Torani: Can I choose to discard focus and evade tokens even if I don't have any?

[Jimbawa 122]

Another way it was scrutinized was presuming a ship must discard a focus AND an evade (as the text read they must discard all focus AND evade tokens, and if 0 is not an acceptable amount, then 1 of each must be the minimum) meaning that unless a ship had both tokens every turn, there was no way to prevent the damage. Most ships can't even take the evade action, let alone do both actions every turn. So this was considered an improper reading as it calls for an almost impossible means to counter it.

Not that PTL, evade and focus is impossible, but in a tournament setting, that setup, ship limitations and order of actions would almost never come into play. 

[AlexW 2,902]

4 hours ago, missedtrashday said:

If you don't want to accept the damage, you have to do something to avoid it.  

But that isn't really the way the card is worded.   They could have worded it as a cost to pay but they didn't.  

[AlexW 2,902]

3 hours ago, Jimbawa said:

Another way it was scrutinized was presuming a ship must discard a focus AND an evade (as the text read they must discard all focus AND evade tokens, and if 0 is not an acceptable amount, then 1 of each must be the minimum) meaning that unless a ship had both tokens every turn, there was no way to prevent the damage.

This is a great point.

[muribundi 406]

And there you have it, if 0 is an invalid choice, then you will nearly never be able to do the choice...

So as in any other game, 0 is a valide choice. Yes, this will make it so your opponent may do Target Lock or Barrel Roll. Like many other way to by pass opponent effect. Like choosing Focus instead of Target Lock against Sensor Jammer. Your argument of the card costing something is irrelevant. Sensor Jammer cost 4 points and is kind of really bad at this price when the opponent can just focus every turn to circumvent it.

[Tom1132 193]

21 hours ago, missedtrashday said:

Additionally, if you may simply void the ability by stating that you are discarding your zero tokens, what is the point of the ability to begin with?  I can throw away imaginary things all day long.  lol

 

This was my first thought upon hearing that this in debate.

Maybe I'm missing something, but surely your opponent can always just say this and the ability does *nothing* - ever (edit: against *tokenless ships* specifically)
What exactly does the ability *do* if this was the ruling?

Edited November 8, 2017 by Tom1132

[StephenEsven 632]

The ability strips a ship of tokens ir deals them a damage if they want to hang onto them.

If you have no tokens you do not care and just accept that you get stripped. 

The end state is the same wether you had tokens or not to begin with.

The damage only ever vomes into play if you want to keep the tokens you already have.

 

[muribundi 406]

Quote

What exactly does the ability *do* if this was the ruling?

Because you want the ability to be a damaging one or an action preventing one when it is not. It is a token stripping ability, and it that sense, whatever the opponent choose an action that do not give a token or remove the token when ending in the bullseye change nothing. The end result is the same, a ship without Focus or Evade. And that part is HUGE, that is what people have to realize... you never do a Barrel Roll except to block or get out of arc to not be shot. Having no token is a huge deal at this game, this is why bumping is the worst possible out come.

[FourDogsInaHorseSuit 1,486]

You're being robbed. You've been informed that you should give them all your money or get shot. You empty your wallet in front of them. Nothing falls out. Do you still get shot?

[joeshmoe554 839]

1 hour ago, Tom1132 said:

Maybe I'm missing something, but surely your opponent can always just say this and the ability does *nothing* - ever (edit: against *tokenless ships* specifically)
What exactly does the ability *do* if this was the ruling?

It's similar to Hotshot Copilot, Carnor Jax, Wes Janson, Palob Godalhi and likely many other abilities in the game that have no effect if your opponent doesn't have tokens.  This ability is a way to leave multiple ships with 0 focus or evade tokens, or get a free point of damage on those ships.

[muribundi 406]

1 hour ago, FourDogsInaHorseSuit said:

You're being robbed. You've been informed that you should give them all your money or get shot. You empty your wallet in front of them. Nothing falls out. Do you still get shot?

