A Question on Fire Control Teams

By UberMunchkin, in Star Wars: Armada Rules Questions

Morning Hivemind.

I have a question on Fire Control Teams, reading the FAQ entry on the card:

" Fire Control Team
If a ship with this card equipped resolves both the XX-9 Turbolasers critical effect and the standard critical effect, only the first 2 damage cards are dealt faceup. If a ship with this card equipped resolves both the Assault Proton Torpeodes critical effect and the standard critical effect, only the damage card dealt by resolving Assault Proton Torpedoes is dealt faceup."

My question is, if this is the case then what is the point of this card?

Is this a case of it only be any use with Ion Cannon upgrades?

Not only on Ion Cannons, ACMs also proc. But I do think the main intent is Ion Cannon upgrades

Also, it allows you to use XX-9 and APTs with other crits

27 minutes ago, Visovics said:

Also, it allows you to use XX-9 and APTs with other crits

But only from Ion Cannons, that's what seems weird to me. The wording form the FAQ specifically says that you can't.

"If a ship with this card equipped resolves both the XX-9 Turbolasers critical effect and the standard critical effect, only the first 2 damage cards are dealt faceup."

So this seems to be saying, as I read it, that XX-9 & Standard critical effect still means only two face up damage.

"If a ship with this card equipped resolves both the Assault Proton Torpeodes critical effect and the standard critical effect, only the damage card dealt by resolving Assault Proton Torpedoes is dealt faceup."

And this seems to say pretty clearly that APT + Standard Critical Effect means only one face up card.

It just seems like a bit of a non-event of a card, it should be awesome but it seems meh.

Just now, UberMunchkin said:

But only from Ion Cannons, that's what seems weird to me. The wording form the FAQ specifically says that you can't.

"If a ship with this card equipped resolves both the XX-9 Turbolasers critical effect and the standard critical effect, only the first 2 damage cards are dealt faceup."

So this seems to be saying, as I read it, that XX-9 & Standard critical effect still means only two face up damage.

"If a ship with this card equipped resolves both the Assault Proton Torpeodes critical effect and the standard critical effect, only the damage card dealt by resolving Assault Proton Torpedoes is dealt faceup."

And this seems to say pretty clearly that APT + Standard Critical Effect means only one face up card.

It just seems like a bit of a non-event of a card, it should be awesome but it seems meh.

Any crit effect that involves cards up doesn't add to normal,but it opens possibilities to using them with Ion Cannons or Ion Cannons without losing the benefit of the card faceup

Yeah, that's what I thought, given that I play Rebels and we have not much in the way of Ion slots anyway I was just hoping for a decent alternate use for the card.

Thanks for taking the time to answer though.

1 minute ago, UberMunchkin said:

Yeah, that's what I thought, given that I play Rebels and we have not much in the way of Ion slots anyway I was just hoping for a decent alternate use for the card.

Thanks for taking the time to answer though.

Your best use may be on MC80s and ACMs on MC30s I think

It works exceptionally well with ACM - with the caveat that any ship with ACMs and a Weapons Team slot should probably be equipping OE instead! Unless your admiral is Screed or Vader.

I play Rebels so I have no Screed or Vader option. :) Can't afford to have both factions, I don't make that much money. Especially on top of an X-Wing habit as well. :) It's annoying because I am missing so many good cards from my collection.

I hear you. Just saying the card is not useless - just niche. And the niche happens to fall outside your fleetbuilding criteria :)

Also, the FAQ doesn't specify what happens when using both XX-9 Turbolasers and Assault Proton Torpedoes together - does XX-9 count as the first damage card being dealt face up? In other words, if both crits took effect, do you deal 2 or 3 face-up damage cards?

It's quite clear: all damage cards dealt during the attack count, whether dealt normally or by a crit effect. So XX-9 + APT = 2 faceup cards.

16 minutes ago, DiabloAzul said:

It's quite clear: all damage cards dealt during the attack count, whether dealt normally or by a crit effect. So XX-9 + APT = 2 faceup cards.

Thanks. Its not clear though, that's why I asked :P APT still deals an extra damage though, however its an expensive combo coming in at 12 points.

It's not explicitly stated, but I'd say it's undoubtedly implicit from the FCT FAQ entry, which indicates that the APT card counts as the first damage card dealt in the attack (even if stated in the context of the standard crit effect, the same principle applies to XX-9).

Indeed, FCT doesn't really play nice with APT or XX-9 alone. It interacts nicely with Ion upgrades and/or ACM, or a combination of either of those with APT or XX-9. But that gets expensive real fast.

So if you use XX-9s with APT it's basically getting the standardcrit + APT?

8 minutes ago, Visovics said:

So if you use XX-9s with APT it's basically getting the standardcrit + APT?

More or less, yes.

Yeah, if you are going to run XX-9s with Fire Control Teams it seems you're much better off using either an Ion upgrade that procs off a crit or ACMs.

APTs + XX-9s: only two total crits, so APTs is sort of wasted, however the timing of APTs (after defense tokens are declared, before damage is resolved) may make it worthwhile in some niche situations (IE, Dodonna can pull a Project Misaligned on your full-shield ISD, turning one APT faceup and one shield damage, into one APT faceup and one XX-9 faceup ). Plus the fact that APTs still fires even when shields are full, whereas only XX-9s would not. So not strictly useless.

The only strictly useless Fire Control Teams combinations are the default critical effect with APTs or XX-9s .

Otherwise; ACMs + Default Critical, or ACMs + XX-9s: Psuedo-APT / Psuedo-Super-APT, respectively. And yes, all the blue crit effects.

But the future is wide open.