So me and my friends play once a week at least and this week he tried a 2 glad, 2 raider fleets with 100pts in squadrons. each ship had APT and he destroyed my 2 MC80, neb fleet because of APT. It was that it bypassed shields, but that he made me, 1) spend tokens, 2) Take the face up crit, 3) brace or redirect the damage to which ever hull zones. Now my question is that what is the point of spending defense tokens if you do not use them during that phase. Also because I drew the face up first sometimes it would affect my shields or even not allow me to redirect which doesnt sounds right because why would you spend a token if you cant even use it due to a card affect that should (IMO) happen after defense tokens and damage is allocated. So who is right? Me for saying tokens, damage, then crit or him who says tokens, crit, damage, and Please if you can give me a solid foundation that I could use for or against him as he is a very stubborn 'by the rules' player.
The order of damage
He's right.
Critical effects happen right after defense tokens are spent.
Brace is spent, but it affects damage way at the end of calculating damage. Redirect happens right after that. Only Evade happens immediately.
APT is good because it does not contribute to the braceable/redirectable amount of damage (neither does ACM, for example.) It just deals one faceup damage. Sometimes that can hit really, really hard by draining key shields before the rest of the damage hits, that's how the card was designed.
Even Dodanna's Pride follows the same resolution. My cousin put Overload Pulse on it once, hit me with a crit, so I chose to exhaust all my defense tokens to mitigate the damage (and prevent his OP from effecting me) so instead he elected to cancel all of his attack dice to just deal a damage instead - but I had exhausted my defense tokens and gotten nothing out of them.
Note that you can do the same thing with APTs on the MC30 - except you can do it better if you run Dodanna.
He is right.
The foundation is in the RRG (rules reference guide) under attack on page 2. You can review this online by going here:
I'm sure others will provide you with a more detailed break down of the attack sequence but addressing the part you brought up it goes:
spend defense tokens (certain tokens like evade are resolved immediately)
Resolve critical effect
tally and apply damage 1 at a time.
So in your case, lets say he has APT's and rolls with black dice: 2 criticals and 3 hits.
You then spend a brace and a redirect -- but you don't resolve their effects yet.
He then resolves his critical effect and chooses to resolve the APT's effect of: Black Crit: Deal 1 faceup damage card to the defender."
You take a face up card, resolve it's effects.
Then you total up the damage which in this case is 5. You then halve the damage with your brace, which rounded up would be 3.
You then resolve your redirect and apply damage, 1 at a time following the rules of redirect and anything that affects redirect.
So lets say you have 1 shield on the front that he targeted and 3 sides remaining on the side. You could redirect all 3 damage to the shields on the side.
Edited by ReirycHandy dandy video #1
Handy dandy video #2!
He's right.
Critical effects happen right after defense tokens are spent.
Brace is spent, but it affects damage way at the end of calculating damage. Redirect happens right after that. Only Evade happens immediately.
APT is good because it does not contribute to the braceable/redirectable amount of damage (neither does ACM, for example.) It just deals one faceup damage. Sometimes that can hit really, really hard by draining key shields before the rest of the damage hits, that's how the card was designed.
Even Dodanna's Pride follows the same resolution. My cousin put Overload Pulse on it once, hit me with a crit, so I chose to exhaust all my defense tokens to mitigate the damage (and prevent his OP from effecting me) so instead he elected to cancel all of his attack dice to just deal a damage instead - but I had exhausted my defense tokens and gotten nothing out of them.
Note that you can do the same thing with APTs on the MC30 - except you can do it better if you run Dodanna.
And you get the damage card that doesn't let you prepare your defense tokens again? It could be awesome XD