Torani Kulda - Pilot Ability

By Schu81, in X-Wing Rules Questions

The Pilot Card of Torani Kulda states

"After you perform an attack, each enemy ship inside your bullseye firing arc at Range 1-3 must choose to suffer 1 damage or remove all of its focus and evade tokens"

Is it possible to remove 0 focus and evade tokens, if you haven't got any?

His Pilot Ability wouldn't make any sense though.

18 minutes ago, Schu81 said:

Is it possible to remove 0 focus and evade tokens, if you haven't got any?

Based on available evidence, yes you can. All of zero is still all.

18 minutes ago, Schu81 said:

His Pilot Ability wouldn't make any sense though.

What is it with people writing this guy off because of this? He's PS8 with an EPT; take VI, move late and line up on people with tokens. Just because he's not Dengar-style plug and play doesn't mean he's bad.

Actually I am just wondering if his pilot ability was meant to work this way? It feels like FFG wanted to express something else. More like:

"You either choose to suffer 1 damage or remove all your focus and evade tokens. You have to remove a minimum of 1 focus or evade token to avoid the damage"

We have now way to know their intent. It will need FAQ.

1 hour ago, Schu81 said:

Actually I am just wondering if his pilot ability was meant to work this way? It feels like FFG wanted to express something else. More like:

"You either choose to suffer 1 damage or remove all your focus and evade tokens. You have to remove a minimum of 1 focus or evade token to avoid the damage"

It may or may not be the intent but I doubt it (as noted 'all' or 'any number' normally allows you to pick zero if that's all you have); it's already a nasty enough pilot ability when paired up with someone who can realistically shoot first.

Look at it this way; if he gets a 'boresight line' on 2-3 ships without tokens, doing that much damage as a free bonus in addition to your attack would be really really nasty.

It's more the other way around; it kills all your focus and evade tokens but you can choose to take a point of damage to prevent this. Whether you'd take that option or not depends on how much damage you expect those tokens to stop/cause (a focus-plus-evade on Poe is likely to stop much more than a single point of damage, for instance, or a deadeye missile ready to go on a TIE bomber)

Compare Old Teroch, which kills your focus and evade tokens automatically with no get-out clause - and is about as hard to set up (in your opponent's arc at range 1). Kulda is more likely to be able to hit a large ship at long range, or multiple ships, but they have an (equally bad) get-out clause.

Edited by Magnus Grendel

I feel fairly certain that it was intended to work out with being able to choose to discard 0 tokens as an option as the non-0 ruling would be practically impossible for any ship in tournament play to deny.

"After you perform an attack, each enemy ship inside your bullseye firing arc at Range 1-3 must choose to suffer 1 damage or remove all of its focus and evade tokens" would be the equivalent of saying "you must remove all of your focus and all of your evade tokens or suffer one damage."

If 0 is not a valid number of either token, than the minimum you would need is 1 focus AND 1 evade. Most ships can't even take the evade action, so only a very limited list of pilots using PTL could ever hope to stop that damage (or a few other means like recon spec and jan ors), and VI Torani would move after and shoot before all of them, meaning they either take double actions and stress each round to only hope of blocking one damage, or just accept the fact that they are on a clock as long as she is on the board.

Can you imagine that set up vs a tie swarm? Line up 6 ties in your arc and you've got 6 damage they can never block before you've even rolled dice. It would be beyond silly if it actually operated that way. I think when you compare that scenario of damage only if you want to keep your tokens vs. unblockable damage to multiple ships with next to no counter play, the first option seems much more reasonable and more likely to be the intent of the developers.

Edited by Jimbawa

Here's an example from the "you NEEd a token to remove any" which I believe is completely WRONG and making this ability WAY TOO good:

-You defend against an attack from that ship and are in his bullseye arc.

-You roll just one evade against his 2 hits but you have an evade token and no focus token

-If you spend your evade, you then suffer 1 damage from his ability

-If you DON'T spend your evade, you suffer 1 damage because you did not use it AND then you lose your evade token because of the ability

Its a LOSE/LOSE situation which is CLEARLY why it doesnt work that way.

