Jabba with Fast Hands, Blackmail, Salvage Stand and Imperial Inspection Vs. Jango and 2 Holdout Blasters – timing ruling needed

By no_to_co, in Star Wars: Destiny

swd04_blackmail.png Image result for star wars destiny spirit of rebellion spoilers Image result for star wars salvage stand card

I have Jabba with Fast Hands and 2 Blackmail. I also have 2 Salvage Stands and 2 Imperial Inspection on the board. I roll out Jabba/Blackmail and get 2 resource Jabba dice and 2 disrupt Blackmail dice. I choose to re-roll 1 disrupt Blackmail die and get a discard side. My opponent has 3 resources. When does he get to pay the resources to remove my Blackmail dice?

Not before I get to activate 2 Salvage Stands and remove 2 of his resources.

Not before I get to activate 2 Imperial Inspection and have him put the Holdout Blasters back in his hand, the re-roll to a discard side happens after the first roll that triggers the Imperial Inspection.

Not before I use Fast Hands to resolve the Blackmail disrupt and remove his last resource.

Since he now has no resources, the opponent can’t remove any of the Blackmail dice. He rolls in a naked Jango in response to Jabba’s activation.


Now, let’s say that that the opponent gets to pay a resource after Blackmail dice are rolled. I roll 2 discard dice and he pays 2 resources to remove them immediately, then he rolls in Jango. Or I roll 1 disrupt and 1 discard dice, the opponent rolls in Jango, sees that he only needs one resource for Holdout pay sides and uses 1 resource to remove the one discard, keeping the other one for the Holdout Blaster pay side he rolled.

Lets look at the Salvage Stand and Imperial Inspection while this is happening. Jabba rolls and gets 2 resource Jabba dice and 2 disrupt Blackmail dice. Opponent has 2 resources and immediately pays 2 resources to remove the Blackmail dice. Neither Salvage Stand nor Imperial Inspection trigger. Or…

Jabba rolls in as above. Opponent has 3 resources and Salvage Stand and Imperial Inspection immediately trigger to remove 2 resources and the Holdout Blasters. He uses his last resource to remove one Blackmail die before Fast Hands can resolve it.

To me, the only clean and simple way is to let the Jabba player do all the things he can do on his side that was triggered by him activating Jabba and rolling the dice. Allowing to pay resource to remove the Blackmail dice when they are literally rolled will pretty much make Blackmail dice not work with Fast Hands, Salvage Stand, Imperial Inspection and Dark Presence. If we do the card and dice timing one at a time this will become an nightmare.

Playing Mill already puts opponents on edge (I guess it is less ‘fair’ to lose 2 of your resources then to get ambush cheated for 12 damage you had no way of preventing) so it would be great to get a clear ruling that can be explained to an opponent in a single sentence:

”I do all my card and dice effects on my side first in the order that I choose before you can do any of the card and dice effects on my side, and then you do the card and dice effects on your side. “ So, I roll in Jabba/Blackmail, re-roll it with Jabba's ability, then resolve it with Fast Hands before you can pay to remove the Blackmail dice, after that you can roll in Jango.

What do you think?

The answer is...

From the Rules Reference:

"When two or more triggered abilities meet their trigger conditions at the same time, the player who is resolving those abilities chooses the order they resolve in (in the case of before abilities) or enter the queue in (in the case of after abilities). If more than one player has abilities that are simultaneous, the player who controls the battlefield chooses the order they resolve in."

So whoever controls the battlefield determines the order when multiple effects trigger from both players at once. So when you active Jabba and roll your dice, all of the effects for Jabba, Fast Hands, Blackmail, Salvage Stand, and Jango all trigger. Whoever controls the battlefield chooses the order.

Who controls the battlefield?

SW Destiny Rules Reference

SIMULTANEOUS ABILITIES

When two or more triggered abilities meet their trigger conditions at the same time, the player who is resolving those abilities chooses the order they resolve in (in the case of before abilities) or enter the queue in (in the case of after abilities). If more than one player has abilities that are simultaneous, the player who controls the battle eld chooses the order they resolve in.

