An interesting question came up on Discord and the rules text for Movin’ has changed at some point in the past few years. Someone wanted to know if it was possible to make one of the 2 non-booting exceptional Movin’ actions, but still opt to boot your dude?
The relevant text from Movin’
As a Noon play you can move one of your unbooted dudes to any other location in play (a deed, a home, or the town square), regardless of how far away that location is, or whether or not it’s adjacent. This movement boots a dude. Booting your dude is considered a cost of moving, which means your dude boots before moving, and then moves to the new location booted.
There are two special moves where you do not need to boot your dude (but the dude must still be unbooted to do these):
- A dude can move from their own home to an adjacent location without booting. Locations adjacent to your home are the town square and the deeds on either side of your home, but could include other locations as indicated by card effects.
- A dude can move from the town square to any adjacent location, except their own home, without booting. This includes all in-town deeds and other players’ homes, but again could include other locations as indicated by card effects. Although neither of these special moves boots the dude, the dude must still be unbooted in order to perform the move.
Previous versions of the rules were unambiguous, the first paragraph ended with a statement that marked the exceptions as mutually exclusive to regular movement. Does the text “do not need to boot your dude” mean that you can boot it if you want to, or is that a case of trying to pay a cost that doesn’t exist?