Let's see if I can clarify myself... I think you may be doing something very simmilar of what you're accusing me of doing - the whole concept of triggers isn't named in the rulebook or FAQ, and not referenced in any ability, but without them, the game doesn't work. No matter which overarching framework we assume to exist, we have to assume something. I just wanted to illustrate an alternate fundamental perspective of the rules and the wording on the cards that functions in a way that didn't rely upon the words as triggers but words as timing windows.

The part I bolded here is, I think, the big difference between how I normally try to approach it, and what's going on here.

X-wing lacks deep and detailed timing rules and defined terminology. An awful lot of the foundation we use to figure out how abilities interact is based on extrapolation and reverse engineering.

But we (or at least I) do that to the minimal point possible. Without some sense of trigger timing, the game just doesn't work. Without some limitation on the number of times you can activate an ability in response to a trigger, the game just doesn't work. So we accept that.

The problem with pretty much every argument I see here (including the "timing window") is that while they may be in the same realm of reverse engineering the rules, it's way beyond any minimum requirement. Does anything break if we don't have a concept of cost, or distinguish how abilities work based on that? No - everything works just fine. Opportunist follows the same once-per-trigger that we expect of every other ability in the game. It still works, just not the way people want it to work.

Which is the other reason I'm not at all on board with the direction things are going here. It seems to me that this is not an attempt to figure out how Opportunist works - it's an attempt to justify how people want it to work. Nobody brought this up in regards to Elusiveness, because Elusiveness sucks. But a shiny new card that could give you +3 attack dice? Time to fire it up and find a way to make that work! The evolving thought process illustrates that perfectly - first it was cost, then cost didn't exist so it was choice, then it was whether it was a ship ability or upgrade ability, then it was maybe just EPT that was different, and now we're back to cost, which has the advantage of not being disprovable because it's never mentioned. That's not trying to figure out how the ability works, it's trying to make the ability work the way you want.

Is it possible that FFG has an inherent concept of cost that they've never articulated through the rules, that abilities which use that concept of cost are triggered and handled differently than pretty much every other ability in the game, and that they'll rule as people here seem to want? Probably depends on whether or not it's Tuesday. But based on every precedent we have in the game right now, every understanding of how every other ability works, Opportunist triggers once and has one opportunity (pun intended) to do its thing. Who the heck knows what FFG will do... but until they do, we should evaluate it based on previous precedent and other abilities, not try and invent a new distinction with a purpose.

You raise a good point. I think there's a world of difference between "let's look at the rules and try to figure out how this ability works within them," and "ok, here's how I want this rule to work. Now let's cut and paste bits and pieces of various parts of the rules and see if we can justify it working that way."

Since there was no buzz regarding the Imperial aces pack, I wonder if this was a rush-to-box attempt by FFG which led to new cards having to be quickly drawn up to make the product viable and play testing simply missed this combo.

The very worst that this combo could do is 8 dice (Interceptor base 3 + Range 1+ Opportunity's broken 4 only with Yorr) for the imperials. The most that is currently available is 6 (X-wing base 3 + Range 1+ Expose + Jan Ors) for the rebels.

If there were a squad that could contain Jan Ors and Yorr, wouldn't the same combo potentially exist. (For this argument, lets assume that the house rules only cover squad formation)

Jan Ors pilot ability:

"When another friendly ship at range 1-3 is attacking, if you have no stress tokens, you may receive 1 stress token to allow that ship to roll one additional attack dice."

By the current rules, how would the interaction breakdown between Jan and Yorr?

8 dice, possibly focused and/or target locked, in a single shot would be pretty close to the definition of game breaking.

If Jan and Yorr could be in the same squad, Jan would be able to use her ability on multiple attacks during a turn, but still only once per attack, because the trigger is "When another friendly ship at range XXX is attacking." Exactly the same as Howlrunner's trigger.

8 dice, possibly focused and/or target locked, in a single shot would be pretty close to the definition of game breaking.

I totally agree.

If Jan and Yorr could be in the same squad, Jan would be able to use her ability on multiple attacks during a turn, but still only once per attack, because the trigger is "When another friendly ship at range XXX is attacking." Exactly the same as Howlrunner's trigger.

You have the "triggering" phrase correct. Jan ors ability only starts when another ship in range attacks. What you don't mention is how the stress for a die should be resolved.

The limiter on some abilities that are out there is that you cannot use it if you have a stress token. Opportunity and Elusiveness are two currently being discussed.

Yorr creates a new problem in that he can remove the stress "before receiving" it. That means that an Imperial pilot could take a stress token to use the ability as normal but come away without the stress. From the rulebook, we know that a pilot can get more than one stress in a round. Which leads to important questions that I'm looking to get answered.