Example: A Tusken Raider ( r 22) is activated with Jango Fett ( r 21) in play. Each card is controlled by a different player. Both have an after ability that can resolve after the Tusken Raider activates, so it is the battle eld controller’s choice as to which one enters the queue rst.

If your opponent controls the battlefield, he can remove the blackmails, otherwise it is all his exaltedness, the great Jabba the Hutt going to town.

ok, lets take Jango out of the mix. Does the Blackmail dice give the opponent a "simultaneous ability", even thou it is not his die or card? And therefore, if he has the battlefied he can chose the order to resolve all of my abilities. This feels quite wrong to me. I have 10 of my abilities in the cue, one of my dice gives the opponent one ability, opponent has the battlefield, so he can choose the order in which I resolve all my 10 abilities? Seems way to powerful. And would make Blackmail with Fast Hands, Salvage Stand, Imperial Inspection and Dark Presence a liability.

47 minutes ago, no_to_co said:

ok, lets take Jango out of the mix. Does the Blackmail dice give the opponent a "simultaneous ability", even thou it is not his die or card? And therefore, if he has the battlefied he can chose the order to resolve all of my abilities. This feels quite wrong to me. I have 10 of my abilities in the cue, one of my dice gives the opponent one ability, opponent has the battlefield, so he can choose the order in which I resolve all my 10 abilities? Seems way to powerful. And would make Blackmail with Fast Hands, Salvage Stand, Imperial Inspection and Dark Presence a liability.

That is a question for which we do not have an answer. Who is activating the ability? Your opponent because he is paying the resource? Or you, because it is your card? We just don't know at this point. Right now I have been preparing (testing on tabletop simulator) for the worst case scenario and letting my opponent choose what order it resolves. I'll be quite happy if it turns out the other way, but at least I'll be prepared if it does not.

Edited by CBowser

There's also an open question with the timing on rolling during an activation. Is the roll a sub-part of activation, or is it part of one big single action? If the former, then Blackmail (which is after the roll) is not simultaneous with Fast Hands (or anything else) which is after activation. If it's all one big thing, then they are.

I'm inclined to think they're nested, which would make for a far more coherent timing structure, but we really don't know at the moment.

We also don't know the answer to who "owns" an ability on my card which you choose to activate.

I'm really hoping we finally get the real, comprehensive rulebook next week. FFG has tended to get by with light rules and "because I said so" rulings in a lot of their games, but the release schedule for Destiny is going to create a volume of cards that's much higher than the LCG model. There are literally dozens of SoR rule questions that are either deeply unclear or simply unanswered by the current rules, and that's not going to be tenable going forward.

The rules reference does not give any indication that there are sub-steps to activating a character. Sub-steps that would allow for abilities to trigger in between.

From the rules reference:

"To activate a character or support card, a player exhausts that card and rolls all of its dice. These dice are now in that player’s dice pool, and that player can take an action on a future turn to resolve their symbols."

I think Blackmail is worded the way it is so that any time it is rolled (be it when a character is activated, or rerolled as part of another effect), your opponent can pay a resource to remove it. But not to inject an extra step into the activation process and allow special timing for it's ability to resolve.

2 hours ago, no_to_co said:

ok, lets take Jango out of the mix. Does the Blackmail dice give the opponent a "simultaneous ability", even thou it is not his die or card? And therefore, if he has the battlefied he can chose the order to resolve all of my abilities. This feels quite wrong to me. I have 10 of my abilities in the cue, one of my dice gives the opponent one ability, opponent has the battlefield, so he can choose the order in which I resolve all my 10 abilities? Seems way to powerful. And would make Blackmail with Fast Hands, Salvage Stand, Imperial Inspection and Dark Presence a liability.

