Xxcha special ability, Assembly, Assembly II and Political II

By Orc Slaver, in Twilight Imperium 3rd Edition

The Xxcha ability states, "Immediately after a Political Card is drawn and read aloud, you may spend one Command Counter from your Strategy Allocation to cancel the card and force another Political Card to be drawn."

With Assembly and Assembly II, you rarely will draw and read aloud a Political Card. And with Political II, you never draw Political Cards at all.

Can the Xxcha veto Political Cards following the typical execution of Assembly, Assembly II and Political II?

Yes, the Xxcha can use their ability on all those cards, in these cases, you use the ability after a Political Card has been read aloud and put up for voting.

There is a rule about it for Assembly, SE Rules p14:

The Xxcha and the Assembly: The Xxcha player

can use his special ability (spending a Command

Counter from his Strategy Allocation area) to cancel a

Political Card after it is read aloud by the chosen

player. The chosen player then draws the top card of

the Political Deck, reads it aloud, and resolves it.

Interesting. Can the Xxcha use it's ability to cancel a vote on Voice of the Council?

The official FAQ has this to say about Voice of the Council:

Q: Do Action Cards that refer to “voting” apply when voting on who becomes Voice of the Council?
A: The vote for Voice of the Council is treated as a vote for an agenda, so cards that would apply to an agenda vote apply to the Voice of the Council vote.

Not exactly the same situation, but based on that "treated as a vote for an agenda" bit, I'd be inclined to say yes, Xxcha can cancel a vote for VotC.

I'd say you can't cancel the vote for VotC.

Normally you can change a PC for another with Xxcha. As the VotC is an objective and not a PC, I don't think the ability would apply, and if it did what would you do then? would you draw a PC from top deck and vote on 2 this round? It doesn't feel right to me.

I agree that voting on the VotC works as a normal agenda, bot putting it up for voting isn't the same as putting a normal PC up to vote.

The question that arise is this:

Is Voice of the Council considered a "Political Card" as far as the Xxcha ability is concerned?

If yes, then the vote is cancelled.

If not, then can the Nekro vote on Voice of the Council? The Nekro Virus ability says "You cannot vote on Political Cards or Agenda Cards".

It's a rule that might need some attention.