Guild arrival; its preceding five Guild deaths are staged, not an original five-death play chronology. All four original policies make accepted reveal or alliance decisions; only Easy reveals in that position, while Medium/Hard/Brutal form the accepted alliance. This is minimal legal participation, not four Duke kills or strategic calibration. No saved/deployed rooms or complete-mode acceptance are covered.

Sneak Attack's owner projection supplies reserve maximum and any blocking reason at the offer and resolution stages. Thus the player can preserve the hidden token before an unsupported positive entry; deliberate zero-force revelation remains possible. No ordinary action counter or spice payment is consumed. The adopted Heighliners and BG shipment compositions are recorded above; older blanket unsupported claims are not current policy. Expansion starts and full-combination acceptance remain gated.