After having commentated most of the European Continental events via streaming over the YourDestinyPodcast feed, I’ve come to realize that people are completely messing up triggers and whilst sometimes it isn’t relevant, more often than not, it’s technically wrong / illegal and you can be forced to miss an effect if the judge is called. If you are going to any of the National (Grand) level events, you should expect your opponent to ask you the order of your effects and if you do it wrong, you can’t blame any one but yourself for not knowing. There are a lot of things to get to, so let’s get started with the most common ones you’ll see; keep in mind that I might put Fateful Companions in interactions because that causes most of the big issues with the stacking, but Fateful isn’t played in every Droid list so those end up being way more lenient about having to do it properly so we’ll run down the stuff again when we get to Fateful and Rex Blaster.

Droids Day Out

DDO (pictured above) should actually be one of the hardest ones to mess up with, but I still saw it happen on stream which blows my mind.

Mistake: Activating your Droids one at a time WITHOUT telling your opponent which Droids you intend to activate. Reasoning: You aren’t allowed to activate R2, then 3PO and see the results then decide to activate Chopper or not. You pick which droid(s) you wish to activate and then you roll them all in at the same time or if you prefer, notify your opponent of which ones you’ll activate and then do them one at a time (which you might have to do if you have multiple of same upgrades on different characters).

Mistake: You activate your Droids one at a time, and you resolve their abilities before going and activating the next Droid. Reasoning: You have to finish activating all of the Droids you will activate and complete the DDO effect BEFORE you can get to the triggered abilities. In a situation where you play DDO and activate R2, then do the R2 ability to change a dies side, you are having been considered to be done with your DDO effect. If you notify your opponent of all the droids you are activating and still do the R2 ability before you finish activating the other Droids, then you aren’t handling game state correctly and could potentially receive an infraction (this last part is less likely because if it is known, the person should just tell you to finish rolling in the other ones and not likely call a judge on you).

It’s quite hard to mess up, but I definitely watched a player do DDO, roll in R2, focus a die, then roll in 3PO (with DDO….) and resolve a die for + 1 value. You should be super safe here as long as you are notifying your opponent of intent.

Off The Sensors

This was played incorrectly at Germany Grands and a guy won the game that he shouldn’t have, so let’s get the most important thing clarified here. The card says SPOT A RED CHARACTER… if you are using or playing against Rainbow Droids, if C-3PO is dead, they can’t use it any more.

If you choose the 2nd bullet point which is “Activate 2 of your characters or supports.”, you are allowed to do 2 Characters, 2 Supports, or 1 Character and 1 Support, but you have to roll them at the same time or notify your opponent of which 2 it will be before rolling them in one at a time. You also have to pick 2 if you have 2 available (but you wouldn’t play this if you only had 1 anyways so it is a moot point).

For the sake of clarity, I’ll write this, but I’d expect most of us to know by now. If you pick the first bullet point “Resolve one of your dice, increasing its value by 1.”, then it can’t be a modified side, and it is also just the base side by itself… you aren’t allowed to have it modified by another die while resolving it, because you only get to resolve the 1 die.

The common mistakes here are the same as DDO which involved people doing activations one at a time without notifying the opponent AND/OR people resolving triggered abilities in the middle of the activations prior to completing the Off the Sensors card effect.

Ewok Ambush and Instigate

Neither of these have ways to mistake orders because you are only activating 1 thing. Technically you could mess up on the 3 Ewok character portion of Ewok Ambush, but I’ll assume by this point, you understand that you finish the effect before doing any triggered abilities. Both of these cards are here for when we start making things complicated with Rex’s Blaster and the mistakes that happen with that so strap in and get ready as we jump into the actually complicated stuff.

Rex’s Blaster Pistol

Rex’s Blaster is pretty lit and does some pretty crazy stuff in Droid decks on it’s own, but it gets exasperated when you mix in the other cards. I’ll start off talking about ability triggers based on whether you have it on R2-D2 or C-3PO because they get handled very differently, then we’ll kick it up a notch and start to include the “Action Cheat” cards which we’ve gone over already.

Those of you that have played the deck before know that you seldom put Rex on 3PO, but those that haven’t may not understand why. Assuming that we control the battlefield and we activate 3PO here, we’ll have Rex Blaster die in the pool and 3PO dice in the pool and it’ll now be time to order our triggered effects from the activation. We only have two options here, we can 3PO resolve a die for +1 value first, or we can Rex first. If you 3PO first, you can only resolve the 3PO or Rex die for the +1 value, so you’ll NEVER want to do it this way and it is more preferable to do Rex first. So we’ll stack our queue with Rex then 3PO.

Queue: Rex’s Blaster Activate -> 3PO Resolve

We resolve Rex and roll out R2-D2. R2’s dice are in the pool and now adds it’s effect to the queue and Rex had completed so it was removed from the queue.

