never fear, I'm here!
Let me preface my explanation by quaoting the title of a section of the book out of context. "The importance of definition". I found this to be very humerous as, the 8th edition rule book is utterly terrible at defining many things, leaving you to swim through a mountain of wordings to acquire the best means of resolution. :tongue:
The FAQ has no answers on anything relevant to this question so we must delve into the wording, as is always fun.
The banner of the world dragon gives a 2+ ward save against wounds caused by spells magical attacks, magic weapons. spells being the relevant factor here (however it is worth noting that magical attacks are attacks specifically stated to be magical- there is no definition of these in the book.
If we flip over to the curse of Anraheir it states, "in addition, the unit treats all terrain (other than impassable terrain) as dangerous terrain and will fail dangerous terrain tests on a 1 or 2, rather than a 1."
These two have very subtle meaning to them that allows for only one answer- that the wounds from the dangerous terrain test are not magical and the unit is not allowed to take a ward save against it that was granted by the banner of the world dragon.
The first point of the argument for this is the inclusion of the word "caused"- in the context of the game this means that only the last 'step' back can be considered. This must be the case otherwise you could argue to extremism thing like vanhels causes wounds by allowing a unit to charge or wyssans wildform causes wounds by augmenting the strength of a unit- this would be absurd. this point is not overly relevant to the argument but helps to reinforce it.
The most important part is just how Curse is worded. Curse does NOT cause a unit to take a dangerous terrain test, if it was worded such that "until the start of the caster's next magic phase, if the unit moves then it must take a dangerous terrain test..." then this would definitely be the case, as it is with fulminating flame cage however what curse does is give the unit three clauses:
- -1 to hit with shooting and close combat
- treats all terrain (other than impassable terrain) as dangerous terrain
- fails dangerous terrain tests on a 1 or a 2
It is not the CAUSE of the dangerous terrain test being taken, the CAUSE of the test is that the unit treats all terrain as dangerous.
It is unlikely that anyone you are playing against who insists that BotWD gives you a ward save will be convinced by this argument but, until an FAQ comes out that comments on either of these points this is the correct RAW resolution.
On the topic of ethereals, the answer of whether they must take the test depends on whose turn it is- remember the player whose turn it is decides the order in which simultaneous events are resolved. In this case, a unit of hexwraiths targeted by curse has two conflicting abilities
- treat all terrain as dangerous terrain
- treat all terrain as open ground
Thus, the player whose turn it is decides which to resolve first, with the one being resolved second the one that is actually applied (as it will nullify the prior), so it is possible that if ethereals are targeted with curse and they move in your opponents turn that they take the dangerous terrain test.
