Defense Tokens

Ships and unique squadrons gain the defense tokens indicated on their ship and squadron cards during setup and place them next to their corresponding cards. Defense tokens can be spent by the defender during the “Spend Defense Tokens” step of an attack to produce the effects described below:

- Redirect: The defender chooses one of its hull zones adjacent to the defending hull zone. When the defender suffers damage from this attack, it may suffer any amount of damage on the chosen zone’s shields (up to the shields remaining on that zone) before it must suffer the remaining damage on the defending hull zone.

- Evade: At long range, the defender cancels one attack die of its choice. At medium and close range, the defender chooses one attack die to be rerolled.

• While defending at extreme range (beyond the length of the range ruler), the defender resolves the long-range effect and cancels one additional attack die.
• While defending at distance 1–2, the defender resolves the effect for medium and close range.
• When a ship spends an Evade token while defending against a ship of a larger size class, it may cancel or reroll one additional attack die, as appropriate for the attack’s range. If it does, discard the spent token, whether it is readied or exhausted.

- Contain: If the defender is a ship, the attacker is prevented from resolving the standard critical effect. The attacker can still resolve a non-standard critical effect, such as one granted by an upgrade card.

- Salvo: If the defender is a ship, it performs a salvo attack after the “Resolve Damage” step of this attack. If the attacker was a ship, the defender performs a salvo attack against the attacking hull zone using the defender’s printed rear battery armament. If the attacker was a squadron, the defender performs a salvo attack against the attacker using its printed anti-squadron armament.

• The effect of the e defense token cannot be resolved during a counter, salvo, or ignition attack.
• During a salvo attack, the attack range and line-of-sight are treated as the same as those of the original attack, and firing arcs are ignored.
• Dice cannot be added to a salvo attack. (Other dice modifications still apply.)
• During a salvo attack, only the standard critical effect can be resolved.
• If the ship that spent the e defense token is destroyed before performing a salvo attack, it performs the salvo attack before it is removed.

- Brace: When damage is totaled during the “Resolve Damage” step, the total is reduced to half, rounded up.

- Scatter: The defender cancels all attack dice.

• Defense tokens begin the game on their readied side. When a readied defense token is spent, it is flipped to its exhausted side. When an exhausted defense token is spent, it is discarded.
• If the defender’s speed is “0,” it cannot spend defense tokens.
• The defender cannot spend more than one defense token of each type per attack.
• A defense token cannot be spent more than once during an attack.
• Defense tokens can be spent as part of a cost for upgrade card effects. If spent in this way, a defense token does not produce its normal effect ^[1].

FAQ

^[2]

Related Topics: Attack, Size Class, Status Phase, Range and Distance