Level Two - Lesson 4

Common Clarifications (Part 1)

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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 common clarifications. The Comprehensive Rules strives to be exactly what it says on the front cover - comprehensive. However the game is a complicated one and new cards are released regularly and sometimes there’s a clash between technical language and common-use language, and so there is frequently some confusion about how cards work.

This is where the clarifications come in. Both judges and players frequently seek more insight into how the game is supposed to work, and the designers and developers have been very generous in responding to online questions, as well as questions submitted through the Judge program.

Last week, I talked about how having consistent rules prevents players and judges from having to memorize specific rulings for particular interactions.

But as mentioned above, the rules, while they strive towards comprehensiveness, don’t hit that mark in every section of the rules. So... clarifications. If you want to follow along with these next few lessons and see the original source from the developers answering the questions, check out https://nexus.cascadegames.com/resources/Rules_Clarifications/

We’re going to focus this lesson on frequently asked questions that focus more on individual cards, as opposed to sections of the rules or whole mechanics. We’re not even going to get through all of them, as there are quite a few.

Without further ado, let’s dive in.

For a Cause I Believe In

For a Cause I Believe has two clarifications that I want to touch on today. The first is actually one that applies to several cards, but is exemplified in For a Cause.

When an ability instructs a player to do something multiple times “for each” to one object, that results in one instance of the effect. That means, For a Cause is one instance of damage, not potentially up to four. Similarly, Kanan Jarrus - Revealed Jedi is one instance of healing, Force Lightning is one instance of damage, and Lieutenant Childsen has one instance of gaining experience tokens.

This can cause some confusion due to the wording “For Each” creating multiple simultaneous effects on multiple objects, such as on Calculated Lethality or Count Dooku - Fallen Jedi. Those also happen simultaneously, but are separate instances, and so could potentially cause multiple instances of a triggered ability. This is covered by 8.35

The other clarification currently only affects For a Cause I Believe In, as it is the only card that reveals a set of cards, and then returns them to a hidden, ordered zone. The cards remain revealed until they are returned to the deck, and consequently, if multiple cards are returned to the deck, any opponent is able to know the order in which they were returned.

Observing Defeat

Both Bossk - Hunting His Prey and Grand Admiral Thrawn - ...How Unfortunate have triggered abilities that have a triggering condition based on other triggered abilities that have a triggering condition of a unit dying... That’s a lot of words to say that Bossk and Thrawn are looking to see other units be defeated. However, on a technical level, their abilities are looking to see the resolution of the triggers. If Bossk or Thrawn aren’t in play when the trigger they could potentially be doubling is resolving (because they were defeated at the same time as the unit that had the ability), they don’t trigger.

Managing Aspect Penalties

We mentioned this briefly, but abilities that affect how a card is played only affect that card if it says that it applies while playing. Omega - Part of the Squad’s constant ability doesn’t apply to herself. Her ability only applies to clones played while she is in play.

To clearly demonstrate the difference, Rey - Keeping the Past has a similar ability, but it specifies “while playing this unit...”, which allows it to function in out-of-play zones.

Rukh, Shooting First

Rukh - Thrawn’s Assassin has a powerful ability that allows him to take out units, even if his power wouldn’t normally defeat them. A lot of people intuit that if you give him the ability to deal damage first, for example, with Shoot First, that he will defeat the defending unit before it has the opportunity to deal damage back, no matter how much HP it has.

Unfortunately, their intuition is wrong. Combat damage is one step, and triggers that occur during combat damage don’t resolve until all combat damage has fully resolved. So Rukh would still deal his four damage first, his ability would trigger, but not resolve, and then if the defending unit still has more than zero HP, it would deal its damage back to Rukh. Finally, after that, Rukh’s ability would resolve, with the same timing as it would normally.

The Shoot First ability, which has shown up on a few other cards, doesn’t create an extra combat damage step, and therefore does not create a new window for triggers to resolve.

What Preventing Damage Means

Shields are something that we’re all familiar with - they prevent the next instance of damage. But how do they really work? That might sound like a silly question, so let’s ask some more specific questions.

You control an Outer Rim Outlaws with a shield counter on it.

Let’s go through these one at a time.

When paying the cost of dealing damage, it only matters that the process of dealing damage is begun, not that it results in damage being dealt. That means you can damage a shielded unit to pay for the smuggle cost of First Light.

Similarly, “you may”/”if you do” abilities check to see if you said “yes” to the first action, but don’t check to see how it resolves. So, if you say “yes, deal the damage” and the damage is prevented by the shield (or another effect), Toro will still ready. (Of course, you could also sequence the triggers so that Toro resolves before the shield and avoid this question altogether).

The indirect damage question is straightforward enough, once you read the text of shield and the rules for indirect damage. Indirect damage is unpreventable, and Shield says, “prevent that damage. If you do, defeat a Shield token”. Because the damage isn’t prevented, no token is defeated, and the Outlaws take a point of damage.

