Topic: Ship teleportation
Posted: 2021-Aug-26 18:13
Q: When a player resolves a March order, if they march all of their units out of another player’s homearea and do not leave behind a power token to establish control, where must they retreat if they were to lose the ensuing combat?
A: They would have no legal target for retreat and would thus be destroyed.
This applies to Winterfell, Pyke, Lannisport, Dragonstone, Highgarden, and Sunspear, as leaving an enemy home area without putting a power token automatically and immediately reverts the home area back to control of the original owner.
However, this DOESN'T apply to any other land area, specifically in this case the land areas with ports: Oldtown and Storm's End (the original reason this came up). Those are neutral areas and therefore would become neutral again after leaving it without a power token. Neutral areas are free areas to which an army can retreat; thus, the losing army is able to retreat back to that area and re-establish control again.
However, I still agree that the first part applies here, as the land area is technically uncontrolled during the time the units are battling, and thus the ships should be destroyed