I saw a very concerning post on an X-Wing related FB group just now. The group in question is https://www.facebook.com/groups/xwingukirl/ .

The post basically tells a story about a player who turns up at a store tournment with a Jabba build and the TO rules that because of the wording on the card that Jabba's ability only applies to the ship he is on, so while all ships get the illicit token the part of the card that reads 'When you are instructed to discard an Upgrade card, you may discard 1 illicit token on that card instead.' only works on the ship that Jabba is actually present on.

Now this is clearly not the intent of the card, FFG have even written an article explaining it as basically Extra Munitions for Illicits.

In my opinion the TO in question is being a complete and total tool here and there is no way I would play under that ruling.

The problem is that with the rules as written he is 'technically' correct, just ******.

Has anyone else run into this problem with the Jabba card?

This is a RAW vs RAI question tbh. Both are clear, but FFG made a mistake in their writing of the card, so the former doesn't match the latter. THe card needs errata to work as intended. It's pretty much an open and shut case from the rules perspective.

Regarding the appropriateness of the TO's call, I don't think that's really a debate for this thread, and I don't really think we should be throwing around bouts of name calling about it anywhere, especially not with the kind of invective that's going on over there. FFG shouldn't ever have put TOs in the position of having to make a call between correct RAW and blindingly obvious RAI.

And none of this addresses the IMO more contentious and less-easily-resolved question of whether the Illicit tokens keep working after Jabba is discarded (e.g. by Azmorigan, or by Boba crew) or his ship dies. There've been multiple several-page-long threads on that one which all basically came to the same conclusion: answer is unclear, FAQ required.

It's another one of those issues that's been clear since about 2 minutes after the original spoiler article was published, and which is spectacularly disappointing that they didn't errata on day 1. We're assuming we'll see an FAQ shortly after wave 11 drops next week, hopefully it'll be fixed then...

Fair enough, I was just wondering if this kind of take on the ruling is the generally accepted take? It just seems to me that you can look at the card and the intent of what FFG are trying to do is blindingly obvious, the article they wrote lays this out in super simple and clear terms. To rule against it on a technicality seems extremely disingenuous and frankly mean.

I don't do tournament play, due to many bad experiences, so this doesn't affect me at all, I was just interested to know if this was the wide spread accepted attitude.

2 minutes ago, UberMunchkin said:

Fair enough, I was just wondering if this kind of take on the ruling is the generally accepted take? It just seems to me that you can look at the card and the intent of what FFG are trying to do is blindingly obvious, the article they wrote lays this out in super simple and clear terms. To rule against it on a technicality seems extremely disingenuous and frankly mean.

I don't do tournament play, due to many bad experiences, so this doesn't affect me at all, I was just interested to know if this was the wide spread accepted attitude.

Mostly in Rules Questions we deal with the rules on a theoretical basis.

In practical, casual play I'd run it as obviously intended, but even if I thought it was good enough right now (which I don't, I've got maybe two lists with Jabba and they both use several copies of ships I only have one of), I wouldn't take it to a tourney without checking with the TO first how it would be ruled.

Seems reasonable. I guess I'm just sensitive to bad TO rulings, one of the reasons I don't play in tournments is related to an especially crappy TO ruling where they ruled that I couldn't use Kanan to remove the stress from the Falcon S-Loop after my opponent challenged it.

If its actually a good card is really a totally differnet question anyway (IMO It's great for Epic Play and next to useless for 100pt matches).

Thanks for explaining.

28 minutes ago, UberMunchkin said:

Seems reasonable. I guess I'm just sensitive to bad TO rulings...

TO followed the rules.

... Nothing else needs to be said about this.

Any and all mistakes, in this instance, are on behalf of FFG, for the overall sloppy C-ROC release, and for the player using Jabba for not doing their due diligence (though FFG definitely owns the lion's share of this mistake, especially since it's entirely possible the Jabba player didn't know it was a contested card to begin with).

However, Rules as Written are the baseline every TO HAS to work from. Special allowances outside of that should be in only extreme edge cases, or more relaxed events. What defines an extreme edge case is really up to the TO... and, in this instance, RAW is extremely clear, due to Jabba's Upgrade's use of the word, "you," which is amply defined in the rules.

Yeah, that is exactly why I dropped out of the tournament scene, I'm not saying you're wrong but it immediately creates a hostile and controntational dynamic that I am just not interested in.

47 minutes ago, UberMunchkin said:

Yeah, that is exactly why I dropped out of the tournament scene, I'm not saying you're wrong but it immediately creates a hostile and controntational dynamic that I am just not interested in.