Totally idiot argument... if you assume they will shot you because you have 0 money, they will also shoot you if you have 1 cent or 1 dollar...

[digitalbusker 2,248]

3 hours ago, FourDogsInaHorseSuit said:

You're being robbed. You've been informed that you should give them all your money or get shot. You empty your wallet in front of them. Nothing falls out. Do you still get shot?

Because "comprehensive understanding of and adherence to rules" is like the number one quality associated with muggers.

[FourDogsInaHorseSuit 1,486]

2 hours ago, muribundi said:

Totally idiot argument... if you assume they will shot you because you have 0 money, they will also shoot you if you have 1 cent or 1 dollar...

6 minutes ago, digitalbusker said:

Because "comprehensive understanding of and adherence to rules" is like the number one quality associated with muggers.

I'm not usually a puppet master, but I can see why people do it.

[AlexW 2,902]

From the new FAQ:

Sunny Bounder Sunny Bounder's ability can trigger after rerolling any number of dice, including 0 dice. For example, if an effect allowed Sunny to reroll any number of dice (such as spending a target lock) and 0 dice were rerolled, Sunny may add 1 matching result. Sunny Bounder's ability triggers before the effect of Heavy Laser Cannon resolves.

"Zero" counts as "any number" so it looks like we have a precedent.

[missedtrashday 7]

6 hours ago, muribundi said:

Because you want the ability to be a damaging one or an action preventing one when it is not.

Or maybe it is.  The text, as written, is inconclusive.

After you perform an attack, each enemy ship inside your bullseye firing arc at Range 1-3 must choose to suffer 1 damage or remove all of its focus and evade tokens.

I think that there would be no question if it was worded:

After you perform an attack, each enemy ship inside your bullseye firing arc with focus and/or evade tokens at Range 1-3 must remove those tokens or suffer 1 damage.

That way the card would specifically only the ships with tokens and limit the ability to a token stripping ability.

If the ability is meant to be only a token stripping ability, for my play style, this will be just another card in my box of stuff I never fly because it's just too expensive to make that much of an impact in my lists.  Hopefully it will benefit someone.

Flu casual.

[sharrrp 444]

This is another one that honestly seems extremely clear based on the RAW and past rulings.

Relevant text on Torani: "each enemy ship...must choose to suffer one damage or remove all of it's focus and evade tokens"

So what else do we have that references ALL of something?

Focus from Rules Reference: "When attacking or defending, the ship may spend that token to change all [EYE] results to [HIT] results or [EVADE] results.  All unspent focus tokens are removed from ships during the end phase."  Second bullet point: "A ship can spend a focus token even if it did not roll any [EYE] results."

Keyan Farlander: "When attacking you may remove 1 stress token to change all of your [EYE] results to [HIT] results." Per FAQ this can be done even with no [EYE] results showing.

"All" can clearly be zero. This is long established and the phrasing on the cards is consistent.

 

There is no reason to think that one would need at least one token to pay as a "Cost" to avoid the damage.  If that was the case the card would have to say something like "Ships must spend at least one focus or evade token or suffer one damage" So yes, the ability effectively does nothing against a ship with no focuses or evades.  So what?  Neither does Palob Goldabi's ability.  Lot's of pilot abilities have contingencies for being able to use them.  The simple fact an ability can fizzle in certain situations is not weird, it's in fact very common.  What Torani does is effectively grant the base effect of his Bullseye Arc to all other ships in his squad that shoot after him, and with him being a PS 8 with an EPT slot letting you VI up to 10 you can easily make that the entire squad even with quality wingmen.  Your opponent can prevent this if they wish by taking a guaranteed damage but that's a fairly high cost, especially against a low health ace pilot.  That by itself is pretty strong.  Add in the fact it would also potentially turn off things like R5-P9 and Juke as well as deny a Focus for offensive use and frankly his ability is incredibly strong.

