Level Two - Lesson 6
Common Clarifications (Part 3)
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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 even more common clarifications. This set of lessons is going to expand over time as more cards are added and more questions are raised.
Last time we explored a few individual cards and the mechanics around them more thoroughly - this time, we’re going to zoom out and look at some mechanics on a broader level.
Without further ado, let’s dive in.
Lose and Can’t Gain
The rules for abilities that cause other cards to lose their abilities were updated slightly in Jump to Lightspeed to go from “lose” to “lose and can’t gain”.
This means that it applies more consistently to cards like Gamorrean Retainers, which had some complex interactions.
There are two specific notes about losing abilities that I want to refer to. The first is with Swarming Vulture Droids - this has an ability that applies during deck construction, and does not apply during the game, and so removing the abilities from Swarming Vulture Droids does not make the deck illegal.
The other is a question about triggers that set up lasting effects. Cards like Huyang - Enduring Instructor, Regional Governor or Qi’ra - Playing Her Part all create lasting effects. Even if they lose their abilities after the trigger resolves, the lasting effect persists - it’s not a constant ability, and therefore isn’t removed when the unit loses it’s abilities. Of course, if they somehow lose their ability before the trigger can be created, they won’t create the trigger.
These cards also have a common question when it comes to control - if a player takes control of them after their abilities have resolved, will the effect be affected? Short answer is no. Like with other triggered abilities, once the ability has triggered, it’s independent of the card, and the lasting effects generated by these triggers are likewise independent.
Paying Costs
Our next several clarifications all come in to play while playing cards or activating action abilities - they all interact with how players pay costs.
Of course, we’re always looking to maximize our discounts and the ability to play cards as cheaply as possible, and so there are a handful of questions that have required clarification.
One of the most common questions, particularly from newer players, is when an ability instructs a player to “play a card...” like on Third Sister - Seething With Ambition or Energy Conversion Lab, the player must pay all costs for the card that they are playing, including aspect penalties. Part of this confusion comes up because some cards, like Chewbacca - Walking Carpet, explicitly indicate in their reminder text that the costs must be paid, but that reminder text doesn’t appear on other cards. This is, of course, a good opportunity to remind you that reminder text isn’t rules text, and so reminder text being absent doesn’t change how the card functions.
This is different from cards that instruct a player to play cards “for free” - those cards have their cost reduced to zero, which applies after any increases, including aspect penalties.
When applying discounts (or increases), they stack and apply to the next valid action, even if they over-discount the card.
For example, you activate the leader ability of Jabba the Hutt - His High Exaltedness, then deploy him, and activate his action ability, before claiming both of those bounties. You now have a discount of 1 and a discount of 2 pending.
If you attempt to play a Warzone Lieutenant, both discounts will apply, and the Lieutenant will cost 0 resources. Discounts from different sources stack - if, after claiming both bounties, you played Sneak Attack, you’d be able to play a Gladiator Star Destroyer for free, as you have a discount of 1, 2 and 3, totalling a discount of six.
Similarly, if you had an effect that said “the next unit you play costs 1 more” and you played an event that allowed you to play a unit for free, that card would consume that cost increase.
Exploit
We can’t talk about discounts without talking about Exploit. While Smuggle and Pilot give us alternate ways to play cards, Exploit is the first keyword that changes how cards are paid for, which generates a lot of questions.
Many of these questions come down to when the units are defeated during the process, and they’re defeated simultaneously, during the card being played, before it resolves. This leads to a few things, which we’ll explore with some examples.
Because the units being defeated happen simultaneously, if you defeat two units that have conditional buffs, they’ll see each other be defeated. For example, if you play Count Dooku - Fallen Jedi and exploit two Relentless Rocket Droids, they’ll both have had five power when they were defeated.
Similarly, if you exploit both Nala Se and a Clone Trooper token, the Clone will have the triggered ability when it’s defeated, and you’ll be able to heal your base.
Triggers generated during this window, such as Vanguard Infantry’s When Defeated won’t resolve until after the card has finished resolving. That means if you were playing a unit with exploit, it would be able to receive the experience token from the Infantry.
However, cards that have constant abilities are gone by the time the card resolves, so if you were to exploit in a Separtist Super Tank by defeating Admiral Piett - Captain of the Executor, you wouldn’t get the ambush.
Finally, the player chooses the order in which to either exploit or account for other discounts. That means that if a player exploits Director Krennic - On the Verge of Greatness to play Battle Droid Legion, they order the discounts. If they exploit first, Krennic won’t apply, but if they apply Krennic first, that discount is locked in, and they’ll get that one resource discount in addition to the two resources from exploit itself.
