R5-P9 Hypothetical

By TheMandalorianCandidate, in X-Wing Rules Questions

Posted at

I was playing a game last night and a question occurred to me. My friend was flying Garven Dreis with R5-P9, and I got to thinking: could one spend a focus on R5-P9 even if your ship has no lost shields to recover?

I imagine it could be useful in a couple of situations (Garven specific); passing a focus token at the end of combat to a HWK with Moldy Crow to use the next round (or even pass back with Kyle Katarn), or passing one to Corran Horn for use in his end phase attack.

R5-P9: "At the end of the combat phase, you may spend 1 of your (focus) tokens to recover 1 shield (up to your shield value)."

Does the text of the card allow the spending of a token for no effect? Or does the phrasing mean that you may only spend said token if you have shields to recover?

We already know that you can spend a Target Lock to reroll 0 dice, as 0 satisfies the TL's "reroll any number of dice" effect; similarly you may spend a focus token to modify 0 dice, as 0 still counts as " all of your (focus) results. This sets a precedent for spending tokens purely for secondary effects, but I'm not sure if R5-P9 falls into this category.

To be honest, I'm leaning towards the "no" side, but I'm having trouble defining the specific argument that would forbid this use. So, I'm bringing up the question for discussion/debate/callous slapping down of the idea as foolish.

What do you think?

Would this be legal?

Why or why not?

Did I just waste my time (and yours) on a pointless question with a blatantly obvious answer?

Let me know!

Posted at

This came up a while back, but I don't know that we came to a good answer on it. I honestly don't remember the result, you might be able to find it if you dig back a ways.

It's not quite the same as the focus/TL with zero case. You don't spend a token purely for secondary effects. Those effects say you can change "all" and "any", respectively, and zero is a legal value for "all" and "any", so you're still getting the full primary effect of spending the token. R5-P9 is allowing an explicit regain of one shield, with the "to your maximum" caveat. Does that maximum limit mean you can't use the ability at all? <shrug> As the Magic 8 Ball says, reply hazy, ask again later. There just isn't coverage in the X-wing rules to answer that sort of question.

If we go outside X-wing, many CCG-style games prohibit paying a cost for a benefit you can't get. Again, note that the focus-with-no-eyeballs doesn't fit this. The benefit you get from a focus is to change "any", and that effect is fully resolved and received.

So with largely undefined rules I'd be inclined to say you couldn't do it, both from a broad precedent of similar games and a general sense of conservative analysis that generally assumes questionable stuff doesn't work. That said, a 50-ish combo (assuming a standard focus factory Kyle) that hands Kyle one extra focus at the start of the game doesn't feel breaking to me, so... <shrug>

Edited by Buhallin
Posted at

I believe I saw this come up before somewhere (can't recall when/where), and the answer was yes, you could spend a focus for r5p9 at max shields and not recover anything. I don't see anything in the verbiage that would lead me to believe you couldn't.

Posted at

Those effects say you can change "all" and "any", respectively, and zero is a legal value for "all" and "any", so you're still getting the full primary effect of spending the token

I'd be inclined to say no but for a slightly different reason.

Zero is a valid value for Any or All. But this isn't so much a case of gaining zero shield tokens. You should gain 1, but you can't exceed the printed shield value. If you look at the rules for Energy, it says that if you exceed the printed value you discard any extra.

But shields don't have a rule like that. There is no "if you gain more shield tokens then the printed value, discard the excess." but rather you are simply prohibited from gaining more. If you can not gain more, then you can't trigger the effect.