Edited November 8, 2017 by sharrrp

[missedtrashday 7]

5 minutes ago, sharrrp said:

This is another one that honestly seems extremely clear based on the RAW and past rulings.

Relevant text on Torani: "each enemy ship...must choose to suffer one damage or remove all of it's focus and evade tokens"

So what else do we have that references ALL of something?

Focus from Rules Reference: "When attacking or defending, the ship may spend that token to change all [EYE] results to [HIT] results or [EVADE] results.  All unspent focus tokens are removed from ships during the end phase."  Second bullet point: "A ship can spend a focus token even if it did not roll any [EYE] results."

I may be missing something here but I fail to see how either of the "ALL"s in this part are being used in the same way.

 

10 minutes ago, sharrrp said:

Keyan Farlander: "When attacking you may remove 1 stress token to change all of your [EYE] results to [HIT] results." Per FAQ this can be done even with no [EYE] results showing.

This is an entirely different situation in which the player is spending a token THAT THEY ACTUALLY HAVE and then deciding not to do anything with it.  It is the spending of the token that triggers the effect.

15 minutes ago, sharrrp said:

"All" can clearly be zero. This is long established and the phrasing on the cards is consistent.

While you might be correct about that, the word "all" in these examples does not support your position.

In the first section, "all" is used twice.  The first says that a single focus token affects every die that is showing a focus result.  If the player wants to spend that token with no  results showing to trigger an effect is not in question.  You are correct in saying THAT is well established.  The "all" here is used as a blanket inclusion for the entire group of dice.  But this is secondary to the fact that a token has to be present to be spent.  The second "all" references the entire group of "unspent tokens" that the player might hold.  If the player doesn't have any "unspent" tokens then this does not apply.  So again, this is only talking about tokens the actually exist.

The second quote is much the same.  The player opts to spend a real token that they actually have in order to trigger an effect.  That the player can spend that token with no focus results showing on the dice doesn't matter, because what the player wants is the secondary effect of shedding stress, and again you are correct that the player can opt to spend the token at a time when its intended purpose would not be the result.

In both of those cases, the rulings do not create something from nothing.  The dice are there, and the player is spending the token despite the fact that the dice will not be affected.

41 minutes ago, sharrrp said:

There is no reason to think that one would need at least one token to pay as a "Cost" to avoid the damage.  If that was the case the card would have to say something like "Ships must spend at least one focus or evade token or suffer one damage" So yes, the ability effectively does nothing against a ship with no focuses or evades.  So what?  Neither does Palob Goldabi's ability.  Lot's of pilot abilities have contingencies for being able to use them.  The simple fact an ability can fizzle in certain situations is not weird, it's in fact very common.  What Torani does is effectively grant the base effect of his Bullseye Arc to all other ships in his squad that shoot after him, and with him being a PS 8 with an EPT slot letting you VI up to 10 you can easily make that the entire squad even with quality wingmen.  Your opponent can prevent this if they wish by taking a guaranteed damage but that's a fairly high cost, especially against a low health ace pilot.  That by itself is pretty strong.  Add in the fact it would also potentially turn off things like R5-P9 and Juke and frankly his ability is incredibly strong

I agree with almost this entire paragraph.  I think that the wording on the card will have to be addressed in some way by the PTB to end the debate.  And I agree that if it is purely a token stripping ability, that may well fizzle in some situations.  If that is the case I won't play it for the same reason that I don't play e-wings.  They're lots of fun, but you just don't get what you pay for most of the time.  By the time I kit this thing out to really do well, I'm down one large base ship or even two small base ships for something that only gets to use its ability sometimes.  It would be much better to play Oberos, whose ability will work every time.  I just don't do well when I try to build those kinds of 'the moon must be in the second house of Ares when the fish jumps' lists.  I spend too much of my attention trying to make the situation happen and not enough time playing the game.

Good debate!  We're passionate because we care.

Fly casual.

