Sure this will be a simple answer, but I haven't ran into it until recently.

A pilot has a focus and a Target Lock on the ship they are attacking. They roll 4 attack dice. 1 hit, 2 blanks, and a focus. The player then spends the TL, and rerolls the dice, one by one. He sees the first two blanks he rolls are hits, and then, feeling lucky, decides he wants to keep the focus for defense and rerolls the focus result as well.

Is this legal, or are players required to pick up all dice at once, and reroll all of them at once when spending a target lock?

All at once. You decide which dice you want to reroll, pick up all those dice, and reroll them.

Spend a Target lock you choose as many dice that you want to re-roll at that time. If you have 4 dice... one hit 2 blanks and 1 focus... you can re-roll the blanks and the focus and test your luck... or you can re-roll the blanks only and spend your focus token to change the 1 focus into a hit. It's your choice... but you cannot roll one dice at a time deciding if you want to re-roll another one.

He may roll them one at a time but he MUST declare how many he will be rerolling before he ever starts and has to roll that many.

If someone spent a TL and then rerolled some dice I would have to assume that is all the dice he intended to reroll unless stated otherwise before hand. Allowing one to be rolled and then using that information to decide if others should be rerolled is equivalent to spending multiple TLs during the round.

Rolling one dice at a time would make for a very looooooong game. That would drive me nuts. But yes. You can roll of the chosen dice one at a time.

Rolling one dice at a time would make for a very looooooong game. That would drive me nuts. But yes. You can roll of the chosen dice one at a time.

It could even be consider "slow play" and as such against the rules.

This looks like it fully falls into the realm of RAI but the RAW leave some vagueness to it.

I skimmed through the PDF for the LtP and the RRG, and I cannot find anywhere that it says the technical procedure for TL re-rolls spelled out specifically as all at once or one at a time (but there's the suggestion that it should be all at once), or that you need to declare how many you plan to do before you start to re-roll. Did I miss the glaringly obvious one that says this specifically? It simply refers to reroll "any number" of dice, but it doesn't suggest anything beyond this. Personally, I think it's all at once, as that's how I've always played since Release/Wave 1, but that's because it's how I was taught then.

It's quite possible under the statement on Page 5, to only bring one attack die with you and operate this way. Not exactly cool, but within the rules. It's always possible to lose dice, so it's conceivable that you could (somehow) end up with only one attack die. I didn't see anywhere in the Tournament PDF that a player is expected/required to bring a certain and/or specific number of Attack and Defense dice with them either.

If players would roll more dice than the maximum
number that they have available, keep track of
the rolled results and reroll the dice necessary to
equal the total number of dice the player would
have rolled all at once. Note that these dice
are not considered rerolled for the purposes of
modifying dice.

Learn to Play:

Page 12

Spending a Target Lock: If the attacker
has a target lock on the defender, he may return
the pair of target lock tokens to the supply to
reroll one or more attack dice of his choice.

Rules Reference Guide:

Page 3

ACQUIRE A TARGET LOCK
Ships with the <TL> icon in their action bar may
perform the acquire a target lock action to
acquire a target lock on an enemy ship at Range 1–3.
While attacking, a ship can spend a target lock that it
has on the defender to reroll any number of its attack
dice.

|
Page 5

Target Lock: The attacker can spend a target
lock he has on the defender to reroll any number
of his attack dice.

Page 24

Acquire a Target Lock: Place 1 blue target
lock token near the locking ship and 1 red target
lock token near an enemy ship at Range 1–3.
If the locking ship attacks the locked ship, the
locking ship may spend the pair of tokens to
reroll any number of its attack dice.

Unless you give me reason to believe otherwise "any number" and "one or more" are still going to be specific numbers associated with spending a given TL token.

To argue that the number of dice to be rerolled is not set when the TL is spent is nearly the equivalent of saying that once you've spent the TL you can reroll any number of dice going forward from that point.

I hope you're just playing devil's advocate here Slugrage but while things may eventually look the same mathematically selecting "3" would be selecting "any number" while selecting "1+1+1" is selecting multiple numbers.

