Hi all, I'm very new to X-Wing, I just played my first three 'real' games tonight.

I was left with a few questions about the interpretations on certain cards:

1) with cards like Adv. Homing Missile which deal a face up damage card, do these ignore shields and grant a straight crit or can a shield negate them?

2) if AHM is affected by shields would a double damage card dealt face up eat 2 shields?

3) what is meant by 'deal 1 damage and cancel all dice rolls'? Does this count for evade too?

4) if a 'hit' is achieved does that mean a hit roll or a hit after evade dice and tokens have been spent?

5) can Bossk spend a crit with his pilot ability before Heavy Laser Canon downgrades it?

1 (&2): Absolutely they ignore shields. The key language here is "deal a face-up damage card" rather than "deal one damage" or "take one critical hit".

3: I believe you'll find that these cards include the phrase "if this attack hits". An attack that hits, therefore, has already dealt with evade results.

4: After. An attack that hits is an attack with remaining crit and hit results uncancelled after evade results and tokens have been spent (or an attack fired by Lt. Blount, Z-95 Headhunter pilot). These remaining attack dice are the ones you would then cancel in point 3.

5: No. Bossk requires that his attack hits, and the HLC downgrades dice immediately after the attack roll (before defense dice are rolled, or target locks, or focus are spent, or anything else).

1 (&2): Absolutely they ignore shields. The key language here is "deal a face-up damage card" rather than "deal one damage" or "take one critical hit".

Is there an official response to this? I'm entering a tourney in a few weeks and was discussing it with the tournament judge last night. He was unsure (My interpretation of the rules is the same as yours but he had never thought of it that way) then someone else added that it would have it got eaten by the shield anyway. If there is some official word on this I'd like to bring it to his attention pre tournament as I would like to use AHM in my list.

You have to differentiate between 'dealing damage' and 'dealing cards'

Dealing/suffering damage is an specific process that checks for the presence of shields tokens. If there are, you begin to discard shield tokens for each uncancelled damage... And if there are not, you recieve one face-down damage card per uncancelled [hit] red die result, and one face-up card per uncancelled [critical] red die result.

As you can guess, 'cancelled' means canceled by [evade] results coming from green dice or evade tokens.

However, some effects like Proton Bombs and Advanced Homing Missiles, don't deal damage. They deal cards... and as such, the above process is ignored, and you get the card directly, even if you still have shield tokens left.

When an effect instruct you to "deal 1 damage and then, cancel all dice rolls", it means precisely that. The targeted ship will suffer a [hit] damage result following the above process, and then, you will ignore all the results on the dice. As the above post mentioned, this effect usually requires that your attack hits.

An attack is considered to have hit when the defender doesn't have enough [evade] results in his roll to cancel all the [hit] and [critical] hit results from the attacker's roll.

Wow, he doesn't get card text like that but is judging a tourney?

I mean...yikes...

Hi Frostweasel - welcome to the game and to the forums.

In order to understand how effects that trigger when a player is "hit" work, It might be helpful to understand how the combat sequence works. and how a "hit" is defined within the game.

****EDIT**** and I would MOST DEFINITELY make sure that your TO understands this too - because if he doesn't - as InterceptorMad said - "Yikes!"

a "Hit" - as it is defined within the rules of X-Wing - can ONLY happen after a combat sequence has been resolved but before any damage has been dealt, and is defined as a state where there are uncancelled hit or crit dice results after both sets of dice have been rolled and modified, and the results have been compared.

So when performing an attack, after the weapon has been selected, the target declared and range and arc measured it goes like this:

Attacker Rolls Attack Dice.

Defender Modifies Attack Dice (if they have any abilities / upgrades that allow them to do so)

Attacker Modifies Attack Dice (if they have any abilities / upgrades / Tokens that allow them to do so)

Defender Rolls Defence Dice

Attacker Modifies Defence Dice (if they have any abilities / upgrades that allow them to do so)

Defender Modifies Defence Dice (if they have any abilities / upgrades / Tokens that allow them to do so)

Players Compare results - each evade result / token will cancel 1 hit or crit result, hits are cancelled before crits. If there are uncancelled hit or crit results remaining after this, the attack is considered a Hit.

Deal Damage. Most weapons apply all damage to shields first and apply hit results before crit results - so Hit Hit Crit against a ship with 3 shields will just remove three shields - against a ship with 2 shields, the defender will lose both shields and receive a face-up damage card.