 

[DR4CO 6,234]

4 hours ago, missedtrashday said:

I agree with almost this entire paragraph.  I think that the wording on the card will have to be addressed in some way by the PTB to end the debate.  And I agree that if it is purely a token stripping ability, that may well fizzle in some situations.  If that is the case I won't play it for the same reason that I don't play e-wings.  They're lots of fun, but you just don't get what you pay for most of the time.  By the time I kit this thing out to really do well, I'm down one large base ship or even two small base ships for something that only gets to use its ability sometimes.  It would be much better to play Oberos, whose ability will work every time.  I just don't do well when I try to build those kinds of 'the moon must be in the second house of Ares when the fish jumps' lists.  I spend too much of my attention trying to make the situation happen and not enough time playing the game.

Sheesh, Scum players these days. If something's not Dengaroo-level OP, you just write it off as unplayable. We're talking about a likely PS10 ship that can reload Harpoons, has access to Unhinged, R4 Agros, and Illicits, denies the use of tokens and stresses people when he shoots, and has an ability that can either cause automatic damage or waste your opponent's actions, and this ability can hit multiple targets, but that said ability won't trigger absolutely 100% of the time is a dealbreaker? Really!?

As @AlexW and @sharrrp have pointed out, RAW is rather crystal clear in this case. All the precedent in the world points towards people being able to choose to discard all of their tokens without needing to have any. All of zero is still all, and that has been the case since Wave 1.

Edited November 9, 2017 by DR4CO

[thoracicpork 4]

2 hours ago, DR4CO said:

We're talking about a likely PS10 ship that can reload Harpoons, has access to Unhinged, R4 Agros, and Illicits, denies the use of tokens and stresses people when he shoots, and has an ability that either causes automatic damage or wastes your opponent's actions, and this ability can hit multiple targets, but that said ability won't trigger absolutely 100% of the time is a dealbreaker? Really!

The problem is that he also can't do green K-Turns.  So restrictive.  Until they faq that I'm out man.  I'm out. ;-)

[missedtrashday 7]

2 hours ago, DR4CO said:

Sheesh, Scum players these days. If something's not Dengaroo-level OP, you just write it off as unplayable. We're talking about a likely PS10 ship that can reload Harpoons, has access to Unhinged, R4 Agros, and Illicits, denies the use of tokens and stresses people when he shoots, and has an ability that either causes automatic damage or wastes your opponent's actions, and this ability can hit multiple targets, but that said ability won't not trigger absolutely 100% of the time is a dealbreaker? Really!?

No, What I said was that having to divide my already narrow attention span between playing the game and looking for specific conditions to line up was a dealbreaker.  There are a lot of things in this game that are really cool and work really well, but if you don't catch the opportunity when it pops up, it doesn't work for you.  I tend to miss those types of things, so I don't put variable things in my lists.  I know that I am missing out on some great combos, but I switch my list nearly every time I sit down to play (outside of organized events).  That means that even if something is a constant, I still miss it sometimes because I don't have every comma and period of every card on my list committed to memory.  I would probably win more if I settled on just a few lists and then really tricked those out, but that just seems like such a waste.  There are tons of lists I've flown just because I wanted to (5 hawks, not effective, funny as heck).  I also mentioned that I would fly the second tier pilot because his ability was constant.  It's just the way I play, because that's the way I want to play.

As for the rest of it, from what I can see it is definitely not clear from the RAW and FAQ because this exact same conversation is happening on two different forums.  On the X-Wing wiki forum the debate is swinging the other way, with most people agreeing that Torani's ability will do automatic damage to ships in the new arc who don't have any tokens to discard.  While it might be OP, it is my interpretation of the card and rules as they currently stand.

I freely admit that my interpretation could be incorrect, and if it is, great!  That being said, I feel like the opposite point of view is based on the ability to ignore the lack of tokens due to an inference of intent.  It's just that when I read the card, I don't infer the same intent.