Queue: 3PO Resolve (who is waiting for his turn previously) -> R2 Focus (newly added to the end of the queue)

You might now see where the problem therein lies and why Rex Blaster very rarely goes on 3PO, which is because you have to do 3PO ability BEFORE you get to focus a die with R2. Whilst it isn’t a huge dilemma per se, it reduces your overall effectiveness.

This is where the real bread and butter is. You’ll want to follow the same concept as before, which is to stack Rex’s Blaster first, then R2 in the Queue.

Queue: Rex’s Blaster Activate -> R2 Focus

Now Rex activates 3PO and after the die is rolled into the pool, 3PO ability is added to the end of the queue and Rex falls off due to it completing it’s effect which leaves us with:

Queue: R2 Focus (leftover on queue from before) -> 3PO Resolve (newly added)

Boom, now you focus using the R2 ability, then get to Resolve a die with +1 value due to 3PO and you should be quite happy. Sure, you might not decide to do the 3PO resolve on the die that got focused by R2, but doing it properly means that if you did want to resolve that die, you’ll be able to.

So that is pretty simple and easy to remember and do, but having it on the correct character and putting certain effects first just makes it that way, so let’s now mix in the Action Cheat cards.

Rex + DDO / Off The Sensors

DDO and Off The Sensors will operate similarly for the most part so it’s quite simple to lump them together.

For the most part, this is just going to operate exactly like the Rex Blaster options above. The main difference is that if you need to take a line of play that doesn’t put Rex on R2, then DDO and Off the Sensors will help you to live out the proper sequencing to get maximum efficiency.

Off The Sensors: It won’t matter who the Rex Blaster is on, just be sure to have R2 activated as one of the 2 Characters in that effect instead of as the Rex activate effect, and you’ll be able to order the triggers to have R2 focus a die and 3PO to resolve it.

Droids Day Out: This will open out the option to have Rex Blaster on 3PO and still get the proper ordering that you need. If you put Rex on Han and you DDO though, you’ll just be in for a sad time as he’s not in the pool in combination with the rest.

You might be wondering where the Queue stack is, but it’s just not needed here after having explained it earlier. As long as you get R2 and Rex blaster equipped character in with DDO or Off the Sensors, then you’ll set the Queue as 1. Rex to activate, 2. R2, then 3. 3PO. There is the matter of when 3PO actually get’s activated, but you’ll definitely want him as the 3rd ability on the Queue here.

Fateful Companions

Are you ready for your head to explode, because it might. Everything before was just a build up to understanding how the ordering works and what is the “efficient” way to do it. Now we have the most properly pictured card as R2 and 3PO hover over a dumpster fire of triggered effects and leave chaos in their wake. Something to note is that Fateful triggers on each of the abilities and you only choose to exhaust it and make the copy when it is resolving Fateful in the Queue, THEN you add the copy of the ability to the end of the Queue. I’ll do my best to name things and use quotations to be more easily discernible but with writing the same stuff a bunch of times, there can be minor errors or changes in the naming sense, so do your best to follow a long and if something looks wrong, just drop a comment so I can check it over.

Example: Activate 3PO and we put a 3PO ability and Fateful Copy 3PO in the queue and we can stack 2 different ways with the resolutions being pretty different. Ex1Queue will be 3PO first, then fateful. Ex2Queue will be Fateful first, then 3PO

Ex1Queue: 3PO Resolve, Fateful Copy 3PO

We now resolve “3PO ability” and Resolve a die and that leaves just “Fateful Copy 3PO” in the Queue after. We resolve that and decide whether to exhaust Fateful or not, and if we do then we add a “3PO Resolve Copy” to the end of the Queue. After that we then resolve the “3PO ability Copy” and resolve another die.

Ex2Queue: Fateful Copy 3PO, 3PO Resolve

We decide whether we want to copy 3PO ability or not, and if we do, we exhaust Fateful and add the “3PO ability Copy” to the end of the Queue. The queue would then look like this after fateful resolves.:

3PO Resolve, 3PO Copy Resolve

We then resolve a die and go to the next item in the queue and resolve another die.

The differences between those, won’t seem like they matter, but once we start adding additional triggers to the queue, that is when it gets messy and you have to be on top of the game.

