Hey guys, I'm putting a new fleet together and wondering if you can clear something up for me, regarding Assault Proton Torpedoes and other cards that read in a similar way.

It says if I roll a black crit, the opposing ship takes a faceup damage card. Do I have to spend the die to cause this effect? Or is it added on top of the 2 damage?

Other cards tend to tell you to spend a die to get an effect. But at the same time I'm wondering if the highlighted black crit text is supposed to imply it having to be spent to give the face up damage card. :-/

You don't have to spend the black die for APT.

One black hit/crit die will do a face up card (even if shields are present) and then 2 damage (which could be braced).

Thanks. :-)

More generally, you want to bear in mind that resolving Critical Effects does not require spending of critical icons - they only require that at least one critical icon is present in the attack pool (after defense tokens have been spent).

CRITICAL EFFECTS (RRG page 4):

A critical effect, denoted by the “<crit>:” header, can resolve if there is at least one <crit> icon in the attack pool.
• The attacker can resolve only one critical effect per attack.
• The attacker does not spend a die icon to resolve a critical effect unless the effect says otherwise.
• Critical effects resolve at the beginning of the “Resolve Damage” step of an attack.
• The standard critical effect is “<crit>: If the defender is dealt at least one damage card by this attack, deal the first damage card faceup.”
• Squadrons cannot resolve or suffer critical effects unless otherwise specified.