As far as the examples given of Sunny, Keyan, and focus, from my point of view that is an apples and oranges comparison.  In those cases, I spend a token (focus, stress, target lock, etc.) that I hold because it benefits my squad in some way.  The key to those rulings and all the debates that led up to them was that I have the token to spend to trigger my ability, can I spend it even when I don't need it for its original intended purpose.  The answer is yes.

In this debate, you are telling me that I can spend a magic token that I don't have to mitigate damage that I should be taking from my opponent.  That doesn't seem fair to my opponent.  Again, that point of view comes from what I infer to be the intent of the ability.

There is one thing I can think of that could change my mind, and that would be to see the dial.  If it is like a TIE Interceptor on crack and can zip everywhere carefree, then to also give it automatic damage at only 27 points would be ridiculous.  Conversely, If it moves like a bread truck on square wheels stuck in mud, maybe the automatic damage is there because you are only going to get people in the bullseye once or twice in a game, and lining up 3-4 opponents?  Only in the promo.

Of course there is another conversation going on about should automatic damage even be a thing, but that's waaay off topic for this thread.

I hope that no one is taking this the wrong way.  I am really enjoying the debate and it's great of you all to take the time to debate it with me.

Fly casual

[DR4CO 6,234]

Just now, missedtrashday said:

As far as the examples given of Sunny, Keyan, and focus, from my point of view that is an apples and oranges comparison.  In those cases, I spend a token (focus, stress, target lock, etc.) that I hold because it benefits my squad in some way.  The key to those rulings and all the debates that led up to them was that I have the token to spend to trigger my ability, can I spend it even when I don't need it for its original intended purpose.  The answer is yes.

In this debate, you are telling me that I can spend a magic token that I don't have to mitigate damage that I should be taking from my opponent.  That doesn't seem fair to my opponent.  Again, that point of view comes from what I infer to be the intent of the ability.

The bold part here is the key to where I think you're going wrong, you don't spend anything for Torani. His ability tells you to remove your tokens, not spend them. Those are two very different terms with very different meanings. If he did tell the defender to take damage unless they spent all of their Focus and Evade tokens, then you'd be entirely correct. But he doesn't.

His ability doesn't have any kind of actual cost involved; it presents a choice, Option A (suffer 1 damage) or Option B (remove all tokens). You could reverse his ability so "remove all tokens" was the first choice presented and it would change nothing. They are completely separate from one another, which also means there's nothing that "entitles" him to expect damage as a default option.

[missedtrashday 7]

Hence the need for Frankmail or something, because if it is a choice that the defender has to make, and they do not have the token to choose B, then by default they must choose A.

[missedtrashday 7]

And, If you are "Removing" a zero token to mitigate damage, are you not "spending" it for a game effect?

Edited November 9, 2017 by missedtrashday
Add emojis for context

[DR4CO 6,234]

19 minutes ago, missedtrashday said:

Hence the need for Frankmail or something, because if it is a choice that the defender has to make, and they do not have the token to choose B, then by default they must choose A.

Except that you can choose B, because you've still removed "all" of your tokens even if you had none. Same as you've still changed "all" of your dice results even if you had no dice at all courtesy of the old Blinded Pilot.

13 minutes ago, missedtrashday said:

And, If you are "Removing" a zero token to mitigate damage, are you not "spending" it for a game effect?

Not as far as the game is concerned. "Spend" is a very definite term that involves spending [this thing] to do [that thing], which you definitely aren't doing in Torani's case. "Removing" tokens is entirely different; see Wes Janson for another example. 

Edited November 9, 2017 by DR4CO

[Pewpewpew BOOM 1,246]

Discard what you do not have you may.

If one hand can clap alone in a forest and it discards 0 tokens, can you hear ?

[FourDogsInaHorseSuit 1,486]

7 hours ago, missedtrashday said:

And, If you are "Removing" a zero token to mitigate damage, are you not "spending" it for a game effect?

A ship shot by Wes Janson has no tokens, does the game end in a draw?