In my game last Tuesday, my opponent fired on my AF2 with X17s - and I said (correctly at the time) my APs will counter it, there then ensued a quick search of this forum, for the ruling. This was accepted by my opponent, somewhat grudgingly, as he'd bought the Neb expansion to get this upgrade, to counter AP!! Roll on a few days, and the roles have reversed somewhat

I now feel compelled to buy at least 1 more Neb, a ship that I dislike (one of the least popular ships?) especially if I go back to playing Imps.

This actually makes far more sense than most people think. It is consistent with other rules. The other ruling was not.

AP is can. XI7 is cannot. The other hull zones effect is still in play from AP.

Allow me to quote from the rules:

The Golden Rules

... If a card effect uses the word “cannot,” that effect is

absolute.

Cannot was never the issue.

It was the use of "Hull Zones" that created the ambiguity

I'm actually not sure there was any ambiguity initially, if "hull zones" was the issue instead of "cannot." The "cannot" effect is supposed to be absolute, according to the RRG golden rules. If there's no dispute about that, then the XI7 "cannot" seems pretty straightforward:

"While attacking, if the defender spends a [redirect] token, it cannot suffer more than 1 damage on hull zones other than the defending hull zone."

You "cannot" suffer more than 1 damage on hull zones (plural, not singular) other than the defending hull zone. Assigning 3 damage to hull zones (plural, not singular) other than the defending hull zone (even if it's only 1 damage per hull zone) violates the "cannot". Seems straightforward to me.

But I'm primarily an imperial player who wasn't looking forward to AP-enhanced Ackbarred Gunnery-teaming AFII terrorists, so perhaps I'm overlooking something...

With this change, is there any reason to take the Heavy Turbolaser Turrets upgrade over the XI-7? It seems completely outclassed with this ruling.

I'll never understand the freaking out about one card change (unless it was a fleet wide thing like an admiral).

Yup. Easy enough to make this statement. I can dig it.

However.

In my own small little view of the world, there were a lot of assault frigs and a lot of assault frigs carried AP because they're great on AF particularly when they ignore the XI7 penalty.

AFs had become synonymous with rebel lists, in my head at least. If you remove that AF>AP>XI7 dynamic it really does end up changing ... everything.

It was also the only viable ship that could take Advanced Projectors too...unless somebody found good use for it on a CR90?

Also for all the people saying how one upgrade card counters another isn't right, pretty sure that ECMs hard counter H9s AND Sensor Teams....just saying.

In my game last Tuesday, my opponent fired on my AF2 with X17s - and I said (correctly at the time) my APs will counter it, there then ensued a quick search of this forum, for the ruling. This was accepted by my opponent, somewhat grudgingly, as he'd bought the Neb expansion to get this upgrade, to counter AP!! Roll on a few days, and the roles have reversed somewhat

I now feel compelled to buy at least 1 more Neb, a ship that I dislike (one of the least popular ships?) especially if I go back to playing Imps.

more like "least understood ships"

the forum has a bad habit of blowing things way the **** out of proportion

the vulnerability of Neb side arcs is one of those things

I actually think the biggest impact will be to the MC30, based on this change.

The AFII is tough enough that it can withstand most hits even without complete redirection (and has brace, additionally). Then a single engineering command or tokens allows you to bounce shields around on the ship in order to cover that hull zone again, plus it moves fast enough (or at least has the ability to do so) that you shouldn't always have to expose the same side to most imperial ships over and over. However, the MC30, despite having the same speed, is fragile enough that larger ships can one shot it, thanks to the much lower hull. This is also harmful to the MC80 for the same reason, though not as much.

Ironically, the biggest impact of this change may to be reinforce the AFII as far and away the best rebel ship.

