In a related post on Maarek Steele, a question was raised about how the critical damage is dealt from the Damage Deck when using his Pilot Ability.

Maarek Steele reads, when your attack deals a faceup Damage card to the defender, instead draw 3 Damage cards, choose 1 to deal, and discard the others.

The Core Rulebook says this about dealing damage.

Critical Damage (p16)
When a ship suffers damage, players deal the Damage card facedown and ignore the card's text. However, when a ship suffers critical damage, players deal the Damage card faceup.

This begs the question, upon resolving Maarek Steele's ability, does the player draw (and look at) the 3 Damage cards, choose 1 to stick, and discard the others? OR, does the player draw (facedown) 3 Damage cards, choose 1 to stick, THEN reveal it faceup, and then discard the other cards?

When taking critical damage, are cards drawn from the Damage Deck faceup? Clearly they are DEALT faceup, but "drawing" and "dealing" are two different things.

I would interpret it as the attacker gets to view each card and decide which critical to apply. Otherwise this ability is pure random and not much point to it. The damage cards are technically random anyway. I have always played being able to select the faceup damage card. No one I have played against has ever questioned it. Clearly, in my opinion, this ability is meant to increase double hull damage crits

KickinAces said:

Haha, yeah sersiously - if you were picking one facedown this ability would be 100% useless. XD

Cptnhalfbeard said:

That's what I said when I read the pilot skill. However, it wasn't clear enough to establish that you get to look and deal any crit you wish from the 3 cards picked…Just seems kind of cheap to be on the receiving end of that crit hit. In a way, that pilot skill is better than Vader's, saying you can manage to score critical hits all game.

Sprolly G said:

i don't agree that his ability is inexpensive. Let's look at Maarek Vs Storm squadron pilot. Maarek costs 4 more points, which is the equivalent of a concussion missile or a pricey elite upgrade. The 4 points is definitely not worth just the jump in pilot skill, so clearly he needs to do something cool. He only rolls 2 base attack dice, so his standard chances of even critting at all are quite slim. Seems appropriate to me.