Important: If you had ordered it as 3PO ability, then Fateful 3PO copy in the queue, but you exhausted the Fateful prior to resolving a die with 3PO, then you would have technically skipped your initial 3PO ability, BECAUSE you don’t exhaust Fateful until it is resolving it’s effect in the queue. That technicality could cost you if a judge is present and decides to hold you to how you did it. If you ordered it as Fateful Copy first, and then 3PO ability and you didn’t exhaust your fateful, but resolved a die, then you’ll have technically skipped your Fateful Copy option and have decided to not do it. Could you consider someone a scumbag for holding you to it???, sure, but it’s really on you to understand how the game works and to do it properly. A Judge is supposed to make sure that the game is being played properly and it isn’t their fault that you did it wrong (assuming that you did it wrong) and that they enforced it. At high level events, you are expected to know how the game works and to do it properly. Announcing intentions properly and knowing How Stuff Works is imperative to not having a bad story that you tell your friends about later.

Rex Blaster + Droids + Fateful

Rex Blaster on 3PO:

3PO activates and rolls dice in the pool; the 3 effects we now have to order are Rex, 3PO, Fateful trigger 3PO. For the sake of this, we’ll do it as is and we have:

Queue: Rex Activate -> 3PO Resolve -> Fateful Copy 3PO decision

We now resolve Rex Blaster ability and activate R2, and put both a R2 focus ability and Fateful Copy R2 decision on the queue then remove Rex from the Queue. Assuming we are doing R2 Focus, then Fateful Copy R2 as the order.

Queue: 3PO Resolve, Fateful Copy 3PO decision, R2 Focus, Fateful Copy R2 decision.

3PO Resolves a die then removes itself from the Queue and now we have a decision to make as the next item in the Queue is the Fateful Copy of 3PO. If we decide to make the Copy of 3PO, then we would exhaust Fateful Companions here, and then add the 3PO ability Copy to the end of the queue and it would look like this:

Queue: R2 Focus, Fateful Copy R2 decisions (which will fail), 3PO ability Copy from Fateful.

Then you focus a die and R2 ability falls out of the queue, then the Fateful R2 Copy fails because it can’t exhaust, then the 3PO resolve copy from fateful goes and resolves a die.

As you can see, the Fateful Copies of abilities can move around in the queue based on how you order it and make it so that you can get behind an R2 Focus. The drawback here is that if you wanted to make the copy of R2 Focus, then you wouldn’t be able to use a 3PO resolve on any of the dice that got focused because it is on the queue first. You would have to settle for double 3PO abilities and using the fateful copy to resolve the R2 Focused die. Pretty much, you’d still want to avoid having Rex on 3PO over R2 due to that being a much more efficient way to go about it but sometimes you have to take what you can get.

Rex on R2 + Fateful does the same as above, except ordering wise, you’ll always be able to get that R2 Focus on whatever die if you were looking to 3PO resolve it. Even if you decided to copy R2, you can have the original R2 Focus the die that you were looking to 3PO resolve, then have the R2 Copy focus whatever other die that you wanted. It is the preferred sequence for maximum value and doesn’t mess anything up provided that you did things right and didn’t lose any of your abilities due to messing up resolutions / fateful. The more triggers we’re adding to the queue at once, the easier it is to make a mistake and potentially forfeit abilities as mentioned back in the Fateful section under “Important” in bold.

Action Cheat + Rex + Droids + Fateful

If the action cheat is DDO, then you don’t have much to worry about as far as ordering is concerned as long as you do Rex Blaster first (on either Droid), and have R2 Focus before you have 3PO Resolve, because whatever you decide to Fateful copy will be at the end anyways. The same applies to playing Off the Sensors if both Droids are being activated and Rex is on one of them. If Rex is on Han (or w/e 3rd character) then you’ll want to activate R2 as the second character, so that you can have Rex and R2 in the queue (and fateful which we don’t care about), then activate 3PO via Rex, then have R2 Focus go off and do exactly whatever you wanted.

It changes when the action cheat is Ewok Ambush or Instigate though because you wouldn’t have gotten all 3 characters into the pool around the same time. Assuming that the goal is to get all 3 characters dice in the pool and resolve a focused die via 3PO then you’ll want to have Rex on R2 or the 3rd character and then you Ewok Ambush (assuming you can do this) or Instigate him (the Rex equipped character), then you’ll activate R2 / the 3rd character (whomever Rex isn’t on obviously) and be able to R2 Focus, then decide if you want to Fateful Copy R2 ability. After the Queue is empty, due to having an action to take because of Ambush, you activate 3PO (provided that you want to) and use his ability to resolve a die, or dice if you still have Fateful available to copy.

Yeah, I know, welcome to queue hell. I believe I laid it out in a way that should be understood. If you read all of this a couple of times and still are having difficulties, feel free to drop a comment and I’ll check in and reply to try to make sure you have it down.

Pushing slash goes in order of the text written on the card. Activate the Blue Character, decide to resolve one of that character’s character or upgrade dice. After that is when you decide to turn a die or not (assuming you have Niman Mastery attached to it). You can NOT turn a die, and then resolve that die with the Pushing Slash effect.

~HonestlySarcastc