Honestly, that's not really a valid reason for X-Wing, because these "hostile and confrontational" instances are few and far between. They're much rarer than any other competitive game I've played, and FFG has done their best (and continued to do so, for the most part), to be responsive to issues.

If you're actually participating in a competitive scene, it's on you to do research. That's true across anything , board game, miniature game, athletic event, whatever. So the player should have known that Jabba was an issue, and should have taken the time to reach out to the store beforehand. It's unfortunate that they did not, and their list was affected due to that, but that's not a common occurrence.

X-Wing is still the friendliest competitive game I've ever seen played, and I honestly feel like the competitive community is the only reason I've continue to play for as long as I have. If I was playing casually, Armada is so much more interesting... Or any number of my board games would be preferable.

That's obviously my personal take on the game, and not remotely a fair assessment to be applied to anyone else, but writing off the competitive scene because it's "hostile and confrontational" is an uninformed opinion. Reading JUST the forums and Reddit might make one feel that way, I suppose, but the same can be said for most online/Reddit forums -- they are generally poor samples of their larger communities.

This card serves to contradict itself in the fact that it allows you to place tokens on all ships in a squad, but the wording refers to only one ship being allowed to use those tokens. The TO was within his rights to provide a strict ruling, but I feel that a better ruling would be to allow the card to be played as intended and all ships use the tokens. FFG has to be more careful in their wording to avoid conflict.

I think the TO was within his right to make that call, but the preview was pretty clear on how the card should be played. In fact it says...

"In short, Jabba the Hutt is Extra Munitions for every illicit upgrade in your squad."

I totally get that a preview is not an official document used for rulings (I am a TO with over 15 events under my belt), but the TO sounds like he was sticking way to close to vest here. None the less, their ruling has to stand. It seems pretty clear that FFG needs to make sure the card designers, play testers, and article writers talk to each other before stuff gets released because some of these oversights are causing major headaches in the community.

1 hour ago, shaunmerritt said:

I think the TO was within his right to make that call, but the preview was pretty clear on how the card should be played. In fact it says...

"In short, Jabba the Hutt is Extra Munitions for every illicit upgrade in your squad."

I totally get that a preview is not an official document used for rulings (I am a TO with over 15 events under my belt), but the TO sounds like he was sticking way to close to vest here. None the less, their ruling has to stand. It seems pretty clear that FFG needs to make sure the card designers, play testers, and article writers talk to each other before stuff gets released because some of these oversights are causing major headaches in the community.

Not only are articles not official documents, they are well known to always contain an error, either in list-building, or in describing how a new mechanism works (ie, the SLAM fiasco).

3 hours ago, ArbitraryNerd said:

Honestly, that's not really a valid reason for X-Wing, because these "hostile and confrontational" instances are few and far between. They're much rarer than any other competitive game I've played, and FFG has done their best (and continued to do so, for the most part), to be responsive to issues.

If you're actually participating in a competitive scene, it's on you to do research. That's true across anything , board game, miniature game, athletic event, whatever. So the player should have known that Jabba was an issue, and should have taken the time to reach out to the store beforehand. It's unfortunate that they did not, and their list was affected due to that, but that's not a common occurrence.

X-Wing is still the friendliest competitive game I've ever seen played, and I honestly feel like the competitive community is the only reason I've continue to play for as long as I have. If I was playing casually, Armada is so much more interesting... Or any number of my board games would be preferable.

That's obviously my personal take on the game, and not remotely a fair assessment to be applied to anyone else, but writing off the competitive scene because it's "hostile and confrontational" is an uninformed opinion. Reading JUST the forums and Reddit might make one feel that way, I suppose, but the same can be said for most online/Reddit forums -- they are generally poor samples of their larger communities.

Telling someone that their opinion on feeling that the environment is "hostile and confrontational" is wrong and going at lengths to lecture them about it is, in it's own way, hostile and confrontational.

Player doesn't want to play due to past bad experiences they have had. Fair enough. No point in lecturing them on how they're, in your view, wrong.

7 minutes ago, Slugrage said:

Telling someone that their opinion on feeling that the environment is "hostile and confrontational" is wrong and going at lengths to lecture them about it is, in it's own way, hostile and confrontational.

Player doesn't want to play due to past bad experiences they have had. Fair enough. No point in lecturing them on how they're, in your view, wrong.

If that's your definition of "hostile and confrontational," sure.

Of course, as those aren't the actual definitions of the words "hostile" or "confrontational," I'd probably lecture some more on how the interpretation or use of those words is incorrect.

And gorram me, but I do love giving a lecture.

