A few questions from new players...

By Intys Rule, in Star Wars: The Card Game

Might as well just use one thread for all the questions that are to come...

So, we just bought the box set and have had a few games with my son. After a couple of games, here are the questions we come up with:

1. What happens if both players are tied on the Edge battle? Who gets priority?

2. In one round, one player can only draw the exact number of cards then his command deck is empty. Can he still play that round?

3. In one round, one player is one or two cards short of a full hand (ie, he can only draw up to 4 or 5 cards instead of 6 cards). Can he still play that round?

4. Does the Empire player automatically win once his dial gets to or past 12? Or do they still have to play that round?

5. How can a card have more than one focus token on it? This question came about due to cards like The Hand's Blessing and Darth Vader. I know there are some cards that "hit" another for a focus token, but can players willingly activate their card more than once and end up with more than one focus token?

6. With the Black Squadron Assault objective card, if I used it to generate a resource this round, can I still activate it for it's Action effect?

I'm sure more questions will come soon... thanks in advance for any help!

7. A card with Trust Your Feelings - Can he attack, then move the focus token from the Character card to the Enhancement card (Trust Your Feelings), then attack again?

8. Double Strike - Can he attack, then use Double Strike, then attack again? Therefore, if paired with #7 above, a Character can attack 3x?

1. The defender wins tied edge battles.

2-3. If you must draw cards and cannot, you immediately lose the game. That means that if you have enough cards to draw up to your hand size play continues (you were able to draw cards), but if you run out of cards before you get to your full hand you immediately lose and do not continue the turn.

4. The Dark Side player wins immediately when the dial reaches 12, play does not continue.

5. Multiple ways exist for cards to get multiple focus tokens. The most common way is striking while committed to the force (which results in 2 focus tokens). Multiple other card effects can place additional focus tokens. Also Tactics icons, as alluded to in the question. An exhausted card (ie a card with at least 1 focus token) cannot use an ability that requires it to "focus," but other effects that cause the placement of a focus token can still affect it.

6. If you've generated a resource with Black Squadron Assault, it is now exhausted. As such, it cannot focus to pay the cost of its Action and cannot use it.

7. The Action on Trust Your Feelings can be used in any Action Window (see the flow chart in the back of the rule book for details on when Action Windows occur during each turn). There are Action Windows during an Engagement. If you use Trust Your Feelings during one of those Action Windows and nothing else places another focus token on the unit, then the unit must strike again that engagement. If you use Trust Your Feelings after an Engagement, the card could be declared as an attacker in another engagement (again, assuming that it only had 1 focus token and nothing else placed another focus token).

8. Double Strike works as a Reaction and removes the focus token immediately after striking. Thus it happens during the Engagement and the card must strike again during that Engagement unless another effect places a new focus token. This could be used in conjunction with Trust Your Feelings to strike 3 times in an Engagement.

Thanks for that explanation!

We've found the relevant sections for questions 1-4 for future reference as well as the "flow" mentioned in #7 so at least that'll help us remember stuff if it comes up again.

A few more questions:

9. A unit with 2 unit damage and 2 blast damage attacks and two of the other player's unit defends. The attacker wins the edge battle and focuses his unit to strike. His 2 unit damage is not enough to kill his target defender. Does the blast damage still hit the objective? Basically, do blast damage always hit (unless the unit is killed or exhausted before it can attack)?

10. As follow up to #9, is there any way to avoid/mitigate blast damage besides shielding?

11. Is it possible to "skip" reactions? For example, the objective cards Fall of the Jedi or Defense Protocol. Can I choose not to put 1 card to the bottom of my deck? Can I choose NOT to reduce my reserve value? Other cards have Reactions as well such as Superlaser Engineer, Backstabber, and Devastator that I might not want to use their Reaction ability.

12. There are some cards that have no unit damage/blast/tactics icons such as the Superlaser Engineer. However, as per shielding rules, he needs to be declared as attacker or defender for him to be able to put a shield token to a unit or objective. Assuming he does not die during the engagement, does he still have to be "focused to strike" seeing as he cannot really strike anything?

13. Can "Back"stabber be a "Front"stabber if I were to use it's ability when attacking? Basically, I declare attackers, then use Backstabber's Action to play it from my hand into the engagement... does it automatically deal 1 damage to the engaged objective? It kinda goes against the "Back" bit of Backstabber...

14. Is there any site that shows all the expansions and the objective sets and specifically the cards themselves that come with each objective set? I'm trying to be a little picky when buying expansions and direct my purchases to how we plan to expand our decks.

Again, thanks in advance for any help!

I'll try to get to the rest of your questions later tonight, but the website where you can find all of the cards broken down by which set they're in is cardgamedb.com. You'll also find the community there a little more active than these forums (back when the game came out, these forums had tons of technical problems, so the community migrated to cgdb, which is also owned by FFG).

I'll try to get to the rest of your questions later tonight, but the website where you can find all of the cards broken down by which set they're in is cardgamedb.com. You'll also find the community there a little more active than these forums (back when the game came out, these forums had tons of technical problems, so the community migrated to cgdb, which is also owned by FFG).

Is it better to post over there? Thanks for the heads up on that!

You'll often get faster answers over there. There's more people and I check it quite a bit more often than I check these forums (though the wifi at the hospital I'm working at right now blocks both, so I can only check either in the evenings or when I can find phone signal).

9. When a unit strikes, it resolves all of its relevant combat icons (eg only resolves the edge-enabled ones if it won edge, only resolves blast damage if attacking). You get to decide what order you resolve each type of icon (in your example, you could resolve either unit damage or blast damage first, then the other). So in your example, you would resolve the 2 unit damage to deal 2 damage to a participating enemy unit. Once you've done that, you'd resolve the 2 blast damage to deal 2 damage to the engaged objective. Then your strike would be finished. The order you resolve icons will occasionally be very important as something could kill the striking unit in between. For instance, if your opponent used Lightsaber Deflection to send one of the unit damage back at you and that was enough to kill the striking unit, it would be destroyed before it got the chance to resolve its blast damage.

10. Main ways to stop blast damage:

- Shielding

- Win edge to turn off the edge-enabled blast damage

- Kill the attacking unit before it strikes

- Tactics to place focus tokens on the attacking unit before it strikes, preventing it from striking

- Other card effects, such as Confronting the Terror

11. Actions, Reactions, and Interrupts are all optional (at the option of the player controlling the card) unless preceded by the word "Forced" (see Rancor for an example)

12. All units participating in the engagement must be exhausted before the engagement ends. So yes, the Superlaser Engineer does have to strike (and thus focus to strike) if participating in the engagement.

13. In fact, you will almost always want to use his ability while attacking. His "backstabbing" comes from his ability to enter play mid-engagement instead of just during your deploy phase, surprising your opponent. While you can still play him during an engagement on defense, that would be an example of a time you would not want to use a Reaction as using it would damage your own objective.

14. T his is the section of cgdb that has all of the different expansions with pictures of the included cards . Note that it sometimes has spoilers for not-yet-released expansions (currently Galactic Ambitions)

Also, I know that I haven't been posting particularly detailed explanations for my answers, feel free to ask follow ups if you don't understand the why for any of the answers.