When you hit an obstacle, does the hit go through your shields, or do you just remove one shield?

For each damage or critical damage suffered, the ship must lose one shield token. If it has no shield tokens, it must receive one Damage card instead (see “Suffering Damage” on page 16 unless its damage from a proton bomb.

Yes, you lose shield tokens first to asteroids. The only exception currently in the game is Proton Bomb, which gives you a faceup damage card regardless of how many shield tokens you still have. Yes, this means that an untouched A-Wing who draws a Direct Hit from a proton bomb is destroyed even though he still have shields.

What they said.

But on a more hopefully helpful note, it's worth noting the wording of the rules makes this fairly clear (when you keep in mind this is one of the few things they seem to use with surprising consistency):

"Suffering" damage is a pretty important keyword, and page 16 takes you to the step by step rules on 'suffering' damage, which checks for shield tokens before doing any damage to your hull. Any time you see 'suffer' used in context to taking damage, you know that it follows these same steps in order and does not ignore shields.

Thanks guys. Very helpful.

...unless its damage from a proton bomb.

This is a dangerous confusion of terminology. A common one, to be sure, but still bad.

Proton Bombs don't deal damage. They deal cards. If they dealt damage, it would hit the shields. Proton Bombs don't have anything to do with damage at all.

There are three steps to the "damage" process in X-wing:

1. Attack results - {Hit} or {Critical Hit} icons on the dice

2. Damage

3. Cards

Attack results cause damage. Damage causes you to remove shield tokens or deal cards. Cards land on a ship and blow it up. So, Attack --> Damage --> Cards.

Where it gets interesting is that effects can be at any of these three steps. Once there, you follow through the rest of it. For example:

- Kir Kanos adds a hit result. That result, if uncanceled, becomes damage, which may deal cards (1->2->3)

- Obstacles add a result. There's no chance to cancel it, so it becomes damage, which may deal cards (1->2->3)

- Darth Vader (crew), Seismic Charges, or the Stunned Pilot effect deal damage. There are no results here, and nothing to cancel, you just proceed with 2 and 3 - the suffered damage will remove shields if possible, and deal cards if not. (2->3)

- Proton Bomb simply deals a card. You bypass the entire process for suffering damage, which means nothing even looks at shields. You just deal the card. (3)

Understanding the flow of results->damage->cards lets you understand pretty much every damage-related effect in the game.

I realize this thread was originally started in January, but I wanted to chime in with another obstacle / face up damage card scenario we encountered tonight playing through one of the CR90 missions.

In one of the turns, the CR90 ended it's move overlapping an asteroid. The dilemma we had was whether or not shields would absorb the damage or if shields would be bypassed due to the text in the rule book. In order to keep the game moving, we made an on the spot ruling based on page 16 of the rule book under suffering damage that the shields would absorb the hit. The game proceeded, but the decision didn't seem quite right so I started searching through the forums and found this thread.

Page 4 of the huge ship rules state, "When a huge ship executes a maneuver and the final position of one of its sections overlaps with one ore more obstacle tokens, the huge ship is dealt one faceup Damage card."

(For comparison, the Proton Bomb reference card states, "When this bomb token detonates, deal 1 faceup Damage card to each ship at Range 1 of the token.")

While small and large ships do roll dice to determine if they suffer any damage from overlapping (or passing through) an obstacle, according to this huge ships do not.

Based on what I've read in this thread, specifically Buhallin's walkthrough of the results -> damage -> cards flow, this sounds exactly like the Proton Bomb situation where there are no dice involved, the term "suffers" is absent, and subsequently a faceup card from the damage deck is dealt directly to the ship and thus bypasses any shields.

- Huge ship lands on an obstacle, it gets dealt a faceup damage card (3)

Can I get a confirmation / consensus on this?

Thanks!

Correct. Huge ship overlapping asteroid is dealt one face up damage card. Asteroid is destroyed.

Sorry to necro but I cant seem to get the latest faq or rulings on my **** tablet.

So what if a CRIPPLED section of a huge ship lands on an asteroid? If you deal a face up card for that section itmis meaningless. Also crippled sections suffer no damage. Had this situation today and we decided do destroy the asteroid and deel no damage card.

Sorry to necro but I cant seem to get the latest faq or rulings on my **** tablet.

So what if a CRIPPLED section of a huge ship lands on an asteroid? If you deal a face up card for that section itmis meaningless. Also crippled sections suffer no damage. Had this situation today and we decided do destroy the asteroid and deel no damage card.

Sorry to necro but I cant seem to get the latest faq or rulings on my **** tablet.

So what if a CRIPPLED section of a huge ship lands on an asteroid? If you deal a face up card for that section itmis meaningless. Also crippled sections suffer no damage. Had this situation today and we decided do destroy the asteroid and deel no damage card.

According to the rules as written, that is correct. I know there are some people though that house rule that that sort of damage will transfer to the other section if it lands on a crippled section.