Remove 0 is VALID and there is NOTHING that will make me play it differently, not even a ****** TO

4 hours ago, Kalandros said:

Here's an example from the "you NEEd a token to remove any" which I believe is completely WRONG and making this ability WAY TOO good:

-You defend against an attack from that ship and are in his bullseye arc.

-You roll just one evade against his 2 hits but you have an evade token and no focus token

-If you spend your evade, you then suffer 1 damage from his ability

-If you DON'T spend your evade, you suffer 1 damage because you did not use it AND then you lose your evade token because of the ability

Its a LOSE/LOSE situation which is CLEARLY why it doesnt work that way.

Remove 0 is VALID and there is NOTHING that will make me play it differently, not even a ****** TO

Actually there's no dillema if he has the only shot. The base effect of being in the bullseye arc is you aren't allowed to spend focus or evade tokens to defend against that ships attack anyway. That happens with ALL bullseye ships regardless of what else they might have as a pilot ability, so if you have a token your only option is to NOT spend the tokens when he attacks. However, if your ship is in additional enemy arcs then you'll have to decide whether to drop them or take a damage before the additional attack,

Just to be clear, I do agree that you don't have to have a token to avoid the automatic damage. It's quite clear with the phrasing combined with other instances of 0.

Yea I was only thinking about the pilot ability and forgot about the basic bullseye rules~ anyway, so tired of hearing about it from one of the players in our group who definitely wants to use it to get free damage on tokenless ships and wont stop saying that "nothing else works similarly so you cant remove 0 tokens"

11 hours ago, Kalandros said:

"nothing else works similarly so you cant remove 0 tokens"

That is the dumbest reason for anything ever. If that were true, we should just play every new ability however we want because it's never been done before. Your friend is an idiot, please tell them I said that. "ObiWonka from the internet says you're an idiot."

I mean, there weren't sandwiches until the Earl of Sandwich invented them, but you didn't see him going around telling people not to eat meat on bread because no one else had ever done it.

Edited by ObiWonka

That and there are a lot of abilities that currently modify 0 results or are triggered from modifying 0 results. From the FAQ:

- Garven: A ship may spend a focus token during an attack if there are 0 focus results....

- Keyan: When attacking, if Keyan has a stress toekn, he can use his ability even if he hasn't rolled any focus results

- Sunny Bounder: Sunny Bounder's ability can trigger after rerolling any number of dice, including 0 dice.

So while "removing 0 tokens" is not in the list just yet, I think this is enough of a precedent to at least make him think twice.

Indeed, there's significantly more precedent in this game for 'all' including '0 if you only have 0', than there is against it.

Torani's ability is not a "Too bad you don't have any tokens... *eye poke*" ability, but a "I see you have some nice tokens there, buddy. Time to make a tough choice: either dump them, or let me poke you in the eye!"
I agree that 0 is a valid number to choose when confronted with an "Any Number of" choice (number of dice to re-roll after spending a target lock). I also agree that 0 is encompassed with in "All" (number of dice to be modified after spending a focus token).

This begs the question: Does this logic break Minefield Mapper?
"(timeing) ... you may discard any number of your equipped [BOMB] Upgrade cards. Place all corresponding bomb tokens in the play area... (location)"

My Tie Punnisher has a single Conner Net and Minefield Mapper as it's only upgrades. I discard 0 (any number) Conner Net Bomb Upgrade Cards. I then place the corresponding Conner Net token in the play area.

How has my logic failed in this course of action?

All 0 corresponding tokens would be placed yes.

1 hour ago, Govrek said:

Torani's ability is not a "Too bad you don't have any tokens... *eye poke*" ability, but a "I see you have some nice tokens there, buddy. Time to make a tough choice: either dump them, or let me poke you in the eye!"
I agree that 0 is a valid number to choose when confronted with an "Any Number of" choice (number of dice to re-roll after spending a target lock). I also agree that 0 is encompassed with in "All" (number of dice to be modified after spending a focus token).

