Ok, got a question about these two cards:

I'm in an engagement, facing a DS army made up of a Death Star Trooper and an Emperor's Royal Guard (that has 2 damage on it). I play Ackbar during the engagement, dealing 1 damage to each participating unit. At that instant, can the Royal Guard's "Protect" kick in, absorbing the damage that the Death Star Trooper would have taken, thus killing the Royal Guard, but leaving the Trooper alive an well? (And I guess the damage that would have been dealt to the Royal Guard just isn't applied?)

Or

Am I allowed to choose the order my opponents' units are hit with Ackbar's reaction, in which case I would simply say the Royal Guard gets buggered first?

Pretty sure the damage placement is simultaneous so the Royal Guard would be at damage capacity and unable to use Protect.

I have a feeling taht they will rule with the doesn't work, I guess it's only one surplus damage- We can all agree that if you added another unit Guard could not redirect both as that takes it over capacity in protect alone, right? If so I'm OK with it.

I have my feelings about how it should work, but the timing of the ability isn't clear since it's a constant ability and not a reaction or interrupt or some other entity with defined timing rules.

Yeah it's a bit tricky- In game terms it is not a reaction/interrupt, nor should it be- but it acts like an interrupt in almost every way- optional reactive effect that stops and changes a resolution. In this situation the question would be does it redirect the damage-meaning it never touches the intended target or does it (in game timing) move it immediatly. Thinking about it more I'm with you-it redirects the damage to it's self [at the exact same time] as it is being damaged. So at the the point where you would check damage capacity limit it has not been damaged yet.

After looking through the rules pretty closely on this one, I'm pretty sure that RAW is going to allow the Royal Guard to redirect damage up to its damage capacity from each character that is being damaged. However, I've heard that the official ruling is going to come down as redirecting a total amount of damage up to his damage capacity. So the guard would still half work. He could save someone, but not everyone. I'd be happy with the game play results of that ruling, still waiting on official word and an explanation of how that's what the rules say.

And now it's time for me to retract my last post and look like an idiot. From Nate French: remaining damage capacity considers assigned damage, so in this example the Royal Guard cannot redirect anything with protect. This doesn't break the game because having enough damage tokens is what causes destruction, not having a "remaining damage capacity" of zero.

dbmeboy said:

So I can be clear, French is saying that the instant Ackbar comes down everyone is assigned 1 damage. Because this would give the protect character a number of damage tokens equal to it's damage capacity, it cannot protect the other character. Right?