Push, Pull and Collision Damage in Tactical Combat

Forced movement is one of the most efficient tools in a tactical combat board game. One rule, push a unit away or pull it closer, and suddenly every square on the map has a second property: what happens if somebody moves me out of it.

Here is why it works, and how one system uses it.

What forced movement adds

Three things, all of them cheap in rules and expensive in thinking.

It makes position contested. Without it, where you stand is your decision alone. With it, your position is something an opponent can take away, which means holding good ground is an ongoing effort rather than a one-time move.

It creates indirect damage. If shoving a unit into a wall hurts it, terrain becomes part of your offence without any new mechanics.

It enables team play. Pulling an ally out of danger or breaking an enemy line is a genuinely different kind of contribution from dealing damage, which gives supporting champions something to do.

The implementation

Trials of MAYA, out on Gamefound September 8, 2026, treats Push and Pull as first-class actions alongside Move, Attack, Defend and Draw.

What is Trials of MAYA?

Trials of MAYA is an expandable card-driven arena combat game. It combines three genres: MOBAs, classic 90s tactics games, and TCGs without booster packs. It plays 1 to 4 players in 60 to 180 minutes for ages 14 and up, with nine asymmetric champions fighting on grid arenas.

Push moves an adjacent entity in a straight line away from you. Pull moves an enemy in a straight line toward you. Both deal collision damage when the moved entity hits an obstruction, meaning a wall or another unit.

That single rule does a lot of work in a tactical combat board game. Pushing an enemy into a wall converts a positioning action into damage. Pulling one out of formation breaks a line without you having to walk into it. Pulling an ally clear of a threat is a defensive move that costs you a turn instead of costing them their health.

It also means the arena’s terrain is doing something every turn. The map keeps a short vocabulary, walls, spikes, high and low ground and voids, but forced movement makes all of it live. Standing beside a wall is efficient until someone can shove you into it.

Combined with initiative

Forced movement gets more interesting when turn order is contested rather than fixed.

Each round in Trials of MAYA every player commits a card face down onto a three-slot action mat and everyone reveals at once. The card’s number sets your initiative, with lower acting earlier, and returns as your energy two rounds later. So acting first is something you bought in advance, blind.

That matters here because a push landed before an opponent moves is worth far more than the same push landed after. Buying the initiative is often buying the right to reposition somebody else before they can react.

Where else to see it done well

Gloomhaven uses push and pull as class identity, with some characters built almost entirely around moving other people. Warhammer Underworlds ties forced movement to objectives, so shoving someone off a scoring hex is a win condition. Guards of Atlantis II uses it for lane control in team fights.

The common thread across every good tactical combat board game in this space is that forced movement is not a damage bonus. It is a way of making the board itself contested.

Rulebooks and public metadata are on BoardGameGeek, the full breakdown is on the official page, and there is a Tabletop Simulator build.

Follow or back Trials of MAYA on Gamefound.