I have a group of friends that have been playing for sometime now and we have come accross some things that we need help on.

1) When using the leaders varient rule, we had a question with the agents ability to act as a "Sabotage". If the agent is captured can the ability still be used because it doesn't say anything about abilities being used after capture and that ability may be used at anytime.

2) Can a shock troop be transported on a cruiser/dreadnought with stasis capsules or will it revert back to a normal ground force?

3) Can you use the brotherhood of yin's racial ability to swap resource/influence even if you have no unexhausted planets? So to stall would be the play instead.

Any help will be appriciated.

TMob said:

If your agent is captured, you don't have control of it, and cannot use it to Sabotage.

TMob said:

Yes, as long as there is at least one other GF in the fleet; Corey has stated that ST's are "with" another GF if they are being transported in the same fleet.

TMob said:

No, since it requires you to choose an unexhausted planet; if you can't do that, you can't use the ability. (Though why you didn't use it before is another question... )

Thanks for you help.

sigmazero13 said:

Can you provide a rules citation for your interpretation?

We could not find any reference in the rules to support either decision regarding the usage of the agent after capture. Agents are sneaky devils!

Fabricator General said:

First love your name -

Now about the Agent. I would say there's a few things to consider. One the Agent isn't in your play area and is controlled by another player. A unit or token that is controlled by someone else, you can not activate or do anything with unless there's a rule that specifically says you can. Otherwise you can move opponents ships and attack with them no? It specifically says that a captured leader is controlled by the opponent whom did the capturing. It is also said that the token is removed off the board and placed in the capturing players play area.

Since the leader is no longer on the board, you can't use any abilities that leader possesses. This is why captured leaders can't be used by the current owner to carry out their special abilities. This also means that you can't use the Agents ability because A) you don't have control of that leader and B) it's not technically in play (only in the play area.)

The strongest argument and maybe what you're getting at is whether the Captor can sacrifice the Agent. To that response I would say probably not because of my definition that placing in the play area doesn't put the token in play. I'm not sure if there's an action card that targets captured Leaders. If there was one, then I would say there's a strong case for the Captor being able to do so. Everything I've seen, it seems that the captured leader is for the most part out-of-play and becomes more of a bargaining chip during the status phase.

Fabricator General said:

When a Leader is captured, it is placed in the capturing player's play area. It's not on the board, it's not even in front of you; by being in another player's area, I think it's pretty clear the intent is "you don't control this leader anymore." If something is in another player's area, that person has control (though with leaders, I think the rules also strongly imply that you can only "use" your OWN leaders). Admittedly, it's not written in black and white (a flaw with many FFG games, unfortunately), but I think it is 100% apparent that is the intent. It would be utterly silly to say "oh, you've captured my leader, but he somehow still managed to sacrifice himself to sabotage your intricate plans while in custody.

If anyone tried to pull a stunt like this off in any group I've ever played with, it would be soundly denied, and if the person had the gall to try and lawyer his way into letting it happen, they would no longer be invited to participate (and would STILL be denied by the group, so it would be whining for naught).

I am quite sure if you were to ask FFG, they would confirm this as well.