Second Chance With Ammo Belt

By 939nick, in Star Wars: Destiny

Question... If I were to defeat an opposing character equipped with Second Chance and an Ammo belt with a dice roll would Ammo Belt prevent Second Chance from being discarded?

Second Chance: UPGRADE - Ability

Yellow character only

Before attached character would be defeated, instead heal 5 damage from it and discard this ability from play.

Ammo Belt: UPGRADE

Before another upgrade on attached character would be discarded by a card effect, you may discard this upgrade instead.

My interpretation is that the dice roll is what triggered the event. Thus, you would not be able to use Ammo Belt in this situation.

My friend's interpretation is Second Chance forces him to discard it, thus making it a card effect.

I personally think he is reading too deep into it and that the first event that happens (in this case a dice roll), is what is responsible for triggering all additional effects.

If he is correct, this technically adds 10 life to a character (possibly 20 if you have end up playing two of each card).

Ammo Belt should work in that situation.

The only reason you discard Second Chance when a character is defeated is because the card, Second Chance, says to do so. That seems pretty clearly to be a card effect causing it to be discarded, which would trigger Ammo Belt.

What Joe said. Defeat doesn't cause Second Chance to be discarded - Second Chance does that itself.

Yeah, I agree with Joe and Buhallin. The fact that Ammo Belt says "card effect" is somewhat misleading. I can't really think of a case where you can remove an upgrade without using a card effect, because the only ways for your opponent to remove upgrades so far are with their own event cards, and the only way for you to remove your own upgrades are through an effect on the card itself. So, as far as I know, you might as well just treat ammo belt as if it said

"Before another upgrade on attached character would be discarded, you may discard this upgrade instead."

Also, in this specific case, it is definitely the second chance's own card effect that is causing it to be discarded. Think about it: if second chance only read

"before attached character would be defeated, instead heal 5 damage from it"

the card would never get discarded. The only reason it ever gets discarded is because it says to do so.

This is a little disturbing. I know there are cards that can affect the game, but this changes it significantly. As mentioned, if someone has two copies of each, they can essentially increase their health by 20. Toss that in with a couple "Cheat" cards and you can make it another 10.

They do take the place of any weapons or upgrades, but for a mill deck, you don't need much. My buddy uses Jyn to mill and paired her with Second Chance and the Ammo belt as I decribed. I had put 25 damage on her and she still wasn't defeated. He eventually milled me out.

Probably heading toward the FAQ. The discarding is a card effect, no question there. The question is, does second chance effect happen if it itself isn't discarded? You have to heal 5 damage and discard second chance to get the effect. So can ammo belt do a replacement effect and still get the 5 damage healed? As written, probably, but it seems over powered, so probably not in the long run.

Ammo Belt: one more reason to play Imperial Inspection. Are we having fun yet?

I have an argument with a friend about this, he is trying to ruin it because of this text, rules reference page 17:

REPLACEMENT EFFECTS
A replacement effect uses the word “instead” somewhere in
its text. If a replacement effect resolves, the original effect
is considered to have not resolved, and no abilities can
be triggered off of it. Abilities can be triggered off of the
replacement effect.

He says Second Chance effect is not resolved if you use Ammo Belt, so this whole thing doesn't happen: heal AND discard. Thoughts?

16 hours ago, Mep said:

Probably heading toward the FAQ. The discarding is a card effect, no question there. The question is, does second chance effect happen if it itself isn't discarded? You have to heal 5 damage and discard second chance to get the effect. So can ammo belt do a replacement effect and still get the 5 damage healed? As written, probably, but it seems over powered, so probably not in the long run.

Apparently Lukas answered this at SW Celebration over the weekend. I hope it's in the FAQ.

Yes, you'd heal 5 damage and discard Ammo Belt.

Ammo Belt and Cargo Hold should only work with Weapons and Equipment. Why even have subtypes if they don't consistently use them where it makes sense?

Because that requires playtesting and research, and FFG is too good to bother doing their premier license justice.

So many of these games have over powered cards it makes you wonder if it isn't done on purpose just to get people excited and buy the new product. After all, if all the new cards were pretty vanilla would anyone even bother?

On 2017-04-17 at 2:14 PM, Kieransi said:

So, as far as I know, you might as well just treat ammo belt as if it said

"Before another upgrade on attached character would be discarded, you may discard this upgrade instead."

I think that the wording the way it is, is very relevant. It may seem broken in conjunction with Second Chance; but in actual play it feels balanced when you're playing against tier 1 decks like Poe//Maz.

Furthermore, I think it would be broken if Ammo Belt did in fact read in the manner of the quoted statement, for I f it was; I could hypothetically choose to override my A180 Blaster, discarding Ammo Belt in its place, and effectively put my IQA-11 into play at essentially the cost of the Ammo belt.