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.