42 minutes ago, meffo said:

i don't like this question, because it seems like it's bordering on the kind of rules lawyering i detest the most, as in someone wanting the rules to work to their advantage, but never against them.

Ok. I hope you realize that this is not, at all, what I'm trying to do. You're afraid of a "hah, gotcha!" when I'm repeatedly saying that it does not work at the moment AND we largely agree that the interaction seems to be intended - the same way as FFG wanted to make certain interaction but messed them up repeatedly in the past.

8 minutes ago, GreenDragoon said:

Ok. I hope you realize that this is not, at all, what I'm trying to do. You're afraid of a "hah, gotcha!" when I'm repeatedly saying that it does not work at the moment AND we largely agree that the interaction seems to be intended - the same way as FFG wanted to make certain interaction but messed them up repeatedly in the past.

i realize that, yes. hence my apology.

4 hours ago, meffo said:

i don't like this question, because it seems like it's bordering on the kind of rules lawyering i detest the most, as in someone wanting the rules to work to their advantage, but never against them.

Or what i call, loophole hunters 😛

4 hours ago, theBitterFig said:

Don't get me wrong: I think this makes *FAR* more sense than FFG's rulings.

FFGs rulings on maneuver difficulty are their most asinine to date.

I sort of agree with you, but also with FFG. Abilities can only read what the game state is *at the moment it looks at it* or while its happening. As someone said, BB-8 cant 'look into the future' and know what difficulty the maneuver the ship is about to perform. There is nothing on the board/play area telling him that information. As far as maneuvers go, the only thing it has to reference is the maneuver dial, which has a state and can be referenced directly. He can see Leia's charge is spent, but doesnt know what for, or what the target is.

I *do* see what FFG is trying to do here. They are trying to prevent players *having to remember a game state* in order to perform an ability. That's why abilities like Ric can only look at the current dial state, not the maneuver the ship *actually* did perform, even if it was different than the dial itself (example Ved Foslo). There needs to be 'something' in the game area to represent. A dial, a focus token, a damage card, whatever. Having to remember "what you did" or commuting to "what you could be doing" was kind of annoying to deal with in 1E.

Also, i think BB-8 was better written in 1E, because he looked at the dial specifically, not the maneuver "you were about to perform".

29 minutes ago, Lyianx said:

I *do* see what FFG is trying to do here. They are trying to prevent players *having to remember a game state* in order to perform an ability.

I don't really think they accomplished their goal. Instead, they just wrote a rule so that the difficulty of a maneuver flips around several times during the turn, and did it all in a FAQ and none of it on the actual cards themselves.

2 hours ago, theBitterFig said:

I don't really think they accomplished their goal. Instead, they just wrote a rule so that the difficulty of a maneuver flips around several times during the turn, and did it all in a FAQ and none of it on the actual cards themselves.

Exactly. It is intuitive to pretty much everyone that it should work. Leia reduces it to blue, BB8 wants a blue. The conclusion that it does not work comes from a very good understanding of the rules, far above not only average but also seasoned players.

The pause between revealing a dial (Leia) and before executing (bb8) does only exist in theory. That is the same moment on the table, there is nothing to remember.

14 hours ago, GreenDragoon said:

Exactly. It is intuitive to pretty much everyone that it should work. Leia reduces it to blue, BB8 wants a blue. The conclusion that it does not work comes from a very good understanding of the rules, far above not only average but also seasoned players.

The pause between revealing a dial (Leia) and before executing (bb8) does only exist in theory. That is the same moment on the table, there is nothing to remember.

Yeah.

BB-8 and Leia working makes more sense than it not working, even if "the rules" say it doesn't, but these rules man... these rules don't make as much sense.

actually, i wholeheartedly disagree. it's not intuitive to me that it should work and i do think the rules make sense.

the rules are not super well designed by any stretch of the imagination. neither are the cards. there have been erratas, rules clarifications and changes to the rules reference on more than one occasion. that's sort of inevitable if you don't use technical writers and proper proof reading. the design of the game is still brilliant, though.

please explain to me why this should work.

1 hour ago, meffo said:

please explain to me why this should work.

