Might be a silly question but I've been reading through the manual for quite some time and I didn't find a clarification either in there or in the FAQ. So my question is, what's the point in NOT using the aim-order all the time? As far as I can see, aimed attacks have absolutely no drawbacks. It would occur to me that when placing an aim-order the marine uses up the rest of his turn for aiming and can discard it no sooner than his next turn, but I don't find anything in the rules that would forbid to place an aim-order, discard it right away and simply delivering a better shot than by just moving and shooting. Can anyone clarify please?

That's exactly how you use Aim orders, you declare a Ready action with the Aim as your Order and Attack as your other "half" of the turn, place the Aim and then attack, allowing you to reroll the dice you need to (usually the Misses and the Ammo icons). In fact, if you don't aim a lot, you find that you run out of ammo real fast.

However, that doesn't mean that you should aim every turn. If you did, you would never move. Also sometimes it's better to make 2 attacks instead of 1, or even not attack at all and run as far as you can (which you probably should be doing more than aiming + attacking). To do an aimed attack, you need to do the Ready order (barring any special abilities), but many times Sprint or Advance is more appropriate for the situation at hand.

Remember, you discard the Aim order if you Move or take a Wound (or use the Aim), so you are almost always Aim then immediately Attack.

-shnar

Okay, thanks for the answer, it makes a lot of sense, but I didn't find anything in the rules to back it up.

A. Harbinger said:

Rulebook page 10 - how excacly aim order works and when it is discarded.

Rulebook page 6 - how ready action works and why you can't put an order move and attack in the same turn.

I just looked it over and - at least in the german translation that we are using - it's pretty ambiguous. But thanks.

Anyway, another question occured concerning the "Prepared"-skill. It says that you won't get your tokens back when you're reanimated. But what about one mission and the next? Do you have those three cancel-tokens for every mission or are they gone once they're gone? And what can you actually cancel with them? On the card it says "event cards". So does that mean only Invader event cards or Invader spawn cards as well?

A. Harbinger said:

You re-set the card for each Mission. Invader deck has two types of cards, Event and Spawn cards. Prepared can cancel the former.

Okay, thanks for the answer.