It's becoming a circular argument at this point, and the ISYTDS vs RD is just repeating the same points over again. It is generally accepted throughout the community that ISYTDS is not critical damage because it behaves so differently, but you should ask the TO at the event you're playing at for clarification and that trumps anything we might say here. If it's a casual game and there's no TO, talk it over with your opponent on how you should handle it, but don't be surprised if they believe what spaceinvader and myself have pointed out.

2 hours ago, thespaceinvader said:

OK, fine. Let's, for the sake of argument, assume you're right.

So, how many critical damage does ISYTDS cause?

0. No damage is suffered, and the card from ISYTDS is dealt instead of the normal procedure.

Either way you look at it, the ISYTDS damage doesn't add anything to the total for RDs, because it either doesn't happen, or it happens, but has a value of 0.

It doesn't cause critical damage, because it's a replacement effect for the critical damage that was suffered to trigger it.

I cannot spell out my stance any clearer. Normally a critical damage is dealt against shields or hull for its standard effect, but ISYTDS supercedes the standard effect. Stop telling me that it isn't the standard effect. I know.

I have the wording of the card and the phrasing of the FAQ on my side so far. Feel free to contribute more than the standard effect of critical damage to back up yours.

2 hours ago, Jimbawa said:

It's becoming a circular argument at this point, and the ISYTDS vs RD is just repeating the same points over again. It is generally accepted throughout the community that ISYTDS is not critical damage because it behaves so differently, but you should ask the TO at the event you're playing at for clarification and that trumps anything we might say here. If it's a casual game and there's no TO, talk it over with your opponent on how you should handle it, but don't be surprised if they believe what spaceinvader and myself have pointed out.

Thoughts on the language in the FAQ?

I feel your interpretation is fundamentally a stretch of both the RAW of the card and the RAI, and continuing to point to the standard effect of critical damage as the justification for why a card that literally relies on suffering critical damage to trigger does not count as critical damage is pretty intellectually lazy. Cards stretch how rules normally function all the time, so there has to be an explanation beyond that, right?

Why is it that a card that bears little in common with the language of AHM/Proton Bombs/Wampa being treated as the same? Don't tell me I'm wrong, show me why I'm wrong, please. With examples from the FAQ and prior precedence for language, which is the standard we use for every single other rule, too.

20 minutes ago, RampancyTW said:

It doesn't cause critical damage, because it's a replacement effect for the critical damage that was suffered to trigger it.

I feel like this should sum it up pretty well, but somehow you want to keep pressing that it both does and does not do this. You suffer the crit that then doesn't cause damage and therefore does not count as having taken damage for any purpose that tallies damage taken.

You have also been operating your entire stance on the fact that "instead" does not replace the trigger, which it in fact does. The crit suffered to trigger ISYTDS no longer exists as is the plain english meaning behind "instead". That is the basis by which we refute that suffering the critical damage no longer happens.

When you challenge the differentiation of dealing cards vs suffering damage, you give no support beyond "I don't think that applies except to these other examples". You need to actually accept that it is in fact covered by this rule and the discussion should stop there. This rule applies equally to AHM, Wampa and proton bombs, and the slight difference in wording is explained by these effects not having the same triggers but follow through to the same end result. Bomb detonates or attack is made and deal a face up damage card. ISYTDS follows the same "attack is made, deal a (specific) face up damage card". If you feel this should be a specific exception, you need to present proof backing up that statement.

You even quoted the FAQ for it, and failed to identify that suffering critical damage and suffering the Damage card are in fact very different phrases with different yet important distinctions. Not only that, but that keyword "instead" appears again to further show that you are not in fact suffering any critical damage at all.

I can't understand how anything about this stance on ISYTDS goes against any RAW or RAI, and seems perfectly in line with how the effect occurs in game. It can hardly be considered intellectually lazy when telling you this is precisely the reason why ISYTDS behaves as such and why it is distinctly different from suffering damage.

A ship subjected to ISYTDS suffers 0 critical damage from the critical hit (because that damage was replaced by an effect) and it does not suffer damage from ISYTDS (because the effect deals a faceup damage card, which is explicitly a different thing). Thus while it could be argued that the defender suffered critical damage due to the wording of ISYTDS, the amount of critical damage actually suffered would be 0 and it would not add to the total required by Reinforced Deflectors.

@Jimbawa , @nexttwelveexits Hope you guys had a good holiday weekend! Wanted to wait to address this one until I was back behind a big screen with a mouse and a keyboard.

On 3/28/2018 at 9:17 PM, Jimbawa said:

If you feel this should be a specific exception, you need to present proof backing up that statement.