I... don't know what to tell you. You can check any conversation on the topic, which generally starts with the assumption that it works. So when you ask "why" this should work, what exactly are you asking? We know it does not work. You have discussed with people who erroneously believe it works (me included). There is no correct reasoning for the why.

Are you asking what I believe the intention was? Or how many people think it works/should work? Or why I think it is intuitive?

Those are different questions with different answers. Parts of them are already on this very page.

1 hour ago, meffo said:

actually, i wholeheartedly disagree. it's not intuitive to me that it should work and i do think the rules make sense.

the rules are not super well designed by any stretch of the imagination. neither are the cards. there have been erratas, rules clarifications and changes to the rules reference on more than one occasion. that's sort of inevitable if you don't use technical writers and proper proof reading. the design of the game is still brilliant, though.

please explain to me why this should work.

Without the FAQ applied Leia triggers and alters the maneuver difficulty when the dial is revealed which comes before BB-8's timing. The FAQ moves the difficulty alteration (but not the payment if the cost) to during the execution of the maneuver which is after BB-8's timing.

Frankly they need to drop her from the FAQ/constant effects explanation. She isn't constant so it shouldn't apply.

1 hour ago, GreenDragoon said:

I... don't know what to tell you. You can check any conversation on the topic, which generally starts with the assumption that it works. So when you ask "why" this should work, what exactly are you asking? We know it does not work. You have discussed with people who erroneously believe it works (me included). There is no correct reasoning for the why.

Are you asking what I believe the intention was? Or how many people think it works/should work? Or why I think it is intuitive?

Those are different questions with different answers. Parts of them are already on this very page.

i was asking why it should work. i'd also like to know why you believe the intention was that it should work.

1 hour ago, Hiemfire said:

Without the FAQ applied Leia triggers and alters the maneuver difficulty when the dial is revealed which comes before BB-8's timing. The FAQ moves the difficulty alteration (but not the payment if the cost) to during the execution of the maneuver which is after BB-8's timing.

Frankly they need to drop her from the FAQ/constant effects explanation. She isn't constant so it shouldn't apply.

while thank you, sir. i now understand why the interaction is intuitive. i guess i'm just too focused on they rules as they are and not how they would have worked without FAQ.

3 hours ago, meffo said:

please explain to me why this should work.

If I get an effect before I do a blue move, and I do a blue move, I feel like I ought to get that effect. I understand why the rules right now don't let me, but it sure is silly to me.

//

Additionally, Cova + R4 is silly. I'm happy to use the FAQ ruling, since I like rolling extra dice, but having a red move that becomes white then becomes red again seems like a really strange way to parse the text "Decrease the difficulty of your speed 1-2 basic maneuvers." This seems to me like it should be an always on, always applicable effect. It isn't. That's silly.

For R4 to behave like it behaves in the game right now, I'd much prefer if it were worded something like "While you execute a speed 1-2 basic maneuver, decrease it's difficulty." Now there's a timing on the card, and the effect as it exists right now isn't strange.

The more I think about it, that's what irks me. There's a massive disconnect between the plain text of the cards, and what that actually means in game terms. There are times when an errata to the rules is worse than an errata on the cards would be.

It's obvious to me that these cards are not intended to work together.

And that's why we go by RAW and not RAI. What's "obvious" intention to one person is nonsense to another person, and hidden or meta subtext is not sufficient.

This all comes back to not having properly sorted out the timing of ANY of the change difficulty of a maneuver effects and not having added or created a further breakdown of the Activation Phase that could allow more clarity with these change difficulty of a maneuver effects and when stress is applied and removed.

It is a great failing of 2nd Edition that they didn't sort this all out at the start and then compounded the errors with rulings and FAQ answers and what can and can not go in the ability queue that conflict. All of these sorts of effects and resulting interactions created a mess in 1st Edition and it is quite clear they didn't learn the lesson when creating 2nd Edition. The designers seem to clearly have a penchant for myopia and sloppiness when it comes to these interactions and the player-base's penchant for loophole hunting.

18 hours ago, meffo said:

i was asking why it should work. i'd also like to know why you believe the intention was that it should work.

