It seems 100% clear to me that Swarm Tactics does not work on huge ships, because huge ships have an engagement value that is separate from their initiative value, so changing the initiative value has no effect on when a huge ship engages.

It also seems 100% clear to me that rebel Han gunner can be used by a huge ship to perform a single bonus turret attack at initiative 7 (but cannot attack again from that turret arc this turn).

Roark, however, is a little in between:

On the one hand, Roark's ability lets you to engage at initiative 7. On the other, the ability specifies "instead of its standard initiative value," which could trip up the interaction because huge ships don't engage at their initiative value to begin with.

I admit that, right now, it seems to be that huge ships will be pretty powerful (especially with their ability to perform multiple bonus attacks before/after engaging) and I don't really want to see Roark enabling multiple initiative kills from a huge ship, so I would prefer that it doesn't work. But I wanted to see what everyone else thought about this interaction, and whether it's possible that Roark's ability will not work on huge ships.

for obvious reasons, this is a strange one. i'm going with roark does not work on huge ships, since huge ships do not engage at their standard initiative value, so "engages at initiative 7 instead of its standard initiative value." cannot be true for a huge ship. they engage at their engagement value, not at their initiative value.

6 minutes ago, meffo said:

i'm going to roark does not work on huge ships, since huge ships do not engage at their standard initiative value, so "engages at initiative 7 instead of its standard initiative value." cannot be true for a huge ship. they engage at their engagement value, not at their initiative value.

works for me.

12 minutes ago, meffo said:

for obvious reasons, this is a strange one. i'm going to roark does not work on huge ships, since huge ships do not engage at their standard initiative value, so "engages at initiative 7 instead of its standard initiative value." cannot be true for a huge ship. they engage at their engagement value, not at their initiative value.

"However, a huge ship engages during the Engagement Phase at the initiative of its engagement value instead." I'm hoping you're right, but I can see the argument for Roark permitting a huge ship to engage at I7, especially after the Cova/R4 ruling-rules change...

"at the initiative of its engagement value" seems to me to mean when that initiative # comes up in the engagement phase, as opposed to the "initiative value" on the ship cards that Roark refers to.

This is pretty wonky and i can see debates on this happening for a while. Note. Roark specifically says "standard" initiative. Which for huge ships, appears to be the larger, 1st orange number. But of course, huge ships don't engage at that number anyway. So Roarks replacement effects likely doesn't qualify because the number its replacing, isn't valid. Same can also be said for Torkil Mux (tho he says "normal" instead of "standard"... yay non-consistent wording).

I dono, i have a strong feeling FFG doesn't want their initiative's mucked with too much so they would likely say "no, it doesnt work", but the wording is questionable.