I was just wondering about when gunner actually happens. In the rules, dice and rerolls on attacks happen before defense is rolled. With gunner, it sounds like it happens after the defense is rolled, which would mean that any focus or evade tokens spent on the first attack were essentially wasted, making gunner much more powerful.

So, which is it? Before or after defense dice are rolled?

Gunner is a separate attack, not a re-roll like a target lock. So, after the defense dice are rolled and modified, then if you did not hit, you can activate Gunner/Luke.

which would mean that any focus or evade tokens spent on the first attack were essentially wasted...

You have to consider carefully if you want to use that focus or evade to cancel a hit, knowing full well that the gunner/Luke may roll better then what you're looking at now. With Luke it's even more likely to be more damage.

A good example - I was playing a game with my wife last night, who was using Chewbacca YT with Luke as crew. She took a shot at me and landed 1 hit. I rolled to evade and wound up with a single focus - and I had a focus token. I ate that hit rather than spend the token to evade it, because I figured that if I gave her a brand new attack with Luke (one that got a free mini-focus action bonus, no less) I was probably going to get hit even harder, and now I'd have nothing to further mitigate damage with to defend it.

So rather than risk getting nailed for 2-3 damage on the Luke bonus attack, I just kept my focus token and ate the single hit. As he said; that's part of the power and tactics of playing with or against Gunner/Luke. Sometimes it's better to let one hit through than it is to evade it and then be left helpless against a SECOND attack which might roll better.

Gunner/Luke is after a miss. And sometimes forcing that miss is a tough call.

Han w/ Gunner shooting at one of those crazy Stealth Interceptors with both Focus and Evade tokens available can make the situation very challenging. The Imperial player may be able to spend tokens to avoid a hit and thus save the Stealth Device but if it does then that second attack comes and may not only blow the Device away anyway it could deal more damage. How much confidence does it take to risk an unknown second attack or accept a hit from an initial attack?

Good one, Steve. That's another agonizing example.

But back to the original question: as was pointed out, it's important to note that Gunner/Luke is not a reroll. It is a second, brand new attack, that triggers off of the first one missing. That's important because of its interaction with a number of other rules (target locks, Han's ability, etc) as well as timing, as you point out.

If it was a reroll, the timing might come into question. Because it's a new attack that only happens after the first attack has been resolved (and resolved as not landing one or more hits), it obviously can't take effect until the first attack, including any rerolls, focus tokens, special abilities, etc, have been used and resolved to completion.

Awesome. Thanks for the replies. I'm not sure why I was stuck on it being a reroll.

Because it FEELS a lot like a reroll. But you can use them if you miss with a secondary weapon, and you also don't have to take the second shot at the same target.

Because it FEELS a lot like a reroll. But you can use them if you miss with a secondary weapon, and you also don't have to take the second shot at the same target.

Keep in mind, the second shot with gunner is a PRIMARY weapon attack, even if the first attack was a secondary weapon.

A couple of those last statements can be important.

1. Gunner/Luke uses the ship's PRIMARY attack

2. That attack can be against any legal target.

What does this mean? A few examples:

1. A Falcon fires a missile at an Interceptor at long range and misses. Now the gunner triggers and instead of trying that very difficult shot decides to shoot at the Academy TIE Fighter that just flew past it and is closer even if it isn't in the front arc.

2. Ship fires Cluster Missile at the target (usually not a good weapon choice but bear with me) and the attack(s) miss. Now that the gunner fires it uses the primary weapon and if the target is at range one gets to roll the extra (normally 4) attack die.