I had a situation come up with Join Me in a game tonight that I am hoping to get a consensus opinion about how this card should work.

Background:

For reference, Join Me is an event card that states:

"Play only during your deployment phase.

Action : Take control of a target non-unique Character unit."

LS player has a 2 cost Character unit in play. DS player plays Join Me and takes the unit over to his side of the board.

I believe that it has already been established in other forum threads that the following things take place when the LS card moves over to the dark side:

1) The LS player removes any Force cards and enhancements attached to LS unit. Force card returns to LS player's pool of available Force cards. Enhancements return to LS player's discard pile.

2) Any damage or focus tokens currently on the unit move with the unit over to the DS.

Am I correct in this assumption? I was unable to find the thread where I thought I had read this previously, and want to establish a baseline for this question.

Situation:

So, after Join Me is played, the DS player controls the unit, according to the text on the card. Now, the LS player plays Swindled.

For reference, Swindled states:

" Action : Return a target unit with printed cost 2 or lower to its owner's hand"

Question 1:

If the unit is Swindled, does it go to the DS player's hand (since DS "controls" the unit) or does it go back to the LS player's hand (since LS player was original "owner")?

If the unit can be Swindled into DS player's hand, the DS player can only deploy that unit if he has a resource match. (Conditional to answer of Q1.)

Question 2:

When the LS unit that was the original target of Join Me is eventually destroyed, does the unit return to the LS player's discard pile since he was the original "owner", or the DS player's discard pile, since he "controls" the unit?

Per page 23 of rules book:

"When a unit is destroyed, it is placed faceup on top of its owner's discard pile."

Any thoughts or comments would be greatly appreciated!

Pete

You should always treat the rules and card texts literaly:

Return a target unit with printed cost 2 or lower to its owner's hand

When a unit is destroyed, it is placed faceup on top of its owner's discard pile

Owner is the person who has the card in his/her deck at the start of the game.

Also note that enhancement are not discarded when a unit changes controller unless the enhancement could no longer be played on that unit (ie it reads "Enhance friendly unit"). For instance, playing Join Me on a Guardian of the Peace with a Jedi Lightsaber will give the DS player a Guardian with a Lightsaber that functions normally. If the enhancement was instead Trust Your Feelings, it would still stay attached, but the LS player is still the one who controls the enhancement so only they could use its Action.

Thanks for the replies!

So essentially, when Swindled is played on the unit, it goes back to the LS player's hand since he is the owner. If LS had not played Swindled, when the unit is destroyed, it goes to the LS player's discard pile. Got it!

dbmeboy - In regards to your statement about Trust Your Feelings, has that been discussed elsewhere? Can you attach a link for that if there has been an official decision on that from FFG? I am not understanding why the Jedi Lightsaber will work, but Trust Your Feelings will not.

As for the tokens, they stay with the unit when it switches sides, correct? For instance, if there was one focus token and one damage token on the unit, the damage will come over and stay on the unit, and the unit will remain focused until the next DS refresh phase. Am I correct in this assumption?

Thanks again.

Pete

Here's the link to the official response from FFG .

As far as Lightsaber vs Trust, they actually both continue to work as normally. In fact, the LS player could always have chosen to play those enhancements on a DS unit if they had wanted to. However, only the unit changes control and not the attached enhancement so any optional abilities (Action/Reaction/Interrupt) are still under the control of the LS player in this scenario. The LS player certainly could choose to use Trust Your Feelings to remove a focus token from the unit, but it is unlikely that they would do so.

Here's Nate's response for people who don't want to go link hopping:

"No, this (rule 2.6 in FAQ) does not apply to enhancements, at least not automatically.

First, the enhancement itself does not change control, it remains under the control of its original owner, functioning the same as any enhancement that has been played on an opponent's unit. This means that the player who gained control of the unit does not control the enhancement, if the enhancement has an Action, Reaction, or Interrupt, only its original controller can opt to trigger those abilities. Passive or constant effects that an enhancement provides are still "on" though.

Second, it is possible that the control change results in an illegal attachment state. For instance, if the enhancement read something like, "attach to a character you control," and the character changes control while the attachment does not, you have an illegal connection, and the enhancement is discarded."

Yeah this ruling rarely comes into effect and it still seems counter-intuitive to me but just eliminating your opponent from using trust your feelings to hurt you can be helpful.

I can think of one or two strange combos where the LS player would want to use Trust to unfocus the DS-controlled unit. Generally in combination with Stinging Insult to force it to block and kill it (perhaps planning to get it or the Trust back via It Binds All Things or BotF Obi-Wan). The real counterintuitive consequence of this ruling is that something that enhances a unit you control (ie Smuggling Compartment) will be discarded in 2v2 if the enhanced unit is loaned to your partner as a support attacker or defender.

You could use Trust as a LS player and force him to block just to kill him to get the cards back in your discard pile, and then use the gametext of a card to play your enhancements from your discard pile.

I'm pretty sure that's exactly the combo I listed :-)