Hi all,

First of all, I'm sorry if this question has already been asked. I did search through the 2.2.1 FAQ and did a forum search before resorting to actually making a topic about this.

So, onto the actual problem I had in mind. We had a really nice game yesterday, but at one point a player managed to invade a planet with shock troops left on his army. One of the objectives was to destroy an opponent's space dock, so obviously he wanted to get rid of the space dock on the planet at that point. However, there were two PDS units on that planet as well, and he would've wanted to capture those instead of destroying them.

The defending player stated that since the rulebook says "--the invading player may capture enemy Space Dock and PDS units on the planet. (Normally such units would be destroyed after a successful invasion.)", the player must either choose to capture or destroy everything on the planet, clinging to the fact that the rule says and , not and/or . Me and the invading player found this as the more illogical way to interpret the rule, but we ended up resolving it as the defending player requested.

Is there an official ruling on this or could someone with English as his native language tell his view on this one.

I would think that the word "may" implies an option left to the choice of the invading player. There has been some debate about whether capturing a space dock in this manner also constitutes "destroyed". Even though the opposing player is replacing it with one of his own pieces, some interpretations of the rules, for game purposes, count this as destroyed.

Dopson said:

I would agree with your interpretation, that the invader can choose to capture some and destroy others. I'm not sure that there's any official clarification on this, though, it's the first time I've seen this particular question raised. If you group insists on playing the way the defending player requested, then I would keep that in mind for any future situations - per your friend's interpretation, the ST must capture everything or nothing, so if he's short on even one SD or PDS in his reserves, he must destroy them all.

Thanks for the advices. Yeah, we'll just have to make a house ruling on this one for now. I was hoping there'd be an official ruling on this one, but a house rule will have to do until there is one. I'll try to use this topic to get some leverage on my interpretation of the rule though, since you seemed to back it up.