im suffering from having to deprogram myself of this game, because the way i was showed how to play by a wizkids volunteer at gencon came out to be totally wrong from what the rules dictate, i was kinda upset that wiz kids would get people that didnt know the game to demo it for people. it was clear that the demo runner was only volunteering for wizkids to get some mechwarrior stuff at gencon. however here are some of the myths that i was taught that i need more clarification on.

1) squadron special abilities.... some squadron's retain special abilities if they remain within a certain increment from each other. would this ability stack if i was to bring in 2 of the same squadrons and flew them all tight formation? or are you not alowed to have more than one copy of a ship or squadron (maybe they are all unique ships)

2) boarding rolls... (man im real confused on how this process works) lets say im defending and roll 1 die, and your boarding rolling 4 die, if you roll 4,5,5, and 3 and i lucky roll a 6 do i compare my high dice to all your dice that are higher and successfully repel your boarding this turn and do 1 damage to you? or do i compare my 6 to your 5, then you compare your next highest die to me not having any more dice and succeed in a hit. or are each of the remaining dice counted as individual hits against my ship in turn dealing 3 damage to my ship . i want to understand this mechanic of the game because i think alot of people are over ruling the ability to put full shields on a armored hull and just fly around and ram and board ships instead of arc lasering them.

3) what is the advantage to having a space station over using an asteroid? other than mounting pods i see it more as a disadvantage to having the option of having your base shot down. and even if base def is a good way to prevent enemies from shooting you down it doesnt help against boarding. if i understand the boarding rules its real easy to load up a hearts blood with 6 shield, a marine, capt mash, and the chick with the whip to give your ship a woping 12 boarding dice against your base's (base(4)+ship(1)+Pods(4)= 9. Space stations would seem more valuable and playable to me if they had the ability to repair docked ships. example (at the end of your turn any ship docked with space station can repair 1 pod that is missing)

4) can bases repair and i overlooked it? or is the only repairing available in the game structial engineers? i just remembers that in pirates your ships docked to your island can repair one mast per turn.

5) Collisions and docking. am i reading this correctly that you can dock on to an enemy ship as easily as saying "im spending 1 ap to dock with your ship" i can uinderstand docking to microids and asteroids and home bases and friendly units but i would think it common that no space ship would sit still and let some one dock them and attempt a board "that easily" i would think the attempting ship would have to succed in a collision before docking with an "enemy" ship.

6) so a ship can dock with a friend and shoot using a W.Off and then move the crew to the other docked ship and then tack another shot with the crews benefit. crews rotation should be done at the end of the turn. example at the end of the turn any player who has docked ships may transfer crew. this would prevent this kind of loophole from being used.

7) at gencon i was told that you could salvage enemys ships and fly them in your own fleet. from reading the directions i find this not true, but why not? if anything why not put the opponents salvaged ship in your resource fleet and make it available to come into play on your side if you spend its resources? doesnt that make sence? in every scifi/war epic you see a case of a stolen enemy ship being used against the enemy,

8) can fighters tow podless salvaged ships back to the base? this should only be doable if fighters had a tractor beam (i assume a future pod in development) or cargo.

9) if the rule of 2 and 12 override all rules than if im flying a ship that lets me reroll any missed attack i make, if its doubles i cannot do so if i roll a 2 and like wise you cannot use evasive manuvers and or base defense or any dodge abilities if i roll a natural 12. am i correct on this one?

10) Can an npc with abilities simular to generic crew ranks pair up in the same ship as a generic crew of the same rank? example the mercury queen has abilities of both a captain and a weapons officer. can i put her on the same ship as aother generic captain and another generic weapon officer? if so for a 13 point cost i would have a ship that would be at -4 wr and would gain +4ap if it fires its weapons pod.

