Rules Questions

Played a game of SPQR and love how quick it is to pick up, learn, and play. Can’t wait to expand my warband of Celts. That said, I have a few rules questions – especially regarding Bravery Checks and Mercenaries.

1: Will to Fight and Bravery Checks (as per the FAQ) are two separate terms. That being said, is a Will to Fight Check considered a type of Bravery Check?

The reason I ask is, Standards cost 25 points to include in a unit. Per the rules, Standards allow the re-roll of a failed Bravery Check. The only times the rules have you roll a Bravery Check (as opposed to a Will to Fight Check) are: when rolling for Hit and Run, when dropping Large Shields while fleeing. 25 points seems hefty for essentially just improving the Hit and Run effectiveness of nearby units. I suspect that Standards are meant to allow you to re-roll Will to Fight Checks as well (counting them as a subset of Bravery Checks). Is this a correct interpretation?

2: Can any warband use units from its own Warband List as Mercenaries? I see some Warband Lists (such as Briton) list themselves as potential Mercenaries, while others (such as Gauls) only list outside warbands as potential Mercenaries.

I thought this was intentional until I read the rules for Vercingetorix. He is a Hero of Legend in the Gallic list that allows for Gallic Mercenaries to be hired at half the normal cost. As written, it seems that a Germanic warband could take Vercingetorix as a Hero of Legend, and hire Gauls as Mercenaries at half price, but if a Gallic warband took Vercingetorix as a Hero of Legend, it wouldn’t have access to Gallic Mercenaries at all (let alone at half price).

Beyond this, the rules for Heroes of Legend state that they can lead any warband in the same way as Mercenaries – but it would seem that since Gauls don’t have their own warband listed as a source for Mercenaries, they couldn’t even take their own Heroes of Legend.

3: Are Challenges a form of ongoing combat? As written, I got the impression that they are ongoing and occur over a number of actions (adjacent to the main ongoing combat taking place between the Heroes’ units). This was inferred from the paragraph that states that the Challenge between the Heroes continues even if one of the units is otherwise wiped out.

I watched a couple of On Table Top videos from Youtube where it looked like Charlie was completing the entire Challenge during a single Melee Action – so it made me second guess my interpretation.

4: Do Standards effect the unit they’re equipped to?