Level Two - Lesson 3
Advanced Core Rules - Modified Actions and Nested Abilities
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Hello there!
Welcome back to the level two lessons for the Star Wars™: Unlimited Judge Program!
As always, I’m your host Jonah, and today I’ll be talking about some of the advanced core rules, in particular Modified Actions and Nested Abilities.
This is where a lot of confusion comes in for many players, especially players coming from other games. It creates a whole boatload of questions, and it’s something that can frustrate a lot of people, trying to understand exactly how it works.
As we’ve discussed before, generally, the rules are designed to be intuitive and consistent and they are, generally speaking, but there are times when the rules stop being intuitive in favor of being consistent, which is critical for a working game engine, rather than many disparate scenarios that a player (or judge) would simply have to memorize uniquely.
Without further ado, let’s dive in.
Modified Actions
As we know, actions include playing a card, attacking with a unit, or using an action ability. Modified Actions are the result of an ability instructing a player to take one of those actions, as opposed to the player choosing to take that action for their turn. You can find the exact text for Modified Actions in 7.1.6
A modified action may have additional effects attached, such as restrictions, changes to how the action resolves, or many other effects, but does not necessarily have to have those additional effects. When a player is instructed to take a modified action, they must perform that action if possible, with the exception of actions that involve hidden information, such as Energy Conversion Lab’s ability “Play a unit that costs 6 or less from your hand.”
Any modifications to the action occur at the appropriate step of the action, which is usually before it fully resolves. For example, Admiral Piett - Commanding the Armada has a modified action that allows you to play a Capital Ship unit from your hand, and modifies the cost of the card during the “determine costs” step of playing a card.
Han Solo - Worth the Risk has two modifications, one is the cost modification, and the other is dealing two damage to the unit, which is dealt as soon as possible. The damage will be dealt as soon as it can. Units not in play can’t be assigned damage, and so it waits until the unit is in play, but the damage is part of the ability resolving. Constant abilities will apply to the unit, but triggers won’t occur until after the ability has finished resolving.
This deserves a quick and classic example.
Let’s say you control the leader Han Solo - Worth the Risk and activate his ability to play Stolen Landspeeder. What happens?
This is, of course, a modified action, so we go through the steps of playing a card, modifying where appropriate. The cost is reduced by one, to a total cost of zero, so you don’t have to pay any resources.
Then, as Stolen Landspeeder enters play, it is dealt two damage. That damage has to occur before any triggers begin to resolve, because it is part of the action of playing the card. Furthermore, before we can resolve any triggers, we perform a check for game state maintenance, which catches that the Landspeeder has zero remaining HP and is defeated. Then the trigger can resolve, but it won’t do anything in this case.
Similarly, a Lieutenant Childsen - Death Star Prison Warden wouldn’t be able to survive being played by Han, but an Academy Defense Walker would be able to benefit from its own trigger.
For both modified Play a Card and Use an Action Ability actions, triggers won’t occur until the modified action has completed. With, of course, a few exceptions. Modified Attack with a Unit actions still have triggers occur at the appropriate steps during the attack.
First, per 7.6.8, triggers can interrupt a resolving action or ability if there is a part of the ability that occurs “after” something else that occurs.
As of Jump to Lightspeed, this rule applies to one card - Barrel Roll. Only triggers caused from the attack action, not from playing Barrel Roll, can interrupt this event.
For example, if you had a Bossk - Deadly Stalker, there’s no possibility of dealing damage to a space sentinel before the attack occurs, or before the second part of the event, which would exhaust a unit.
The other key exception is in 7.1.7 - if a player is instructed to take multiple actions, such as attacking with multiple units or playing multiple cards, any triggers caused by those actions resolve those triggers as nested triggers, and at the appropriate time.
Any triggers caused by the action that created the instruction, however, will wait to resolve until the action has finished resolving, as normal.
A straightforward example is with U-Wing Reinforcement. If you reveal a Warzone Lieutenant, a Veteran Fleet Officer, and Admiral Ackbar - Brilliant Strategist, and control no other units, how can the triggers resolve?
Let’s go step by step - you can choose to play the cards in any order. The order in which you resolve the Lieutenant and the Veteran doesn’t matter, but after you play the Veteran, its When Played ability will trigger and resolve before you play your next unit. If you end the sequence with Admiral Ackbar, you’ll have three ground units and one space unit, allowing you to direct damage as you choose.
You could also play Admiral Ackbar first, and deal one damage to a ground unit.
Of course, this is already stepping on the toes of the next section a little bit - Nested Abilities, so let’s just start talking about them!
Nested Abilities
We now look at sections 7.6.11 and 7.6.12. Nested abilities like modified actions are not extensively covered in the Comprehensive Rules, but bring a lot of questions to the community.
After resolving a triggered ability, if any abilities were triggered while resolving it, the new abilities are considered nested and must be resolved before any other abilities triggered in the same window as the initial triggered ability.
Let’s immediately look at a classic example, with Darth Vader - Commanding the First Legion being played, while your opponent controls a Hevy - Staunch Martyr.
Two triggers occur initially: his Ambush and When Played.
If you choose to resolve the Ambush first, and attack Hevy, Hevy will be defeated (that’s what you get for standing up to the Dark Lord of the Sith). That causes Hevy’s ability to be triggered, and we now have two triggers waiting to resolve.