It seems to me that the intention that it should work stems from Leia's wording trying to create a timing where this applies at the time the BB astros are checking if the maneuver is blue. As a matter of general principle rules should work as intended if the intention is clear and fair. I think in just the vacuum of the two upgrades it is intended to work.

I get why it doesn't work as intended though. As soon as you start looking outside of a BB Astro/Leia vacuum things get muddled. Leia uses similar language to effects that do not occur at the time BB astros want to check if the maneuver is blue.

FFG have made a muddle of when we are to check the difficulty of a maneuver and whether any change difficulty of a maneuver effects are "always on" or apply only in a phase of activation or only in response to some other trigger. FFG compounded that difficulty with the addition of effects that care about a "revealed maneuver" absent any language of when exactly amidst all of these effects that "revealed maneuver" is determined. Then they muddled it up without clarification of what requirements need met to put thing in the ability queue.

The problem to me in all of this is that they over-simplified the Activation Phase and/or did not create keywords for these effects that can tie them to parts of the activation phase. Sometimes simplification isn't does not result in simplicity.

Really the discussion over timing, intention, etc is not necessary. We have the Rules Reference Q&A which itemizes when the maneuver is considered blue (During the execute maneuver step and for effects that trigger AFTER the maneuver). If its not on the itemized list then it doesn't work.

• BB-8 triggers before .
• Before is not on the list.
• Therefore BB-8 doesn't work.

If the people who write the rules want the interaction to work, just add the word "before" to the Rules Ref answer on this subject.

If they intended for it to work, then why did they make an intentional FAQ that explicitly stops it from working?

Intent is expressed through rules verbiage. Assuming unwritten intent is the same as putting words in someone's mouth.

If FFG intends for these two cards to work together, they'll express that intent and release new rules verbiage that does that.

1 hour ago, Tvboy said:

If FFG intends for these two cards to work together, they'll express that intent and release new rules verbiage that does that.

Come on, you know perfectly well that they messed up intended interactions very often. We had because-I-say-so quasi-official tournament rulings without released written rules. There is no need to be difficult in this subforum.

At least for myself, I don't have an opinion on whether FFG intended it to work or not. No clue, and I kinda think it's irrelevant.

I personally think the decision for it not to work is a bad decision. I don't necessarily like the way they revised the rules to get particular results, which makes the text of a good few cards seem silly.

I'm expressing the simple thought that I don't like it, and giving my reasons for not liking it. No more, no less.

I think the intent is always relevant. Particularly if we go from a premise that they mean this stuff to be balanced and of different "flavor" for particular factions or ships. And I'd think how the designers intend this stuff to work as significant influence on initial costs.

18 hours ago, Frimmel said:

I think the intent is always relevant. Particularly if we go from a premise that they mean this stuff to be balanced and of different "flavor" for particular factions or ships. And I'd think how the designers intend this stuff to work as significant influence on initial costs.

I wouldn’t necessarily assume the designers and the guys who write the rules are always the same people, or that they share the same intent. I’ve played Armada for several years now, and more than once a member of the community who’s been a play tester or judge has written in with emailed questions that they’ve left out of a recent FAQ or something, asking if card X works with card Y, for example, and the response sometimes comes back, “X PROBABLY works with Y, but it’s hard to say, because Y is worded a little differently than Z, which works with X...” and I’m always left thinking, “Probably?? Didn’t you write the cards... and the rules??”

But I’m beginning to think (and this is all guesswork, I freely admit) that the devs for FFG’s games just make the barebones card ideas, then hand them off to writers with a quick description (and not much insight into “intent,” when it’s fuzzy), and they let THAT team write the actual words on the card. So “intent” sometimes gets lost in translation, and when asked about how it all works later, the developers have to do weird mental gymnastics to bridge the gap between how they wish it worked, and what finally got written on the card.

I really *hope* this isn’t the way they do things, but it’s pretty clear that even they don’t always know, which sounds like a really weird system. Their games are fantastic despite this, so at least there’s that!

