Retailiate Clarification

Posted at Rebelbasers:

You were right, we were wrong. You have my apologies for adding to the confusion in the short-term here, but I think a revised ruling is necessary.

After re-examining the core issues that we've been dealing with concerning Retaliate, and listening to the concerns of our players, we'll be posting an update to the Battle of Yavin rulings.

The short version is this: Retaliate should function much like any other activated ability, without any special timing rules. Players have the opportunity to activate Retaliate after an attack is declared but *before* dice are rolled (and thus before damage prevention). As previously noted, the Retaliate ability will still have its effect even if the defending unit is discarded as a result of the attack.

Thank you for your patience and continued support of the game.

David Eckelberry
Lead Developer, SWTCG

So the timing is key on this, since even if the unit that is attacked gets discarded, it can still retaliate, as long as they declared and activated the ability before the dice were rolled.

The way I see it is like this. LS has Chewie with one health left. DS has Vader. DS declares that Vader will attack Chewie. LS pays the force and declares they will activate the Retaliate. Vader kills Chewie. But before he goes to the discard pile he still gets to roll the retaliate dice and hurt Vader back.

 

It says that it is like other abilities. Does this mean that you have to evade before the dice is rolled?

 

I think that just means there are no special rules outside normal timing rules.

Evade always happens after the dice are rolled but before damage is put on it. That one is covered in the rulebook I think.

I am not sure what the hubbub was about retaliate, I took it for granted that was how that worked.

 

The hubbub was that a WotC ruling in an article posted on their website prior to Mar. 24th stated that the Retaliate ability can be activated (pay Force to use it) during the Damage Prevention POP that occurs after the dice roll. The AotC and ANH Rulebooks clearly state that only damage prevention and reroll abilities may be used at this time.

Yesterday's reruling corrects that judgment and also clarifies that when activated, the effect may still be used even if lethal damage is incurred by the defending unit with retaliate activated.

This also means I must now reprint my errata hardcopies I take along with me for games...

 

I'm glad to see that the SWTCG team at WotC ruled on the side of reason on this issue. It would be a shame to have *another* game where every rule had an exception because someone felt it should work that way. That way lies madness. Kudos to David, Paul, Matt, and everyone else that made this decision happen the right way.

 

I agree. I hadn't realized there were so many questions about it but it makes sense now.