Zuckuss crew, stress and huge ships

[ID X T 820]

I had just assumed Zuckuss would work fine on the C-roc, but now I don't think he does.  

Zuckuss has the cost of receiving stress, which is the same trigger as Soontir Fel essentially.  Since it is a cost the effect doesn't proceed if the cost isn't paid, which we know from the Soontir/Yorr interaction.  

So my argument is that since Huge ships remove the stress tokens the cost of Zuckuss' abilty is never paid.  I guess technically you could argue that there is a small moment in time where they were received but discarded, but that seems to be an issue with the huge ship rules about discarding them straight away.  

From the the huge ships rules, 

"Focus, evade, and stress tokens do not affect huge ships. When a huge ship receives any of these tokens, immediately (sic) remove them and return them to the token supply."

Now it would have been much easier to word this as "huge ship cannot receive..." But that is just an issue of them not taking cost payment into account.  

Regardless, the whole procedure could just work this way instead.  The cost is paid because the tokens are received (though immediately discarded) and then Zuckuss continues but since no tokens were actually received no cost was paid and Zuckuss gets to reroll zero dice.  Less ideal interpretation. 

But I guess my argument is that since Zuckuss is a cost and that cost cannot be paid (unless you select to receive zero stress) by a huge ship he should not work.

I can see the counter argument that I discussed above, but it all comes down to "costs" for abilities being poorly implemented with almost no attention paid in the rules reference to them, particularly stress which functions often as both a cost and an effect and sometimes illogically.  

Thoughts?

Edit to add, as a TO I would rule that an epic ship cannot pay the cost of Zuckuss, but that is more in line with RAI, because the RAW is contentious.  I.e. I can see how the Yorr precedent is circumvented by an extremely literal interpretation of actual rules for huge ships and stress.  

Edited March 27, 2017 by ID X T

[FourDogsInaHorseSuit 1,486]

That passage you quoted says they can recieve stress, and that there's rules for dealing with it. So you can pay the cost. (also it's not a cost, because receiving isn't paying)

[ID X T 820]

11 minutes ago, FourDogsInaHorseSuit said:

That passage you quoted says they can recieve stress, and that there's rules for dealing with it. So you can pay the cost. (also it's not a cost, because receiving isn't paying)

That is not true, it depends on where it appears, for example, Soontir is a cost, while something like the new Millenium Falcon title is an effect (I.e. After doing something receive a stress).

Soontir must receive the stress for the effect to occur, hence why Yorr intercepting the stress negates his ability.  Yorr intercepting the stress from the falcon title would not do anything to prevent the other effects.

Yes, for a tiny moment in time they kinda do gain the stress, but I would argue that the "cost" is never paid since the "currency" ceases to exist.  Essentially Zuckuss' card reads (paraphrasing here) " receive X stress, to make your opponent reroll X dice". It just happens that for a huge ship X = 0.

It is sadly obvious how it would work if you read it as "cannot gain focus, evades or stress", rather than "do not affect".  But sadly poor rules writing rears it's ugly head.  The first and second sentence of the rule for focus, evades, and stress, do not have logically agree with one another.  Ironically having either sentence, but not the other  makes more sense.  

[DR4CO 6,234]

2 hours ago, ID X T said:

Yes, for a tiny moment in time they kinda do gain the stress, but I would argue that the "cost" is never paid since the "currency" ceases to exist.  Essentially Zuckuss' card reads (paraphrasing here) " receive X stress, to make your opponent reroll X dice". It just happens that for a huge ship X = 0.

That tiny moment in time is all that is necessary; the ship has received the stress, what it does with it beyond that (or how soon that happens) is irrelevant. This is basically identical to Nien Nunb pilot and R3-A2; Nien can use his pilot ability to immediately discard the stress given to him by the droid without affecting the resolution of R3-A2's text. No reason this would be different.

[FourDogsInaHorseSuit 1,486]

That is not true, it depends on where it appears, for example, Soontir is a cost, while something like the new Millenium Falcon title is an effect (I.e. After doing something receive a stress).

That's not a cost. That's a trigger. When X do Y. There is no cost to Soontir's ability. I don't know how you decided there is a cost involved with either of these abilities. Costs are easy to identify since they say things like spend, or give you the option to remove. Keyan Farlander, and the Proton Torpedoes come to mind as abilities that have costs associated with them.

Soontir must receive the stress for the effect to occur, hence why Yorr intercepting the stress negates his ability.  Yorr intercepting the stress from the falcon title would not do anything to prevent the other effects.

Correct. For Soontir's ability to trigger the condition must be met. In the case of Yorr, Yorr has the word instead. Instead means a replacement. So the event Soontir was looking for, the assignment of a stress token, was replaced by Yorr. The rules for Huge ships don't replace the receiving of stress tokens, what they do is create another trigger (And use the word immediately, which as the Bossk/IG-88 combo proves, has no actual meaning game-wise) which then removes the tokens. Unlike in the case of Yorr, the ship still receives the token, and then the token is removed. To remove the token, you have to receive the token.

