Hello there!
I'm writing from the italian community. Unfortunately we have been cut off from localization since operative Luke and Vader, but the community is growing by the way. I hope we are going to meet somewhere on international or local tables soon.

I would like to ask if some of you experieced this scenario on beam cannon with TX-130 Saber:

You are shooting with Arsenal 2 on a troop, you critically hit it, but you don't kill all the minis in that unit. Then you proceed by attacking using the second beam attack a second unit at range 1 from the previous attack and on Saber LOS. That unit has just 2 minis and you kill them all. By killing all minis of that unit now that unit in no more at range 1 of a third unit. Is that true? Will the beam stops if it kills completely a unit? Will this stops your beam chain attacks?

If you go with your immagination the beam starts from the first attack and goes till the end, it's supposed to be a single energy beam crossing the battlefield, but if you follow the rules a unit that is no more present on the field it can't be at range 1 of another one. If this second case is the true one, it may also be relevant how to choose your casualties under beam fire to stop the chain attack.

This "beam chain stop" may also happens at the first attack. If that is true you probably need to redirect your primary weapon somewhere else and hope not to kill all unit minies, which is quite weird.

Need your experience to solve this.

Thanks for help.

Alessandro

I feel like the intent is to measure ranges for the Beam weapon and declare all defenders before rolling dice. That's at least the way I've seen other people use it.

In the answer I gave Alessandro on the italian Fb group, I considered that beam are specifically separate attacks. So the range between two units must be measured 1 attack by 1 attack.

And of course an attack ends when the casualties have been determined.

So yes, taking out the right models can stop the beaming chain.

that seems like it would make the beam cannon way too expensive, it is barely worth it at the moment.

9 hours ago, 5particus said:

that seems like it would make the beam cannon way too expensive, it is barely worth it at the moment.

With clones wanting to bunch up to token share, and droids wanting to do the same for order sharing, you can pull off a few shots, or discourage them from being as close ,

kind useless against rebels or empire though by that measure, still not worth 30 points, it would be if we could fire support each shot but not without that

1 hour ago, 5particus said:

kind useless against rebels or empire though by that measure, still not worth 30 points, it would be if we could fire support each shot but not without that

Empire has the Royal Guard, which have to be in range 1 to use Guardian, not to mention Shoretroopers/Rebel Vets who have to be in Range 1 of an Emplacement if they are going to use Coordinate. Plus support characters.

Also, there are plenty of times I've seen Rebel and Empire players cluster around objectives.

I'll probably be wrong (as the rules seem to be frequently written to ignore common sense) but minis dying shouldn't interrupt the beam. It's arching over the battlefield; it's not just going to stop because someone gets cut in two because of it. Not an issue I've encountered, but if that's going to be how it's interpreted, I'd argue that declaring targets ahead of time completely bypasses the problem and fits with the idea the game mechanics are supposed to be representing.

i have a rules clarification with them at the moment, they have not gotten back to me in the last week though