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".