This has probably already been discussed (I looked through most of the thread but not all of it), but I am glad for the changes. Yes, I realize that Rebel ships rely on their shields more, but I like the idea of actually having to worry about exposing only one side of your ship to the enemy the whole game. Now, the guppies always pull a half-circle at long-range and just flip the shields all over the place with AP. Now, you may have to alter tactics in order to be able to present that other broadside in cases where your shields are down on one side. Do I think the original tactic is destroyed by the FAQ? Absolutely not, its not like FFG started handing out free XI7s to everybody and not every ship can (or will want) to take them. God forbid they make the most powerful ship in the game have a little bit of a counter if you want to use up your turbolaser slots for them.

I'm going to disappoint *ALL* of my XI-7 Wielding opponents by utilising a Force of Nebulon-Bs and B-Wings instead of Assault Frigates... I'm starting to get more Confident with them, and they'd be wasted points shooting at me....

With this change, is there any reason to take the Heavy Turbolaser Turrets upgrade over the XI-7? It seems completely outclassed with this ruling.

There are some specific scenarios where you might not want XI7s:

• No reason to take them against a Raider/Neb swarm (they contribute nothing, as neither ship has redirects). Also limited utility against a CR-90 swarm (which is more of a thing), as their single redirect is rarely game-saving. So if that's your local meta, HTTs will be far more valuable against the Nebs/Raiders (though it doesn't add anything against CR-90s, as they have no brace).
• If you're running a ship with overload pulse, you may also not want XI7s, as you generally want to encourage your opponent to spend exhausted defense tokens so they're discarded (unless you're Avenger , of course). By that logic, also no reason to run HTTs if that's your strategy.
• There are probably other scenarios, but these seem like the two most common.

Beyond those scenarios, HTTs are worth considering because they offer the superior defense token shut-down, in my opinion. XI7s neuter redirects, so you want them on ships that shoot lots of dice, so that your massive damage ends up as close to your target hull zone as possible. But XI7 doesn't prevent your opponent from using a redirect (though it may dissuade him from doing so), and doesn't do anything to prevent your opponent from using any other defense token. HTT, on the other hand, either forces your opponent to use a severely gimped version of Brace (which is by far the most valuable defense token in terms of mitigating high-end damage), or prevents your opponent from using any other defense tokens, in any form, gimped or not. For a large ship (ISD, MC-80), this means if your opponent wants to use other defense tokens, HTT is basically functioning as 40-90% of a free accuracy on the target's Brace (depending on how much damage would be cancelled by brace, and whether the partial brace to reduce damage by 1 is still used); if on the other hand your opponent wants to use Brace, HTTs is the same functionally as three free accuracy results .

If you want to prevent your opponent from using the brace + redirect combo, HTTs are absolutely the most efficient way to do it. To achieve that result solely with dice, you need 1 dice worth of accuracy for non-ECM ships (Neb, Glad, VSD, ISD I) to block their Brace. ECM + redirect ships (AFII) require 2 accuracies, since your first accuracy can be ignored, and the best you can hope to do with two is to tap the two redirects (leaving Brace useable). Ships with ECMs + two redirects (ISDII/MC-80) actually require 3 accuracy results (brace + both redirects, so only one is useable with ECMs)... which means 3 less dice giving you damage (at least 3 damage is lost, and as much as 6 damage on red dice). HTTs allow you to shut down either the brace, or the redirects/other defense tokens, for free. The drawback is that it's your opponent's choice what gets shut down. But something's getting shut down every time. For just 6 points. No dice fickleness hazarded, no loss of damage output on your dice required.

