How does combat work...

By saiharris, in Star Wars: Rebellion

So, I feel daft asking this but it's to do with the expansion and it's cinematic combat.

Since the attacker resolves their dice before the defender, can they ever use the light saber role to prevent damage to ships? I'm having a big debate about this in my group and its really not clear how they are used effectively.

The answer to your question is NO, the attacker cannot “save” lightsaber results. All results must be resolved during that player’s attack and any unused symbols have no effect. This is from Corey designer of the game

Right. That you. I noticed a cinematic combat thread after I posted this which says the same thing

Ah. That's not what we concluded yesterday. We had both players 'saving' lightsabre results until the end of the combat and then using them.
I'll read it again.

This paragraph from the rules seems to suggest you can keep them for later

"Since units are not destroyed until the end of the round of battle, a player may
be able to save a unit from being destroyed by removing damage. Example:
A unit that has 1 red health is dealt 1 damage. Later in the battle, a player
spends 1 red ? to remove 1 damage from the unit and prevent its destruction."

Edited by stuuk
5 hours ago, stuuk said:

This paragraph from the rules seems to suggest you can keep them for later

"Since units are not destroyed until the end of the round of battle, a player may
be able to save a unit from being destroyed by removing damage. Example:
A unit that has 1 red health is dealt 1 damage. Later in the battle, a player
spends 1 red ? to remove 1 damage from the unit and prevent its destruction."

For the initial round, there will be no damage assigned to the attacker's units (as the defender has not rolled dice yet). So the lightsaber results have nothing to operate on, and are useless for the attacker's first round (making them excellent candidates for rerolls granted from a leader).

For subsequent rounds, the attacker may have partially-damaged units (from a previous combat round), where lightsaber results could be used.

It is interesting that the previous advantage the attacker had (pick up more cards with a lightsabre) is now switched to a defender advantage (the attacker may waste dice and cannot use a lightsabre).

That doesn't feel right at all.

I actually feel that you should save your lightsabres until last. The rules are really not clear on the designers intent here and are even less clear on how to perform the new combat mechanism.

I had to pour over the combat rules in RotE about 20 times before I fully understood how to play them correctly, and yes, the RotE rules for the new combat system are poorly explained. There would have been no confusion had they simply replaced the entire combat sequence in the Rules Reference Guide with a new combat sequence.

Trying to shoehorn in all of these exceptions, like do this before that, and not using the same terminology established in the RRG (they screw up the terms "combat round" and "battle" in the RotE manual), makes learning and understanding the new combat system a real pain and has caused problems for lots of folks (here and on BGG, myself included).

Yeah the manual in the expansion is poor. I say manual. Large sheet of paper.

Really, an extra two sheets before would have saved so much agro later.
Even the setup is cumbersome as you now have to reference both pages at the same time, figure out which no longer applies, etc.

On ‎09‎/‎20‎/‎2017 at 9:24 AM, stuuk said:

It is interesting that the previous advantage the attacker had (pick up more cards with a lightsabre) is now switched to a defender advantage (the attacker may waste dice and cannot use a lightsabre).

That doesn't feel right at all.

I actually feel that you should save your lightsabres until last. The rules are really not clear on the designers intent here and are even less clear on how to perform the new combat mechanism.

The old advantage was minor. I believe the new advantage is also minor.

With the reroll system, it simply urges the attacking player to reroll the lightsabers creating a higher damage roll which negates the defensive blocks. On top of that, the card system allows for players to switch initiative. And on top of that, the cards allow for attackers to block damage.

Combat, while important, is not the main focus of the game. A slight imbalance in how combat plays out would likely only affect the outcome of a scant few games per thousand.

The expansion manual does suck though. The expansion manual needed to rewrite the appropriate rules sections so you didn't need to refer back and forth. An extra page or two would have been well worth the effort.

I disagree that the alterations are minor, i think the new combat system provides quite a large defender bias which is entirely the opposite from the old system.

it means there's an extra 16% on each die of that die being useless.

