In light of the Beck ruling...

By Cpt ObVus, in Star Wars: Armada Rules Questions

I’m copying my post from another topic, because this is a different question. One that I didn’t want getting buried. Forgive me if you’ve read this already in the other thread!

This concerns the recent Commander Beck ruling in the FAQ.

... given that we now have two (conflicting) precedents demonstrating how “as if you had spent an X” effects work, doesn’t that call into question how all such effects work?

A concrete example: Executor SSD. Piett. Two Engineering tokens banked.

On my turn, I reveal a Concentrate Fire dial (and I get a token). I decide to keep the dial for later.

I’m badly damaged, so I want to regain all the shields I can. So I exhaust Piett to spend one of my Engineering tokens and “resolve it as if I had spent a dial instead.”

Previous to the recent FAQ, we had been led to believe that “as-if” commands had to stand alone, meaning that Piett could only give me 4 Engineering points back (as if it were a dial). Now, given the Beck ruling, it appears that an “as-if-token” command can be combined with a corresponding dial... which begs the question, “Can an ‘as-if-dial’ be combined with a corresponding token?”

In other words, can I use that second Engineering token in conjunction with Piett, thereby gaining 6 Engineering points?

It’s not combining Beck with other cards that’s the potential issue here, so much as the Beck ruling opening up a gigantic hole in the rules which really could change the way we’ve been playing for some time now.

This is exacerbated by the fact that the previous precedent (that “as-if” commands must stand alone) was based on a response to a question about the Pursuant title, and that, to me, doesn’t sound like it carries as much weight as an official FAQ. So is the Beck ruling now the precedent to follow in resolving “as-if” command questions? Or do we revert to the way we’ve been doing it for years now, and call Beck a special case?

Frankly, it never made sense to me that you couldn’t combine an “as-if” token/dial with the corresponding dial/token, and I kinda hope this opens the door to doing that. But my personal feelings have nothing to do with how this ought to go. I just want a ruling that makes sense, and has some sort of understandable internal consistency.

We need clarification on this.

The answer is. We don't know, and I'm scrambling to get that answer before worlds.

Hard to judge it if I don't know the intent with the card either.

10 minutes ago, Karneck said:

The answer is. We don't know, and I'm scrambling to get that answer before worlds.

Hard to judge it if I don't know the intent with the card either.

Please keep us posted as it would be good to know how the card was intended to be used. Thank you for checking on this.

15 minutes ago, Karneck said:

The answer is. We don't know, and I'm scrambling to get that answer before worlds.

Hard to judge it if I don't know the intent with the card either.

Excellent, thank you. I’m not at all connected to the people who make these rulings, and don’t have a network of TOs and judges to discuss this stuff with, outside of this forum. I figured there were people who were better connected than me trying to get this question answered, but it’s very nice to know for sure.

I would like to stress that I don’t think it’s just Beck that’s the problem here. We need to know (if possible) what the general rule for combining “as-if” effects with tokens/dials is (can it be done or not?), because there are all sorts of combos that I can think of which don’t require or include Beck at all, but hinge on the “can-we-combine” question. The Beck ruling only raised these questions.

Thanks again!

Edited by Cpt ObVus