This is currently being discussed over on the WizKids rules forum. While it looks like there will be no "unique" rule, you wont be able to stack abilities from two duplicate squadrons. This means that if you do use two Avengers squadrons (Rebel fighters that give -1 WR for each ship within 1 M distance, the largest bonus you will get is -2, and that will only be possible by using ships from the same card.

Damage is limited by the person with the fewer dice. From your example, your one die ship would cause one damage to the other ship, and then the boarding wave is over. The other three dice don't get used for anything because there is no dice to compare them to. The reason that having more dice than your opponent is preferable is that it gives you a greater chance to roll high. But even with a huge dice advantage, it's always possible that the smaller ship will get lucky and damage the larger one (which wont happen if the larger one is just shooting at it).

Personally, I don't see much advantages to space stations. They are more of a liability in my eyes, because they can both be boarded or destroyed with regular fire. The one thing they have going for them is you can put shield pods on them, and thus make them immune to boarding until those pods are destroyed.

And your example has a couple of errors in it. First, you cannot put Ivana on a Martian ship, because she is part of the Legion of Terra, and thus can only go on a Legion ship, or an unaffiliated ship (currently only the space stations are unaffiliated). Even without her, your Martian Rocket ship would have 12 Boarding Dice (6 for the pods, 1 for the ship, 2 for the crew, 2 more for Captain Mash's ability (he has a misprint), and 1 for the Marine's ability).

Nope, the only repair comes from Structural Engineers, and the Phoenix (a rebel cruiser that repairs a pod when it destroyes an opponent).

Yes and no. You can spend 1 AP to dock with a ship you are in contact with, but only if that ship has no shield pods. Shields prevent docking from happening. This is what keeps a six pod ship with all shields from being too scary. If all the opponents ships have at least one shield pod, the six-podder has no offensive options.

You can swap out crew at any time. But you have to remember than you can only have one active ship at a time, and once the ships turn is done, it cannot take any more actions later in the same turn. So you can't fire with ship A, give its WO to ship B, have ship B fire, give the WO back to ship A, and then have ship A move to ship C and transfer the WO to them.

There is a Rebel crew who allows you to capture a boarded ship and use it as your own. It's of dubious use, as the ship you are getting has no pods, so you'll have to have a structural engineer to repair it. Other than that, any ship that capture via boarding can be used for a resource in building a ship from your reserve fleet, but that's it.

If the fighter won the boarding action and salvaged the ship, then yes, it can tow that one ship back to your home base for use as a resource. It doesn't need tractor beams or anything else to do that.

You're spot on. ;)

You cannot have multiple crew of the same "rank" on a single ship. Since the Empress has the ranks of "Captain", "Marine" and "Weapon Officer", you cannot place any generic crew with one of these "ranks" on the same ship with her.

so does this mean you cannot dock to your friendly ships and transfer crew unless they have no shields as well?

is there a effective way for a ship with full shields to be offensive if it was to ram the other ships with the collision rule? or am i overlooking something here as well?

No, you may always dock with your own ships, whether they have shield pods or not. I assume this is to show that the shields can be either phased together for friendly forces or a portion (or entire) shield may be shut down when docking. :D This also allows your ships to dock with any space station you control which has shield pods and unload cargo or transfer crew. Once the ships are docked (either to each other or a space station), crew transfer may take place for free.

Not that I am aware of. According to the rules, two ships that had at least one shield pod each would not suffer any collision damage nor would they become docked to one another. The only offensive tactic a shield pod only ship may perform is a collision and/or boarding of an enemy unshielded ship or base.

Hope that helps.

Well, that's trueish. Yes Lt. Bulkhead, the Rebel crewman that has this ability, can capture ships amd make them part of your fleet, you cannot put anyone else on the ship unless they are the faction as the ship. IE, if you 'borrow' a Mars ship, you must have Mars crewmen to put onto the vessel. To make matters worse, if Bulkhead leaves the ship, it becomes you opponents again!
Thus, the best thing about Lt. Ethan Bulkhead is his name.