Note: I'd allow that this post qualifies as both

I did not see his post as a lecture. Sorry but someone feeling is not automatically the truth. If I say I have a feeling that everyone here is an ***, it does not mean I'm "right" to feel like so. And trying to encourage someone to give another try and change their feeling is not lecturing...

51 minutes ago, muribundi said:

I did not see his post as a lecture. Sorry but someone feeling is not automatically the truth. If I say I have a feeling that everyone here is an ***, it does not mean I'm "right" to feel like so. And trying to encourage someone to give another try and change their feeling is not lecturing...

To be completely honest, I wasn't even attempting to get the OP to give the game another shot -- my concern is other newer players seeing posts like that and deciding that X-Wing isn't for them.

The OP is well within their right to never touch another competitive game for as long as they live, though I suspect we'd be the worse for that; those that dislike normal "competitive" settings generally do so because those settings go against their open and accommodating natures... which are the exact natures competitive games could benefit from.

Or, you know, they're complete jerks. I dunno.

So my personal take on this, trying to say that Jabbas ability to ditch the tokens only works on his ship is just being obstinate. The text of the card makes NO sense whatsoever if that's how you're supposed to run it. Yes, as written that's what the second half says but this is like when the timing chart came out and people were saying stress-bot now did nothing. TECHNICALLY yes that's what the RAW says but the RAI is so incredibly obvious not following that ruling is just silly.

Imagine they put out a new rule book and there was a typo where it said "Ships that have NOT fled the battlefield are destroyed" would you really say that any ship that doesn't fly off the board is immediately destroyed until an errata was issued? This is just as absurdly clear to me. Jabbas ability applies to all ships not just the one he's on.

7 hours ago, sharrrp said:

So my personal take on this, trying to say that Jabbas ability to ditch the tokens only works on his ship is just being obstinate.

Or it's reading the card as printed and following the rules.

7 hours ago, sharrrp said:

The text of the card makes NO sense whatsoever if that's how you're supposed to run it.

It makes perfect sense, it's just crappy and gives out some useless tokens. Hardly the first time FFG released a card that had interactions that weren't particularly useful upon release.

7 hours ago, sharrrp said:

Yes, as written that's what the second half says but this is like when the timing chart came out and people were saying stress-bot now did nothing. TECHNICALLY yes that's what the RAW says but the RAI is so incredibly obvious not following that ruling is just silly.

Following the rules as written isn't silly. In fact, if TOs went away from rules as written in any real sense of the way, there would be absolute chaos.

7 hours ago, sharrrp said:

Imagine they put out a new rule book and there was a typo where it said "Ships that have NOT fled the battlefield are destroyed" would you really say that any ship that doesn't fly off the board is immediately destroyed until an errata was issued?

Well, I mean, it's literally in the rule book? So yes? If I was concerned about an event I was going to following it or not, I'd def reach out to the store first, because that would impact how I plan on playing.

7 hours ago, sharrrp said:

So my personal take on this...

...This is just as absurdly clear to me. Jabbas ability applies to all ships not just the one he's on.

That's, like, your opinion, man.

*Until addressed in an official capacity.

52 minutes ago, ArbitraryNerd said:

Well, I mean, it's literally in the rule book? So yes? If I was concerned about an event I was going to following it or not, I'd def reach out to the store first, because that would impact how I plan on playing.

It would be useless for you to go to a tournement, as soon as you place your ship on the board, they would be destroyed because they did not leave the battlefield. So no you would not be able to play the game anymore until they errata the rule book. So the question remain, would you follow a clear blantant blunder of a rule just because they are slow to do errata.

This is a perfect theoretical example that at some point TO have to aknowledge that the rule or text is broken and fix it for the tournement.

31 minutes ago, muribundi said:

This is a perfect theoretical example that at some point TO have to aknowledge that the rule or text is broken and fix it for the tournement.

Again, that's your opinion. I'd argue that your scenario is uselessly hyperbolic and has zero merit for the discussion.

TOs are supposed to enforce the rules. That's the baseline, and anything beyond that is conjecture. It's not wrong for a TO to follow the rules . Even if the rules are garbage. Even if you don't like it. Even if RAI is obvious. It's not wrong for a TO to follow the rules.

1 hour ago, ArbitraryNerd said:

Again, that's your opinion. I'd argue that your scenario is uselessly hyperbolic and has zero merit for the discussion.

TOs are supposed to enforce the rules. That's the baseline, and anything beyond that is conjecture. It's not wrong for a TO to follow the rules . Even if the rules are garbage. Even if you don't like it. Even if RAI is obvious. It's not wrong for a TO to follow the rules.

