Chewbacca's reaction allows him to deal double the amount of damage just dealt to him, back at the opponent. I'm assuming that if a single unit does enough damage to kill Chewbacca (ie: someones does 4 damage in one attack) that Chewie dies before he can use his reaction. Is this correct, or does the reaction take place before the card leaves play? The rulebook says units who receive damage equal to their damage capacity are IMMEDIATELY discarded, but I wanted to check this interpretation.

correct, if he is dealt enough damage to kill him his reaction doesn't go off. also keep in mind, his reaction only goes off if he t akes damage during an engagement (whether he is in it or not), and he can only do damage back to participating units in the engagement.

If it were an interrupt then it would go off when he died but because it is a reaction it happens after the triggering event (not an event card) has resolved, in this case the damage. Once a unit has reached its damage capacity it is immediately discarded and by then it is too late for the Reaction to trigger.

Ok, so what if Chewbacca has an Old Ben's Spirit on him?

Say Chewbacca already has 2 damage on him. Then he gets hit for 3 damage from a strike from an opposing unit during an engagement. I prevent his destruction and remove all damage. Does removing the damage somehow change the fact that Chewbacca was dealt damage? Could I, in this instance:

A. Prevent his destruction

B. Use Chewbacca's ability to retaliate for 6 damage

C. Remove all damage from Chewbacca

I know I can do A and C regardless, what I'm really asking about is B.

Micah

Excellent question. The sequence for an effect is interrupt, execute, reaction. Here's how I'd rule on it:

Chewbacca is to be dealt 3 damage.

Interrupt: OBS interrupts and wipes out all the damage.

Execute: If there is damage to be dealt, it would be dealt now, but there's not. OBS has cancelled it, meaning ...

Reaction: There's no damage to react to.

One of the conversations I've had with the design team in the past is just because it's said that a character deals damage to another, it doesn't mean that damage is actually dealt. Damage is only dealt if there actually ends up being damage on the receiving character. Only then can it be said that the attacker dealt damage and the receiver was dealt damage.

Because Chewbacca ended the sequence with no damage on him, this conversation leads me to think that no damage is dealt and therefore that Chewbacca's reaction doesn't kick in. But these are just my thoughts. It could well be worth asking FFG.

You know, I was just about to write a post concurring with PBrennan and I went to double check Chewie's text.

Reaction: After this unit is dealt damage during an engagement, it deals twice that much damage to a target participating enemy unit.

And OBS.

Interrupt : When enhanced unit would be destroyed, instead discard this enhancement and remove all damage from that unit.

So, if Chewie is dealt lethal damage and has OBS on him, OBS stops death and clears the damage off. However, Chewie was still dealt damage. That ends. Chewie's death begins, but is interrupted. Now the question is did Chewie's reaction miss it's window? Because OBS does not cancel damage, the damage was still dealt. OBS interrupts the death sequence.

So I think, like I said above, the big question now is, 'Does Chewie's reaction miss its window if it is after the death sequence?'

The damage is definitely dealt to Chewbacca, Old Ben's Spirit kicks in after damage is dealt but before he is destroyed.

I think Chewbacca's reaction would be able to kick in after he is saved by Old Ben's Spirit, removing the damage doesn't change the fact that he was just dealt damage.

Excellent question. The sequence for an effect is interrupt, execute, reaction. Here's how I'd rule on it:

Chewbacca is to be dealt 3 damage.

Interrupt: OBS interrupts and wipes out all the damage.

Execute: If there is damage to be dealt, it would be dealt now, but there's not. OBS has cancelled it, meaning ...

Reaction: There's no damage to react to.

One of the conversations I've had with the design team in the past is just because it's said that a character deals damage to another, it doesn't mean that damage is actually dealt. Damage is only dealt if there actually ends up being damage on the receiving character. Only then can it be said that the attacker dealt damage and the receiver was dealt damage.

