Combining Skill Icons When 2 Leaders are Present?

By Radon Antila, in Star Wars: Rebellion

This is from today's News release:

After the Imperial General assigned Boba Fett to Retrieve the Plans from Princess Leia, play continued until the phase arrived once more at the Imperial Admiral's initiative, and his Emperor Palpatine revealed Lure of the Dark Side . Desperate to keep Leia from turning against them, the Rebels agreed that the Rebel Admiral would send Han Solo to oppose the Emperor's designs. After the Emperor and Boba Fett rolled a total of nine successes and added two for Palpatine's presence, the Rebel General rolled an astonishing seven success for Leia! Now, the whole of the Rebel Alliance may depend upon the Rebel Admiral's decision to send Han Solo to the rescue…

Emphasis mine.

I'm not certain if this specific to "Lure of the Dark Side," as that card specifically counts out all skill icons regardless of type, but if it isn't, then has there been any word against my reading of the rules that:

"If you attempt a mission at a location where an allied Leader is already present, then your die pool for this mission is equal to the total number of the relevant skill icon type both Leaders possess."

Is this right?

Could you, theoretically, send Jan Dodonna to attempt an Infiltration mission for a 2-die pool as a feint (since a success result does not directly impede the Empire), then follow-up with a Steal the Plans attempt with Princess Leia for a sudden jump to a 4-die pool with 2 auto-successes?

Then the Imperial could play Research & Development with General Tagge for a 1-die Logistics pool in the location where Leia went for their own feint, followed up by Darth Vader attempting a Capture Rebel Operative mission for a total of a 4-die Spec Ops pool (3 from Vader, 1 from Tagge) in order to improve the chance of success in case the Rebels send a Leader to block Vader.

Does anyone know if there has been a clear ruling on this through any of the reviews and playthrough videos put up thus far?

Edited by Radon Antila

Lure specifically calls for all skill icons. For most other missions, you would only roll for the matching icons. But I think it still be an important part of the equation.

If you are worried that someone might counter your critical mission, you could do another mission in the same system with someone else that has the same icon.

So yeah, it sounds like both your plans would work if those are legal moves (skill and missions all match and what not). But keep in mind that during that capture attempt, the Rebels could counter it with another leader. And you would roll for all 3 leaders (not like Jan or Leia would help much).

I think the more interesting part would be what would happen the following round. Imps capture Jan. Imps want to turn Jan. Both sides do multiple missions and military moves to the system to ramp up their dice pools.

I do think a fine line between good and great players in this game will be the ability to set up larger dice pools like you are discussing though.

Yeah, it was specifically mentioned in one of the previews that all leaders present in a system contribute their relevent skill icons to the mission.

So yeah, in that scenario, both boba and leia were already in the system. The imperial played with lure of the dark side with Emperor, Han opposed making it 2v2.

The only unknown is to what degree captive heroes contribute skill icons. It is clear that they contribute icons if a mission is played against them. But it is not known if they would otherwise contribute icons (it is looking like they don't).

That's great; there's a lot more complexity under the hood, then.

Though I'm slightly concerned that once this kind of thinking becomes 'the norm' at high-level play, it's going to change from 'Which Leader do I hold back in order to oppose?' to 'Which Leader do I hold back in order to fake-oppose in order to set-up my dice roll for the Leader that's actually going on a mission?"