My question is when is a token assigned to a ship? This mainly applies to Tarkin and the soon to be released Antilles cards.

If I have three tokens assigned to a ship at the start of a turn, and use Tarkin to gain another token, what happens? Do I have to assign it to the ship and replace one of the other tokens? Or can I use it that turn and leave the other three on the ship?

I have looked through the rules and know the rules in regards to what a ship can be assigned. I have also found the rule that states a token can be spent in the same turn it is gained.

So the question is after gaining a token when must it be assigned to the ship? The rules do not specifically stipulate when this happens. Is there a chance to spend it between gaining it and assigning it?

From RRG Command Tokens section.

"When a ship is assigned a command token, if it has more command tokens than its command value, it must immediately discard one of its command tokens."

"When a ship is assigned a command token, if it already has a copy of that command token, it must immediately discard that command token."

With Tarkin the ship's get the tokens at the beginning of the ship phase, each command lists an appropriate time to spend tokens and dials during that ship's activation. As you get the token before you even get a chance to activate the ship, you would have to discard one of your tokens. That is my understanding at least.

Yup, I agree with skyhwk. The Tarkin card says it adds tokens "at the start of the ship phase". You do his action right after you're done setting your new command dials in the Command Phase. If any ships have token counts exceeding their command value, they have to discard right then and there before they even get activated.

You mentioned the Antilles card:

"When you reveal a command, you may gain 1 matching command token without spending the command dial."

His effect occurs at a different time than Tarkin's. You would activate a ship, reveal the dial, decide if you want to use Antilles' ability, discard a token if you have too many, then you could start thinking about actually using your commands.

In order:

- Command phase: each player selects a command on a dial and puts the dial at the bottom of their stack

- Tarkin picks one command and all allied ships get that token. Dupilicate tokens and/or tokens that exceed a ship's command value is discarded (you can pick which one).

- All ships are played one at a time. When it's that ship's turn, it starts by flipping over the top command on it's stack. At that exact moment, Antilles ability activates if it was assigned to a ship who's turn it was.