6 minutes ago, Undeadguy said:

How is killing a commander this way any different than SoS? You still need to use Luke, a 160 point investment, and traverse the battle field to be able to do this. And with SoS or force push, you end up killing a commander regardless. It's a game mechanic. X-Wing and Armada have the same rule. Fly off the table and it's destroyed. It doesn't make sense thematically, but it's a game.

SoS isn't a sure thing- I've thrown 18 attacks at Vader with aim over two rounds and only caused 2-3 damage.

In X-Wing/ Armada flying off the board is sometimes done to you, but usually through random critical hits. Otherwise it's the player's own fault.

Force Push is done to you and there's comparatively little you can do about it apart from play 'safe pints' with your commander. Is safe pints even a thing still?

Anyway, it's not the biggest problem in the world and will most probably be rectified soon.

35 minutes ago, Katarn said:

SoS isn't a sure thing- I've thrown 18 attacks at Vader with aim over two rounds and only caused 2-3 damage.

In X-Wing/ Armada flying off the board is sometimes done to you, but usually through random critical hits. Otherwise it's the player's own fault.

Force Push is done to you and there's comparatively little you can do about it apart from play 'safe pints' with your commander. Is safe pints even a thing still?

Anyway, it's not the biggest problem in the world and will most probably be rectified soon.

Weird, cuz my SoS has killed Vader and Luke many times, with or without aim.

I can't speak for X-Wing, but in Armada, your opponent has little control if YOU fly off the table. The only crit that matters is the one that reduces your yaw by 1, and that's a 2/52 chance of pulling it. But for the OP, there are ways to play around this. Namely, don't keep our commander so close to the edge.

My point is, however you are killing the unit, you still need to spend the points on Luke. So it doesn't matter how it's done, because in both cases Luke would take no damage except for the time he is closing distance.

1 hour ago, Undeadguy said:

How is killing a commander this way any different than SoS? You still need to use Luke, a 160 point investment, and traverse the battle field to be able to do this. And with SoS or force push, you end up killing a commander regardless. It's a game mechanic.

Yeah, I’m in complete agreement here. Truthfully, if you think of it as just another attack you will be fine. For high defense value commanders it might seem a bit cheap, but Luke or Vader can pretty easily kill Veers or Leia in a turn without Force Push. People are complaining about the “instakill” nature if the result, but realistically to get this done you are using a lot of actions. Certainly a comparable amount to just attacking and killing the commander. As far as safe zones and making the Jedi characters dangerous... well, yeah. How is that a bad thing? That’s why Vader and Luke cost so much. Jedi are powerful.

As far as complaining that it’s not thematic or immersive, if you include the prequels, literally dozens of instances are shown in the movies where force push is used to end battles or skirmishes or to take someone effectively out of the battle by flinging them through the air. Obi Wan is Force pushed into peril in all three prequels. I don’t know why you would choose to imagine that they just move a few feet and then shrug and walk away when you could just as easily imaging that they are lying unconscious in a crumpled heap at the base of a rock, tree, wall or dropped on their head in a flat field.

If you and your friends don’t like it, that’s great. Don’t use it. I’m a huge believer in house rules to make games fun. But it doesn’t seem especially broken to me, and I have seen way cheesier strategies employed for winning tournaments than this.

54 minutes ago, Undeadguy said:

Weird, cuz my SoS has killed Vader and Luke many times, with or without aim.

I can't speak for X-Wing, but in Armada, your opponent has little control if YOU fly off the table. The only crit that matters is the one that reduces your yaw by 1, and that's a 2/52 chance of pulling it. But for the OP, there are ways to play around this. Namely, don't keep our commander so close to the edge.

My point is, however you are killing the unit, you still need to spend the points on Luke. So it doesn't matter how it's done, because in both cases Luke would take no damage except for the time he is closing distance.

Yeah, I think my dice pick up on my contempt of the whine of Skywalkers. The rebel troopers shoot fine with the exact same dice. My harpoon gun regularly gets kills.

My point was that SoS isn't a sure kill while Push is. From what I can tell, the designers didn't intend for sure kills on expensive characters- look at the way force choke is worded.

Still, it ain't no big thing. Airspeeders disrupting troopers is more common and just as strange.

I imagine that force pushing units off of the board will be FAQed out of the game pretty quickly. In X-wing you cannot tractor beam your opponents ships off of the board. They also changed the rule where your opponent could set your maneuver dial to whatever they wanted if you set an illegal maneuver (setting a red move while stressed). This used to create situations where you could fly your opponents ships off of the board.

Hopefully they'll say no Force Pushing off the table edge. Force Pushing off a cliff should remain legit though.

I'm sure the intention for force push is that it has to be a "legal move," hence not being able to move them on and off different height terrain, which would seem like moving them off the map would also not be a legal move. I'm sure we'll get official clarification eventually.

1 hour ago, AlKusanagi said:

I'm sure the intention for force push is that it has to be a "legal move," hence not being able to move them on and off different height terrain, which would seem like moving them off the map would also not be a legal move. I'm sure we'll get official clarification eventually.

Has somebody actually submitted this question?

Nobody has expressed why this is a cheap gameplay mechanic. I kinda get how it’s not thematic, but if I can use my imagination that a mini being suppressed gets cover in the middle of an open field, I can imagine someone getting tossed off the battlefield means they can’t come back.