22 minutes ago, Cpt ObVus said:

I wouldn’t necessarily assume the designers and the guys who write the rules are always the same people, or that they share the same intent. I’ve played Armada for several years now, and more than once a member of the community who’s been a play tester or judge has written in with emailed questions that they’ve left out of a recent FAQ or something, asking if card X works with card Y, for example, and the response sometimes comes back, “X PROBABLY works with Y, but it’s hard to say, because Y is worded a little differently than Z, which works with X...” and I’m always left thinking, “Probably?? Didn’t you write the cards... and the rules??”

But I’m beginning to think (and this is all guesswork, I freely admit) that the devs for FFG’s games just make the barebones card ideas, then hand them off to writers with a quick description (and not much insight into “intent,” when it’s fuzzy), and they let THAT team write the actual words on the card. So “intent” sometimes gets lost in translation, and when asked about how it all works later, the developers have to do weird mental gymnastics to bridge the gap between how they wish it worked, and what finally got written on the card.

I really *hope* this isn’t the way they do things, but it’s pretty clear that even they don’t always know, which sounds like a really weird system. Their games are fantastic despite this, so at least there’s that!

Those are poor excuses. Yes, some confusion is going to happen. Loophole-hunters will chase this stuff round the moons of Endor, and folks don't know all the rules in minutiae. If we do excuse them because of the things you suggest, the cause is the one I keep hammering on: they have to do all that stuff with change-difficulty-of-a-maneuver effects and cares-about-the-color/speed-of-a-maneuver effects where they didn't set out proper timings for when this stuff is decided. Problems with these effects and their interactions are NOT NEW and they did not fix them for 2nd Edition and in some ways made them worse.

On 3/24/2020 at 2:53 PM, Lyianx said:

I *do* see what FFG is trying to do here. They are trying to prevent players *having to remember a game state* in order to perform an ability. That's why abilities like Ric can only look at the current dial state, not the maneuver the ship *actually* did perform, even if it was different than the dial itself (example Ved Foslo). There needs to be 'something' in the game area to represent. A dial, a focus token, a damage card, whatever. Having to remember "what you did" or commuting to "what you could be doing" was kind of annoying to deal with in 1E.

Eliminating memory issues is a noble goal in general in complex games like this, but there are plenty of memory issues in X-Wing that even I, as a new player with relatively little experience, have found. For example, the “one action of a type per turn” rule can be a beast when things are happening like Petty Officer Thanisson Coordinating a barrel roll action to Major Vonreg, and then, eight activations later, after Vonreg and everything around him has moved, you’re saying to yourself, “Oh, sweet! Vonreg can just roll into obstruction behind this rock for an extra defense die...” when he really can’t, because he barrel rolled twenty minutes ago.

I’m starting to think that with some multi-action aces, it may be helpful to start placing some sort of token over actions on the action bar to indicate that I have used them this turn... but I digress. Anyway, it doesn’t seem like “eliminating memory issues” was really on the list of things they were trying to do!

2 minutes ago, Frimmel said:

Those are poor excuses. Yes, some confusion is going to happen...

Oh, you mistake me. I’m not positing these reasons as excuses! I’m pointing them out as failures that need to be fixed. I love FFG, and I love their games, but for the long-term health of those games, the developers and writers and rules teams all need to be in lock step and fully on board with the intent and mechanical functioning of each and every single card... or at very least have a good broad-strokes understanding of whether certain interactions were intended or not, which is obviously not always the case.

If any dev reads this, could you please explicitly address the phrase "Before you execute a blue maneuver," in the part of the FAQ that addresses cards that change maneuver difficulty? An explicit answer to "do BB-8 and Leia combo?" would be wonderful. Love you!! ❤️

5 hours ago, Neuvost said:

If any dev reads this, could you please explicitly address the phrase "Before you execute a blue maneuver," in the part of the FAQ that addresses cards that change maneuver difficulty? An explicit answer to "do BB-8 and Leia combo?" would be wonderful. Love you!! ❤️

the devs don't respond to questions asked in this forum. if you don't think their clarification on the timing of changing difficulty of maneuvers is sufficient, please post your question here:

https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/contact/rules/

As usual meffo comes through with the rules question link

@Neuvost feel free to post what you're planning to send them and I'd be happy to workshop the question with you (along with others I'm sure will chime in) so we can try to get the clearest possible answers.