Can a pilot give himself multiple stress token in a round when using one ability?

Can an ability, that is not an action, be used more than once in the same step?

These are very new conundrums that Yorr has created and some players are going to make these logical leaps.

I am playing devils advocate on this one as I don't believe this whole interaction is correct. What I would like to see if we can point out the rule element that is lacking that is causing this.

The rules are vague to keep them simple and easy to pick up and go for the core set, however, each new wave is getting into more complex card interactions without the necessary solidly stated checks in place.

Sergovan, This was my intent, and the point i was trying to make.

I went about it by trying to find an alternate rules framework that left the current gameplay intact, to see if another possible structure existed. - it lead to the conclusion that you could create a set of rules to govern abilities with a cost, that are not "action:" or "Attack:" abilities.

The Designers stated multiple times that they intended to create a game that had multiple levels of play - from the quick start, to the full on squad building etc... I hope that they see the number of interactions increasing, and read these discussions - Buhallin has said that they are aware of the "Turret weapon" issue, so perhaps we will see a "higher level" of rules.

I believe that the following rules elements are lacking

- Definitions of ability costs, and how often / when those costs can be paid, Vader, Jan, Elusiveness and Opportunist all appear to have costs. All of these are wave 3 or post wave 3. I've searched through all the abilities and cards for any other upgrade card or pilot that has something that appears to be a non action / non attack cost. Technically, Actions are costs as well (spend one action to activate that ability... if you don't have the action to spend, you can't do it) - Also, you could argue that tokens are generally used to pay costs, and that modification abilities have costs.

- Definitions of Triggers, specifically ones that act as interrupts (Advanced Sensors interacting with the Ion cannon is a pretty good example of an "interrupt" in other games.

The approach the others are arguing (One ability use per trigger) has a nice symmetry with the rest of the game rules (Ships receive one action, ships may not take the same action more than once) The simplicity and lack of game breaking suggests that the "one use per activation" idea is sound.

P.S. to answer your question - I can't think of any, Daredevil is as close as you get to 2 stress per use - If you have the damaged engine crit, as the Daredevil turn would become a red maneuver and then give you a stress. But - we already discovered that the red maneuver in the action phase didn't give you stress which was the reason for the errata - so it's a moot example.

If A ship could have daredevil AND push the limit - Yorr could recieve two stress in short order from that interaction. still not quite relevant.

I do not think Opportunity is broken unless you attempt to put multiple extra dice on a single attack in a single turn.

IMHO I do believe that it is and should be limited to one use per attack. I don't see any precedence for an alternative interpretation.

If so how would you get 8 dice?

Three pages... just because of a conditional ability?

There is a condition "When attacking"

The ability can be used whenever the condition is met.

The same gamestate can not trigger the same condition more than once.

There are conditional abilites with the potential to trigger themself, but it's wirtten on the card itself it's not allowed.

Like Luke/Gunner would create an endless chain of attacks if every attack misses.

Or Push the Limit would trigger itself for even more actions.

But Opportunist is not able to trigger itself, so no endless chain.

Why can't a condition be triggerd multiple times with the same gamestate?

"Whenever I won a game against you, I may pay 1$ to the bank to make you pay me 10$".

If I have 10$ and you have 100$, and I won one game against you... now how much money am i allowed to get?

Am I allowed to make you pay me 10$ ten times, because I am able to pay the cost ten times?

Ken - I think the idea was that Yorr pulls 3 stress, and then you can put one more on the pilot for 4 stress, with each stress equating to an additional die, so, interceptor at range 1 rolls 4, 4+4 = 8.

Even if this were ruled as functional - you'd have to be doing green maneuvers with yorr and the opportunist ship, keeping them in range one, and even then you'd not get the "alpha strike" back immediately, because you can only remove one stress at a time. It's still pretty op, because the dual ships means you can remove 2 stress per turn - and the stress occurs in a place where you'd be able to focus as well, however it'd be easy to get out of the way of that duo, I think.

Why can't a condition be triggerd multiple times with the same gamestate?

"Whenever I won a game against you, I may pay 1$ to the bank to make you pay me 10$".

If I have 10$ and you have 100$, and I won one game against you... now how much money am i allowed to get?

Am I allowed to make you pay me 10$ ten times, because I am able to pay the cost ten times?

Depends very much on the parameters of the game, and if cost is defined as part of the conditional state. In a game like Magic the Gathering, absolutely, you could pay the cost 10 times. In X-wing? Parameters are still undefined - I expect the next FAQ update will sort this out though.

I do think it's worth pointing out, the entire concept of 'paying a cost' for an ability in X-Wing is tenuous at best. Certainly no such wording exists anywhere in the game. So I think part of the confusion is that a lot of CCG players who are USED to paying ability costs are trying to apply that logic to a game where, as far as we know so far, you simply meet the circumstances listed on the card and do what it tells you to. In which case "when attacking" means something more like "when you make an attack" and not "while you're attacking."