Because Chewbacca ended the sequence with no damage on him, this conversation leads me to think that no damage is dealt and therefore that Chewbacca's reaction doesn't kick in. But these are just my thoughts. It could well be worth asking FFG.

OBS interrupts the destruction, not the damage, so you would still get the reaction to the damage being dealt, and Chewie would come out smelling like a rose with no damage.

The reason this works is that the damage was dealt, because all three damage would technically be placed on Chewie (since all 3 is dealt at the same time), then the mechanics would try to discard him because he reached/exceeded his damage capacity and OBS would interrupt, removing the damage.

After the damage is removed, it's a question whether FFG wants to use the "no memory" excuse... which seems to only be in effect sporatically to confuse people... or not, becuse if the game can remember that the damage was dealt and not cancelled, even though it was subsequently removed, then this should work without a hitch

After the damage is removed, it's a question whether FFG wants to use the "no memory" excuse... which seems to only be in effect sporatically to confuse people... or not, becuse if the game can remember that the damage was dealt and not cancelled, even though it was subsequently removed, then this should work without a hitch.

I don't think the 'no memory' thing would come into play here. Damage was dealt. Period. THEN, the character began to die. OBS interrupts the dying, it doesn't 'cancel' the damage dealt. The question is, does Chewie's reaction go off where I typed Period above, or can it wait until after the auto-dying. By having to wait until after the dying and the interrupt of OBS, did his reaction miss its window?

Page 21:

capacity is ignored .

Just for reference. Also, a Chewie with two damage on him already truly only takes one more damage.

Page 21:

When a card has a number of damage tokens with

value equal to or greater than its damage capacity, it is

immediately destroyed. Damage in excess of its damage

capacity is ignored .

Just for reference. Also, a Chewie with two damage on him already truly only takes one more damage.

good point. I was more referring to whether it works for any damage. I wasn't remembering that excess damage is ignored.

For those of you that want to capitalize on this, though... being ignored doesn't mean not dealt for the purposes of there being damage left after OBS. Just for the purposes of responses such as how much damage to deal back with Chewie.

One of the conversations I've had with the design team in the past is just because it's said that a character deals damage to another, it doesn't mean that damage is actually dealt. Damage is only dealt if there actually ends up being damage on the receiving character. Only then can it be said that the attacker dealt damage and the receiver was dealt damage.

Hmmmm...that's an interesting point. Only damaged if damage actually lands on it...so I can see how shields and the protect keyword would play a part here. But in the case of Chewbacca, a damage token was in fact placed on him, otherwise the interrupt on Old Ben's Spirit would never have gone off in the first place. Then the damage token comes right back off due to the interrupt. But it was there, albeit briefly.

I guess if Old Ben's Spirit somehow prevented or canceled the damage being placed, then yeah...but Old Ben's Spirit doesn't prevent damage, it just prevents the destruction after damage has actually been placed, then removes all existing damage. Based on that reasoning, I think the combo works.

Thank you for bringing this up. This kind of discussion was exactly what I was hoping for.

Micah

I'm definitely not wedded to my answer, can see it being ruled either way. I'll ask.

The underlying question is whether OBS negates the fact that damage was dealt (because it ends up with no damage). Here's the ruling from the development team:

"Chewbacca can return the damage. This is the inverse of "Can Boba Fett capture someone that Old Ben's Spirit saved?" (the answer to which was "yes"). In both cases, the damage was dealt, otherwise there would have been no reason for the use of Old Ben's Spirit. (Just like Boba Fett's Reaction doesn't look for there being damage from his ability on the target, only that they took some from his strike)."

(I wasn't aware of the Boba Q&A, otherwise I think I would have answered differently above.)

Knowing this, I think it says we can rule in future that the difference between OBS and other cancellation effects is that it negates the result (leaving play) but doesn't negate how the result came about (damage dealt), whereas other cancellation effects cancel how the result came about (damage dealt) which means the result (leaving play) doesn't get to happen.