Today I’ll be breaking down one of the cards that is most talked about on social media as well as one of the most played cards in any Yellow hero deck: Second Chance (AW137). The card text reads: “Yellow character only. Before attached character would be defeated, instead heal 5 damage from it and discard this upgrade from play.”
Artwork
I think the artwork is a great representation of the card’s meaning. For anyone that hasn’t seen Star Wars: Episode VII, for one, you have to, and secondly, if you have, you’ll remember this scene as one of the most heart wrenching moments in the movie. The stolen TIE fighter piloted by Finn and Poe crash lands, and Finn wakes up to find nothing left of Poe. Then the TIE fighter is swallowed up by quicksand and he believes Poe to be dead. This embodies everything about Finn getting a second chance, having just fled the First Order and crashing without dying. I just love it.
Deck Options
Being a Yellow hero support card, you will only be able to build this into a hero deck with a Yellow character present. One of the most common decks to contain this card is a eHan/eRey deck. The survivability this card adds to any deck is really amazing, especially if you can successfully get it to trigger multiple times in a game.
You might be asking, “Wait, hold up a second, it’s discarded from play after it triggers, how do you use it multiple times?” Well folks, when paired with the battlefield Starship Graveyard (AW174), which reads: “Choose a support or upgrade in your discard pile and place it on top of your deck,” you can easily claim and get that puppy right back on top of your deck!
Now lets have a look at the meat of this card. How does it work? How does it interact with the queue? What are some examples of play to get around a character equipped with Second Chance?
How does this card trigger?
The trigger for this card is a defeat; currently, there are two ways for a character to be defeated: with a card effect such as the special found on Crime Lord (AW23) (“Special: Spend 5 resources to choose a character. That character is defeated after this round ends.”), or by meeting or exceeding, with damage, the health of a character. With either of these conditions, the trigger condition is met so you continue with the rest of the effect, which happens to be a replacement effect.
With Crime Lord, there is no damage to take into account. The defeat was triggered by the special effect, so the outcome is simple, you would simply discard Second Chance and heal 5 from whatever HP that character is currently at. This could potentially mean your character heals to full health or anything in-between.
Excess Damage and Healing 5 Damage
With a defeat via damage, there are a few questions that come up, one being, “what do we do with excess damage?” The simple answer is, “nothing.” All excess damage is ignored as per page 15 in the rulebook.
The way I think of this is like when playing Pandemic: Contagion, if you have a pool of 1 million people that can be infected and could die, you can’t kill 2 million people. If we apply that same logic to damage dealt, if a character can only take 10 damage to be defeated, you can’t deal them 12, they are already defeated, they don’t have 12 to take.
So using that logic, and the rulebook, when Second Chance heals 5 damage, it is always from the max health of that character. If your character has a total of 10 health, you’d heal 5 of the damage counters on them, leaving 5 damage counters. If they have 12 health, you’d again heal 5, leaving 7 damage counters. Basically, subtract 5 from your total HP and that is where you sit.
Example of Play
Now, this doesn’t mean that you can’t defeat that character in the same action/turn. We know that each die is resolved one at a time, except for modified dice that are resolved together. Say, for example, you’re facing a character with 10 health, 9 damage, and Second Chance on it. You have rolled a 1 unmodified ranged damage, a 2 unmodified ranged damage, a +3 modified ranged damage, and lastly, another 2 unmodified ranged damage.
You can defeat this character or not, depending on how you choose to resolve your dice. So always make sure you count and double count before resolving.
To beat this character, resolve the 1 unmodified ranged damage, defeating the character and triggering Second Chance. Because Second Chance met its trigger requirement and is a “before” ability, it would attempt to resolve immediately before any other dice can be resolved. It would check for any other competing “before” abilities triggered by a defeat. If it is the only one, then it would resolve immediately, and would heal 5 damage from that character, leaving it with 5 damage. Which means, of course, because it healed 5, you would need to deal another 5 damage to defeat that character.
Then the queue would continue and you would continue to resolve your ranged dice, as you were in the middle of your “resolve a die” action when Second Chance interrupted the queue to resolve. You could then resolve the 2 unmodified ranged damage with the +3 modified ranged damage to deal that character another 5 damage and defeat it a second time that round. Since Second Chance was just discarded from the last defeat, you will defeat the character for good.
Now with the same dice pool, you could resolve it in a way that would not defeat the character a second time.
If you resolved the 2 unmodified ranged damage with the +3 modified ranged damage first, Second Chance triggers, but excess damage is ignored, so you’ve wasted 4 damage. That character heals 5, ignoring the 4 excess damage, and you’d only have 3 total ranged damage left over in your dice pool, with 5 damage needed to defeat that character.
So again, always count and count again before you decide how to resolve your dice, it can really make or break the game for you.
Rules updates not yet found in the FAQ
There has been much debate on whether or not Second Chance triggers before or after other “Before a Character is Defeated” triggers, particularly with a General Grievous (AW3) due to the use of the words “would be defeated”, instead of “is defeated.”
I spoke with lead designer Lukas Litzsinger and he has confirmed that both will attempt to resolve at the same time, as both triggers are the defeat of the character. What this means, based on the rule book, is when any simultaneous effects attempt to resolve, the person controlling the battlefield chooses the order of resolution.
He clarified that in the case of General Grievous being triggered first, he would steal a weapon, however, Lukas mentioned this: “If it triggers the other way around, then there is the question of whether the replacement effect negates the trigger on Grievous. This will be given due consideration and answered in the next Rules Reference update.”
So stay tuned for the next Rules Reference update to see what happens if Second Chance triggers first.
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