Versailles Special Destroy to Build Rule

[Pops2112]

Intrigued by but have not tried Versailles. Studied the Variant Rules. One query ... if the special Destroy / Build rule is available, how exactly does it operate?

I get the concept - the special rule applies if a Major liberates its Minor’s National SC, or vice versa, but only where the resulting unit/SC counts mean that the Liberator has a Destroy to order and the Liberated has a Build. Is it then as simple as Liberator enters Destroy and Liberated enters Build, for the liberated territory, and both Orders resolve at the end of the Build phase? Or is there a two-part Build phase?

Also, out of interest, since the liberation reveals the Major/Minor pair, why limit the rule to the case where a Destroy/Build Order pair is otherwise available? From the perspective of the Versailles rules logic, it would be fine, and it would have a nice touch of realism to it, for the Liberator always to be allowed to destroy the liberating unit, allowing the Liberated partner to Build. But knowing nothing of coding, perhaps that would be horrid to write, because the way it is, you are using the standard programming to identify if a Destroy or Build is available and then just tweaking the processing rules to allow the special case to work ...?

[super_dipsy]

I get what you're saying, but I think you may be misunderstanding slightly.

Obviously the major / minor pair is given away because in no other situation can a move end up with a unit from one country on another country's SC at Build time. That is one of the reasons players have to think carefully whether they want to liberate a partner SC like this.

You asked about the mechanism. What happens is that assuming the liberating country has a destroy and the liberated country has a build, then the player can actually enter a Destroy order for the liberating unit which will be actioned immediately followed by the Build for the liberated country which will happen at the end of the phase as normal.

The reason though that this requires the liberator to have a destroy and the liberated to have a build is because otherwise it would cause anomalies. Suppose for example that Britain has liberated his minor in Spain. If he were allowed to do what you suggest, he could destroy his unit in Spain and get a new Build at home. So even though he has no Builds, he gets to build a new unit at home which seems counter-intuitive.

[Pops2112]

Thanks, @super_dipsy, that all makes sense. I was not seeing that the Destroy (Liberator) got actioned first, ahead of the normal Build phase deadline, and I was not seeing the anomaly you raise with my additional thought, which means that it would only work with a lot of extra 'engineering' going on to create a bespoke species of Destroy Order available just for the Liberation case and then got carried through the later stages of the game, going against the basic 'Major/Minor operate independently' concept. Nightmare!