I am gonna run Tractor Beam in Regionals on multiple ships. I have a couple questions I need clarified.

Do you have to preform the barrel roll or boost on the enemy ship or can you skip?

Can the template overlap obstacles when performing this?

1: No, you don't have to move them.

2: RAW, probably no, RAI probably yes. It's not actually clear.

Has FFG ever made a ruling on template over obstacle for Tractor Beam in a high level tournament? I would think this issue has had to come up in the past at one time or another.

Not that I know of.

1) No you don't, but remember, you only get to do it the first time they get a TB token each round so if you give out multiple TB tokens, you only get the option of moving them with the first assigned token.

2) They have ruled on it, it is in the FAQ...

TRACTOR BEAM REFERENCE CARD This card should read:

"This is not an action or a maneuver, and can cause the ship to overlap obstacles (but not other ships). The ship suffers the effect of any obstacle it overlaps."

Good luck in the regionals!!!

So based on the rules it is implied the template can cross the obstacle since it is only a guide for the enemy ships new position?

1 minute ago, s1ickrick said:

So based on the rules it is implied the template can cross the obstacle since it is only a guide for the enemy ships new position?

Correct, the only things it cannot do is overlap another ship or go off the mat. It suffers all effects of overlapping the obstacles . I have used it in the past to put a ship on a rock to keep them from shooting. It was glorious.

If they rule you can't do it if it overlaps thwn you can argue that they suffer infinite damage. The new obstacle rules (underneath the tractor beam rules in the FAQ) state that if the template overlaps when not doing a maneuver, you suffer an effect based on what was overlapped (this wording also bypasses collision detector). If they rule you can't complete the barrel roll, then they still suffer the effect and you just keep trying over and over and they take infinite damage.

Edit: Slight necro, but this was the newest topic I found for this rule that came up in a chat recently.

Gtrfvbbccff

I don't know if @Hoffburger 's infinite damage argument is tearing up the meta anywhere, but counterpoint: in the basic Barrel Roll rules (rr p6) it says you can't perform a barrel roll if the template would overlap an obstacle. Not if it does overlap, if it would. In other words, it's not actually happening, so you don't get penalized for it.