The problem is that the rules also say that focus tokens do not affect huge ships.

But apparently they do. That means either FFG is throwing RAW out the window, which they can do. Or else that first line doesn't mean anything by its self. It doesn't actually mean what it seems to mean, but is more of a descriptive sentence.

Either way I think it's a problem. But again if we accept Frank's ruling here, then it clearly means one of the two things or perhaps both are true.

Yeah, I see no problem with that.

I do, because that's not how the rules work, and quite clearly not how they are intended to work. It's quite clear that they want small ships to be able to buff the Huge ones, and removing that interaction would make both Huge ships and support ships even less attractive in Epic games.

There is a difference here, and RAW aren't being violated. CR-90 isn't being assigned a focus token by Esege, it's spending Esege's. If Esege's ability was to give tokens (Like Garven), then RAW would say it would be discarded, which is what happens.

Huh Wha? RAW not violated? If the CR-90 "treats (her) focus tokens as its own" shouldn't it be immediately discarded? No way is this RAW.

Read the actual rule. The only thing that causes the token to be discarded is being assigned a token.

Esege texts do not say anything about spending a token. Simply to "treat it" as if it belonged to another ship.

Yeah, I see no problem with that.

I do, because that's not how the rules work, and quite clearly not how they are intended to work. It's quite clear that they want small ships to be able to buff the Huge ones, and removing that interaction would make both Huge ships and support ships even less attractive in Epic games.

They already debuffed Biggs, debuff everything and be done with it.

Saying that that is not how the rules work, that is how the rules work. If they make a rule saying that huge ships aren't affected by small or large ship's abilities.

Then that would be the rule and that would be how it worked.

Well, that particular interaction hadn't occurred to me, but I can't think of a single reason why anyone would think it wouldn't work.

Seems very straightforward to me.

The original thread I cited in the OP coalesced opinion toward it not working. Makes for an interesting read in light of Frank's recent series of ruling emails.

Huge Ship Rules:

Focus, evade, and stress tokens do not affect huge ships. When a huge ship

receives any of these tokens, immediately remove them and return them to

the token supply.

Focus tokens do not affect huge ships. Note the word receive a token. Distinctly different than assign​.

Esege Card Text: When another friendly ship at Range 1-2 is attacking, it may treat your focus tokens as its own.

Esege lets you treat a token as if it belonged to another ship.

I am perfectly OK with the ruling. Huge ships can use the help. I am even OK with saying the rules might allow it from a certain point of view. I am absolutely flabbergasted by the folks that were against pre-SLAM bombing because it is against RAW and the same folks saying that this ruling is RAW. HuhWha?

The problem is that the rules also say that focus tokens do not affect huge ships.

But apparently they do. That means either FFG is throwing RAW out the window, which they can do. Or else that first line doesn't mean anything by its self. It doesn't actually mean what it seems to mean, but is more of a descriptive sentence.

Either way I think it's a problem. But again if we accept Frank's ruling here, then it clearly means one of the two things or perhaps both are true.

You know, this is now twice in the space of a week where an email ruling from Frank led, in one way or another, to the argument that a sentence written in the rules does not constitute a rule ... (as was debated elsewhere regarding the definition of "choose a maneuver" in our infamous SLAM thread, and now the line about how tokens "do not affect" Epic ships) ... leading to some really frustrating philosophical gymnastics!

I wonder again about the implications of Frank not being credited as a developer on the new TFA Core Set, which presumably includes its new rules book.

a sentence written in the rules does not constitute a rule ...

In the one case I'm simply trying to reconcile Franks ruling with the text we have, and that's just me throwing some theoretical ways to do so.

At the most basic RAW it seems like this shouldn't work. But RAI it does. That means as I said either they're ignoring RAW, or else RAW doesn't mean what they wanted it to mean.

But it does prove if nothing else that Frank doesn't rule based purely on RAW. So any argument that the SLAM was based on RAW so Frank didn't have a choice is clearly proven false by this.

Frank is trolling us hard.

Edit: While Esege's ability makes sense and I support it, I'm just noting how his replies seem to conflict with certain "consensi."

"Consensus" is an English word, and on the rare occasion you really need a plural, it's "consensuses".

Among the good reasons to do it that way is that in Latin, "consensus" belongs to the fourth declension, so its plural is "consensūs". (The -us to -i rule of pluralization only applies to second-declension nouns.)

