Just now, theBitterFig said:

It's essentially meaningless. When intentionally suffering extra damage on a ship doomed to die, the burned cards are just as likely to be the "not so bad" crits as the "really bad" crits.

Of course, no one said they were more likely to be "bad" cards... but burning "not so bad" damage cards is still theoretically helpful, because it tips the scales further to make decisions that mitigate incoming critical damage. In the scenario I laid about above, that means as you're deciding the risk-benefit analysis of defensively spending vs saving your Focus token, knowing that both Blinded Pilot and both Weapon Damage cards are still in your deck might push you to spend the Focus token on defense rather than saving it, whereas knowing those cards are both out of your deck might encourage you to save it rather than spend it.

27 minutes ago, nikk whyte said:

the rules reference doesn't say that you cant look at discarded damage cards, so there is no conflict.

🤨 I must be missing the part where damage cards assigned to a ship are discarded upon its destruction. Please cite where this is located. This part of the Damage Cards section is pretty **** clear though:

"The text of a ship's facedown damage cards cannot be looked at unless an effect specifies to do so."

As is:

"Damage cards are used to track how much damage a ship has suffered. When a ship needs to be dealt damage cards, the player uses their own damage deck. After a ship is destroyed, its damage cards remain on that ship. "

And interestingly that clearly states they're not discarded, so this doesn't apply:

"Each player’s destroyed ships, lost shields, lost charges, and discarded
damage cards are open information."

So I guess you're right, there is no conflict since the only ones that can be looked at are the ones discarded via repair.

huh, sorta got me there. i'd need to see if the wording is identical, since they were open info in 1e. must have just assumed that rule carried over 100%.

which reminds me, did you guys know that the cocked die/reroll rule no longer exists?

I came in here to rip this up, quoting a blind "mill" strategy from other card games as a reference. IE randomly removing 1 card from the top of opponent's draw deck/pile has just as much of a chance of hitting a useless card (helping your opponent since they'll draw one less useless card) as it would a useful card thus hurting your opponent by denying a good draw.

However when I really think about this he's actually correct. The primary difference in this case is that there is zero cost to you as the player to take additional damage as your ship dies.

If your ship is down to 1 hull and has no chance of survival, you might as well (zero cost) take additional damage cards by declining to spend focus/evade tokens. You might not draw away that "blinded pilot" crit that the opponent wanted to assign you via "I'll Show You The Dark Side" but if you do then you get the extra benefit.

Again the primary difference here is that there's zero cost to you taking additional damage cards if your ship wasn't going to survive anyways. Thus I think a free dice roll is worth it.

PS: Obviously don't do this if you can keep your ship alive....

Additional PS: this only applies to "I'll show you the dark side" where a damage deck is explicitly searched. This does nothing statistically to reducing the probability that you draw a "Direct Hit" as an example.