So here's how this all works out when dealing with large, medium, and small/everyday damage totals:

• High-end damage: Suppose you deal 10+ damage. Arbitrarily selected, but perfectly achievable in Wave II from an ISD's front arc (CF + some combination of Devastator /Vader/Screed/Overload Pulse/ Avenger /SW-7s/hot rolls), an MC-80/AFII's side arc (Ackbar + CF + some combination of Defiance / Paragon /SW-7s/hot rolls), an MC-30 at close range (with CF + Ordnance Experts + APTs/ACMs + hot rolls, with or without Ackbar), a Vic I's front arc at close range ( Dominator + Expanded Launchers + CF + Ordnance Experts/Screed/Vader), or as BigBearCDN has noted, even a very special Neb-B under certain circumstances ( Salvation + 2 Opening Salvo black dice + CF black die, with all six dice landing crits, for a whopping total of 16 damage... not too shabby for a Neb). At 10 damage, HTTs permit your opponent to brace that down to five, but no redirects/evades/contains can be used, meaning if he uses brace, you're dealing damage to the hull on every ship (no accuracies required). If your opponent doesn't brace and instead redirects 10 damage, you're probably still looking at damage to the hull for most ships (CR-90, Neb, Glad, VSD, ISD I, which either can't take advanced projectors or don't have enough shields for them to matter), and severe depletion of shields on all the others:
  • Fully-healthy MC-30 spreads 9-10 damage (9 with gimped brace) across 11 shields. Total shield depletion: 82-91%.
  • Fully-healthy AFII/ISDII spreads 9-10 damage across 12 shields. Total shield depletion: 75-83%.
  • Fully-healthy MC-80 spreads 9-10 damage across 15 shields. Total shield depletion: 60-67%.

HTTs seem to really shine when damage output crosses the 9 damage threshold. Without APs, you're boring into any hull at that point; with APs, you're eliminating somewhere between 60% and 80% of your target's total shields. But even at lower levels, the effect adds up.

• Take your garden variety Neb forward arc shot of 3 red dice (which, btw, is also the same battery as a CR-90 A with CF, an AFII side arc without Ackbar/Enhanced Armaments, a Vic I/II front arc at long-range, an MC-30 scout with Enhanced Armaments, an MC-80/ISD at long range, with an obstruction... in other words, a very common dice battery ). Add a red die with CF. Average damage output is 3.0 (4x0.75), peak damage can be as high as 8 (four double-hits on generic ships, plus some combination of four double-hits/crits on Salvation ).
  • Looking just at your average expected damage (3.0), you're probably still better off with HTTs than XI7s, unless you scored an accuracy (17% chance, on four dice, so it happens, but not reliably). With XI7s, you accuracy the brace if possible. If there's an evade, the damage is going down to two (or one, if you were lucky enough to land a double-hit, or a crit with Salvation ), with 1 redirected and 1 to your target zone. This is fine if your target didn't have any shields on your target hull zone, but in every other situation, it's a poor return on investment. If you didn't score an accuracy to block the brace, then you will be lucky to land any hits on your target hull zone (with four single hits/crits, evade reduces down to three, brace down to two, redirect 1 and 1 on the hull; if you roll any blanks, the one damage that survives brace + evade is going to be redirected, even with XI7s).
  • EDIT: The math in this section is incorrect; see note on Bitharne's comment, below . Now, take HTTs. You know HTTs are going to shut down your opponent's brace or his other defense tokens automatically, even if you don't roll any accuracies, so any you do get are pure gravy. If you do get one, you can still tap the brace if you want the opponent to avoid halfing damage, but the better bet is probably to block the evade (if your target has one), especially if you have a precious double-hit/ Salvation crit you want protected. Now your opponent has to choose: do I spend my brace to half 3 damage to 2, and then take it on the target hull zone, or do I not brace, and redirect 3 damage across my hull zones? In the first scenario, you get 2 of your 3 damage where you wanted it; in the second, you get all 3 damage onto the ship you wanted to take it. Either case is a net win over what XI7 offered you on the exact same roll.
  • Without the accuracy result, the difference between HTT and XI7 is less pronounced. If one of your dice is cancelled with an evade, you're looking at only 1-2 damage (depending on whether you got a double-hit/ Salvation crit, or 3 single hit/crits on a generic ship). With XI7s, that 2 damage result can be halved with Brace to 1, and then redirected. If HTTs are involved, the opponent can spend the brace to reduce the damage to 1, and then redirect (because the brace is only reducing damage by 1). So the result is the same, whether you have HTTs or XI7s.
  • Finally, if your damage total is at all above average--or the higher your average damage scales--HTTs are still going to offer the best chance of putting as much of that damage as possible on the target you want to have it. Say you get the red super-roll of 8 damage (four double-hits, or some combination of four double-hits/red crits on Salvation ). At first blush, it seems like XI7s would be fabulous for this peak damage: just one can be redirected, which means the other 7 have to be dealt with. The problem is that to get this peak damage, you can't have any accuracies, which means your super-roll can be modified with Evade (8 down to 6 at long-range, and down to 4 by Admonition at long range... ouch ), and Brace (6/4 down to 3/2); with redirect, that's 2/1 damage to your target hull, and 1 elsewhere. That's not much return on your 8 damage super roll. HTTs means the super role is either being halved to 4 and all going on your target (a single shield facing, meaning it guarantees no shields on that facing, and has a high probability of hull damage on most targets), or it's being reduced to 6 (4 with Admonition... still ouch ), and then being redirected (in which case you're getting 4-6 hits on shields, instead of just 2-3).

