Here's the scenario I just thought of, and I need some clarification.

UPS shuttle has the Targeting Synchronizer upgrade and has an enemy ship locked.

Gamma Squadron Vet. Equipped with Homing Missiles uses the target lock provided by the UPS's tech upgrade to shoot at said enemy ship.

The text on Targeting Synchronizer includes "when a game effect instructs that ship to spend a target lock, it may spend your's instead"

Could the Gamma Squadron Vet use the target lock to reroll his attack dice, since Homing Missiles does not require you to spend the target lock? Or does the Gamma Vet have to actually own said target lock?

Yes you can use the Target lock from the ship with TS to re-roll on another ship.

Appreciate it!

14 hours ago, Oberron said:

Yes you can use the Target lock from the ship with TS to re-roll on another ship.

I'm not so sure about that. Why not just word it exactly like Norra Wexley's Shara Bey's ability? That's more concise.

You mean Shara Bey's ability.

And the assumption is to avoid all ships having ownership of the lock, thus allowing ATC ships not to need the TL action, and probably most importantly, Omega Leader to have up to 3 locked ships on the board...

Are you sure you can re-roll with Targeting Synchronizer? It's not a "game effect that instructs that ship to spend a target lock" IMHO, like, say, paying the cost of shooting a torpedo.

It's not 100% clear. I have it on my list of 'questions I'm submitting to FFG as soon as Wave 10 officially releases' waiting for an answer...

1 hour ago, costi said:

Are you sure you can re-roll with Targeting Synchronizer? It's not a "game effect that instructs that ship to spend a target lock" IMHO, like, say, paying the cost of shooting a torpedo.

I'd go with this. Choosing to spend your target lock for a re-roll is not the same as being instructed to spend the target lock.

To be honest, I see nothing on the card that allows the reroll. Targeting Synchronizer changes the wording on some secondary weapons so that a TL is no longer required and it allows the ship to spend the TL of the ship that has Targeting Synchronizer. This looks very clear to me. There is no mention of rerolls.

The question is:

Does spending a target lock in order to re-roll dice a "game effect"?

The answer is:

We don't really know.

Intuitively, I'd say that spending a target lock is the cost you pay to achieve the effect - a re-roll. In the case of, say, Proton Torpedoes, the spending of the target lock is part of the effect, because it's behind the "Attack:" bit.

Not certain that's how it works but if that's the concensus I'll go with the crowd. Iwouldn't think the second ship could spend the lock got rerolls, but I could certainly be wrong. The big benefit is that multiple ships can utilize the target lock to repeatedly fire Homing Missiles with focus, using one lock on another ship.

I don't think you can spend the TL on the ship with target scanner to re-roll your dice. However, as the card allows you to treat attack: target lock as attack... you don't need to spend your own TL to fire a proton (for instance, because you treat it's header as attack) but you can still spend yours to re-roll your attack dice. Allows you to be effectively double target locked on an attack without needing to be able to target lock after you spend it to fire.

" When a friendly ship at Range 1-2 is attacking a ship you have locked, the friendly ship treats the ' ATTACK (TARGET LOCK): ' header as ' ATTACK: ' If a game effect instructs that ship to spend a target lock , it may spend your target lock instead. "

So, I guess the default Target Lock effect is kind of up in the air, and probably needs FAQ, but to me that sounds like a game effect that instructs that ship to spend a target lock while they're attacking. I suppose it might be a timing question. In general though, I think this does cover any abilities where you might be spending a target lock on an attack in the range they can spend the Synchronizer ship's instead. The obvious is munitions, but technically I'm pretty sure the "game effect" line is a seperate effect from the Header one under the trigger "friendly ship at range 1-2 is attacking a ship you have locked". So for example, Norra Wexley could spend a T-70 with Synchronizer's lock for her ability - but only if she was attacking at range 1-2 of it. Unless pilot abilities aren't game effects.

18 hours ago, WWHSD said:

I'm not so sure about that. Why not just word it exactly like Norra Wexley's Shara Bey's ability? That's more concise.

The last line of the card says " If a game effect instructs that ship to spend a target lock, it may spend your target lock instead. "

It is a replacement effect.

under Target lock in the rule book "While attacking, a ship can spend a target lock that it has on the defender to reroll any number of its attack dice. "

it is clearly a game effect that instructs a ship to spend a target lock. And Targeting Synchronizer replaces the target lock that is spent. While Shara bey lets anyone at range 1-2 treat her target lock as theirs. Something that another person has stated. For instance if there was a cross faction game with a Tie advance with ATC and Shara bey, the Tie advance treats shara's as its own TL which will let it add the boom result. With Targeting Synchronizer it doesn't treat the TL as another ships but lets another ship spend the TL as a replacement effect.

