So with the HLC, you must change your crits to hits immeditally after you get a crit, but the merc copilot says you may change a hit to a crit if you want. Which takes priority? Is the order of events in favor of the merc or the HLC?

I would be inclined in the spirit to say that the HLC takes priority, but it may come up later.

nimdabew said:

I think that you could change one of your regular damage ro critical, because the HLC change all your CH directly from the dice, and the MC, could change the damage from the result, greettings.

I was going to ask the same question, cause that was a combo that beat me in a local tournament. So I loaded out my firespray (merc copilot, hlc, slave, photons, concussion, seismic, and stealth) with krassis. Played family game with this setup--Loved it. my teammate had Vader (determination, assault missiles, stealth) and 2 academy pilots versus (my daughter and her boyfriend's team) wedge (photons, marksman), arven crynyd (marksman, concussion), tycho (marksman, concussion), & garven (photons, marksman). This gave the rebels slightly more points than imps, but the imps managed to win.

General concensus is that HLC works immediately, then MC turns one back to a crit if applicable. Works great with Krassis and Kath.

Careful,

Both dice asssigenments happen at the same time.

Under "Breaking the Rules" p.20. "If one card ability forbids an effect, while another ability allows it, the effect is forbidden ."

HLC changes all crits to hits (crits are forbidden)

Merc changes one hit to a crit. (allows a crit)

Thus, all crits are changed to hits.

Opposing effects take the worst ruling, not the best.

See also - Maneuvers in FAQ.

Sergovan said:

I don't think there is any abiguity here. HLC says change [crits] to [hits] immediately, which would happen before you had the opportunity to invoke the Merc's ability to change one back. But if you want to argue that "Both dice asssigenments happen at the same time", then I'd refer to page 11 under "Modify Attack Dice", where it says: "If a player wants to resolve multiple modifying abilities, he resolves them in the order of his choosing." An astute player would of course resolve HLC before Merc Copilot.

There is nothing in any of this which "forbids" or "allows" any effect, so the ruling on page 20 has no bearing on the subject.

I'm not so sure there's an opposed thing going on here -

The HLC doesn't outright forbid criticals . It merely changes criticals to regular hits. The question is when does this happen - My guess, is that it would occur in the modify dice stage. If the HLC were to forbid criticals it would have text along the lines of "All critical hits with this weapon are considered hits" or "This weapon may not deal critical hits" or face up damage card - or some other wording that outright forbids critical hits. Instead the wording is to change the criticals to regular hits. (Certainly an official ruling will be useful, I admit that my interpretation that it is not "forbidden" could be wrong)

Here we have two effects by the active player - the merc and the HLC - i believe you can choose the order in which to apply these - applying Merc Copilot first would result in HLC turning everything back to hits… but the other way around and you can get a crit.

(Note that, if the HLC effect is immediate, you would then end up with being able to use the Merc copilot in the modify dice stage anyway.)

Sergovan said:

There is no such rule. There is a ruling concerning two effects which change the color of a maneuver, but this isn't that. And even if there were such a rule, it wouldn't apply in this case.

"Immediately after rolling your attack dice, you must change all…"

That's a trigger, with a specific condition (rolling attack dice). It goes off when you roll the dice, and you perform the effect (change the dice) before you even leave Step 2 (Roll Attack Dice). You then move to Step 3 (Modify Attack Dice) as normal, and you can choose to use the Mercenary Copilot's ability.

Buhallin said:

There is such a rule actually, but it does not apply in this matter.

As you stated, the HLC makes you immediately change your crits to regular hits as if you only ever rolled regular hits. After that, the merc pilot allows you to alter a regular hit to a crit.

There is no instance of the HLC forbidding you from having crits, so the "Breaking the Rules" rule does not take effect.

paradox23 said:

Could you cite it, perhaps?

There's the movement change effect, and there's "can't overrides can" but there'snothing I can find about "worse" beating "better".

It's in a little blue box on the bottom right of page 20 of the x-wing rules.

Nothing about worse or better. Just that the negative effect, or the taking away effect always trumps the giving effect.

paradox23 said:

You seem to be extrapolating. The rule says "if 'forbid' and 'allow' conflict, 'forbid' takes precedence." I would challenge the idea that from that rule, it's permissible to assume a rule which states "if 'bad' and 'good' conflict, 'bad' takes precedence."

The rule you are quoting is much narrower in scope than you are making it.