Three pages... just because of a conditional ability?

There is a condition "When attacking"

The ability can be used whenever the condition is met.

The same gamestate can not trigger the same condition more than once.

There are conditional abilites with the potential to trigger themself, but it's wirtten on the card itself it's not allowed.

Like Luke/Gunner would create an endless chain of attacks if every attack misses.

Or Push the Limit would trigger itself for even more actions.

But Opportunist is not able to trigger itself, so no endless chain.

Why can't a condition be triggerd multiple times with the same gamestate?

"Whenever I won a game against you, I may pay 1$ to the bank to make you pay me 10$".

If I have 10$ and you have 100$, and I won one game against you... now how much money am i allowed to get?

Am I allowed to make you pay me 10$ ten times, because I am able to pay the cost ten times?

You hit it on the head Z (and don't feel bad, we did ELEVEN pages on a similar topic until someone's feelings got hurt yesterday and the thread got locked).

The game state can only trigger once, but people are trying to read into it that as long as the conditions 'remain' met, you can trigger the effect over and over and over again, even though I don't know of a single rule or effect in X-Wing that actually works this way. As I said, it's trying to apply MTG logic to X-Wing, even though the entire concept of "paying a cost" to trigger an effect doesn't exist as such.

I do think it's worth pointing out, the entire concept of 'paying a cost' for an ability in X-Wing is tenuous at best. Certainly no such wording exists anywhere in the game. So I think part of the confusion is that a lot of CCG players who are USED to paying ability costs are trying to apply that logic to a game where, as far as we know so far, you simply meet the circumstances listed on the card and do what it tells you to. In which case "when attacking" means something more like "when you make an attack" and not "while you're attacking."

For the record I do come from a CCG background where 'pay x amount of stuff for y amount of effect where x and y have some sort of relationship (typically x = y)' is common. This definitely coloured my reading of both Opportunist and Elusiveness and I didn't have the slightest inkling that this would be a controversial opinion!

For me here one of two things is happening:

1 - FFG are expanding the game by slowly adding cost limited (rather than action or timing limited) abilties.

2 - FFG aren't expanding the game in this direction at the moment and Occam's razor should be applied so that you read 'When attacking...' as 'Once per attack...' (and seriously guys, wouldn't that have been a better opening phrase?)

Neither approach will be game-breaking - a single 8 die attack per game that requires you to pin the a manueverable yet fragile fighter to a shuttle and have it live to shoot etc. will simply add another strategic wrinkle to the meta game. Equally limiting it to once per attack merely makes it Expose by another name. We won't know either way until FFG respond to my question, either directly or in the next FAQ.

I propose that we draw a line under this until we get the official word on the matter. Fly casual!

Even magic has abilities with conditions... Triggerd Ability. Ask any MtG player, this part works the same.

Depends very much on the parameters of the game, and if cost is defined as part of the conditional state. In a game like Magic the Gathering, absolutely, you could pay the cost 10 times. In X-wing? Parameters are still undefined - I expect the next FAQ update will sort this out though.

"when condition A is true, you may resolve effect B to resolve effect C"

Let's try it with the cost (effect B) as part of the condition:

"When ((condition A is true) and (effect B is resolved)), resolve effect C"

The cost (effect B) is now part of the condition... and it still triggers only 1 time since "condition A" is still part of the whole condition.

Edit:

Since there are some people here arguing with Magic Rules...

The card reads like this:

"When 'ship' creature attacks, you may pay 1 'stress' mana. 'ship' creature gets +1/+0 if you paid 1 'stress' mana"
And not like

"When 'ship' creature attacks, 'ship' creature gains: "pay 1 stress mana: 'ship' creature gets +1/+0""
See the diffrence?

Three pages... just because of a conditional ability?

There is a condition "When attacking"

The ability can be used whenever the condition is met.

The same gamestate can not trigger the same condition more than once.

There are conditional abilites with the potential to trigger themself, but it's wirtten on the card itself it's not allowed.

Like Luke/Gunner would create an endless chain of attacks if every attack misses.

Or Push the Limit would trigger itself for even more actions.

But Opportunist is not able to trigger itself, so no endless chain.

Why can't a condition be triggerd multiple times with the same gamestate?

"Whenever I won a game against you, I may pay 1$ to the bank to make you pay me 10$".

If I have 10$ and you have 100$, and I won one game against you... now how much money am i allowed to get?

Am I allowed to make you pay me 10$ ten times, because I am able to pay the cost ten times?