Alternate Costs
What’s important to remember about exploit is that it is not an alternate cost - it’s simply a different way to pay costs.
This is important because you can’t combine alternate costs. Bamboozle, Piloting, and Smuggle are all alternate costs, and you can only choose to use one of them at a time. For example, with Tech - Seeking Insight, if you have a Bamboozle, Clone Pilot, and Separtist Super Tank in your resource zone, you can’t play Bamboozle by discarding a card, you can only play the Clone Pilot as a unit and not an upgrade, but you can exploit units to reduce the cost of the Super Tank.
Piloting
That leads us to one of the more complicated mechanics, and one that has spawned a lot of questions. It has received some clarifications, and even a quick update to the CR shortly after it’s launched, but the exact wording still leaves a lot of questions in players’ minds - Piloting.
Let’s start with talking about pilot leaders, especially the ones that have the text “attached unit is a leader unit.”
Units upgraded with a leader pilot with that ability are treated like leaders, but don’t convey their aspects to the player’s deck, so you’re not able to change your access to aspects.
If your opponent attempts to gain control of the unit, say by activating the ability on Mercenary Gunship, the unit will be defeated, as per the CR for leaders changing control.
If a player has Brain Invaders, causing your pilot leaders to lose abilities, the upgraded unit will cease to be a leader but retain its printed abilities, because the upgrade will lose the ability granting the type before the upgraded unit gains the type.
Next, let’s talk about control. When a player takes control of a vehicle from another player, they do not gain control of the upgrades attached to it. This applies most practically to Poe Dameron - I Can Fly Anything and Luke Skywalker - You Still With Me?
The player who controls these upgrades remains their owner, unless an effect explicitly gives another player control of the upgrade, not just the unit that they’re attached to.
This means that if you deploy Poe as a pilot and then your opponent takes control of the unit he’s attached to, you can pay one resource to move him back to another friendly vehicle. Similarly, if Luke is defeated after the vehicle he’s piloting is stolen, he’ll eject back to your ground arena, not your opponent’s. In fact, any leader can be recovered from a stolen vehicle with the Eject event!
Retaining Links
When a unit with piloting becomes an upgrade (through an effect like Corvus - Inferno Squadron Raider), it retains some of its history.
While it loses all of its upgrades (because it’s no longer a unit and therefore not valid for those upgrades) and all damage is removed from it (for the same reason), it will still remember other connections. For example, if the pilot was guarding a captured unit, that doesn’t change - it’s still associated with the pilot card, even though it is now an upgrade. If the upgrade is defeated, the guarded card would be rescued.
In a similar fashion, if you played the unit with Sneak Attack, and then moved it to Corvus, the lasting effect remembers the card. The pilot hasn’t left play, and so its still the same object, and consequently the lasting effect applies.
Moving Pilots
This talk of moving pilots opens up a whole bevy of further questions. Corvus - Inferno Squadron Raider is the first card that can turn pilot units into pilot upgrades, but Survivors’ Gauntlet, Evidence of the Crime, and U-Wing Lander can all move upgrades from one unit to another.
These all generate a similar set of questions about “what is an eligible unit”. To answer that, we’ll have to go on a bit of a journey - all upgrades have attachment restrictions. If they don’t have a printed restriction, it’s “attach to a unit”. Pilots don’t have a printed restriction, but they do have an ability that allows them to be attached in the first place - which says that they must be attached to:
- A friendly unit
- That is a vehicle
- That does not have any other pilots attached to it
This means that if you want to move a pilot with Survivors’ Gauntlet, the destination vehicle can’t have a pilot already and must be friendly. However, restrictions only check when the upgrade is attached. If you later lose control of your vehicle the pilot upgrade won’t be removed.
Furthermore, if we look at R2-D2 - Artooooooooo!, his ability specifies "You may play or deploy 1 additional Pilot on this unit." Notably, that does not include attaching Pilots, and so you can’t use Gauntlet to add a second Pilot to the vehicle that R2 is piloting, while you can still play or deploy one.
Of course, you can also play R2 onto a vehicle that already has a pilot that was attached, not played or deployed. The game is only looking for those specific actions when R2 is already on the vehicle.
In any case, that’s all for now. Join us next time as we leave the comprehensive rules and take our first foray into the Tournament Regulations and begin to explore event structure! 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.