Because Hevy’s ability didn’t occur at the same time as Vader’s when played, it is nested, and must resolve first. If Hevy’s damage causes a unit with a When Defeated of it’s own to be defeated, that trigger is also nested, and must also resolve before Vader’s when played.
Finally, after the nested triggers have been resolved, Vader’s ability can resolve and you can search the top ten cards of your deck.
In another galaxy, you choose to resolve Vader’s when played first, and then the Ambush. If you reveal Droid Commando off the top of your deck (while controlling a Separtist), and choose to play it, you must resolve the Ambush before you can resolve Vader’s Ambush. You can, of course, choose not to attack with the Commando, and then Vader’s Ambush would resolve.
Putting it Together
Let’s go back up to 7.1.6E. “If an ability instructs a player to take a modified action, any abilities triggered during or as a result of that action are considered nested abilities.”
What does that mean? One way to think of it is that it means that you can consider modified actions to act somewhat like triggers when determining when things can and should resolve.
Let’s go through a couple of examples with playing different events with our friend Bossk - Deadly Stalker in play, to demonstrate.
You control Bossk and play Takedown on your opponent’s Vanguard Infantry. What happens?
First, you play the Takedown and Bossk triggers, but because we’re in the middle of an action, it doesn’t begin to resolve. Then Takedown defeats the Infantry, and it triggers. Then Takedown finishes resolving.
At this point, there are two triggers waiting to resolve, and you, as the active player, can choose which one you want to have resolve first.
This is because defeating a unit is not a modified action, and so all triggers will wait until the event finishes resolving
Let’s try it again, but with you playing Timely Intervention to play a Super Laser Technician to ambush your opponent’s Vanguard Infantry. What happens this time?
First, you play the Timely, and Bossk triggers, and like before, Bossk isn’t allowed to resolve. Then you play the Technician, and Ambush triggers. This ability was caused by a modified action (the instruction to play the unit), and so it does meet the conditions to be a nested ability.
That means that the Ambush must resolve now. We resolve it, and then, after the Ambush finishes resolving, the event finishes resolving, and finally Bossk can be resolved.
The interaction of Timely Intervention and Bossk - Deadly Stalker is similar to that of Timely and Hondo Ohnaka - That’s Good Business.
Let’s say you play that Timely Intervention again with Smuggle - Hondo triggers, but can’t resolve yet, as we have a modified action that we need to complete first - playing the unit from hand. We play that unit, and it creates an Ambush trigger which is nested. That means that the Ambush has to resolve before Hondo’s experience can be placed on the unit.
This is different from the interaction with Hondo and Weequay Pirate Gang. When you play Weequay Pirate Gang via smuggle, you have a modified action that is causing two triggers, and so both of them are nested. However, because they triggered at the same point, the Active Player gets to choose the order in which they resolve.
This is different than the Timely Intervention interaction, because one trigger is coming from a card being played with Smuggle, and another trigger is coming from the unit being played as opposed to both triggers coming from the Weequay Pirate Gang being played.
Another example of modified actions interacting with nested abilities would be playing U-Wing Reinforcement against your opponent’s Krayt Dragon. You choose to play a Millennium Falcon - Piece of Junk and a Fleet Lieutenant. What happens?
Let’s go step by step.
First you play U-Wing, which triggers Krayt Dragon. The Krayt Dragon trigger for seven damage must wait for U-Wing Reinforcement to finish resolving.
Next, you play Millennium Falcon - Piece of Junk. This triggers Krayt Dragon again this time for three damage. Because playing the unit is a modified action, and we complete modified actions in sequence, we must resolve the Krayt Dragon trigger before moving on, and the three damage is dealt. The seven damage trigger is still waiting to happen.
Then we play Fleet Lieutenant. This triggers Krayt Dragon a third time, again for three damage. We finish resolving Fleet Lieutenant and have a When Played trigger from it as well. Since we have two triggers that are trying to resolve in the same window, the Active Player chooses which player resolves their triggers first.
Assuming we resolve the Fleet Lieutenant first, we can attack with the Millennium Falcon (because it entered play ready), and get damage in. Both the seven damage trigger and the second three damage trigger are still waiting to resolve when we make this attack. Furthermore, if there are any triggers that come from the attack, they resolve at the appropriate point during the attack, while the Krayt triggers are still waiting.
After the attack, the three points of damage can be dealt. If either of these instances of Krayt Dragon dealing three damage causes a unit with a When Defeated trigger to be defeated, we handle that before proceeding.
Finally, with nothing else waiting to resolve, the U-Wing Reinforcement completely resolved, the Krayt Dragon can deal its seven damage. This means that the Non-Active Player can make the decision about where to assign that damage with maximum information.
Now, I did promise a question about Ezra Bridger - Resourceful Troublemaker, Leia Organa - Alliance General, Rebel Assault, and Clone.
Rather than going over it again, I’ll direct you to check out our rules clarifications page, where you can read about eight step process there and some involuntary twitching of ears on behalf of the Rules Admiral of the game.
In any case, that’s all for now. Join us next time as we begin to cover some questions that resulted in clarifications from the designers, many of which are points of confusion and uncertainty for players.. If you’re watching this on YouTube, and you want more level two lessons in your feed, go ahead and subscribe. Join us Tuesdays and Fridays on twitch.tv/swu_judges for live broadcasts covering the content of these lessons as they are released, and join the Star Wars: Unlimited Judge Program Discord to join the community in discussion of this and much, much more.
As always, good luck, and have fun.