I definitely take exception to this-- I feel I've been pretty thorough with explaining why I feel this is an exception. There are multiple card that reference uncanceled critical hit results between steps 6 and 7, such as Draw Their Fire and Bossk, which I offered up as previous examples of how FFG has treated uncanceled critical hit results leading into the deal damage step. There is absolutely no reason to use "suffer critical damage" as a timing tigger, because the same thing can be accomplished between steps 6 and 7 like it is for those two cards. As for AHM, PB, and Wampa, all of them refer to a general damage card interaction, as opposed to a specific damage card interaction, which I think also potentially separates ISYTDS from that category. See my third paragraph for why I'm not entirely sure that matters at all, though.

As to the general disagreement, I've definitely identified where the hangup is, and why we're talking past each other-- I think you guys are misunderstanding what "suffering damage" means. The damage suffered isn't the shield taken or the damage card taken as the standard effect of suffering damage-- it's the uncanceled results leftover at the start of Step 7 of the attack timing chart. If there's a Boom result uncanceled, you take one damage and resolve that damage by removing a shield or drawing a faceup card, and so on and so forth down the line. The rules instruct you to take damage one by one equal to the leftover results, and then instructs you on how to resolve those damages. It doesn't tell you to resolve the results, and then count that as a damage. I totally get that this is ticky-tack, so I'm going to point to the wording on the Proximity Mine reference card: " When this bomb token detonates, the ship that moved through or overlapped this token rolls 3 attack dice and suffers all damage (Boom ) and critical damage (Kaboom) rolled. Then discard this token. This card clearly ties the damage to the results themselves-- there is no card or rules reference that clearly sets apart taking damage as a consequence of individual results from the results themselves. Draw Their Fire comes close, but happens before Step 7 where results convert to damage. While the wording is frequently ambiguous as to how results relate to damage, the only unambiguous reference we have very clearly ties them together.

One of the things you guys are getting hung up on is on Page 9 of the Rules Reference, where it states: "If an effect instructs a player to deal a Damage card to a ship, this is different from the ship suffering damage. The card is dealt to the ship regardless of whether the ship has any shield tokens remaining." I understand why it seems on the face of this that it invalidates ISYTDS as involving critical damage. But we have to consider what an effect is. We have as precedent from Targeting Synchronizer that doing standard things with a target lock for standard reasons counts as a game effect. We have no reason to believe that "game effect" is somehow not a subset of "effects" if there even is any distinction at all. Being dealt a damage card from suffering damage would therefore qualify as an effect that instructs a player to deal a Damage card to a ship, just as choosing to modify your dice with a TL reroll would qualify as an effect that instructs a player to use a TL. If being dealt damage cards counted as damage in and of themselves, then dealing damage or critical damage whose effect resolved against hull would count double (one damage when the damage was suffered, and one damage for the damage card)! Separating being dealt a card from damage itself is necessary given how the reference materials define effects.

To finish up my support of why the wording of ISYTDS matters, and what I believe cements the condition as a replacement effect and not a replacement for the trigger, I'll point to the second paragraph of the "Damage" section of the Rules Reference. It reads: " When a ship suffers a damage or critical damage, it loses one shield token. If it does not have any shield tokens to lose, it is dealt one Damage card instead. For normal damage, the Damage card is dealt facedown; for critical damage, the Damage card is dealt faceup and the text on the card immediately resolves. " So the normal rules are "When A or B, do C then D then E then F." The language of ISYTDS mirrors this extremely closely, which makes me suspect that it was written with the reference in mind: " When you suffer critical damage during an attack, you are instead dealt the chosen faceup Damage card. " So I read ISYTDS as "When B from an attack, do G instead of doing E then F." Otherwise, ISYTDS has to read as "When B from an attack, do G and then undo B" which the card absolutely does not instruct us to do.

This is obviously an extremely pedantic argument. But pedantic is exactly what rules interpretations are. It's one of the reasons why we so frequently need FFG to clear things up-- because the slightest change in wording matters. So when I read ISYTDS, I see that the language is consistent with the rules reference for damage. The interpretation I've gleaned from my reading of the card and the rules in no way contradicts any other existing rules, based on the way in which they are written. And most importantly, my interpretation removes the need to go back and retroactively unsuffer damage that the card already tells us was suffered-- which is something that the card does NOT instruct us to do, and is something that we have no precedent for in other upgrade cards. The closest there would be is ATC, which prevents using a TL for two different effects, but doesn't retroactively alter the gamestate. ATC at worst introduces a programming error (and should probably be further FAQed).