It’s not an “insta” kill at all. Luke or Vader needs to trudge all over hades’ half acre while not dying, and and shove someone off the map while his opponent actively ignores the threat. Vader’s 200+ points. Protecting him means not letting someone else toss him out of play as well as not just leaving him without cover.

Gamey? Maybe. Cheap? Absolutely not.

1 hour ago, CaptainRocket said:

Has somebody actually submitted this question?

It's one of the posts in the pinned thread at the top of the rules forum.

1 hour ago, Crawfskeezen said:

It's one of the posts in the pinned thread at the top of the rules forum.

I meant Force Push off the table. I didn't see anything in the rulings thread...

7 minutes ago, CaptainRocket said:

I meant Force Push off the table. I didn't see anything in the rulings thread...

Ah, sorry, I misread. Yea, its legal. I started a thread about it a few weeks ago. I believe it was @nashjaee that contacted the dev team. It should be in the big email thread somewhere. I, alas, am a pleb and don't know how to link threads.

Why wouldn’t Force Push off the map be a legal move? Nothing suggests it isn’t. Rules deal with units moving off the map, and Force Push is a normal move.

1 hour ago, Crawfskeezen said:

Ah, sorry, I misread. Yea, its legal. I started a thread about it a few weeks ago. I believe it was @nashjaee that contacted the dev team. It should be in the big email thread somewhere. I, alas, am a pleb and don't know how to link threads.

Yeah, I asked them about force pushing off of a ledge. The question and answer were more-or-less identical to what ended up in the official rulings thread. (And by the way, if you just paste a URL the forum software automatically turns it into a fancy schmancy link like this one below. And you can get the URL for a specific comment by clicking the "share" button next to "Report post".)

I don't recall seeing anyone email about force pushing off of the board edge. If anyone has, they haven't posted it here yet.

32 minutes ago, nashjaee said:

Yeah, I asked them about force pushing off of a ledge. The question and answer were more-or-less identical to what ended up in the official rulings thread. (And by the way, if you just paste a URL the forum software automatically turns it into a fancy schmancy link like this one below. And you can get the URL for a specific comment by clicking the "share" button next to "Report post".)

I don't recall seeing anyone email about force pushing off of the board edge. If anyone has, they haven't posted it here yet.

Well thanks for the info. Huh, I swore I saw something about board edges in the email thread. I'll go digging.

2 hours ago, KalEl814 said:

Why wouldn’t Force Push off the map be a legal move? Nothing suggests it isn’t. Rules deal with units moving off the map, and Force Push is a normal move.

Well it looks like it is a legal move but the real question being debated is whether is should be.

Partly it's difficult to justify that simply shoving someone over an imaginary line on a flat surface instantly kills them. Other games disallow it on the grounds that a little bit off map still doesn't mean out of the battle - and therefore the borders are considered somewhat flexibly defined. But FFG games tend to have a lot of problems with this because of the inflexibility of the movement tools and templates for vehicles etc. But this doesn't really apply to troopers.

The other issue is that in game terms is unforgiving for inexperienced players and it can be exploited by creating a safe zone at the table edges for defending units where any melee attackers can be instantly killed.

15 hours ago, Zerker said:

Unfortunately this rule creates "safe zones" for units close to the table edge if melee attackers (like Luke) need to put themselves in the danger zone of a force push to engage.

It’s only a danger zone if you willingly allow another Luke to exist in the same space.

The AT-RT was not the priority target, in that situation, Luke was.

3 hours ago, Zerker said:

Partly it's difficult to justify that simply shoving someone over an imaginary line on a flat surface instantly kills them.

Honest question... how is this any more difficult to justify than Leia taking an AT-ST mortar to the face and not immediately dying? Or troopers with sidearms being able to damage an AT-ST? Luke pushed Vader off the battlefield and busted up his robot legs, the end.

3 hours ago, Zerker said:

The other issue is that in game terms is unforgiving for inexperienced players and it can be exploited by creating a safe zone at the table edges for defending units where any melee attackers can be instantly killed.

I don't want this to come off as being unsympathetic to new players since any game needs an influx of them to stay healthy. But it's in the rulebook, they should know it the same as they know that units in LOS of a range 4+ attack and not near a leader are in danger of being panicked immediately.

And again, I don't think "instant" is the right word for this. No map lets someone just run up and push someone else's commander off the battlefield with no chance to respond. You have to completely ignore the threat for this to happen to you. I don't think it's meaningfully different than having Vader wander into the middle of the battlefield unprotected, and lamenting that he cannot survive getting unloaded on. I appreciate that having a full health Luke / Vader getting eliminated quickly feels bad but unlike hot / cold dice... this is totally under the control of the player.

This was done to me in one of my very first games. It created a momentary NGE for me as I hadn't anticipated and it caught me by surprise and it felt like a crappy move that hadn't been thought out by the devs (can't tractor someone off the board in X-Wing). Then I got over myself. Won't be done to me again.

Fortunately, I share Mandela's view so even though I was slaughtered by my enemy in that match, I felt like I actually won

Edited to add: however, to be 100% clear, i totally had one of those petulant "wait, can you do that? Is that allowed?" responses when it happened to me.

damn you, old man Vader.