I can't seem to find this question on the forums already, hopefully I haven't missed it. Is it possible to choose a cleave target after killing a figure that was blocking LOS to the intended cleave target? The rules for cleave do not seem to indicate when the condition for "target able to be attacked." Or should possible cleave targets be only ones that were able to be targeted when the attack was initiated?

Secondly, I believe the mission name is Dark Obsession, where the Imperial player can designate an adjacent stormtrooper to be the target of an attack intended for Vader. Were we correct in ruling that cleave damage cannot be redirected to adjacent stormtroopers, too?

We've been really enjoying the game, but the imperial player's been having trouble. We've only the finale left to play on our first campaign, I think the imperial player has only won one mission so far. It's hard with three players to catch mistakes versus one, I think. Plus some lucky rolls...the penultimate mission was won by the rebels in two turns, due to two evade rolls protecting Jyn and her quick draw shooting Weiss at point blank before his AT ST even came up the elevator...and that was without us knowing we needed to hurry.

While you spend surges in Step 5: Spend Surges to gain the Cleave keyword, the Cleave does not happen until after Step 7: Calculate Damage applies, as the original target must sustain damage before Cleave can be used. As soon as a target suffers enough damage to remove it from the table, this is done immediately. This would open up LOS for choosing a different target for Cleave.

So in this case we assume the attacker has Reach. The attacker can not target "2" because he does not have LOS to it.

However, if target "1" is killed by the initial attack, "2" would become a valid Cleave target

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In Dark Obsession, the Stormtrooper becomes the new primary target. Cleave damage cannot be mitigated. (so Vader would take the Cleave damage)

Thanks for the quick reply! Yes it was cleave with reach, forgot to include that sorry. Good to know we were playing it correctly, I felt bad for the imperial player as things didn't go very well, so it's good to know it wasn't due to us misunderstanding the rules.

Yeah, Cleave with Reach is pretty much the *only* way this situation would arise.