There is a difference here, and RAW aren't being violated. CR-90 isn't being assigned a focus token by Esege, it's spending Esege's. If Esege's ability was to give tokens (Like Garven), then RAW would say it would be discarded, which is what happens. The CR-90 is not receiving any tokens in the case of Esege.

This is much like how Howlrunner and Captain Jonus can assist the raider.

Maybe the guy has just had a bad week and is trolling us all.

I propose Frank to be errataed in the next FAQ as not reliable rules source.

The problem is that the rules also say that focus tokens do not affect huge ships.

But apparently they do. That means either FFG is throwing RAW out the window, which they can do. Or else that first line doesn't mean anything by its self. It doesn't actually mean what it seems to mean, but is more of a descriptive sentence.

Either way I think it's a problem. But again if we accept Frank's ruling here, then it clearly means one of the two things or perhaps both are true.

You know, this is now twice in the space of a week where an email ruling from Frank led, in one way or another, to the argument that a sentence written in the rules does not constitute a rule ... (as was debated elsewhere regarding the definition of "choose a maneuver" in our infamous SLAM thread, and now the line about how tokens "do not affect" Epic ships) ... leading to some really frustrating philosophical gymnastics!

I wonder again about the implications of Frank not being credited as a developer on the new TFA Core Set, which presumably includes its new rules book.

Different developers work on different projects; don't read too much into Frank's presence or absence in the credits. James Kniffen was gone for several waves, but is back for the core set. Is it because he was banished to some Cthulhian nether realm for giving the HWK 1 Attack or getting the maneuver rules wrong with both Night Beast and Daredevil? Possibly, but more likely he was just busy working on other stuff.

As for the other thread's gymnastics, "choose... a maneuver" on the SLAM reference card could mean the same thing as "choose a maneuver" in the context of the Planning phase. But it turns out it has the plain meaning of "choose" instead, the same way it does in dozens of other places in the rules.

I propose Frank to be errataed in the next FAQ as not reliable rules source.

Why, because you don't happen to like his rulings? He is as far as I know one of the lead designers on X-Wing, that makes him a de facto reliable resource, and one of the only two authorities on the subject.

These guys really need to invite someone over from Wizards of the Coast to explain to them how to write rules and keywords.

I think the bloat and doublespeak prevalent in Wizards' products would be the absolute last thing we need. Some of you guys may not be aware that Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition was intentionally written to be ambiguous.

With the rules as written on huge ships, there was never a conflict.

These guys really need to invite someone over from Wizards of the Coast to explain to them how to write rules and keywords.

I think the bloat and doublespeak prevalent in Wizards' products would be the absolute last thing we need. Some of you guys may not be aware that Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition was intentionally written to be ambiguous.

With the rules as written on huge ships, there was never a conflict.

I think the sarcasm was missed...

Because of Frank's ruling, I'm thinking that from here on forward, we are to take it that the sentence saying that huge ships aren't affected by focus, etc., etc. tokens, is implied when the ship is "receiving" a token, which in this case it is not.

Given the fact of the new rule, it's the only thing making sense to me.

Edit: Given the growing expanse of the game, the odd wording f***up should be expected. I think it's pretty obvious what Frank was getting at here.

Well it isn't official... yet, until It gets a FAQ there will always be 2 sides to this conversation, similar to the email we got about the use of SLAM and bombs.

Basically, I'm turning a blind eye to these email rulings until they update the FAQ.

I propose Frank to be errataed in the next FAQ as not reliable rules source.

Why, because you don't happen to like his rulings? He is as far as I know one of the lead designers on X-Wing, that makes him a de facto reliable resource, and one of the only two authorities on the subject.

As a matter of fact no, I don't happen to like his rulings.

But not because the rulings themselves, but for the feeling of extreme inconsistency that he or Davy are keeping the game rules corpus in.

In a game where there are so many little rules overriding the big, fixed rules, and when the outcome of a move, or an entire match, depends on the correct understanding of the rules, you cannot consent when redacting them the sloth and lack of care that we have needed to suffer lately.

We are in a constant state of "rules insecurity". You no longer know what the Authority intends by reading their rulings. You can buy an upgrade card or ship expecting one behavior, and next day the Authority will change their fickle mind and alter the deal.

This is just the last example of them saying the opposite of what they said before. Spare me the apologizing. I don't care who is "they". "They" is the X-Wing team, whoever compiles the articles, redacts the cards, writes the rules references, sends the mails or updates the FAQ.