This begs the question: Does this logic break Minefield Mapper?
"(timeing) ... you may discard any number of your equipped [BOMB] Upgrade cards. Place all corresponding bomb tokens in the play area... (location)"

My Tie Punnisher has a single Conner Net and Minefield Mapper as it's only upgrades. I discard 0 (any number) Conner Net Bomb Upgrade Cards. I then place the corresponding Conner Net token in the play area.

How has my logic failed in this course of action?

the token has to relate to the card discarded, If it worked as you indicate EM token +card would work.

As for torani, i'm 99.9% sure the ruling will be 0 is a valid number. it's just more of the token punishment this wave has dished up besides jamming and bullseye. That said, there's a reason it's on a pilot that's able to hit ps 10, slap vi and a bid on him and there's very few pilots he'll be shooting with 0 tokens to punish.

6 hours ago, Ralgon said:

the token has to relate to the card discarded, If it worked as you indicate EM token +card would work.

As for torani, i'm 99.9% sure the ruling will be 0 is a valid number. it's just more of the token punishment this wave has dished up besides jamming and bullseye. That said, there's a reason it's on a pilot that's able to hit ps 10, slap vi and a bid on him and there's very few pilots he'll be shooting with 0 tokens to punish.

Indeed. I see it better a "wes janson you can choose to take damage to ignore but can hit multiple ships at once"

4 hours ago, Magnus Grendel said:

Indeed. I see it better a "wes janson you can choose to take damage to ignore but can hit multiple ships at once"

Maybe, it's going to take some awful fancy and unexpected flying or a potato level opponent to line up multiple ships without action economy, especially now the meta seems to have moved onto small bases.

The gila in general is going to give kanan lists a hard time though, if you can make it competitive

31 minutes ago, Ralgon said:

The gila in general is going to give kanan lists a hard time though, if you can make it competitive

Large base ships in general. I have a broad dislike of large base ships and a game mechanic which hits them harder than small based ones is a welcome change, even more so because the Kaijugodzilla's 'gimmick' is triggered by good flying and tactics rather than card-combo shennanigans.

I can attest that a squad of generic Kimi Raikonnens can eat IG-88 'Bro-bots' alive - even agility 3 is only so-so without tokens to back it up, large bases have trouble avoiding a bullseye crossfire, and the Killergorilla is just about tough enough to eat two heavy laser cannon shots and probably still get a shot off.

Edited by Magnus Grendel

Being able to take Brobots isn't exactly a strong point in favour of a given list though.

4 hours ago, Ralgon said:

The gila in general is going to give kanan lists a hard time though, if you can make it competitive

For the two turns it'll take for Kanan to kill it, sure.

1 hour ago, DR4CO said:

For the two turns it'll take for Kanan to kill it, sure.

If kanan can keep arc on it, sure. And then he still has to wear the 2 attacks (+ auto damage if he wants to use his ability)

Just now, Ralgon said:

If kanan can keep arc on it, sure. And then he still has to wear the 2 attacks (+ auto damage if he wants to use his ability)

Who needs arc? You just TLT the thing.

6 minutes ago, DR4CO said:

Who needs arc? You just TLT the thing.

Once again, ps 10. Repostion and not having mods is still countered by the auto damage + kanan cant pull his usual evade rubbish either from himself or low.

Edit: Heck you can even take the title to make kanan more predictable via stress in the 1st exchange of combat

Edited by Ralgon
On 11/24/2017 at 8:45 AM, thespaceinvader said:

Indeed, there's significantly more precedent in this game for 'all' including '0 if you only have 0', than there is against it.

Exactly this. List of every pilot ability in the game for which "All" can mean 0:

  • Wampa
  • Lieutenant Kestal
  • Omega Ace
  • Countdown
  • Han Solo
  • Keyan Farlander

Every single one of these ships can do "All" of something, where All is zero.

Though, that's not to say that "all = 0" is always good... [Ahem - Countdown]

Edited by Raynor1111
added comedy.

The main thing you have to remember is if you have them in your bullseye firing arc they can not spend focus and evade tokens so when you put VI on him and then you focus fire you will either get a free damage or be attacking a defenseless target with your other ships