I have a question that pertains particularly to the Eldar's Swooping Hawks and Fire Prism combat cards, but it is generally applicable to situations where a player is forced to lose combat tokens. My question is, if the player has no tokens of the appropriate type but he or she has dice of that type, does the player receive "negative" tokens and receive a penalty to the icon total for the turn, or is the benefit lost.
For instance, the Fire Prism can be used to reduce the opponent's shield tokens by five if used by a defending player with unrouted Falcons or Void Stalkers. If I use this against an opponent with no shield TOKENS but a total of six shield DICE and CARD ICONS, does this bring him down to one shield for the round it is played, or is this effect wasted?
If one is to be exact about the wording, it seems like it would be wasted, because you're supposed to lose tokens, and you don't have them. But I can understand if this was not the intended interpretation. I'm surprised that I haven't run across this elsewhere as a question or clarification.