If you take a critical hit and the damage card has the text:

Action: Roll an attack die and if the hit icon comes up turn the card over

or anything else after the word Action, does that mean take an action now, or you can choose to do that as your action during the action phase?

csi15 said:

thank you, thats what I figured, but wanted to make sure.

Yes, it gives you the possibility of mitigating the effect of a crit, but at the cost of using up your Action for a turn. There are other cards that allow you to cancel their effect without rolling a die (Console Fire, for example), but again you must use an Action to do it.

Note that if there was another way to gain a free action (Squad Leader), you could use that free action to attempt the removal; this would not work with Lando or Push the Limit, since they specify that the free action be "shown in your action bar".