I've read the rules now several times and watched a few video's but I'm still not very clear on the squence, if any.

Captain Seevor has the 'While you defend or perform an attack ...' ability.

In case Seevor is attacked by a proton torp the attacker will have a target lock. I understood the attack is 'okay', dice are rolled, and that Seevor's ablity kicks in immediatly after the roll to jam and remove the target lock. The attacker can therefore not re-roll his dice but it can use a focus if it has a token, for example.

When attacking I understood Seevor can roll his dice, jam immdiatly and remove a focus token, for example. The defender will then not be able to modify his 'focus'defense dice.

If you take Juke, which says 'While ou perform an attack ...' I see players change an evade to a focus after all modifications are done and at the end the sequence so the defender cannot modify the focus back to an evande. Appears to me that the timing for Juke is different to that of Seevor when it attacks.

Can a 'While ...' ability be used at any time? And how you see fit? Or do I miss something in the rules?

Thx.

1 hour ago, Slade said:

If you take Juke, which says 'While ou perform an attack ...' I see players change an evade to a focus after all modifications are done and at the end the sequence so the defender cannot modify the focus back to an evande.

If you see players do so, they are resolving the ability incorrectly. Call them out on it, for either they lack the proper understanding of the rules, or they are trying to take advantage of other player's lack of proper understanding.

During combat, the-not-rolling-player is always the first to apply their modifiers to the dice pool, both in attack and in defence. The defender may try to weaken the attack (like with Seevor's ability) coming at them, but the attacker still gets the last word on using their modifiers. The attacker may attempt to weaken the defence (e.g. using Juke) but the defender always modifies the dice after the attacker's gimmicks are done. The relevant pieces of the Rules Reference are:

Quote

Rules Reference, Page 5, Attack

• Modify Attack Dice: The players resolve abilities that modify the attack dice. The defending player resolves their abilities first, then the attacking player resolves their abilities.

(...)

• Modify Defense Dice: The players resolve abilities that modify the defense dice. The attacking player resolves their abilities first, then the defending player resolves their abilities.

1

This means that:

• Seevor gets to Jam the attacker/defender before they have a chance to spend their token do modify the dice.
• Juking ship cannot prevent the defending ship from modifying the chosen die back to Evade result if the defender has a modifier available. The card is mostly used to push the defending player to spend the focus (taking it away from the incoming attack or further defences) or to catch off-guard a ship not prepared to modify their focus results.

1 hour ago, Slade said:

Can a 'While ...' ability be used at any time? And how you see fit? Or do I miss something in the rules?

Yes and no. In X-wing, there's hardly any long, ongoing process you could interrupt at will to resolve an ability. "While" timing is used to mark effects taking place after the game event has begun (all of the "before you ..." effects have already been resolved) and before the event has ended (none of the "after you ..." effects can be resolved yet). In most cases, there is just one timing window available that the "while" effects take place in.

Multiple effects having the same trigger are executed one after another. To do so, they are placed in a queue. To form a queue, rules are applied:

1. If applicable, effects are resolved in initiative order (high-to-low or low-to-high, depending on the conditions, as with moving low-to-high and shooting high-to-low).
2. If the effects of two players still resolve simultaneously, the First Player resolves their effects first.
   1. Note however that this is not a case during attack and defence, as both players have clearly defined, separate timing windows for their effects, as I've explained above
3. If multiple effects of one player still resolve simultaneously, that player may put them in the queue in any order they like.

So, to wrap it up, "while" abilities fit in a rather specific timing during a game event and missing that window takes away the ability (e.g. allowing the defender to modify their dice means you've missed out on your part of the Modify Defence Dice step). They can, however, be chained "as see fit" if they all belong to the same player.

Cheers.