I'm not the one who said good v bad, merely clearing up the rule someone else was referencing unclearly.

I probably shouldn't have written that post at 11:00 pm and I should have had both the cards with me to reference.

My understanding at the time was that the HLC and Merc pilot were asigning dice in the same phase. It that sense what I said was right. If the two differing effects happened at the exact same time , all crits would be hits.

But Buhalain pointed out that the assignments happen in different phases. The HLC happens first (in dice rolling ), then the Mercs ability after (in assignment ). Because of that difference, the merc pilots ability would work because they have a differing timing sequence. The HLC modifies first, then the Merc's ability could happen

But if they were both happening in the assignment phase, they would not.

Just to put it out there:

HLC:" Immediately after rolling your attack dice, you must change all of your [crits] results to [hit] results."

I am prepared to argue that a HLC forbids crits for itself. Without any other card effects coming into the argument, just the HLC, with that card you cannot perform a secondary attack with it and get a crit. It's not allowed.

Therefor HLC forbids crits for the HLC. The wording does not come out and say "I forbid you to have a crit" but consider this

Forbid; Adjective meaning: not allowed; banned.

With a HLC, crits are not allowed by the HLC when it fires to try to hit (I'm going to say again that it is only the HLC. Other cards that modify for crits in another phases would still work, just not in the dice rolling phase when the HLC was fired. Any effect that tried to modify hits to crits in that phase would not work)

What I am noticing is that FFG developed this game with wording that is too general. I've noticed that phases are not printed anywhere on the cards, they have to be infered. In my case I infered that the dice changing for the HLC happend when every other dice changing effect occurs, in modify dice results, which was an error.

I brought this up before the KRT's, because the Imperial player was required to run Kath with HLC and merc Copilot, and here is how it plays out:

1. The HLC immediately turns all crits to hits.

2. The Merc copilot then may change 1 crit to a hit if at Range 3.

3. Then Kath's ability kicked in

That was how it was ruled back in December for the KRT's.

I'm going to interleave Sergovan's comments in italics, since the board doesn't seem to like multi-quotes.

My understanding at the time was that the HLC and Merc pilot were asigning dice in the same phase. It that sense what I said was right. If the two differing effects happened at the exact same time , all crits would be hits.

No. If they happened at the exact same time, the controlling player would get to choose the order. So he could change crits to hits with the HLC, then change a single hit to a crit via the Mercenary Copilot. The other possible interpretation if they occur at the same time is that the HLC would have to go first, because of "immediately" (which is a word that most of us understand to mean something, but it's not formally defined in the rules). In no cast would you be locked in with only hits.

I am prepared to argue that a HLC forbids crits for itself. Without any other card effects coming into the argument, just the HLC, with that card you cannot perform a secondary attack with it and get a crit. It's not allowed.

Therefor HLC forbids crits for the HLC. The wording does not come out and say "I forbid you to have a crit" but consider this

Forbid; Adjective meaning: not allowed; banned.

With a HLC, crits are not allowed by the HLC when it fires to try to hit (I'm going to say again that it is only the HLC. Other cards that modify for crits in another phases would still work, just not in the dice rolling phase when the HLC was fired. Any effect that tried to modify hits to crits in that phase would not work)

This is incorrect. You're basically creating extra rules and restrictions which are not present in any rule or card. The HLC changes certain results to other results - nothing more, nothing less. It does not create any sort of restriction on anything which can happen after it does so.

Consider a hypothetical effect: "This ship cannot change or reroll any of its attack dice." What happens to the HLC in this particular instance? It would keep its crits and deliver them just fine - the change of the dice is prohibited, so they stay crits. It has nothing to do with whether the HLC allows or forbids crits - it's solely about whether or not it can change the dice.

I understand what you're trying to do - you're starting from the expected effect and working backwards to derive intent, and then creating new rules to more fully implement what you see as the intent. But that's a very wrong way to go about reading the rules, and there's really nothing that allows you to make that first jump of "changing dice" to "never allowing a crit".

hothie said:

This is 100% correct, and was used in the Kessel Run preview event.

At no point are crits prohibited by the HLC, they are instead modified. Dice are modified by the hlc first. Then the dice are modified again by the copilot.

There is no prohibition on modifying the same dice again; rerolling already rerolled dice is prohibited.

The last point on my post, which seems to have gone unnoticed, was that the wording being used on cards tends to be open to interpretation because of lack of structure and following specific wording.

