After receiving rave reviews and requests, we are back at it looking over some commonly misunderstood things in the game of Destiny. If you’re thinking that you know everything already, then I challenge you to read the entire article and see if it is still a truth that you hold to be self evident. Most of the stuff will be a bit rudimentary but for the sake of maintaining interest for the “know-it-alls” then i’ll sneak in some “combat tricks”, one of which i briefly mentioned last week.

Resolving Damage

One of the more commonly misunderstood things in this game is that when you are resolving a specific symbol, you don’t resolve all of those sides at once. They are done in “packets” one at a time. Each “packet” is ONE base die and any other modified (same symbol) dice of your choosing. If you don’t have any modified dice then you are essentially doing it one at a time, but I just wanted to clarify the term “packet” since i’ll be using it a TON through out the article and it is very important for the first specific card that we’ll be talking about. Below is a quickie reference picture as well as text in the Rules Reference Guide explaining what I call “packets”.



We have 3 base melee damage dice in the picture above so that we know we have 3 packets of damage and the Ancient Lightsaber Modified 3 melee damage can be paired with any of them. So our packets are 1, 2, and 3 damage with any of them being capable of using the Mod +3 to increase that packet and we can resolve them in any order that we choose or even decide to not resolve all of the packets in the case that we want to reroll or save one for a card like Guard or Force Misdirection. So in order assuming we choose to modify one of them, on of the packets will be changed to 4 (Padawan and Ancient), 5 (Heirloom and Ancient), or 6 (Obi and Ancient) depending on which one we do.

That second bullet will come in later when we talk about Second Chance, but in general do know that when you “overkill” a character, it doesn’t matter since they can only end up with what their max health is. This is relevant for end of time procedures, but we won’t be talking about that today.

Our good friend Vibroknife got a nerf back when the balance of the force took FN-2199, Poe, Phasma, and Unkar from us. Some like to blame the thriving shield meta on the nerf, but all that matters here is being able to use it properly / understand it. The current text is “Damage dealt by this die or by dice it modifies is unblockable.”, which if the text didn’t make sense to you then it roughly means that any “packet” of damage that it is a part of is unblockable. It’s main benefit nowadays requires it to be on it’s modified side or for you to have large / multiple modified melee sides to pair with it to make big unblockable “packets” of damage. The picture below gives a few examples, but there isn’t a whole lot to know here once you get the gist of it.

So in this situation we know that we have 2 damage packets at most since there are only 2 base sides and we just have to figure out how we want to combine them. The available choices for the unblockable damage here are: 4,5,7, or 8 unblockable damage with leftover of “blockable” damage packets of 6, 5, 3, and 2 respectively (we had 10 maximum, and the math shouldn’t be too hard to see what is leftover).

Indirect Damage

Normally I’d prefer to write and then reference the rules stuff, but there is just so much confusion with Indirect Damage that I think everyone should read those 3 excerpts. I’ll do this out of order and reference the second part of the picture which is that an Indirect Damage side counts as “Showing Damage” for any cards that effect that. A lot of people get confused by the “clarification text” on the older cards before Indirect came into fruition, which have “(melee or ranged)” {using pictures} every time it says “Dice Showing Damage”.

The first excerpt explains that the damage is assigned “as you wish” and the third excerpt explains the rules behind the distributing damage “as you wish”. The breakdown of #1 in excerpt 3 is that you that you can only assign a character damage equal up to the amount of remaining health + the number of shields on that character / cannot “overkill” with Indirect Damage unless all of your remaining characters have been assigned “lethal” in which case you then assign the leftover damage to whichever character you want.

The next photo is a different scenario with only 1 character remaining and the same 5 indirect damage. (I didn’t realize i forgot to close quotations on “lethal”… whoops)



(Black Text: Due to the remaining health + shields being reached at 3, but then no other characters are remaining then the overflow of 2 indirect damage is also assigned to Yoda.)

You might be thinking that Yoda taking 3 or 5 here doesn’t matter, because he is defeated in both scenarios, but when we get into situations with the next card interaction, it will make much more sense.

There is a popover on the header for Force Illusion if you want to read it. In general, the Force Illusion timing window is actually the same window for Shields blocking damage. Most people aren’t aware of this, but you can choose to have your shields block damage first, and then Force Illusion whatever damage is leftover. That trick becomes relevant when you are short on cards in deck to block the damage or trying to not “mill” too many cards. In theory, you could do it the other way as well, but it doesn’t work with Force Illusion because that card needs to stop all of the damage or none of it, but it would work with Armor Plating. Elaborating on the stop all of it or none of it. A character could have 1 health remaining and take 8 Damage (assuming it could be legally assigned and only stating this because of the Indirect rules if other characters remain) from one “packet” and you’d had to choose to block all 8 with Force Illusion or block none of it (once again, assuming this is after shields have been used if you choose to do so in that order).



(Black Text from Picture: This is where several of the rules become relevant. Since Yoda can only be assigned 3 damage maximum, the other 2 would have to be assigned to Hondo (thereby defeating him) even though Yoda would be able to block the damage with the Illusion, remaining health + Shields is the maximum limit to be assigned.) Setting people up to be incapable of blocking big indirect damage packets with Force Illusion is an important thing to learn unless you are going for the “mill” win.

Second Chance is another card that tends to confuse people and operates similarly in the situation above in place of Force Illusion where it doesn’t increase your “maximum assigned damage limit”. Picture below for reference.

In general, the other thing that messes with people in regards to Second Chance is the timing window / what happens with additional damage. Let’s use the above scenario but change the incoming damage to a packet of “4 damage” (not indirect) and it is assigned to Hondo. Hondo will max out at 10 damage, the overflow of 2 damage goes away, Hondo is defeated will “trigger”, second chance cuts in and “heals 5” and then Hondo is no longer defeated. The breakdown is that after Second Chance finishes, the character will always have 5 Health Remaining.

The trick to busting through Second Chance is to have leftover packets of damage of at least 5 damage after Second Chance goes off, so that you can continue resolving your damage to defeat him. This was a big thing back during the days of Han Rey and Starship Graveyard since it always terrorized people. The most common occurrence was to leave the character with 1 health remaining and go into the next round and do a 1 damage packet and then the other 5.

Rules Reference Guide

When you need a ruling on the fly then asking the community can usually get you instant gratification but if you want to take your game to the next level then I believe it is imperative to read the Rules Reference Guide (the current guide link as of 4-24-2018) and make it a point to understand the mechanics of the game. It will help immensely in deckbuilding and in not losing “random” games at Store Champs, Regionals, etc. to not knowing how some interactions worked. Next time we’ll take a look at Qui-gon Jinn and “Move Damage” like Draw Attention/Impersonate/Vushka. Star Wars Destiny is great, but it can be complicated at times so I hope shedding some light on the darkness that is the Rules helps quite a bit for those who have had some trouble and the small tricks help you get a win that you might not otherwise have gotten.

~HonestlySarcastc

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