Bottom line, unless you have another strategy to deal with Braces (H-9s and Intel Officer seem the most likely, although H-9s can be blocked by ECMs, and Intel Officer is useable only once per activation), the HTTs are going to be the best at getting the most damage onto your target ship, in the most situations, for the lowest cost (required points + required dice facings). In my mind, that makes them at the very least extremely competitive with XI7s, if not the superior choice against most enemy ships.

Edit : Bitharne correctly pointed out that in the 3 damage scenario, your target could still spend the brace with HTTs to reduce the damage to 2, and then evade/redirect. In a 1 v. 1 ship scenario, or at the end of a round, or where the goal is to mitigate as much damage as possible, this would be the play. In this scenario, HTTs would actually be worse than XI7s because it doesn't result in any increased damage output (three is going down to 2 with or without HTTs), and it doesn't prevent the opponent from redirecting both damage to a hull zone that is different from your targeted hull zone (which, in the late game, could be the difference between killing a ship and it limping on).

I'm going to disappoint *ALL* of my XI-7 Wielding opponents by utilising a Force of Nebulon-Bs and B-Wings instead of Assault Frigates... I'm starting to get more Confident with them, and they'd be wasted points shooting at me....

If you put Intel Officer + HTTs on four nebs, and surround them with a flock of B-wings... not fun.

Rythbryt: great analysis. Only problem is 3 damage is identical with HTT and XI7s. You can still brace 1 point off against HTT.

I think the main reason on the XI7 Vs AP Ruling is the fact MC80 has 15? Shields to eat through and with AP + ECM you can almost always get your Brace + redirect every time you need it, I should know I won an MC80 and MC30 at different Sullust events and been running them casually since - Not lost a game and very rarely the MC80 yet.

Rythbryt: great analysis. Only problem is 3 damage is identical with HTT and XI7s. You can still brace 1 point off against HTT.

Thanks for the catch! I missed this somehow. I figured at some point, XI7 would be more advantageous, and this appears to be it.

This seems to suggest that the "sweet spot" for getting damage where you want it for each upgrade is something like this (assuming the target has a full complement of defense tokens):

• 1-2 damage: Neither is effective (neither stops the target from bracing down to 1, and redirecting 1).
• 3 damage: XI7s (neither stops the target from bracing down to 2, but XI7s prevents the target from redirecting both damage away from your target).
• 4-8 damage: Toss-up. HTTs offers the greatest chance of inflicting maximum total damage, or the most damage on your preferred hull zone (either most/all damage is taken somewhere (no brace), or half-damage is taken to your targeted hull zone (no redirect)), but doesn't guarantee the one you'd prefer. Absent Admonition , XI7s guarantee at least one damage will be inflicted on your targeted hull zone, which is advantageous if shields there are already fully depleted.
• 9-16 damage: HTTs. Taking this volume of damage without brace won't always result in an immediate kill, but it's just a matter of time. Bracing this amount of damage guarantees hull damage (and probably crit damage), which becomes significantly more dangerous as the damage scales upwards. Even if braced, 16 damage is boring through a completely full shield zone and putting 4 damage on a hull.
• 17+ damage: At this point, there's no wrong answer. Bracing and redirecting 1 with XI7s is 8 damage to the shields/hull. Bracing with HTTs is 9 to the hull/shields, which is more, but negligible. Redirecting 17 with HTTs is... um...

