We played another game last night with the expansion (Rise of the Empire). We ran into several leader pool issues/questions. Any clarification is appreciated.

For the below we are assuming the leader cap is 8 like the rules state. (I.E. the Empire has not played the action card moving their cap to 9.)

1) In general when would a player be forced to discard/remove a leader? We have noted it's now possible to have 8 leaders in your pool and potentially gain a leader due to action cards or mission(s). When this happens and the new leader(s) join the game in the middle of a turn when would the player discard/remove a leader to maintain the leader cap of 8?

2) Do captured (rebel) leader(s) count against the cap of 8 for either the rebels or empire when captured? I. E. If the rebels have 8 leaders and one or more is captured what happens if they gain the opportunity to recruit/add additional leaders? Also if the captured leader(s) do not count towards the rebel cap, what will happen if said leader is later freed or released by the Empire via mission/effect, or choice due to a second capture or circumstance in the game?

2A) How does turning a captured rebel to the dark side affect both the empires and rebels leader caps. I.E. Is evil Luke or whomever now applied to the imperial leader cap and if so when? Would this also force a discard down to 8?

3) Young Luke Skywalker is in play. Dagobah has been trapped with the "Sweep the Area Action card" and Luke is subsequently captured when going to seek Yoda. (1) Since Luke is captured how will this play out and how does it affect the leader pools and the cap?

3A) This is not per say a rules question but for the above 3rd scenario also assuming you have presumed that Degobah is trapped is their any way to get Jedi Luke without it leading to him being imprisonned/captured first on Dagobah. Specifically we are curious if perhaps the rebel action card "My only hope" will allow the rebel player to fetch/replace Jedi Luke? If no is their any other way for Luke to Jedi up?

Thanks in advance, sorry for the length.

Expansion rules say:

"If a player ever has more than 8 leaders in his leader pool , he must
choose 8 to keep and eliminate the excess (remove them from the game)."

I've highlighted two most important things in that quote:
a). it doesn't matter when the condition is met,
b). if you look at your faction sheet, there is an area named "leader pool" - just count how many leaders are there.

I think this is enough to answer all your questions except 3A.

If you're really scared about Sweep the Area in Dagobah, there are several ways to mitigate it:
- play RM beforehand several times, if you saw Dagobah, sent it the bottom of probe deck and you know it stays there, then the system is safe;
- prepare rescue mission (or Millennium Falcon) in advance;
- make sure the closest system that contains Imperial units (see card text) is a system you can easily rescue him by brute force (i.e. few Imperial units, with you having some possibility to hit and destroy all of them).

Etc. (there are probably others)

The probability to have this system trapped with Sweep the Area is is relatively low in the first place (it is an "Immediate" action card, so when it's drawn, the Empire usually shouldn't have more that 8 probes), so I'm only listing theoretical possibilities, not saying if it's worth it or not.

Still unclear as to who's cap a captured leader would be applied to. If the rebles have a leader captured does that mean they are now playing with 7 and can't further recruit?

4 minutes ago, Hammy44 said:

Still unclear as to who's cap a captured leader would be applied to. If the rebles have a leader captured does that mean they are now playing with 7 and can't further recruit?

Captured leaders are never in the leader pool so they don't apply to either player's cap.