The "Ragnar Anchorage" destination card states the following:

The Admiral may repair up to 3 vipers and 1 raptor. These ships may be damaged or even destroyed.

The issue is with the second sentence - "These ships may be damaged or even destroyed." In the case of raptors, there is no distinction. In the case or vipers, however, there is an important difference between a damaged viper and a destroyed viper. If it should turn out, then, that there are at least three damaged vipers but also some destroyed vipers, is the Admiral permitted to repair the destroyed vipers first (bringing them back into play) while ignoring damaged vipers that he could have repaired?

In a game last night, this destination card was played while there were three destroyed vipers, three damaged vipers, and only two working vipers. The Admiral wanted to repair the three destroyed vipers (bringing all eight back into play) while leaving the three damaged vipers alone (since they could still be repaired normally). However, while the wording on the card might be read to permit this (i.e. "The Admiral may choose any three vipers that are not currently operational, even destroyed ones, and make them operational."), it might also be reasonably interpreted to mean that he can simply repair up to three vipers (as normal), dipping into the destroyed vipers if necessary (i.e. "The Admiral may repair up to three damaged vipers. If there are less than three damaged vipers, he may repair as many destroyed vipers as are necessary to meet this number.").

By the literal wording of the card, we ruled that the first interpretation was permissible - the Admiral could repair the three destroyed vipers first and ignore the damaged vipers if he wished. But while this sounded technically correct, we suspected that it might well be against the intended meaning of the card. We feel that the card was probably intended to mean the second thing, and the author didn't realise it could be interpreted the first way.

What do you guys think?

OverMatt said:

You can "repair" destroyed Vipers first, then damaged ones. Thematically, the card is supposed to represent the fact that the fleet has visited a location where they can pick up extra armaments (presumably including more Vipers), so the intention is certainly that destroyed Vipers *should* be "repaired" first.

I also read it as intending you to prefer destroyed over damaged.

I was always caught by the 'may' in the sentence, meaning if you get this with a Cylon admiral he can just say no.

Yes, that's quite true.

According to the literal wording of the card (specifically, the "may"), repairing any vipers or raptors is entirely optional and occurs at the Admiral's sole discretion. So, as a you said, a cylon Admiral could simply choose to repair zero vipers and zero raptors.

"Admiral look! We found lots of guns! And even some spare food and water! We'll be able to survive for many more months on these supplies."

"Just leave em. The next guy might need them more."