I seem to be caught in one right now regarding whether HLC acts like its forbiding crits for itself or if it is simply modifying dice (which it does not because it changes dice not in that step of the combat phase but just before it). The argument leans on the language used in the card and I'll focus in on that for the moment to see if anyone else can see what I see.

HLC "Immediately after rolling your attack dice, you MUST change your crit results to hit results."

-There is an 'immediately'. This stipulates a timing for the effect which I missed in my first argument and puts the timing for the effect in the dice rolling, not the dice modifying step, of the combat phase, so merc copilot works as it is modifying it after the effect has been resolved, not at the same time.

What's bugging me is the ' must ' change in the last half. The card could just well say "change your crit results to hit results" and it would work like everyone else here is calling for it to work. But the word 'must ' IS there. So, why?

This is where I'll refer back to page 20, in Breaking the Rules, " If one card ability forbids an effect, while another ability allows it, the ability is forbidden."

By adding " must " the effect becomes a not allowed effect, in the sense that the 'change all crits to hits' is an absolute. It must be done. No choice. It stresses a purpose.

Buhallin, you used a forbidden efffect on a forbidden effect to try and justify your argument. That was incorrectly structured to be useful.

Lets see what a hypothetical opposing effect, something that allows it, how it would work.

New hypothetical effect.

" After rolling dice to attack, change all your hits to crits" This now allows for a HLC to roll and get nothing but crits. The timing is the same.

Would you have all hits or all crits?

Now what would the hypothetical effect be ruled with a 'must change'?

As an aside, whats bugging me is that FFG used specific wording to stipulate how to adjucate rules, then doesn't use them in the effects they make to help clarify how they should be adjucated. Do you know of one card that actualy says forbid? Without it, meaning is open to interpretation and these kinds of discussions.

But it only modifies the rolls, not forbids further modifications.

"Must" indicates that it is not optional. Most abilities in X-wing are optional - you can choose to use them or not. In most cases, that is indicated via a "may" in there somewhere. They chose to stress the lack of choice by using "must", which means exactly what it says - you have no choice, you MUST change them - and nothing more. That's it. Once you make that change, you have fulfilled everything the card requires you to do, and you're done.

There is absolutely nothing unclear about the card, or its timing. Is it perfectly consistent templating? Not really. But that's not the same as being unclear.

In your example, I would say they'd all come out as crits. The HLC's text includes "immediately", yours does not, so it would go first - crits change to hits, then hits to crits. If they were both "immediately", or the HLC didn't, then it would be just like every other simultaneous effect - the player would choose the order of the effects. "Must" means you couldn't chose to ignore it, and would have to do it, but it says nothing about the timing, and it certainly doesn't say anything about forbidding any later effects.

As near as I can tell, you've read the HLC, invented an additional effect for it, named it "forbid" and then started griping at FFG for not using the word you made up. <shrug> I can no longer debate rules which exist only for you. The response to the question has been pretty much unanimous, even from paradox and I - who, as you might have noticed, agree on pretty much nothing else. The question has been asked, and the right response has been given. Up to you what you do with it.

I was writing a reply in my head while I drove home from work tonight, and when I got home I found that Buhallin had somehow lifted part of it almost verbatim from my mind. "Must" is there to indicate the effect is not optional, as he said, but there's another reason it needed to be included, and not just worded "change all your [hit] results to [crit] results" (without the must). At the top of page 19 you'll find one of the "blue box" sidebars titled "Card Abilities". The last sentence in it says "Unless a card ability uses the word “may” or has the “Action:” or “Attack:” headers, then the ability is mandatory and must be followed." Since HLC DOES have the "Attack:" header, without the word "must" one could argue that the ability was not mandatory based on this rule. So in this case "must" had to be added to make it crystal clear that the ability was mandatory, and could not be ignored.

And hopefully that's the last nail in this particular coffin.

Thanks for pointing out the bit about abilities being mandatory unless stated otherwise, ziggy. I think because so many of them are optional (via "may" or being actions) I'd flipped the default in my brain. I appreciate the correction.

ziggy2000 said:

Now I see what happened. Without that little piece, I was stuck on why the language of the effect seemed to be more forceful than it needed to be and the meaning seemed unduly restrictive and I was try to undersatnd how to rule on that.

Thanks ziggy.

Wait… things resolved peacefully?

What happened to my internet?!?

Kudos, all.