Finally, we look at Rukh’s trigger. This one requires you to deal damage, but the damage never happened and so there’s no condition to cause the trigger to happen. This is different from the first two scenarios, because this is looking for something specific to occur, not if you’re beginning a process of dealing damage. This is one of the rule sets I most frequently get asked about, and is certainly confusing at times.

Some Notes About Keywords

This one is mostly about Boba Fett - Daimyo, but it also covers The Ghost - Heart of the Family.

If a unit has a conditional keyword, like on Gamorrean Retainers or Emperor’s Royal Guard, it only has that Keyword while the condition is active, so it would only get the buff from Boba some of the time.

Similarly, Coordinate is a keyword that sometimes grants a different keyword. The unit always has at least Coordinate, so Boba would always apply, and every Spectre would have the Coordinate ability, but it wouldn’t necessarily grant any bonuses.

For Boba, Piloting is also a keyword that the unit always has, even though it’s not in the “unit” part of the textbox. Any abilities that are in a separate part of the textbox, unless otherwise specified, still count for Boba.

Furthermore, Smuggle remains a keyword even after the unit was played, unless it only had Smuggle due to another effect, like Tech - who grants Smuggle to your resources and not your cards.

But let’s get back to Coordinate. If you upgrade The Ghost with For the Republic, then every other Spectre gets “Coordinate - Restore 2”. If you have Coordinate, in addition to having the Coordinate keyword, The Ghost also now has the “Restore” keyword, and that would propagate to your other Spectres, which already have the “Coordinate - Restore 2”. This would result in them having Restore 4.

Like with Coordinate, The Ghost copies the whole of any Bounty abilities it gains with every other Spectre. If your opponent puts a Bounty Hunter’s Quarry on your Ghost, and then plays Superlaser Blast, they’re about to do a whole lot of searching.

This is because both Coordinate and Bounty include the effect after the dash as part of the ability, and so when the ability is copied anywhere, that goes with them.

Barriss Offee - Constant Abilities

When Barris Offee - Unassuming Apprentice was first revealed, there were a few questions about how she functioned from many players.

To many, her ability reads like a trigger, because it sometimes applies to some units, and sometimes doesn’t. This led to three questions about her ability.

The answer to each of these comes from the fact that her ability is a constant ability, not a triggered ability. Some people thought it was a triggered ability and therefore would only apply to units that had already been healed when she came into play while others thought that she needed to be in play to see the unit be healed in order to apply to it - but neither of those are true. She applies to both units that were healed that phase before she entered play and those that were healed after she entered play, because it’s a constant ability and constantly checks to see if a unit was healed this phase. If it was, it gets the buff.

For the same reason, that buff ceases to apply as soon as Barriss leaves play.

No Glory, Only Results

No Glory, Only Results is a card that has a couple of questions about it, as players can frequently have different opinions of how abilities should work during the resolution of an event or other ability. The two most common versions of No Glory questions stem from two different Legendary cards from Shadows of the Galaxy, Krayt Dragon and Supreme Leader Snoke - Shadow Ruler.

For the first, when No Glory is played, the Krayt Dragon will trigger. However, as we’ve discussed many times, triggers that come from a card being played won’t resolve until that card has finished resolving itself. That means that you take control of the Krayt Dragon, and then defeat it. Many players equate taking control of a unit to taking control of all of its triggers as well. However, once an ability is triggered, it will resolve independently of its source. You don’t gain control of it, because it is a separate game object from the unit itself, and it doesn’t go away despite the Dragon being defeated for the same reason. Consequently, your opponent still gets to decide where the five damage goes.

With Snoke, on the other hand, you control him, and while you do, during the resolution of the event, his constant ability will apply. Any units your opponent has will be affected by the -2/-2, and if they had only one or two remaining HP, they’ll be defeated due to game state maintenance during the resolution of the event. After they’re defeated, the event will continue to resolve, and Snoke will be defeated. This is commonly misunderstood because some other games don’t perform game state maintenance during the resolution of abilities, and would only check after No Glory finishes resolving.

In The Same Arena

The last one we have for today is Reckless Torrent. If you play it, and your opponent controls a ground unit, but you don’t, can you deal damage to that ground unit? This is mostly a question of templating, and effectively reads “Choose an arena then deal 2 damage to a friendly unit and 2 damage to an enemy unit in that arena.” That means that you can pick a half-empty arena, and damage only your opponent’s unit if you don’t have one in that arena when the trigger resolves. This is different from Asajj Ventress - I Work Alone, who’s ability has a conditional of “if you do”.

In any case, that’s all for now. Wait - what about Lurking TIE Phantom? Isn’t that a card that has a ton of individual questions and clarifications? Well, we’re saving it for next time, because that also covers Chewbacca - Faithful First Mate and Shadowed Intentions - it’s a growing group of cards and is a whole lot of content. So, join us next time as we cover those broader clarifications as well as Darth Maul, Chancellor Palpatine, and Clone! 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.

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