They are a team, and as a team they have failed again and again at putting some words together to express their intentions. When they don't write absurdly ambiguous English constructs in their cards (that anyone of us can detect as troublesome after few minutes they spoil them in a preview article), they shamelessly contradict their own rules.

Until today I have been an FFG apologizer and fanboy. With the final outcome of the SLAM debacle, involving a sneaky alteration of the article that has been there for months contradicting their latest rulings, I have had my share of this nonsense.

Maybe they are overworked, maybe they have not had enough testing and proofreading time? Perhaps.

It's not my business, however. What is my business is to express my discomfort with what I think is a poor handling of such important part of the game. I have invested in this game (and in many other FFG games), and I would hate it to go down a spiral of mediocrity. Whatever in their process is causing this, I'd like it to be changed.

Because the focus token isn't affecting the huge ship but is instead affecting the dice? Hopefully this one gets some real explanation in the next FAQ because I'm not sure I'd buy it otherwise...

Exactly what I say! Using Esege's focus during the attack (the only time Esege ability works) means it affects Tantive's target rather than the Tantive itself.

I thought it odd that someone asked this question again after 3 months but then I realized it was dark side necromancy.

Makes the whole kerfuffle over slam and bomb even harder to fathom.

Can someone give me the short version of this? I was away from the game when it came up (and then resolved) and I still haven't really flown with or against K-Wings enough to independently identify the issue.

I'm assuming there was some RAW item that made SLAMming a bomb illegal, despite the ability to do just that being RAI/what people expected?

Can someone give me the short version of this? I was away from the game when it came up (and then resolved)

Then another preview article came out. In it, the k-wing was explicitly shown dropping a bomb before performing the SLAM maneuver. So everyone thought SLAM was much better than we had previously thought.

The second article stayed that way for a long time. (Month, at least)

Then the k-wing was actually released and we got a FAQ saying that you COULDN'T move-bomb-slam, in direct contradiction of the k-wing preview article.

Then the whole **** board looses its #%^* saying "false advertising!!!", "FFG lied!!!!", "aaaaarrrrrrgggggg!!! Rage quit"

Then, a couple weeks after the FAQ and release, they finally changed the article that made everyone think move-bomb-slam was possible in the first place.

To be fair, the people than knew the rules about dropping bombs when you reveal your maneuver dial realized that the original article was contradicting what was written.

They even got on the forums and let everyone know that something was fishy since nothing about performing SLAM made you reveal your maneuver a second time during the turn.

So the people that were salty over-salted themselves.

If it is any consolation, Deathrain can pretty much do what people thought the K-wing could do. Advanced sensors and Experimental Interface will let you boost forward, then drop a bomb, barrel roll to the side, then perform a maneuver.

It does seem rather inconsistent... gonna be a big FAQ update.

Pretty much this. The FAQ hasn't been updated and the eratta was really only with the huge ship rules of the Gozanti which doesn't do a good job at clarifying all card interactions. We still don't know if Leebo will work on a transport or corvette.

That being said because huge ships have a restricted use I don't necessarily see Esegee's focus being used as that much of a power imbalance. Sucks Imperials and Scum won't have something to the same advantage, but when huge ships come out for scum they will have Bosk<crew> which acts as a FCS for huge ships (since focus and stress will not be a factor). So again epic interactions are interesting but yes epic is not as finely honed and tuned as standard 100 point tournament meta.

I remember quite a few arguments about that article well before the K-wing came out with people being very adamant that the only way you could set the SLAM maneuver is set the dial to the maneuver and then 'reveal' it despite the language never appearing on the SLAM card or in any rules. I never did see any apologies for the very rude language that flew back and forth in these 'debates' after the K-wing actually hit. And no one learned their lesson because each time a new preview comes out we go through the same thing, just that SLAM-gate was so much worse.

I hate the FFG preview articles. I look at them for the sneak peek at the cards but I don't believe any of the PR crap in the article itself until I see the product. Those articles have been proven to be inaccurate to an amazing degree and don't deserve to be the basis of arguments that set brother on brother. That's what FFG's damage deck backslide is for!

Are there any other interactions with Huge Ships that now suddenly become open for use?

Yes, now rebels are over the top in EPIC, especially with X-wings getting a buff.

So 2 focus with simple Recon, and 1-2 more from outside sources possible.

now make the monster PS 12 and you'll understand why our local meta doesn't like epic games with rebel scum any more.