No, you would get to do your actions in any way you choose. The battlefield comes into play if you both have actions to do that are triggered.

On 2017-04-28 at 5:56 PM, no_to_co said:

ok, lets take Jango out of the mix. Does the Blackmail dice give the opponent a "simultaneous ability", even thou it is not his die or card? And therefore, if he has the battlefied he can chose the order to resolve all of my abilities. This feels quite wrong to me. I have 10 of my abilities in the cue, one of my dice gives the opponent one ability, opponent has the battlefield, so he can choose the order in which I resolve all my 10 abilities? Seems way to powerful. And would make Blackmail with Fast Hands, Salvage Stand, Imperial Inspection and Dark Presence a liability.

There is a difference between a player that "choose" something (In this case your opponent") and card controller (You). In the exact exemple they give in rule book, when deciding if you decide the order or you need to check who controls the battlefield, they specifie "card is controlled". So, in your example, there would be no battlefied check, since you control all the cards, you would choose the order.

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Edited by Chakan99939

Jabba roles in, Jango roles in if he so chooses. Then Jabba rerolls a dice. Now Jabba can use fast hands to resolve a dice if he chooses. I may be missing something here but I have been known to.

41 minutes ago, ozmodon said:

Jabba roles in, Jango roles in if he so chooses. Then Jabba rerolls a dice. Now Jabba can use fast hands to resolve a dice if he chooses. I may be missing something here but I have been known to.

It's not always going to go that way. In this case both players have abilities triggering at the same time so the battlefield controller gets to choose the order.

If the Jango player controls the battlefield he could choose to have his Jango resolve last so Jabba can't reroll his die. If the Jabba player controls the battlefield he'll have Jango resolve first so he can potentially reroll Jango's die if he wants.

Adding in more "after character activates" triggers complicates things a bit, but if both players have them, the battlefield controller decides the order and can have them resolve in any order he/she wants.

They may seem simultaneous but, I'm of the opinion that "after this die rolls X" triggers and enters the queue before "after you activate this character" triggers. We'll see I guess.

My personal opinion is that your opponent should always get to remove the blackmail dice, but I really have no idea how the rules interact with this. I think we need to wait three more days for the FAQ.

25 minutes ago, Kieransi said:

My personal opinion is that your opponent should always get to remove the blackmail dice, but I really have no idea how the rules interact with this. I think we need to wait three more days for the FAQ.

I think you can fast hands, blackmail to get if off before the opponent can pay for it's removal. Is paying for it's removal considered an action. Seems like you do one thing I do one, left the building. It would be nice to see a refined timing in a faq

43 minutes ago, Kieransi said:

My personal opinion is that your opponent should always get to remove the blackmail dice, but I really have no idea how the rules interact with this. I think we need to wait three more days for the FAQ.

Having "after you roll this die" trigger before "after you activate this character" abilities would do that.

Rolling the dice is a part of activating the character, so Blackmail should trigger and enter the queue waiting for you to finish activating the character. After that, Fast Hands triggers and enters the queue behind the Blackmail trigger. At least that I how I see it should go. But we'll see.

from the new FAQ:

Can I roll in a Blackmail (D23) die and resolve it with Fast Hands (D150) before an opponent can give me a resource to remove it?

• Yes. The abilities are simultaneous so you can choose to resolve either one in order of your choice.

Since both are yours (the Fast Hands and the Blackmail card and its abilities) you choose the order to resolve them. No need to mention who controls the battle field. This applies to Salvage Stand triggering when you roll in a resource on Unkar's die when rolling in Blackmail! Both cards are yours and you decide the order. Salvage Stand removes the opponents resource before he can spend it to remove the Blackmail dice.

Edited by no_to_co

From this FAQ entry you can extrapolate that Blackmail is considered your ability not your opponents. So yes, I would say you could order the triggers salvage stand, then blackmail. So if you salvage stand away their last resources they wont be able to pay to remove blackmail.