Some weapons and pilot abilities will change the way damage is dealt and apply additional effects - Bossk will change an uncancelled crit into 2 hits - Ion cannons cancel all dice results, then deal 1 damage and add an ion token, Advanced Homers cancel all dice results and deal a face up damage card (you can destroy a ship without ever removing a single shield with these babies)

Note also that there is a difference between suffering damage and being "hit"

It is possible to be hit without suffering any damage (Draw Their Fire, Lt Blount etc) - and it is possible to suffer damage without being "hit" (asteroid collisions - Darth Vader Crew card - Assault Missile splash damage etc)

Hope that helps

1 (&2): Absolutely they ignore shields. The key language here is "deal a face-up damage card" rather than "deal one damage" or "take one critical hit".

Is there an official response to this? I'm entering a tourney in a few weeks and was discussing it with the tournament judge last night. He was unsure

It's in the official FAQ (which I suggest that TO reads) under rule clarifications, Suffer damage vs deal a damage card.

Wow, he doesn't get card text like that but is judging a tourney?

I mean...yikes...

1 (&2): Absolutely they ignore shields. The key language here is "deal a face-up damage card" rather than "deal one damage" or "take one critical hit".

Is there an official response to this? I'm entering a tourney in a few weeks and was discussing it with the tournament judge last night. He was unsure

It's in the official FAQ (which I suggest that TO reads) under rule clarifications, Suffer damage vs deal a damage card.

I'm not actually sure if he's the judge, he is hosting the event though. It is only a local small town tourney full of people like me who are just playing for fun. I'm sure they'll be rolling with a copy of the FAQ, I just wanted clarification as a new player that I wasn't completely misinterpreting the card.

1 (&2): Absolutely they ignore shields. The key language here is "deal a face-up damage card" rather than "deal one damage" or "take one critical hit".

Is there an official response to this? I'm entering a tourney in a few weeks and was discussing it with the tournament judge last night. He was unsure (My interpretation of the rules is the same as yours but he had never thought of it that way) then someone else added that it would have it got eaten by the shield anyway. If there is some official word on this I'd like to bring it to his attention pre tournament as I would like to use AHM in my list.

First thing you're going to need is a tournament judge that knows the rules. The damage process is pretty straight-forward as Funkleton has explained, but it's important that players and the judge know EXACTLY how it all works. The only exceptions to the norm, are when a particular card states something like AHM does with "deal a faceup Damage card". This tells you exactly what to do when your attack hits. Proton Bombs do much the same thing. Any other time, the process is followed as normal.

The Damage cards generally only come into play when the ship suffers damage and has no shields left (or didn't have any to start with), or a card says to deal a damage card straight away. A common newbie mistake is after rolling dice and comparing results is to lose a shield AND take a damage card for the one (or more) uncancelled {hit} or {crictical} result. And remember that {hit} results and {critical} results are handled in a particular order - {hits} then {criticals}.

In response to your question #3, "then cancel all dice results" refers to the uncancelled {hit} or {critical} results after comparing results. This is one of the game's mechanics that is used fairly often. Ion weapons generally use it as well. It's using the dice roll-off purely to determine if you hit the target or not. Once that the target has been hit, then the damage is done differently to normal, so the remaining dice results don't come into it anymore. Such as the AHM dealing a critical faceup Damage card. So if you miss, nothing happens, but if you hit, all they get is a faceup damage card.

Have a read of Step 6 - Compare Results, on page 12 of the rulebook, and the Deal Damage section on the following page.

There's a couple of key distinctions that newer players can often miss when reading the rules, and one of those is the written term 'hit'. Because the rulebook uses icons for their dice results, the term 'hit generally doesn't refer to a dice result. It's usually referring to whether you hit the target or not. And on the forums here, most posters will use {hit} or <boom> and {crit} or <kaboom> (or something similar) to refer to dice results. The other distinction is assigning a token and performing an action that assigns a token. When you have a stress token on your ship, you can't perform any action, but you can be assigned a token from other means (such as an upgrade card). If it doesn't say perform an action, then it's not an action. It's quite an important concept to get your head around.

And if it still confuses you, just ask the questions here.

Just a couple of points that might make understanding the game a little easier for you.

Thanks for the replies folks, it's nice to know I interpreted the card correctly even if I didn't understand why . I've only played 3 real games so far and I'm still building up my understanding of the rules. Plus coming from a background in 40k I'm used to having badly written rules that can be interpreted in various ways as well as the conflict between rule as written and rule as intended.