There are, of course, other factors that could impact this calculus, the most significant being the state (and number) of your target's defense tokens. If your opponent's brace has already been exhausted, HTTs are unlikely to deter them from using it unless the damage to be taken without it is astronomically high. If your opponent doesn't have a brace, or it's been discarded, HTTs aren't useful at that point (though you probably have the advantage at that point in the game).

That said, in a vacuum devoid of these various contingencies, HTTs seem to offer a superior benefit in more situations and against more targets, more often. In other words, their success is less tied to contingencies that you cannot control, and they can be more easily leveraged into advantages by factors your fleet can control.

But if you're tired of getting AP'd all the time by AFIIs... go with XI7s.

I do find it hilarious that the Neb-B suddenly looks a bit better. I was already planning on an MC80 and two Neb-Bs for my squadron list, but this makes me feel a bit better. Things are going to die FAST in this wave.

Looks like a fair analysis to me. The math that I have done favors the XI7 pretty heavily as soon as even one Accuracy becomes available in the attack roll. It then swings back towards the HTT if the target has ECM. Roll enough accruacies and eoither become redundant.

Which is why I tend to take neither. I prefer the blunt force approach of just hitting with more dice or ships, etc. Generally speaking I would prefer Turbolaser Reroute Circuits, Ordnance Experts, or Enhanced Armament to either HTT or XI7s. Which is great, as all are very viable and effective choices.

Rythbryt: great analysis. Only problem is 3 damage is identical with HTT and XI7s. You can still brace 1 point off against HTT.

HTT also don't affect mc30s at all. If people are brave enough to run 4 plus ackbar/riekken and the opponent doesn't have xi7 turbolasers you negated a decent amount of upgrades. I think you'd rather take HTT with your mc80s, but xi7 with the isd as its going to depend more on getting single shot kills than consistent kite damage. While overall damage is higher for HTT, I'd rather not have to deal with chasing shieldless af2 or an mc80 build spamming engineering plus projection experts to survive multiple shots.

I do find it hilarious that the Neb-B suddenly looks a bit better. I was already planning on an MC80 and two Neb-Bs for my squadron list, but this makes me feel a bit better. Things are going to die FAST in this wave.

Rythbryt: great analysis. Only problem is 3 damage is identical with HTT and XI7s. You can still brace 1 point off against HTT.

Happened against Mikael Hasselstein last night. He rolled 4 red with the ISD at long range to my Assault Frigate and got crit, crit, hit, accuracy. He had Heavy Turret Turbolasers and accuracied my redirect. So I evaded the crit and braced down to 1.

He should have accuracied your evade...bad move on his part.

Rythbryt: great analysis. Only problem is 3 damage is identical with HTT and XI7s. You can still brace 1 point off against HTT.

Happened against Mikael Hasselstein last night. He rolled 4 red with the ISD at long range to my Assault Frigate and got crit, crit, hit, accuracy. He had Heavy Turret Turbolasers and accuracied my redirect. So I evaded the crit and braced down to 1.

He should have accuracied your evade...bad move on his part.

Hmmmmmm Yup. Hitting the accuracy would have pushed 2 damage in after the brace with or without the redirect being used.

My issue with this ruling is the x17 card just kills the AP card and means it not worth it. While saying x17 allows AP to only transfer 1 point to each zone makes it worth it even against x17.