So you can choose my interpretation, which violates nothing, maintains the gamestate, and counts the critical damage being suffered like it counts any other uncanceled result that makes it to Step 7, or you can choose the interpretation that forces us to have a schroedinger's gamestate despite no instruction and no precedent to do so.

Here's the thing: if it works the way you say, then you also get a Schrodinger situation.

Let's say you get a full health ship that takes one uncancelled crit, which procs ISYTDS, which deals it one face-up damage card. Looking back at the board state immediately afterward: how much critical damage did the ship suffer? If you say one, then you are saying that it both did and did not suffer critical damage, because it is at full shields and the only damage card on it is from ISYTDS, which is explicitly not critical damage. Taking into account the game state after the fact, the total amount of critical damage suffered must have been zero, or else the face-up damage card both was and wasn't from critical damage.

I think the real question here is: does ISYTDS 'resolve' a suffered critical damage? or does it 'interrupt' a suffered critical damage? While suffering a critical damage is the trigger for the card, that damage itself has not yet been resolved, and ISYTDS interrupts that resolution and replaces it with its own effect. Therefore, the ship has suffered a total of 0 critical damage plus 1 face-up damage card from ISYTDS.

1 hour ago, nexttwelveexits said:

Here's the thing: if it works the way you say, then you also get a Schrodinger situation.

Let's say you get a full health ship that takes one uncancelled crit, which procs ISYTDS, which deals it one face-up damage card. Looking back at the board state immediately afterward: how much critical damage did the ship suffer? If you say one, then you are saying that it both did and did not suffer critical damage, because it is at full shields and the only damage card on it is from ISYTDS, which is explicitly not critical damage. Taking into account the game state after the fact, the total amount of critical damage suffered must have been zero, or else the face-up damage card both was and wasn't from critical damage.

I think the real question here is: does ISYTDS 'resolve' a suffered critical damage? or does it 'interrupt' a suffered critical damage? While suffering a critical damage is the trigger for the card, that damage itself has not yet been resolved, and ISYTDS interrupts that resolution and replaces it with its own effect. Therefore, the ship has suffered a total of 0 critical damage plus 1 face-up damage card from ISYTDS.

It suffered one critical damage, the uncanceled crit that remained in Step 7. I think I was pretty thorough in demonstrating how this was consistent with the rules, particularly given how effects are defined. The damage isn't a shield lost or a damage card dealt-- those are how we normally resolve damage, but nowhere do we define damage by the reduction in shields or addition of Damage cards in and of themselves. Think of Plasma Torps-- it removes a shield as part of the attack but is definitively not damage. Just as with a Plasma torp that hits with 2 uncanceled Boom results removes 3 shields, the player will have to remember where the Damage card came from if (s)he wants to identify exactly how much damage or critical damage has been dealt.

I don't think plasma torps are a good example here, because mechanics aren't necessarily reversible. You can lose a shield without taking damage, sure, there are several ways for that to happen. It doesn't follow that you can therefore also take damage without losing a shield or a damage card. I can't think of any other circumstance in which you can receive 1 damage without losing a shield or taking a damage card.

To be clear, I'm not saying your overall argument doesn't have merit with the way the card is worded. I wouldn't be upset at a TO who came to the same conclusion as you in a tournament ruling. But if it were me, without further clarification from FFG, I'd have to rule that because the defender's ship wound up neither losing a shield token nor receiving a damage card from the critical damage suffered, then the total amount of critical damage that can be applied to Reinforced Deflectors from this interaction is 0.

The card is badly written. Either the word 'instead' is misused, or the word 'would' is missing.

10 minutes ago, thespaceinvader said:

The card is badly written. Either the word 'instead' is misused, or the word 'would' is missing.

I would say that the instead is fine, but it needs "of suffering the normal effect" to be unambiguous if it's not supposed to have a "would" in there

Somebody needs to actually manage to do well in a tournament with RD so we can get an updated FAQ I guess!

17 minutes ago, nexttwelveexits said:

I don't think plasma torps are a good example here, because mechanics aren't necessarily reversible. You can lose a shield without taking damage, sure, there are several ways for that to happen. It doesn't follow that you can take therefore also damage without losing a shield or a damage card. I can't think of any other circumstance in which you can receive 1 damage without losing a shield or taking a damage card.

To be clear, I'm not saying your overall argument doesn't have merit with the way the card is worded. I wouldn't be upset at a TO who came to the same conclusion as you in a tournament ruling. But if it were me, without further clarification from FFG, I'd have to rule that because the defender's ship wound up neither losing a shield token nor receiving a damage card from the critical damage suffered, then the total amount of critical damage that can be applied to Reinforced Deflectors from this interaction is 0.

Fair enough. Cheers!