Yes, for a tiny moment in time they kinda do gain the stress, but I would argue that the "cost" is never paid since the "currency" ceases to exist.  Essentially Zuckuss' card reads (paraphrasing here) " receive X stress, to make your opponent reroll X dice". It just happens that for a huge ship X = 0.

That tiny moment in time is long enough. You still received the tokens, you can still choose a number of dice, no where on the card, or in the rules, does it say how long the tokens need to be present for the ability to work. Also, this isn't a cost. It is another trigger that is giving your ship a number of stress tokens of your choice. While we could colloquially understand this to be the cost of the benefit we're in the rules forum and we have to be very clear about what is happening, and what is happening is the ship Zuckuss is equipped to is allowed to take a penalty of the owner's choice in order to choose a number of dice. 

It is sadly obvious how it would work if you read it as "cannot gain focus, evades or stress", rather than "do not affect".  But sadly poor rules writing rears it's ugly head.  The first and second sentence of the rule for focus, evades, and stress, do not have logically agree with one another.  Ironically having either sentence, but not the other  makes more sense.  

You are correct, if the rules were written differently their effect would be different. Furthermore they do work together logically. Just because a token has no effect on a ship, doesn't mean it doesn't exist. There's no clear example of a ship not having the effect of a token, but the closest thing would be something like Tycho who still has a mountain of stress token, but ignoring them. (However it's not analogous because Tycho remains stressed even while performing the actions). The second sentence follows that if the tokens have no effect, other ships shouldn't be able to interact with them, and the most expedient way to do so is to remove them. It prevents me from using my Huge Ship as a token bank when carrying an Operations Specialist, even though it has no use for them. Or Lats Razi against a huge ship which would have no other way to remove stress tokens.

So in summary: Huge ships are able to recieve stress tokens, therefore allowing you to produce a number for Zuckuss' ability. This isn't a cost, and it is irrelevant if it was.

[ID X T 820]

I am generally on board with the overall thoughts.

That said the FAQ for Captain Yorr clearly identifies Soontir Fel gaining a stress as a cost, it is a cost of triggering, which is still a cost. I put the emphasis on cost, you put it on triggering.  Honestly, FFGs templating for card abilities is pretty terrible (colons are your friends).  It doesn't help much that cost, nor receive are actually defined in the rules reference anywhere.  

DR4CO's analogy with Nien Nunb and R3-A2 makes sense it is hard to argue against that given the way the huge ships rules are worded. 

That said "focus, evade, and stress tokens do not affect huge ships" is a really terrible "rule". Taken on its own, there are no conditions attached to the statement, so for the sake of argument, could easily be interpreted as evade tokens may not be used against attacks from huge ships. I.e. You can spend it but it has no effect. But that's obviously not the intent.  

I still think they should redress the rule for epic ships to "cannot gain" but the likelihood of that happening is slim to none.  

[FourDogsInaHorseSuit 1,486]

I opened up my FAQ and read the words "the cost of triggering an ability" and decided the rules for this game are so stupid That I no longer care anymore. X wing 2.0, please.

[DR4CO 6,234]

58 minutes ago, ID X T said:

That said the FAQ for Captain Yorr clearly identifies Soontir Fel gaining a stress as a cost, it is a cost of triggering, which is still a cost.

The situations are different, though. The reason Soontir's ability does not trigger is that he actually needs to receive the stress in order to trigger it. Yorr intercepts it before it ever reaches Soontir, which means his ability never activates.

In the situation with Zuckuss on a Huge ship, or Nien & R3-A2, the stress is received, which satisfies the requirements of both cards. Other effects (Huge ship rules & Nien's pilot ability) then cause that stress to be removed.

1 hour ago, ID X T said:

Honestly, FFGs templating for card abilities is pretty terrible (colons are your friends).  It doesn't help much that cost, nor receive are actually defined in the rules reference anywhere. 

 

47 minutes ago, FourDogsInaHorseSuit said:

I opened up my FAQ and read the words "the cost of triggering an ability" and decided the rules for this game are so stupid That I no longer care anymore. X wing 2.0, please.

How are you guys not up to speed with this already? For a game as successful as it is, X-wing has some of the worst rules writing ever, and though it's improved a little since the early days it's still pretty poor. But we make do and try to just stumble on through the mess.

[thespaceinvader 17,568]

Basically huge ships are treated as if they had free infinite Electronic Baffles (receive the stress and immediately discard it) rather than free infinite Captain Yorrs (never receive the stress in the first place).  The former works to use Zuckuss then discard the incoming stress, the latter wouldn't.

It's not that tough to grasp, though I wouldn't disagree that the language of the game could certainly be improved.

[VanorDM 11,599]

5 hours ago, thespaceinvader said:

Basically huge ships are treated as if they had free infinite Electronic Baffles

But I don't think that's how it was intended... 

I'd bet that if this were to show up in a FAQ they'd rule that since stress doesn't affect epic ships the cost is not paid so you can't use something like Zuckuss on one.  

