So, do you guys read that as you have to declare you want to spend it when an attack or action is declared, as opposed to after rolling?

I'm seeing it as you spend the token before rolling dice.

I would think this would follow similar rules as conditions so you would have to spend the token when you declared an attack or attribute test. But you wouldn't apply it until counting damage. With focus for instance, you are required to use it on your NEXT attack/test. If these work the same you couldn't just choose to save them up. Now with conditions, you can't have more than one of the same conditions on a figure so I wonder if this will apply.

All abilities that add (or remove) symbols or accuracy to the attack/defense results do it when the ability triggers and is resolved by paying its cost.

The article mentions "declares an attack" and "may discard one of its", so it is safe to assume that when declaring target (or when you are declared as target) you choose whether to discard a token (cost) to gain the effect (the symbol specified by the discarded power token), each figure can only choose to discard one per attack, and a figure can have at least two of them.

1 hour ago, a1bert said:

The article mentions "declares an attack" and "may discard one of its", so it is safe to assume that when declaring target (or when you are declared as target) you choose whether to discard a token (cost) to gain the effect (the symbol specified by the discarded power token), each figure can only choose to discard one per attack , and a figure can have at least two of them.

I'm hesitant to trust an FFG preview article with something as finicky as 'one' excluding the possibility of more than one. It would depend on where the ability to discard the tokens comes from, if it's the figure then sure (although it could be the figure but different types of tokens are counted separately), but if it's on the token then you'd be able to activate as many tokens as you had (I would trust it with the "declares an attack" part though).

In terms of how I'd want it to play (and thus how it would be if I wrote the rules) having a +damage and +surge token from different sources and only being able to activate one seems undesirable, on the other hand figures hoarding them also seems bad so I'd want players to be able to activate one token of each type but no more than one per type.

The article clearly says 'may discard one of its'.... and in IA you can only use an ability once per trigger.... so, unless they are going to break from what has already been set, it will be one token.

7 hours ago, Norgrath said:

It would depend on where the ability to discard the tokens comes from,

You forgot the third source: Power Token Rules.

It looks to me that the article is not misrepresenting the power tokens.

There seems to be a mistake about the timing of Ko-Tun's ability though - possibly mixing up skirmish and campaign versions, or maybe the timing has changed from start of round to the start of activation, or it is just a mistake not caught in editing.

I gotta agree with a1bert here. It's clear the token rules will be in the campaign book when it's out, and for now all we have to go on is that they can be used when the attack is declared by you or against you.

12 minutes ago, a1bert said:

You forgot the third source: Power Token Rules.

Is this a thing you can cite or am I missing something?

I'm not claiming that the article misrepresents anything. The statement "may discard one" doesn't rule out either "may discard more than one" or "may not discard more than one" unless put into rules in that wording and I don't think we can safely assume that the wording that appears in a preview article will be the same as appears in the rulebook.

I can't tell you what the wording is in the rules.

The Power Tokens is a mechanism to give boosts to attack or defense without it being as powerful as e.g. focused or static bonuses from abilities. Being able to spend more than one per attack would easily become a gamechanger, especially in skirmish, because you are still able to stack a power token with hidden and focused.

I personally think the power tokens are a bit fiddly, but they do fill a gap in the temporary bonus department.

9 hours ago, a1bert said:

I can't tell you what the wording is in the rules.

The Power Tokens is a mechanism to give boosts to attack or defense without it being as powerful as e.g. focused or static bonuses from abilities. Being able to spend more than one per attack would easily become a gamechanger, especially in skirmish, because you are still able to stack a power token with hidden and focused.

I personally think the power tokens are a bit fiddly, but they do fill a gap in the temporary bonus department.

So you agree that we don't know what the ruling will be?

28 minutes ago, Norgrath said:

So you agree that we don't know what the ruling will be?

The rules text has not been seen in public, correct.

Until you actually play figures that have abilities for gaining or giving power tokens to other figures, the exact rules are not relevant except for speculation. And for speculation you can assume the article does not misrepresent the use of power tokens.

4 minutes ago, a1bert said:

You don't know the rules text, correct.

Until you actually play figures that have abilities for gaining or giving power tokens to other figures, the exact rules are not relevant except for speculation. And for speculation you can assume the article does not misrepresent the use of power tokens.

Please refer to the bolded text.

10 hours ago, Norgrath said:

Is this a thing you can cite or am I missing something?

I'm not claiming that the article misrepresents anything. The statement "may discard one" doesn't rule out either "may discard more than one" or "may not discard more than one" unless put into rules in that wording and I don't think we can safely assume that the wording that appears in a preview article will be the same as appears in the rulebook.

For further explanation: the wording in a preview article is written to being exciting and easy to understand as opposed to being comprehensive and "may discard one" is what pretty much anyone would use to describe what you can do with power tokens unless they were taking careful care to explain precisely how many could be activated.

I'm not the one making a claim about what the rules say here, you are.

(Incidentally I think it's about 45:45:10 between the three possibilities (Only one, up to one of each type, as many as you have) as to which the rules will go with).

a figure that declares an attack or is declared as the target of an attack may discard one of its power tokens to apply that token's symbol to the attack’s results.

From my point of view there is only one interpretation due to specifically calling for "one" and using singular throughout. I would understand if the article were more vague, e.g. "may discard power tokens to apply the corresponding symbol to the attack results".

The rules are not public, so I can't refer you to them.

7 minutes ago, a1bert said:

From my point of view there is only one interpretation due to specifically calling for "one" and using singular throughout. I would understand if the article were more vague, e.g. "may discard power tokens to apply the corresponding symbol to the attack results".

Funny, "discard power tokens" reads to me as precluding not being able to discard more than one (or was your point that "symbol" as opposed to "symbols" makes it vague). I've already said twice, bolded the second time, that the wording in the article is entirely consistent with either being able to discard more than one or not. And I mean that both logically and in terms of what a marketing person would write.

I'd assume that you can only discard one at a time.

It would be interesting to be able to stack them, though, provided that there may be a cap on how many you can hold. Unlimited tokens could make boss battles obsolete, but if there was a limit of, say, 3, that could allow for some neat powered up attacks.

On 5/6/2017 at 1:59 PM, a1bert said:

From my point of view there is only one interpretation due to specifically calling for "one" and using singular throughout. I would understand if the article were more vague, e.g. "may discard power tokens to apply the corresponding symbol to the attack results".

The rules are not public, so I can't refer you to them.

I liken this to the wording of movement points, where "a hero may spend one strain to gain one movement point and may be do so up to twice per activation" (in quotes but phrased from memory). So the word one is important but not limiting. So power tokens could have a similar wording. For example, they may add that: up to 2 or 3 tokens may be used per figure per timing instance. It will be interesting and I'm looking forward to reading the rules for these. My guess is that one (or both) of the IC decks will make full use of the power tokens. These could work very well with AOE and/or group buffs.

I think it's pretty clear the speculation at this point could go either way.

Without the full rules in front of us, it's impossible to say for certain.

Undoubtedly, being able to use more than one or two at a time could lead to some really abusive situations where someone has stacked a whole bunch and alpha strikes using all of them.

I doubt the rules will allow that, and as such I'm guessing there will be a limit enforced (most likely 1 at a time, but possibly 1 of each type at a time)