The point of my example was to give a scenario that (I thought) no one could possibly argue with. Following the RAW in that case makes the entire game unplayable so of course you have to go with RAI.

99.999% of the time you gotta go with RAW because what people will argue the I is in RAI gets too crazy too often. However, at a certain point you HAVE to go to RAI if there is a sufficiently broken and obvious RAW error. That was the point of my hypothetical.

Now, in the case of Jabba it doesn't make the while game unplayable but the text of the card vs how it's supposed to function is SO obvious I really don't see how a reasonable person could insist it be different. The first part of the card says to give tokens for the entire squad. Then the second part says only that ship can use the tokens with a strict RAW interpretation . So the other ones are decorative? That's what I mean by the card makes no sense if you follow strict RAW, not that the card has literal gibberish or something. It's the same as when the timing chart came out and technically broke R3-A2. By a strict RAW the Droid now did nothing because there is no defender to give stress to during his trigger window. They did later put out an FAQ that basically just said he triggers later when there is a defender but didn't actually change the wording. Although the desrepency was pointed out here, tournaments out in the wild still allowed him to be used as he should because of course they did. Jabba should be handled in the same way.

27 minutes ago, sharrrp said:

Jabba should be handled in the same way.

And likely is, at each TO's discretion.

No one is arguing otherwise.

But a TO wouldn't be wrong to follow RAW.

... So we're back at the beginning and there really isn't any need to rinse and repeat further.

The topic about Jabba the @thespaceinvader refers to is here :

We aimlessly argued back and forth, him arguing in the direction the TO took here (mostly on the "when Jabba is out, tokens are useless" front), and me in the other sense "the tokens get their value from the card and keep their value until used". In my view , the Jabba card is not broken : the "you" in the second part refers to the ship who's a token is removed from (the "you" statement is still as usually used in the RAW, it's the ship that has the effect on). Also, Jabba's death doesn't make the tokens useless.

I guess they can "fix" Jabba by just writing a generic rule errata stating : "tokens are granted a meaning at the time when they enter play and keep that meaning until they are removed from play".

That fix also fixes the "removing the illicit cloaking device makes you have a normal cloak that won't potentially go away at the end of the turn". The cloak token is then described by the card as "unstable" and you still roll if you get rid of the card.

In the case here, the TO counted tokens as mere counting devices, not effect granting chips. It's a ruling, and RAW doesn't say if tokens have intersect value or not. RAW unclear, RAI clear, TO rules in the counter of RAI because he decided on his own RAI based on his reading of RAW. I would be mad if I was the player impacted.

4 minutes ago, NilsTillander said:

In my view , the Jabba card is not broken : the "you" in the second part refers to the ship who's a token is removed from

Your view is wrong according to the rules of the game (though less so to the rules of the english language, where the plural you is a thing and not a clear one from the singular you. THis is such a terrible language for technical writing).

That there is an error in the writing of the card WRT its use of the term 'you' as defined in the game rules is really not in question.

A correct phrasing would be 'when a friendly ship is instructed to discard an upgrade card, that ship may instead discard an illicit token on that card'.

1 minute ago, thespaceinvader said:

Your view is wrong according to the rules of the game (though less so to the rules of the english language, where the plural you is a thing and not a clear one from the singular you. THis is such a terrible language for technical writing).

Better ? : "When you equip this card, place 1 illicit token on each illicit Upgrade card equipped to ships in your squad. When they are instructed to discard an Upgrade card, they may discard 1 illicit token on that card instead."

Also, yes, English is the worst at being clear and concise. Too many short words modifying meaning, too many synonyms that gain sub-meanings and connotations with time...Snakk Norsk!

8 minutes ago, NilsTillander said:

Better ? : "When you equip this card, place 1 illicit token on each illicit Upgrade card equipped to ships in your squad. When they are instructed to discard an Upgrade card, they may discard 1 illicit token on that card instead."

Also, yes, English is the worst at being clear and concise. Too many short words modifying meaning, too many synonyms that gain sub-meanings and connotations with time...Snakk Norsk!

The wording I edited in is how I would phrase the token spending instructions for Jabba if forced to keep it all on his card.

But my preferred solution would have been to make EM a reference card, and have Jabba and EM both use the same sort of tokens and refer to the card. That would make their effect unambiguous, more easily changed if necessary for balance, and accessible to any number of upgrades and pilot abilities without needing to constantly repeat the instructions for how they should be used, as well as completely obviating the debate about what happens if Jabba is discarded..

But, that ship sailed during the design process of the K Wing and Punisher