Hi folks. Lurker-turned-poster here

I have a question concerning the Direct Hit! Action Card that came up in a game I played in over the weekend. My friends and I are still very new to TI so please forgive us if the answer should be obvious!

(TL;DR version below)

Alex initiates a space battle against Zack. Alex's fleet includes two dreadnoughts. During the first round of space combat, Alex suffers several hits and elects to "soak" a hit on each of his dreadnoughts, damaging them both. Zack immediately plays two Direct Hit! cards and announces that both dreadnoughts have been destroyed.

Alex says that Zack cannot play two Direct Hit! cards on his fleet, as per page 23 of the rules:

"A player may never play two identical Action Cards for the same situation and/or on the same entity during one round. Example: A player cannot play two Flank Speed Action Cards on the same fleet in the same round. The player may, however, play a Flank Speed card on two different fleets in the same round."

Alex maintains that this situation is virtually identical to the example given.

Zack disagrees. He says that he is within the rules because:

a) The dreadnoughts are each represented by a separate and individual piece on the board. Therefore they are not the same entity.

b) He is playing each Direct Hit! card in response to a separate situation, namely:

Situation 1: Dreadnought 1 Sustains Damage

Situation 2: Dreadnought 2 Sustains Damage

After a spirited debate, Zack agrees to withdraw one of the Direct Hit! cards and returns it to his hand. He maintains that his interpretation of the rules has merit, due largely to the use of unclear terms like "situation" and "entity". Is he right?

TL;DR VERSION: If a player "soaks" hits on two or more Dreadnoughts or War Suns in the same fleet during the same round of space combat , can the opposing player then play two or more Direct Hit! cards to immediately destroy the damaged ships?

Follow-up question: In the above situation, could a third player (Kevin) play a Direct Hit! card to destroy one of the dreadnoughts, even though he is not involved in the battle?

I'll start with the follow up question, since it's the most straight forward; The errata and the reprinted Direct Hit cards found in the expansion game, adds the text " a space batle in which you are participating ", which limits any Direct Hits to the two players involved.

To you main question, I do not believe the identical action card rule applies. Consider that while casualties are simultaneous, they are applied in sequence, for instance it is not possible to declare two casualties on a single dreadnought if you know that your opponent has a Direct Hit card. The opponent may always interupt you after the first casualty is declared and force you to take the second somewhere else.

For that reason, I see double Direct Hit as two distinct situations, no different than two Direct Hit! cards played in different rounds of the same space battle.

Kama said:

Interesting. I know that it is possible to play an Action "between hits" (as per the FAQ), but I hadn't considered that this might allow a player to double up action cards.

Also, I'd forgotten about the new text for Direct Hit! Thanks.

Direct Hit!'s "entity" is a single ship. You can play multiple Direct Hit!'s, even against ships in the same fleet, as the card doesn't "affect" the fleet as a whole like Flank Speed does; it affects individual ships.

As for the rule quote, it is a bit misleading, because strictly speaking, Flank Speed isn't played on a "fleet" - it's played when you activate a system and affects ALL fleets that move to that system. However, I think what the rule quote you are saying means is that if you later activate another system, you can use Flank Speed on that system, too; what you cannot do is use two Flank Speeds for movement to a single system to give ships +2 movement.

One thing to point out, though, that if you play Direct Hit!, and your opponent plays Sabotage to cancel it, it's considered as if the card was never played; which means, if you DO happen to have a second Direct Hit! (lucky dog), you can play the second Direct Hit! on the same ship you tried to the first time, because the first card was never "played".

Iron Weasel said:

What this rule is basically saying is that you can't play two of the same card against the same target in a single round. In the example, the card Flank Speed targets a fleet of ships, so you can't play two Flank Speeds on the same fleet, but you may play two Flank Speeds on two different fleets. Direct Hit targets one ship. So if you somehow had a situation where one ship was being targetted by two Direct Hit cards, that would be illegal. Targetting two different ships with one DH each is fair game, however. Zack was right. Look at what the action card is question targets (fleet, unit, player, planet, system, etc) and know that you can't put two of that card on the same specific target in single round.

Steve-O said:

Well, almost; Flank Speed doesn't really "target" anything, but it DOES affect ALL fleets moving to the activated system. You can't use two Flank Speeds to give those fleets +2 movement.

However, on your next activation, you could play another Flank Speed to move another set of ships.

I don't really like the example in the book. I'm guessing that Flank Speed originally affected only one fleet, and then it was changed after the rulebook was written.

One of the reasons that our debate got so spirited was because the example wasn't particularly helpful. Your comments have been, however. Thanks!