I think RAW you and others are correct, it does work, but I don't think that's how the RAI would play out, because despite the horrible way it was worded, I think the intention was that epic ships don't actually get things like focus, stress, and evade tokens.  But FFG worded it like they did because there was no real distinction between what they said and what they intended... At least not until now.

[muribundi 406]

Zuckuss RAW work right now, no need to argue, but this is stupid if they keep it like that. Ok, the current Scum Huge ship don't have lots of attack, but we already know infinite defense dice reroll was already too good for one attack per turn, I don't want to play against a huge ship that can just ignore the cost instead of working around it.

[nigeltastic 3,808]

3 points:

1) RAW it works, that's pretty apparent

2) If they don't want zuckuss on the C-Roc they'll do what they did with Biggs and say so in the epic rules document

3) epic is basically always casual play so decide what you want and make it so with your friends.

[WWHSD 9,273]

46 minutes ago, muribundi said:

Zuckuss RAW work right now, no need to argue, but this is stupid if they keep it like that. Ok, the current Scum Huge ship don't have lots of attack, but we already know infinite defense dice reroll was already too good for one attack per turn, I don't want to play against a huge ship that can just ignore the cost instead of working around it.

It was too good in a 100 point game where high agility arc dodgers tend to show up and there are only a couple of ships on the table. Would it be too good in a 300 point Epic game on Huge ships that are often considered to be a liability to include in your squad? 

[FourDogsInaHorseSuit 1,486]

9 hours ago, DR4CO said:

 

How are you guys not up to speed with this already? For a game as successful as it is, X-wing has some of the worst rules writing ever, and though it's improved a little since the early days it's still pretty poor. But we make do and try to just stumble on through the mess.

Honestly I've been playing since wave 4 and the ad hoc rulings of this game never cease to amaze me. Nearly every time I play in an extended event I find some new interaction that's so backwards that I can't believe it exists.

[muribundi 406]

People of my group hate it when I say this, but Magic: The Gathering set the bar so high lately about proper templating of effect... everyone should copy them...

[GrimmyV 7,421]

Are you sure that English is the native language of the guys at FFG?

[D00kies 48]

1 point Zuckuss on a huge ship is hilariously imba. And I'm buying the C-Roc. Even though equipping Zuckuss is in the C-Roc preview it will have to be banned. It's not the first time a preview has been written without implementing the game 

[Tvboy 3,529]

Yorr works differently (token never touches the ship) than huge ships (token is immediately discarded after it is received), so they should not be compared. As stated before, it basically works the same as Nien Numb pilot.

Cost is currently not an officially defined game term in the rules, so trying to define what is and isn't a cost is impossible without making up rules that don't exist. Yes it would be nice to have MTG's comprehensive rules, but that's like 600 pages and FFG doesn't have the luxury of only having a single competitive game.

FFG is probably okay with anything that makes huge ships more competitively viable, they are still a liability in epic play.

[VanorDM 11,599]

14 hours ago, GrimmyV said:

Are you sure that English is the native language of the guys at FFG?

It's not, Minnostodian is their native language I think.

[GrimmyV 7,421]

You betcha, dontcha know!

[VanorDM 11,599]

1 minute ago, GrimmyV said:

You betcha, dontcha know!

Sure you betcha, you seem to be fluent dontcha know.

Makes me think of the one episode of Supernatural where they were in Stillwater MN, which is on the St Croix River, and borders Wisconsin, it's about 30 minutes from where I live.  Nice town, not real big but pretty being right on the shore...

In the episode they had the most outrageously stereotypical northern Minnesota accent which is mostly only really heard up on the iron range.   It was both funny and sorta painful to watch.

[mad mandolorian 137]

On 3/29/2017 at 7:15 PM, GrimmyV said:

Are you sure that English is the native language of the guys at FFG?

oh yea, you betcha!

dontcha know FFG is based in Minisooota?

On 3/30/2017 at 9:26 AM, VanorDM said:

It's not, Minnostodian is their native language I think.

It's Minnesotan you "insert passive-aggressive insult here"

[ChrisBNSJ 0]

On 3/30/2017 at 9:31 AM, VanorDM said:

Sure you betcha, you seem to be fluent dontcha know.

Makes me think of the one episode of Supernatural where they were in Stillwater MN, which is on the St Croix River, and borders Wisconsin, it's about 30 minutes from where I live.  Nice town, not real big but pretty being right on the shore...

In the episode they had the most outrageously stereotypical northern Minnesota accent which is mostly only really heard up on the iron range.   It was both funny and sorta painful to watch.

And looked nothing like Stillwater, MN...

[emeraldbeacon 1,996]

Since this thread has been necromanced, it is worth pointing out that since its original posting, the huge ship FAQ has been updated.  Now, it does NOT allow Zuckuss or Maul to function on a huge ship.  As huge ships are now not permitted to receive stress tokens (rather than receiving then discarding them), each of those two crewmen have a rather ridiculous effect.  They can each assign up to zero stress tokens, in order to provide up to zero rerolls.

Note that this change is different from effects like General Hux, which creates stress as a result of his action, not as a prerequisite.