Rare that I have a true "how did I miss that?" question, but a recent incident in the VWC indicates that I may have misunderstood how Redirect tokens work. One of my opponents noted that according to the rule book, players have to choose the destination for any redirected damage before damage is assigned or critical effects are triggered. Does this mean that a player can choose to redirect to a specific hull zone in advance, but if the intended shields are destroyed by something like the Projectors Misaligned critical effect the damage cannot redirect to another adjacent hull zone?

I certainly understand and agree that if you have no adjacent shields you cannot redirect damage, but do I and my opponents need to explicitly declare the hull zone ahead of taking damage for tournament play?

Yes, you chose the hullzone to redirect to when spending the token, which happens before anything damage related in the attack.

To the next part. I'd say it's a fringe case. The only way to suffer a faceup card before the shields are down during THIS attack is APTs with a lucky draw. But that's space combat and certainly a visit from the screwup fairy.

Yup, that is true. It so rarely comes up that most people don't even bother with it, but an important one to know!

1 hour ago, R4Pi3R said:

To  the   next part. I'd say it's a fringe case. The only way to suffer a faceup card before the shields are down  during THI  S attack is APTs with a lucky draw   . 

47 minutes ago, Akhrin said:

Yup, that is true. It so rarely comes up that most people don't even bother with it, but an important one to know!

Oh you sweet naive summer children... You must hail from a Dodonna-less meta. May you be spared the sight of an MSU toting nothing but APTs on every ship and luck charging your fleet; may you be spared, even as I was not.

AAAAAND Dodonna's pride ._.'

Ok, in THAT matchup it's "not exactly" a "rare" happenstance, i concede and bow to your experience, master.
Truly, most I've seen the last months was Rieekan, Madine and Raddus with the odd Sato thrown in once or twice....

I'd still say it's a fringe case though, since it requires a fleet like this, that is built to go around the mechanic.

24 minutes ago, The Jabbawookie said:

Oh you sweet naive summer children... You must hail from a Dodonna-less meta. May you be spared the sight of an MSU toting nothing but APTs on every ship and luck charging your fleet; may you be spared, even as I was not.

If only! But lately the Dodonna pain I've been facing has been more around Mon Karren with XX-9s so the crits are coming in after most of the shields are already down. For sure though, APT-heavy Dodonna can really take advantage of this rule.

7 hours ago, thecactusman17 said:

Rare that I have a true "how did I miss that?" question, but a recent incident in the VWC indicates that I may have misunderstood how Redirect tokens work. One of my opponents noted that according to the rule book, players have to choose the destination for any redirected damage before damage is assigned or critical effects are triggered. Does this mean that a player can choose to redirect to a specific hull zone in advance, but if the intended shields are destroyed by something like the Projectors Misaligned critical effect the damage cannot redirect to another adjacent hull zone?

I certainly understand and agree that if you have no adjacent shields you cannot redirect damage, but do I and my opponents need to explicitly declare the hull zone ahead of taking damage for tournament play?

As noted earlier, you are correct. Here are the relevant portions of the RRG:

So the redirect is spent during the Spend Defense Tokens step, and at that time, the defender chooses the hull zone.

I’m on mobile, so it’s giving issue with uploading the next part. But it shows that in the attack, resolve damage comes after the Spend Defense Tokens step. The first part of resolve damage is apply critical if available.