Reply: Terra Mystica:: Rules:: Re: My issue with Dwarves ability

by TheOneTrueZeke

Ignipes wrote:

CTKShadow wrote:

Appendix (last page, Mermaid description):

Ability: You may skip one River space when founding a Town. (You decide if and when you want to use this ability. When founding a Town in this fashion, put the Town tile on the skipped River space. Of course, you may build Bridges as usual.)

In the case of Mermaids, they can in fact skip one River space multiple times in the same turn. The one is again referring to the number of hexes that can be skipped, not the number of times one hex may be skipped.

I don't agree.
IMO one is referring both to number of spaces and number of possible usages. If "one" would refer only to number of spaces than you could found 1 town skipping 2 river spaces - twice for 1 space.

The difference is that the dwarve's ability is triggered by an action - terraform and build - and the mermaid's ability is triggered by a game event check - founding a town.

Founding a town isn't an action, it's an automated event triggered by an end of turn procedure where all clusters of directly connected structures of the active player that haven't already formed a town are checked to see if they now form a town. The mermaid's special ability merely alters how that check occurs.