Case review figures only redirect token used. ship rolls 8 dmg. Vs a assault frig that can redirect 3 to a side, take 4 to the front shield and 1 goes through. Now with AP that 8 dmg can be spread to both sides and rear. Which means the assault can spread the dmg and lose all shield to the side and rear but still have it full shield to the front. With just x17 vs no AP or AP with current rule it can redirect just 1 point to one zone which means 4 points on front shield and 3 goes through.

While taking the x17 vs AP of 1 dmg to each of the three zone. Means you lose one shield on each side and rear. And all the front shield. No dmg gets thought, yet with the front shield gones you only need to due hull plus 1 to finish the ship off.

Given some rebels ship like the mc30 have no brace put them at a disadvantage. The max dmg needed to kill the mc30 is 9 (4 shield+4hull plus 1 redirect)

Y'know, the most literal interpretation means there is no shooting at all. You can't draw LOS through the Plastic. At all. Even the Plastic of the Defender itself.

Which, we know, is a stupid interpretation.

I spent years playing 40K.

I DEMAND the right to play rules as written, no matter how stupid.

My issue with this ruling is the x17 card just kills the AP card and means it not worth it. While saying x17 allows AP to only transfer 1 point to each zone makes it worth it even against x17.

Case review figures only redirect token used. ship rolls 8 dmg. Vs a assault frig that can redirect 3 to a side, take 4 to the front shield and 1 goes through. Now with AP that 8 dmg can be spread to both sides and rear. Which means the assault can spread the dmg and lose all shield to the side and rear but still have it full shield to the front. With just x17 vs no AP or AP with current rule it can redirect just 1 point to one zone which means 4 points on front shield and 3 goes through.

While taking the x17 vs AP of 1 dmg to each of the three zone. Means you lose one shield on each side and rear. And all the front shield. No dmg gets thought, yet with the front shield gones you only need to due hull plus 1 to finish the ship off.

Given some rebels ship like the mc30 have no brace put them at a disadvantage. The max dmg needed to kill the mc30 is 9 (4 shield+4hull plus 1 redirect)

Well, to be fair, 9 damage in a single attack from a ship with XI7s (no Glad/Demolisher, mind you), after an evade (or two, with Foresight) to cancel/force a reroll, is a tall order. You can theoretically do it with 6 dice (three red/black and three blue, if all reds/blacks are double-hits/hit-crits), but usually it will take more. There's not that many ships that can do that much damage reliably to one-shot something, although Wave II offers more platforms for these super-rolls, between bigger ships with stronger batteries and cards that allow selective rerolls to improve damage outcomes (Ordnance Experts on VSD Is/enemy MC-30s at close range, Vader across the imperial fleet).

With that said, though, even under the old AP rules, the MC-30 would still go down to 11 damage paired with XI7s. The real issue is its lack of Brace. If a brace was available, damage would need to spike to 21 in order to guarantee a one-shot, which is almost mathematically impossible to achieve (an ISD I's front arc, at close range, with a CF command on its Opening Salvo, with Devastator after a particularly bad opening to the game, could launch 3 reds + 6 blue + 4 blacks; if everything double-hits/hit-crits, no accuracies are rolled, and no brace is used, that's a total of 20 damage--and if the crit drawn is structural damage, that's 21 exactly; playing Opening Salvo as second player could top out at 25... but if your Devastator has lost all its defense tokens before it shoots for the first time, you're probably doing something wrong...). In any event, I think this underscores the fragility of the MC-30 more than an imbalance in game rules post-FAQs.

Yea, the MC30 is extremely fragile right now. . . You almost have to take it with Mon Mothma or Rieekan. . .

I think the main reason on the XI7 Vs AP Ruling is the fact MC80 has 15? Shields to eat through and with AP + ECM you can almost always get your Brace + redirect every time you need it, I should know I won an MC80 and MC30 at different Sullust events and been running them casually since - Not lost a game and very rarely the MC80 yet.

This right here. Actual play experience. That's what I'm talking about.

Also congrats!