You hit it on the head Z (and don't feel bad, we did ELEVEN pages on a similar topic until someone's feelings got hurt yesterday and the thread got locked).

The game state can only trigger once, but people are trying to read into it that as long as the conditions 'remain' met, you can trigger the effect over and over and over again, even though I don't know of a single rule or effect in X-Wing that actually works this way. As I said, it's trying to apply MTG logic to X-Wing, even though the entire concept of "paying a cost" to trigger an effect doesn't exist as such.

One did until it was errated. Expert handling. An ship could barrel role more than once because barrel role, on the card, was not an action. You could do it more than once which was deemed to be broken. So it was updated in the FAQ to be an action and then the rule of "you can't do the same action twice" kicked in preventing the multiple barrel roles.

But Opportunist and Elusiveness are not actions. You therefore could do them more than once in a step/turn/phase because they are only limited by gaining a stress token (of the ship using the ability). Yorr mitigates gaining that stress token so the limiting factor doesn't get to kick in.

What I think should be done is the next FAQ should change Yorr's ability from "before receiving" to "after receiving". That would allow the stress token to act as it should, as a means of stopping this from chaining. How that may apply to other ship/card abilities may become a problem. I wonder if it is written as "before" so that crit stress damage could be bypassed?

See the diffrence?

Again, it's a matter of consistency as we try to reverse-engineer this mess.

Do we have anything that specifically says you can only use an ability once per trigger? No, but I can offer a dozen different examples where the game explodes in a complete chaotic mess if that rule doesn't exist. IMHO, that's pretty good support for assuming that rule exists.

Do we have anything that specifically says "cost" abilities are limited differently than others? No. Are there any cases where the game explodes without that difference? No.

That's the difference here. Neither is explicitly stated in the rules, but one is strongly supported by the simple fact that the game rules don't work without it. Is it possible that FFG is expanding things in a new direction, and those "costs" may prove to be a differentiator is now we handle abilities? Sure, but as of right now there's literally NOTHING to support that case.

But Opportunist and Elusiveness are not actions. You therefore could do them more than once in a step/turn/phase because they are only limited by gaining a stress token (of the ship using the ability). Yorr mitigates gaining that stress token so the limiting factor doesn't get to kick in.

We're all paying the cost for vaguely worded rules and slow FAQ updates.

How did we come up with 8 dice, anyway? I think someone said 4 dice via Yorr, but his ability quits working after he takes 2 stress, right? So how would he be able to let you use Opportunist 4 times even if it did work that way?

At any rate, putting that aside for a moment, the problem I have is that you have this nice little flow; someone attacks, uses Opportunist, gets an extra die, generates a stress - Yorr takes that stress from them. But there's nothing I've seen that says taking that stress away immediately restarts the process. It's a nice theory, but as has been pointed out, nobody has shown where such a thing is supported in the rules, and "well it doesn't say you CAN'T do it over and over" isn't a valid, supported argument.

There's just nothing I'm aware of that says 'if this stress token goes away, you may immediately take another stress and add another attack die, repeat ad infinitum.' Getting the extra attack die and then NOT winding up with a stress token afterward is a pretty good effect in and of itself, and there's just no real evidence that the game intends you to restart the cycle if the stress goes away somehow.

How did we come up with 8 dice, anyway? I think someone said 4 dice via Yorr, but his ability quits working after he takes 2 stress, right? So how would he be able to let you use Opportunist 4 times even if it did work that way?

Max with Yorr involved would be +3. The ability works on any attack though, so you could theoretically stack that on top of an Advanced Proton Torpedo for 8. 7's a more realistic maximum though.

Oh, right. You pass off the first two, maxing out his ability, and then are stuck with the 3rd yourself. Got it.

Yorr's ability activates with 2 or less so he can take up to 3 stress tokens, leaving the 4th for the Opportunist ship.

CW: You hit on one of my earlier questions. Since Opportunist isn't an action, you can do it as many times until you get a stress token, which stops it. But what if I choose to take all 4 stress tokens in one shot, all at the same time? Can I? Yorr takes 3 before I receive them on my ship and I get the 4th to keep, and stops Opportunist. Or can I take Opportunist 4 times in the same stoppage (I doubt this version of running Opportunist but I know someone, somewhere will try it at a tournament)

Buhallin: You keep on referencing Howlrunner, however I think your argument is a little flawed. Howlrunners ability isn't a "do something for something" in structure. It is an "if this occurs, then this happens" in structure. If you are within range 1 of Howlrunner you get 1 die to reroll. As many ships that can be within range 1 of Howlrunner can get this 1 die reroll option. You can't roll more than one die because her ability grants a singular reroll only if you meet the conditions to get it.

If you could meet the conditions more than once with the same ship ( a virtual impossibility) the yes, you could take more than one reroll.