13 hours ago, gamblertuba said:

That's just not how the rules work. You are reading like it is conversational language. It is not. This card affects step 1.c Declare Defender. It says nothing about forcing you to choose a weapon, only your target.

1a Measure range to everyone

1b Choose a weapon

1c Choose a valid target that is in the closest attack range.

Proton torps can only select locked target. Prockets can only select a target in the bullseye. Ion turret can only choose a target in the mobile arc. Nantexi can even choose bullseye or mobile. THEN the card comes in and says you have to choose from among the valid targets in the closest range.

That's my reading of the technical language and how FFG has interpreted rules since 1st Ed.

This

I'm surprised this one is causing so much debate, because the rules really don't leave a lot of ambiguity on the subject. To me, it appears extremely cut and dry.

Let's go through this step by step and try to put this to bed. First of all, the card in question (shamelessly stealing these images from @meffo in the Rules Forum. Thanks, buddy 🙂 ).

ATP tells us that we must choose a defender at the closest valid attack range . What is attack range?

For this, we look at the rules reference's entry on the subject:

As you can see, ATTACK RANGE is determined by measuring distance within the ATTACK ARC . The attack arc, in turn, is determined by the weapon being fired by the attacking ship.

This means that we do not know what our attack arc even is until after we have chosen a weapon. Once we have chosen a weapon and have an attack arc to measure with, we can determined what targets we have and what attack range they are all at. Only then, once we have the necessary information, can we satisfy ATP's requirements. This process is written down in the Rules Reference entry on "ATTACK":

As you can see and as pointed out by others already, we don't choose our target until step (c), after we choose a weapon in step (b). Also note the last dot point (which has a minor error in referring to step (c) as the Declare Target step, but whatever), which spells out again that ATTACK RANGE is determined by the ATTACK ARC of the chosen weapon. This reinforces the point that we can't determine either of those two things until we know what gun we're shooting with. Only then does ATP kick in and tell us to choose the defender in the closest valid attack range, at which point we are restricted by any limitations of our chosen weapon, including arc, range, and the [lock] requirement.

Actually, the only question I still have is, when a ship has two listed primary weapons such as the Nantex or the Lancer, are they considered one “primary” for choosing them as a weapon, or can choosing which of your two primary arcs you shoot with further help you narrow down target priority?

9 minutes ago, Matanui3 said:

Actually, the only question I still have is, when a ship has two listed primary weapons such as the Nantex or the Lancer, are they considered one “primary” for choosing them as a weapon, or can choosing which of your two primary arcs you shoot with further help you narrow down target priority?

Or the TIE/sf, which has both two primary weapons and a Tech slot.

I'd say that you could, say, pick to fire forwards at Range 2, if there's a range 1 target in the rear turret arc. Choice of weapon before choice of target.