Shields

Shields are a common sight thanks to Episode I and the droideka, but they aren’t included in the original game from Hasbro. This page is devoted to the various ways to include shields in Epic Duels. These descriptions assume droidekas are the character you want to give shields to, but they can work for any kind of unit.

Shields I – Power Defense Cards

The most basic way to include shields is by giving your droidekas power defense cards, and alluding to “shields” in the card’s name. Anything from a high value defense (5+) to a block (star) will work, to represent how shields protect a droideka from damage.

Also common are, lower value power defense cards (1-4) with the text, “You may discard any droideka basic combat card to add its defense value to this card.” This alternative allows the droideka the potential to block even the best jedi attacks, but requires combat resources to accomplish it.

This method also has the potential to be combined with either of the following two methods.

Shields II – The Shield Track

In this method, an second health track is added to the droideka’s character to represent shields, called the shield track. When a droideka takes damage from an attack, the shield track must be depleted before the health track begins lowering, and the attack that pushes the shield track to zero does not carry any extra damage to the health track. (e.g. A droideka has 6 health and 2 shield. The Obi-wan attacks with A7, and the droideka defends with D4, Obi-wan does 3 points of damage. The shield track moves to zero, but that extra point of damage disappears, because the extra damage doesn’t carry over to the health track.) Another way to say that is, as long as the droideka has shields, it cannot take health damage from an attack, only shield damage.

It is common (but not universal) using this method for direct damage talent cards to bypass the shield track and damage the health track, even if the direct damage comes from a power attack card.

It is common (but not universal) for shields to be restored via talent cards, but not via discarding to heal.

Shields III – The Defense Bonus

This method adds the most realism to droideka shields, as depicted in Episode I, but can be difficult to implement. Using this method, droidekas have two states, shielded, and unshielded. A player must on his/her turn spend one action to activate shields for one droideka unit, thus activating shields for two droidekas requires two actions, and so on. While droidekas are shielded, they cannot move via the die roll at the beginning of the player’s turn (they can move via talent cards like Force Push, Force Control, and cards for droidekas similar to Give Orders). With active shields, a droideka adds 2 to all defense cards played. The player controlling a droideka may deactivate droideka shields at anytime.

Opposing players may disable one droideka’s shields by attacking the shields. To do this, the opposing player declares which unit is attacking the droideka, the states, “I’m attacking the shields.” Combat for attacking the shields is resolved normally, and if the attack does any amount of damage, the shields are deactivated, but the droideka takes no damage from the attack. Disabled shields remain deactivated, and cannot be reactivated (except perhaps via talent cards).

It is common for this method to include talent cards that: restore disabled shields, allow the player to activate shields as a free action, and move shielded droidekas a finite number of spaces.

Implementing this rule in VASSAL requires specialized use of the Layer function for figures, but on a tabletop this can be achieved by sliding bottle caps or coins under a droideka unit to represent them being shielded. Additionally, if the player is using droideka pawns from the Hasbro boardgame The Queen's Gambit, a clear shot glass will just about exactly fit over the pawn to represent shields. Additionally, the transparent flight stands from the MageKnight game from WizKids will work well for this method.

Shields IV - The Health Bonus

This method abstracts the game effect of shields without actually allowing the players to interact with the shields as game mechanics. The effect of a character having shields is that the attacker will have to expend additional resources to wear the shielded character down before finally being able to land the killing blow. To represent this, the "shielded" character is given an exceptionally long lifetrack - 24 to 30 HP - but otherwise has completely standard cards that make no references to the shields themselves.

This method is theoretical only and has not actually been implemented in a deck. This method should be considered absolutely mutually exclusive with all of the methods discussed above.

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