Can the healing effect of the M'Kraan Crystal be applied to the replacement Iron Man after it is dealt unavoidable damage?

No M'Kraan is an "instead" effect.

In other words this would not occur since Summon Ancestral Spirit would never trigger. SAS only triggers when the character would be KO'd. M'Kraan Crystal prevents that character from KO'ing and therefore prevents SAS from triggering.

I think this is more complex. Both have instead of KO effects. That should mean that the active play chooses the order. Thus either SAS or M'Kraan should happen for a specific about to KO instance. If M'Kraan is chosen first then the character is not KOed and is instead healed. If SAS is chosen then the character is not KOed and is replaced.

You definitely cannot use the M'Kraan crystal to mitigate the unavoidable damage after replacing a figure using SAS, as no figure is being KOed at that point.

Thanks to all that responded!

Nowhere in Ancestral spirit does it say instead....it just says after you KO the piece you roll and maybe replace it...

SAS does not say instead. They are not concurrent events. M'Kraan prevents a KO SAS triggers on KO. Therefore M'Kraan takes priority.

however because it does not say instead...would you score points for every figure killed? Like let's say you KO 201 Iron man...you roll Ancestral Spirit and put out...Iron Soldier? Then he's KO'd you roll and put out Iron Engine...Iron Engine's KO'd and you don't get the roll...would you score 330 points?

Both of them occur "when (character) would be KO'd". They both trigger at the same time, so the active player gets to choose in which order to play them.

If he chooses SAS first, he rolls the dice. If it succeeds, the character is replaced and is no longer about to be KOed, so the crystal is not an option at that point. If the roll fails, he's still in the status of "would-be-KOed" so the crystal is still viable. If he chooses the crystal first, he heals and is no longer in that state, so SAS is not available any more.

Great discussion.

One more question, while we're on the subject of KOs and this trait: Would a KO'd SAS Iron Man using Lazarus Pit still count as the same character for replacement purposes, once revived?

This would be a very expensive way to keep "jumpstarting" Iron Man (110 victory points per KO) in most cases, but could prove useful in higher builds (against colossals).

SAS doesn't need "instead" explicitly, as it tells you to replace the figure with another figure on a non-KO click, thus having no figure KOed. Replacement figures are just that, replacements. When you replace a figure due to an Alter Ego action the opponent does not score points for the figure no longer on the board. The "instead" is implicit to the replacement instructions in SAS.

Hrrrrm Mr Pilkington I'm following your logic but I'll wait for someone else to weigh in!

In response to Troma99, you can only use SAS once. It reads "Only one friendly character per game may be replaced through this ability." Also the character is replaced so it doesn't count as a KO so you only get the points if the person misses the SAS roll or if you KO the replacement fig.

Due to how replacement figures are handled in HeroClix you can (currently) continue to roll SAS on a replacement chain of figures. A replaced figure is considered to be the original figure for all game purposes. The trait reads "Only one friendly character per game may be replaced through this ability.". In this case only one figure is being replaced, because once it is replaced it is considered the original figure. It gets replaced multiple times, but only one figure gets replaced.

Right now all that line effects is a team that starts with multiple SAS figures on it. Once you've rolled for one of them when they would be KOed you can no longer attempt the roll for any of the other figures with the trait that started on your team, but you can keep rolling in the chain of the one you did roll for. And the deputies are checking to see if the intent is to allow one figure to chain all the way through or to limit it to one actual replacement via SAS per game per team.

This is incorrect. M'Kraan Crystal relies on a character being KO'd to trigger. It will only trigger when a character would be KO'd. Instead of KO'ing the character M'Kraan Crystal jumps in and performs its magic.

SAS requires for the character to actually KO. The character is replaced with a new character when that character reaches the KO trigger. M'Kraan Crystal prevents that trigger from actually happening since it says to do something instead of KO'ing. SAS on the other hand requires the character to KO and it is then replaced. It is all in the phrasing. While it might seem like a minor difference it is actually a large difference in Heroclix.

It works like this:

When the character would KO M'Kraan Crystal activates preventing the KO. SAS checks to see if the character was KO'd. Game state shows that the character was not KO'd as M'Kraan Crystal said instead of KO'ing the character was healed. Since the character did not KO SAS does not activate. It will have to wait its turn.