Hi there gang!

Question: During the conflict phase, Is the active player able to engage an enemy objective if he or she has no ready units that have the blast damage icon? Are they able to initiate a battle if they only have a ready unit that does unit or tactics damage?

THX!

Hi there gang!

Question: During the conflict phase, Is the active player able to engage an enemy objective if he or she has no ready units that have the blast damage icon? Are they able to initiate a battle if they only have a ready unit that does unit or tactics damage?

THX!

There's no requirement that any attacking unit have blast damage. It's relatively common to attack with units that just have tactics to open up further attacks.

Ok. Good to know! I can see initiating combat with a unit that just has tactics damage then. The light side could load up tactical damage on Vader to keep him out of play, for example.

But what about initiating combat with a unit that just does unit damage? I guess you might want to destroy a certain enemy unit. But the enemy will have to want to dance and declare that unit as a defender to have a shot at taking it out. If they don't want to defend, then there really is no resolution to the fight. Except if the attacker has a fate card they really want to use. OR... in that scenario, if the defender chooses not to defend, is one point of blast damage still placed on the declared objective because it was an uncontested victory - whether the sole attacking unit has blast damage or not?

Ok. Good to know! I can see initiating combat with a unit that just has tactics damage then. The light side could load up tactical damage on Vader to keep him out of play, for example.

But what about initiating combat with a unit that just does unit damage? I guess you might want to destroy a certain enemy unit. But the enemy will have to want to dance and declare that unit as a defender to have a shot at taking it out. If they don't want to defend, then there really is no resolution to the fight. Except if the attacker has a fate card they really want to use. OR... in that scenario, if the defender chooses not to defend, is one point of blast damage still placed on the declared objective because it was an uncontested victory - whether the sole attacking unit has blast damage or not?

You got it. The unopposed bonus damage does not require any surviving attacker to have blast damage to apply. Winning a game via R2-D2 attacking and getting the unopposed damage to destroy a final objective is quite satisfying.

But what about initiating combat with a unit that just does unit damage? I guess you might want to destroy a certain enemy unit. But the enemy will have to want to dance and declare that unit as a defender to have a shot at taking it out. If they don't want to defend, then there really is no resolution to the fight. Except if the attacker has a fate card they really want to use. OR... in that scenario, if the defender chooses not to defend, is one point of blast damage still placed on the declared objective because it was an uncontested victory - whether the sole attacking unit has blast damage or not?

As dmeboy mentioned, if at the end of the engagement you have at least 1 attacker still in the engagement and your opponent doesn't, you get to place 1 extra damage bonus unopposed.

And sometimes you want to attack with a weenie to force your opponent to block it. Maybe your opponent only has one big unit left to block, and you can send a weenie without blast or tactics icons to do that 1 last damage to an object that has already 4 damage on it, forcing your opponent to block the weenie and leaving himself open against a second attack with your other unit (one that does have tactics). Or maybe you get a bonus from winning the edge battle, so when your opponent lets you get through, you get that bonus (extra card draw, remove focus tokens, play Core Admiral Ackbar, etc) or your opponent has a comitted Darth Vader as the only possible defender, and you still have a Luke for a second attack ... and a Seeds of Decay to put into the edge battle of that "bait" attack.

The possibilities where you would want to attack with a unit that can't do much damage directly are ... well not endless ... but large.