While I agree that combat is not the main focus of the game for the most part is IS how the game is won or lost. The new combat system favours the defender, typically the rebels, by about 16% which, at least to me, is not minor.

On 9/30/2017 at 4:19 PM, stuuk said:

The new combat system favours the defender, typically the rebels

It goes both ways. The Empire needs to plan for tougher contested expansion, sure. But the Rebels also have to plan on any of their attacks (for missions/objectives) to also be more difficult. Of the two, I'd think this discourages the Rebels from attacking, more than it does the Empire.


If that's the case in your game, then that gives the Empire a clear path to just crush the Rebels by quick-spreading. Fewer units on defense means full-court rush for Empire, slowing only to do things that hinder Rebel unit gains.

I think this is a big change. Especially for the rebels as every unit counts for them. Rebels needs those quick and aggressive attacks to fulfill objectives and those attacks are often done with small forces due to resource scarcity.

I'd also like to point out that this new disadvantage for the attacker plays role also in subsequent rounds, not only in the first round of combat. Let me explain:

1st round:
Attacker treats lightsabers as blanks.

Subsequent rounds:
Attacker can heal only those units, the defender decided not to destroy, while defender can heal units that attacker decided to destroy.

Basically heals for the attacker can't save any unit during the battle. The defender do not have to overkill units assigning more hits than necessary, because the attacker can't heal units that will be destroyed anyway.

To me this is huge. Can someone please explain how is this balanced?

Could someone please define how cinematic combat works step by step?

On 4/21/2019 at 2:20 PM, Scoundrel said:

Could someone please define how cinematic combat works step by step?

Does this help? It's long but exhaustive. However once you've played a few rounds it becomes natural.

Cinematic Combat.docx

On 10/5/2017 at 10:32 AM, Libero03 said:

Basically heals for the attacker can't save any unit  during th  e battle. The defender do not have to overkill units  assigning m  ore hits than necessary, because the attacker can't heal units that will be destroyed anyway.

To me this is huge. Can someone please explain how is this balanced?

Yes they can - larger units can be saved one turn to the next if they aren't overwhelmed with damage. If I send a pair of Star Destroyers or AT-ATs into battle I will expect to be rolling some lightsabers next round to repair some of the damage picked up in round 1. Also, if the defender uses his combat card to hit single-wound units (fighters, troops) before the dice are rolled, the attacker's lightsabers can be used for those units. The attacker can also swing the order of battle around if he is willing to pay the price (using his card to do that, whilst the opponent chooses a card with a different benefit).

The pendulum swings to the defender in the cinematic rules, however it is overall balanced for a number of reasons. The attacker has chosen to do this attack, with resources from whatever systems could reach, and therefore presumably is expecting to win. The defender has to sit there and take it. The attacker always has a leader for rerolls, the defender may not. What has changed is the cost/benefit of whether he wants to attack with the resources he has.

In the base game the Rebels could always send their fleet out on the opening turn and have a reasonable chance of taking down a lone Star Destroyer for an easy objective if they were lucky enough to start with that card. This is no longer the case; the Rebels need to do more planning and marshal their forces for most "combat" objectives. To me this is a significant improvement in the strategic game as well as the combat itself.

1 hour ago, Patriarch said:

Does this help? It's long but exhaustive. However once you've played a few rounds it becomes natural.

Cinematic Combat.docx Unavailable

thanks a ton. I think we got it right by now, though : )

edit: Arwwwrgh the link is dead. is there a functioning one please?

Edited by Scoundrel
5 hours ago, Scoundrel said:

thanks a ton. I think we got it right by now, though : )

edit: Arwwwrgh the link is dead. is there a functioning one please?

I'll try again tomorrow. The document is at work 😉

On 4/25/2019 at 2:18 PM, Scoundrel said:

thanks a ton. I think we got it right by now, though : )

edit: Arwwwrgh the link is dead. is there a functioning one please?

Try this

Cinematic Combat.pdf