A little bit, yes. But I can see the thought behind the OP question. And while I agree that rules tell you want you CAN do, and not specifically try to address everything you cannot do, it does leave a bit of wiggle room, for those so inclined to lawyer the rules.

I'd much rather play a game that is written in plain English, even with a bit of game specific terminology, than try to play a game written in legalese that may leave absolutely no doubt about what can, and cannot, be done and which provides the only acceptable method of performing any task. The FAQ is already plenty long but if everything needed to be written out in irrefutable detail, which you know may not be irrefutable to some, I don't think anyone would read it.

Addition:

While I am thinking on things if one has a hard time grasping the idea that "any number" is still a single, fixed, number try a little game. I could bet you some $$$ that if I pick "any number" between 1-3 and if you guess right the first try I'll pay you four times the bet otherwise I keep the money the long term outcome should be clear. If my "any number" is fixed then the guesser should come out way ahead over time but if I can adjust my number, after all it's still just "any number," the guesser will lose every time.

I would say this is more of a Vassal issue... in face to face matches you're just going to pick up the dice your re-rolling all at once. But in Vassal you reroll them one at a time. While I agree it should be all or nothing... in Vassal I really don't need the person to take the time to type out "rerolling dice 2 and 3, not 4" etc. So... if someone wants to be that sneaky I say go for it.

I personally believe the only reason to have multiple re-rolls is when you are out of dice.... for instance you only have one core set. And you have a 4 dice attack roll, you roll your three dice and then you roll one dice keeping track of what your results were. Just because you don't have 4 dice available for you to use. To roll one dice at a time while you are in possession of all those dice is unethical IMHO. Just because the game can be time consuming enough as it is... and it will make no change in your luck if they were rolled one at a time or all at once. So for courtesy of moving the game along do what you can an try not to annoy other players.

Rolling dice one at a time is unethical because it is time consuming which could be turned into slow play with consequences for that. By itself it isn't illegal especially when you have that "insufficient number of dice" clause already in the rules.

Rerolling dice one at a time after spending a TL with the intent on seeing "how things are going" before deciding how many to roll in total is (or at least should be) illegal as you aren't picking "a number" before you starting. Reading the OPs description this certainly appears to be the roller's objective because if he knows he can turn the two bad results into good ones he has a lot of additional information before deciding on rerolling the focus.

A little bit, yes. But I can see the thought behind the OP question. And while I agree that rules tell you want you CAN do, and not specifically try to address everything you cannot do, it does leave a bit of wiggle room, for those so inclined to lawyer the rules.

Rules are intended to tell you what is allowed. My take on it is, if the rules do not specifically state that you CAN do something, then you are not allowed.

A little bit, yes. But I can see the thought behind the OP question. And while I agree that rules tell you want you CAN do, and not specifically try to address everything you cannot do, it does leave a bit of wiggle room, for those so inclined to lawyer the rules.

Rules are intended to tell you what is allowed. My take on it is, if the rules do not specifically state that you CAN do something, then you are not allowed.

Right, which is basically what I said. The wiggle issue is that nowhere does it spell out the reroll as a specific all at once, or one at a time, just so long as you get to the right number at the end process.

Yeah I was talking about "those inclined to lawyer the rules".

....

Right, which is basically what I said. The wiggle issue is that nowhere does it spell out the reroll as a specific all at once, or one at a time, just so long as you get to the right number at the end process.

It seems to me the real question may be when "the right number" is determined.

Although it is a waste of time if you told me the "right number" is three and rolled them one at a time I think we should be ok with that TL use if not the rolling method. If you just start rolling one at a time and only decide what "the right number" is after rolling is when everyone has a right to be upset about how the TL is being treated.

I see a good part of the problem being how someone wants to start reading specific language in the rules. I mean you see "hit" many different places and while it can have different meanings in the game some people want to use the same definition for everything. The example there is "oh I'm sorry but you rolled a 'hit' on your attack so you can't use Gunner although the three Evade results on my defense means that you don't get any damage through."