1 hour ago, Oberron said:

The last line of the card says " If a game effect instructs that ship to spend a target lock, it may spend your target lock instead. "

It is a replacement effect.

under Target lock in the rule book "While attacking, a ship can spend a target lock that it has on the defender to reroll any number of its attack dice. "

it is clearly a game effect that instructs a ship to spend a target lock. And Targeting Synchronizer replaces the target lock that is spent. While Shara bey lets anyone at range 1-2 treat her target lock as theirs. Something that another person has stated. For instance if there was a cross faction game with a Tie advance with ATC and Shara bey, the Tie advance treats shara's as its own TL which will let it add the boom result. With Targeting Synchronizer it doesn't treat the TL as another ships but lets another ship spend the TL as a replacement effect.

While I definitely hope you are right, because it makes the card better. The card seems to be written in a way to specifically allow ordnance to be fired without a target lock, but to not allow dice to be re-rolled without one.

14 hours ago, benskywalker said:

While I definitely hope you are right, because it makes the card better. The card seems to be written in a way to specifically allow ordnance to be fired without a target lock, but to not allow dice to be re-rolled without one.

As written, you can use the lock to fire a weapon but DOES NOT appear to allow you to reroll dice. That is why the language is different from Shara Bey.

Fly your missile carriers up and focus them. Focus or lock with your Upsilon. The Upsilon attacks, getting a lock with Fire Control System. Then each of your bombers fires a focused Homing Missile at the same target.

Okay, I think we need to stop throwing absolutes around. Because until an FAQ, I don't think anybody actually knows for sure if you can or cannot use it on conventional target locks.

Rerolling is a game effect, right? One which requires you to spend a target lock to do. You don't have to utilize that ability, but if you do, you must spend a target lock. Synchronizer doesn't care about any of that - it just says if a game effect instructs a ship to spend a target lock it can spend the TS target lock instead. TS does not have any wording about if the game effect is optional. It's removed from that step, so I need someone to point to me some language which says you cannot before I lean toward that assertion - Oberron's logic is pretty sound on explaining that rerolls is a game effect that instructs you to spend a target lock for X effect.

It's worded differently from Shara Bey because this is an upgrade which is going in an imperial pack and is available to many imperial ships, they don't want unwanted combos with ATC or OL, and perhaps other ships which require you to just have a target lock, not spend it. Similarly it only works on attacking.

14 minutes ago, UnitOmega said:

Okay, I think we need to stop throwing absolutes around. Because until an FAQ, I don't think anybody actually knows for sure if you can or cannot use it on conventional target locks.

Rerolling is a game effect, right?

This is the crux of the issue. While a lot of time, we can determine exactly what the ruling will be with a great deal of accuracy by using preexisting language (Omega Leader's effect was correctly guessed months before the FAQ simply by following the definition of "Modifying Dice" set out by the Rules Reference), game effect is not a predefined term. It is, unfortunately, anybody's guess as to what that means.

This I accept. I kind of jokingly said "Unless pilot abilities aren't game effects. " above, but it's also true. I can assume what "game effect" is, but the card itself isn't clear. If game effect is just "you do a thing during the game" then sure. If they mean specifically something else which I can't even really try to guess at, then no. This is why I say we should stop talking about absolutes. We can't actually be 100% sure what is or is not meant as game effects by TS right now, unless somebody has some precedent to show. What we do know is that TS works for friendly ships at Range 1-2 when attacking - It means they don't need their own target lock for secondary weapons and whenever we figure out what is meant by "game effect", that friendly ship can spend TS lock tokens like they were its own, which does seem to be different from Shara because she also allows cards like M9-G8 to work.

If TS lets you spend the target lock with another ship to reroll dice then it is much better that I initially thought. When I first read the card I assumed it would not work that way so I thought it was way overcosted. If it does work to reroll the 3 point cost looks much better.

I hope we get a FAQ soon on this.

I really want Weapons Engineer + TS + FCS to be a combo that lets my ships reroll attacks every turn!

If it doesn't let you spend the target lock to re-roll dice then its a very niche upgrade that won't see much use (imo).

wasn't this resolved a while ago that using a target lock to re roll dice was considered a game effect?

42 minutes ago, AngryAlbatross said:

I hope we get a FAQ soon on this.

I really want Weapons Engineer + TS + FCS to be a combo that lets my ships reroll attacks every turn!

If it doesn't let you spend the target lock to re-roll dice then its a very niche upgrade that won't see much use (imo).

You dug up an old post that is no longer relevant, they already specified that spending to reroll dice is a game effect, so TS is fine for that.

16 hours ago, Kalandros said:

You dug up an old post that is no longer relevant, they already specified that spending to reroll dice is a game effect, so TS is fine for that.

Wohoooo!
Yes I saw the same thing about an hour after I posted that