States confuse me. Here is what I currently understand. I think the best way for me to understand this is in a scenario. I'll take one that happened yesterday. Massacre imposes Taunt on Bill and teleports in base-to-base with Bill. Taunt is immediate. Bill activates. Bill attempts to disengage, but fails twice. Bill ends turn. So, when does the Taunt flip? Does it flip the moment Bill activates since it was place on him prior? Or, at the end of Bills activation? Or, end of the round? When a state flips are its effects still active? If Bill was able to disengage and kill Massacre does the taunt state still remain in play since he was removed from the board?
At the end of a Character's Activation, there is a States Step. At that time, and no other time*, you flip red-up States to blue-up, and apply whatever it shows on the blue side (for example -2 shows -1), and remove any that are already blue-up. Note that tokens with no symbol on the blue side stay on the Character but do nothing, as there are some abilities in the game that can flip a token back over! In your example, the Taunted token would be flipped at the end of Bill's Activation. *As mentioned, there are some abilities that can flip State tokens at other times, but only when they specificaly say so.
A Taunt state is removed if the character taunting (pictured in the taunt token) is moved to the enfermery.
Okay, so if the state applied prior to their activation it does not count until after that character's state step which is the last step to occur. So, since Bill was taunted prior to his activation he could shoot other models, but after his action the taunt token flips. I find this odd... And here I would have thought the effect would have been immediate and would remain until the end of his activation in which it would flip, ending the state.
No?!? That's when the State gets flipped from red to blue. The red side of the token gets applied as soon as the State is imposed. See https://www.aristeiathegame.com/wiki/article/45-states for more details.
Okay, so I see it stated its immediate unless state otherwise like poison for example. The blue side (flipped side) showing an X ends the effect. So, if Bill was Taunted prior to his activation he would then be under its effects during his activation. When Bill ends his activation the state phase occures, flipping the taunt token over ending the effect. Is this correct?
Poison works in exactly the same way - it's just that the red side does nothing and the blue side (so when you flip it at the end of the Character's activation) does damage. Yes.
We should point out that and tokens are retired when they are flipped to the blue side (check their section on the rules reference). And while we are at it, tokens are the same on both sides, but they are retired when they are used.
The states may be the most important and most misunderstood part of the game. When you just have the CoreSet the only State that you care about is the Energy penalty coming back from the infirmary. On occasion Hexxer might immobilize a character or Lunah might slow them with Suppressive Fire but as you add the expansions you see that States are huge and keeping careful steps to make sure the flipping is done correctly can make or break your game.
@sololobo Congrats that you have a ton of models to work with. I recommend that you consider drawing randomly from your pool of models for each four character team. This is a great way to learn all the characters and not get into a fixed mind set of aiming for frags only. The game rewards area control but granted it is difficult to control area if two or three of your characters are in the Infirmary.