• Crits (or faceup damage cards) are ONLY accessed if shields are 0 and damage is done to that hull - correct? Are there any circumstances when a crit is assessed on a shielded hull?

• Overload Pulse - Does that mean that if I roll JUST 1 Blue crit, all of their defense tokens are exhausted? Regardless of shields? this sounds very strong

For the first question, correct. However the upgrade card Assault Proton Torpedoes bypass shields to land a crit directly to the hull. Also there may be crit or obstacle effects that may assess crits to the hull, but I'm not in front of the rules right now.

The the second question, that is also correct, however, the crit is assessed after the defender uses defense tokens, so to take advantage of it, you would either need to have a dedicated Overload Pulse ship, or have a double arc where you use Overload Pulse on the first shot, then follow up with the second shot.

You resolve critical effects on every attack where you have a crit symbol showing.

its just that the default effect states that your first card dealt is dealt face up, and if you only hit shields at that point, no card is dealt, so none are dealt face up.

On ‎12‎/‎9‎/‎2017 at 9:39 PM, Pizza Guy said:

• Crits (or faceup damage cards) are ONLY accessed if shields are 0 and damage is done to that hull - correct? Are there any circumstances when a crit is assessed on a shielded hull?

• Overload Pulse - Does that mean that if I roll JUST 1 Blue crit, all of their defense tokens are exhausted? Regardless of shields? this sounds very strong

The attack sequence in the Rules Reference is your friend here. So, considering your first bullet...

A critical effect is resolved whenever you have at least one die showing a critical hit symbol (it also adds to the damage total, so critical effects aren't "instead of" but "in addition to" the damage). All ships have the standard critical effect which is "deal the first damage card face-up". So the standard critical effect, while powerful (face-up damage can be NASTY), only happens if you actually deal a damage card. This typically only happens if you get through shields and into the hull. However, many other critical effects do other things besides that. For instance, Assault Proton Torpedoes say, "Black Crit: Deal one faceup damage card to the defender." So...when you resolve critical effects, which is before you apply damage in the attack sequence, you may deal them a faceup damage card as long as you have at least one black die showing a crit symbol. Then you apply damage. Applying damage may result in other damage cards being deal, but since you can only apply one critical effect per attack, they will all be face down (i.e. you don't get BOTH the default critical effect and the one from Assault Proton Torpedoes).

So, the second bullet...yes! If you roll a blue crit, then when you get to the "Resolve Critical Effect" step in the attack sequence, you would do what it says on the card: exhaust everyone of the defenders defense token. Leaves them pretty open to future attack. But note that since defender actually spends their defense tokens before your "resolve critical effect" step, they could have spent them during THIS attack. Good set-up for later in the round, though.

Hope that's clear.

Full list of stuff that does damage to the hull irrespective of shields...

luke - xwing squadron

assualt proton torpedo - ordnance upgrade

ramming / collisions -

asteroids - terrain

dodonnas pride - cr90 title

structural damage - damage card

Thank you everyone.