I've played a game with one of my friends last Saturday. I performed a special attack with missiles against his Cova Nell who revealed his dial with a red maneuver. I claimed that his pilot ability does not work in this attack, and persuaded him to roll only 1 defend die.

I believed it was right but later on not only one of my other friends agreed that Cova Nell's pilot should work while defending special attacks. That makes me unconfident about my explanation.

Is it "While you ((defend) or (perform)) a primary attack, ...", or "While you (defend) or (perform a primary attack), ..."?

My friends all said that literally, if Cova's pilot ability does not work while defending against a special attack, there should be an "against" after the "defend" in the text - and that's the reason why my friends all said I was wrong - I understand the effect of the ability not from the text directly but from the translation, which may lead to my explanation.

And from a point of view, I just thought it was a mistake of wording for the designer to give 2 conditions that are so different to trigger a single effect.

We have a lot of abilities start with "While you defend or perform a primary attack," in the game, so its very important to make it clear how these abilities work.

So anyone could help to make it clear?

5 hours ago, muzhyou said:

I've played a game with one of my friends last Saturday. I performed a special attack with missiles against his Cova Nell who revealed his dial with a red maneuver. I claimed that his pilot ability does not work in this attack, and persuaded him to roll only 1 defend die.

I believed it was right but later on not only one of my other friends agreed that Cova Nell's pilot should work while defending special attacks. That makes me unconfident about my explanation.

Is it "While you ((defend) or (perform)) a primary attack, ...", or "While you (defend) or (perform a primary attack), ..."?

My friends all said that literally, if Cova's pilot ability does not work while defending against a special attack, there should be an "against" after the "defend" in the text - and that's the reason why my friends all said I was wrong - I understand the effect of the ability not from the text directly but from the translation, which may lead to my explanation.

And from a point of view, I just thought it was a mistake of wording for the designer to give 2 conditions that are so different to trigger a single effect.

We have a lot of abilities start with "While you defend or perform a primary attack," in the game, so its very important to make it clear how these abilities work.

So anyone could help to make it clear?

You were incorrect, Cova’s ability triggers against any sort of attack made against her, or when she makes a primary attack.

4 minutes ago, Innese said:

You were incorrect, Cova’s ability triggers against any sort of attack made against her, or when she makes a primary attack.

Yeah, I checked the card browser on YASB 2.0 and read all texts I thought are similar, finally made myself clear that I was wrong.

So I'll make no more mistake on the same question again, starting from the casual event this Saturday.

defending is something you do no matter the type of attack.

there are currently no abilities in the game that makes any difference between defending versus primary attacks or any kind of other attack (special, turret, primary or whatnot), as far as i know.

6 hours ago, muzhyou said:

Is it "While you ((defend) or (perform)) a primary attack, ...", or "While you (defend) or (perform a primary attack), ..."?

I think you got it wrong, but don't feel too bad about it.

Overall, it can sometimes be tricky to parse these things out.

Community convention holds it that Primary applies only to performing the attack. I think it's not utterly impossible to read the text as applying to defending, that would seem incredibly awkward to me. Even if there's a legitimate way to parse the grammar, the construction doesn't hold up. I don't have a good way to explain exactly why Primary only applies to the attack, I just know that it does, based on conventions of language. There's all sorts of sentences which could be formed in that aren't incorrect in the strictest rules of grammar, but are just "off" somehow based on how the language is used in reality.

This is what I tend to mean whenever I rant about RAW being secondary to Rules-as-Community, since language only has meaning based on how a community has decided to interpret it.

This also isn't something I want to lay on the feet of the designers. Overwhelmingly, folks playing X-Wing have read it as applying to any defense, or only to primary attacks, so the devs have been mostly effective at getting their point across. For the devs to try to cover every possibility, the language probably becomes verbose to the point of awkwardness, and creates new problems where the slightest inconsistency now has magnified results.

Basically, I think the community can smooth out the rough edges, and I think this is a case where we have.

18 minutes ago, meffo said:

there are currently no abilities in the game that makes any difference between defending versus primary attacks or any kind of other attack (special, turret, primary or whatnot), as far as i know.

Not exactly, but almost the Grand Inquisitor. His ability is about range bonuses, and Ordnance attacks won't--can't--have a Range bonus, but it isn't about primary vs special exactly.

Contrast Talonbane Cobra, whose ability doesn't the language of range bonuses (it did in 1e), and will work with or against any kind of attack.

I guess technically, it's not that TGI doesn't work against Ordnance attacks, but that there's nothing for him to work on.

"It might be a Scottish name, taken from a story about two men on a train. One man says, 'What's that package up there in the baggage rack?' And the other answers, 'Oh, that's a MacGuffin'. The first one asks, 'What's a MacGuffin?' 'Well,' the other man says, 'it's an apparatus for trapping lions in the Scottish Highlands.' The first man says, 'But there are no lions in the Scottish Highlands,' and the other one answers, 'Well then, that's no MacGuffin!' So you see that a MacGuffin is actually nothing at all." (Alfred Hitchcock)

Reminds me of the ol “does BB8 have a white boost” question. But yes, I agree with your friends’ interpretation.

Don’t feel bad about your interpretation either, I totally understand how you got there.