Preparation for Battle + Renegade Squadron Escort

By The_Crow86, in Star Wars: The Card Game - Rules Questions

Hi all,

I was wondering the following: If I have Preparation for Battle out and the dial is 4 or lower, then I play a Renegade Squadron Escort with other vehicles. If I am able to put a shield onto the escort, can I just redirect all damage from every other vehicle to my escort and say: Well, it is shielded, it cannot be damaged? That would make a whole fleet invulnerable, but I am not sure this is ruled this way. Can you help me out here, please?

The_Crow86 said:

I was wondering the following: If I have Preparation for Battle out and the dial is 4 or lower, then I play a Renegade Squadron Escort with other vehicles. If I am able to put a shield onto the escort, can I just redirect all damage from every other vehicle to my escort and say: Well, it is shielded, it cannot be damaged? That would make a whole fleet invulnerable, but I am not sure this is ruled this way. Can you help me out here, please?

This was asked of FFG recently offline. The answer was that if something "cannot be damaged", it means that damage cannot be assigned to it - be it by combat icons, card effects, protect, moving damage, etc. They confirmed that a Protector (eg in the situation above) could not have damage re-directed to it by the Protector's owner, because damage can't be assigned to it. So no, you can't make the damage all disappear if there are eligible targets to hit.

If there are no eligible targets, then no damage is assigned out (in much the same way that attacking units don't get to damage anything if there are no defenders, and they don't have targeted strike, as an example).

It's likely FAQ bound.