Let's pretend I have ghost widow with armor piercing and armor wars is in play. I'm parked next to a guy with impervious. Does the guy take 1 or two? I assume 1 but I thought I'd check.

A real help in any question is to quote the appropriate cards and/or rule

Armour Wars: When damage dealt is reduced by any power or effect, increase the damage dealt by 1 after it is reduced by all other game effects.

Armour Piercing: Damage dealt by this character may not be reduced below 1.

Poison: Once at the beginning of your turn, as a free action this character deals 1damage to each opposing character adjacent to it.

Okay, so let's look at the sequence of events

Start of your turn, you tell your opponent you are using Poison (it is optional, so if you do not say it, you do not use it). His damage reducer (doesn't matter which) reduces the damage dealt from 1 to 0. This activates AP, which raises the damage back to 1. At this point, AW kicks in. Did you reduce damage? Yes. Was it effective? Who Cares! Damage was reduced, AW kicks in

Total = 2 damage taken

I believe it's 1.

Armor Wars only kicks in if Damage is reduced. Since AP does not allow the Damage to be reduced, Armor Wars doesn't kick in.

Also, a Psychic Blast or Exploit Weakness attack would not trigger Armor Wars.

No, this is why I said quote the cards. It says 'Damage dealt by this character may not be reduced below 1'. This means the damage from AP may be reduced

If I hit you with a 5 damage fist and you had Toughness, AP has no effect. Damage was not reduced to less than 1

You are correct on PB/EW

He takes two. First, his Impervious "reduces" the Poison damage -2, but AP prevents damage from ever being reduced below 1, so 1 damage is dealt. Then Armor Wars, because it's activated after damage has been already reduced, causes another click.

...like Big Soph said much better than I did.

Taking precedence from the FAQ, this is how it would work:

• At the beginning of your turn, Ghost Widow's Poison activates.
• The opposing adjacent character's Impervious triggers. Regardless of the roll result, the damage dealt is reduced to 0.
• Armor Piercing triggers, preventing the damage from being reduced below 1.
• Armor Wars triggers, increasing the damage dealt from 1 to 2.
• The opposing adjacent character takes 2 damage.

What I said ^^^

so basically ghost widow does fat damage to impervious guys without me having to roll?I know what I'm running next non-floor tourney.

My two cents:

Poison deals one damage. Armor Piercing states that damage from a character cannot be reduced below 1. Because Poison deals 1 damage and because armor piercing prevents damage from being reduced below 1, the poison damage is not reduced by the "poisoned" character's damage reducers. The poison damage starts and ends at 1. At no point is the poison damage modified by the damage reducer, because the operation of Armor Piercing prevents the poison damage from being reduced below 1.

Because the poison damage is not reduced, the condition for Armor Wars' damage increasing effect is never met. Therefore, the "poisoned" character would take 1 damage after all effects of Poison, Armor Piercing, and Armor Wars have resolved.

Note: If (hypothetically) Poison dealt 2 damage, then I would say that the "poisoned" character would take 2 damage from Poison and Armor Wars. In this case, the Poison damage starts at 2, is reduced by a damage reducer to a minimum 1 (Armor Piercing), and then is increased by 1 by Armor Wars (because the damage in this case was reduced from 2 to 1).

EDIT: WITHDRAWN IN LIGHT OF THE FAQ'S STATEMENT

Why wait for non-Floor? 200 points is plenty of room left over for a 64-point fig as multi-functional as GW.

Of course, this trick only works once a tournament due to the BFC, and maybe not at all if the other team's themed. Armor Wars is also a double-edged BFC that could severely work in the other side's favor unless you've built your team for it...in which case, your team is pretty soft defensively.

Spy team to wait for non-floor--there are no spies in Crisis. and spy teams are notorious for their lack of reducers.

I've always felt that damage reducers are overrated, it's just another thing I have to outwit before I attack. unless they have fortitude. in which case I thwart it and they have to take a token to get rid of it. So it's either outwit/attack or thwart/outwit/attack with different character.

So you are one of those who think that the damage is not reduced by AP, hmmm?

Damage IS reduced against AP, it just may not be reduced to less than 1

Yeesh

And yes, Invisibo, GW is extremely nasty, with or without AW

A great defence, a healer, mystics-like TA, taxi, cheap

This is the way it *should* work, because any "may not be" rule should prevent the effect from ever occuring. For all intents, it should be as if it never happened. The damage was only one, it was prevented by being reduced to less than one by "may not be" wording, thus it should never have been considered to be reduced or even subject to a reduction effect.

Instead some oddball voodoo ruling was pulled out in which "may not be" actually means "do it anyway to allow triggers on the effect, and then rollback the effect itself". I can't name a single other game where "may not be" or "cannot be" has that same effect, but I can name at least a half dozen where rules with that wording means "treat as if the effect never happened for all intents, and prevent such effects down the chain from resolving". The latter is a much cleaner approach (why it is so was a hard learned lesson for many game rule designers), especially when effect timing issues are involved.

As others have pointed out, the actual HeroClix effect is +1 penetrating damage, regardless of what the original damage was or if it was actually reduced. Consider it one of those may "scratch your head in stunned disagreement, but do it anyway because it was ruled that way" subjects.

When damage dealt starts at 1 and is still 1 after the operation of the damage reducer, I would say that the damage dealt has not been reduced. I know the FAQ says that the damage was reduced, but I don't understand the logic behind that ruling.

In any event, consider what I wrote to be a dissenting opinion.

And by no logical or semantic point could it be validly argued that damage that was 1 was "reduced" if it "may not be reduced to less than 1". In fact the meaning of the phrase "may not" means *it wasn't*. Not "it happened, but pretend it didn't".

Very clearly *all but 1* damage is subject to reduction with AP. But only in the bizzaro world of HeroClix is that last point considered "reduced", even though it wasn't. And I've shown the ruling to rules designers of a couple CCGs and a few board games, and they've had the same WTF response I had. The CCG designers in particular stated that they'd have an effect timing nightmare if they had went the same route with "may not be" and "cannot be" rules.

Yeesh, indeed.