Keyword: Retaliate

Forced Response: After this character is attacked, deal X damage to the attacker. (X is the value next to the Retaliate keyword.)

• The character with retaliate must survive the attack to deal this damage.
• An attack is considered any event or ability that has the attack keyword. For example, Energy Daggers will not trigger Retaliate, as it is not considered an attack, unlike Panther Claws.
• Retaliate triggers once per attack. This means if you attack a character with Retaliate multiple times in a turn (or multiple times with a single card in the case of a few rare cards like Black Widow’s Dance of Death, which counts as three separate attacks), you will take Retaliate damage after every single attack. Ouch.
• This keyword was updated in the 1.8 Rules Reference Guide, which is why this might look a bit different to what you may have read previously.
• Remember that villain Forced Responses will always trigger before any player Forced Responses.

FAQs

Does Retaliate Stack?

• Yes! If you have a character with Retaliate 1, and you add another effect that gives that character Retaliate 1, treat the character as if it has Retaliate 2 – i.e. anyone who attacks that character will take 2 damage after the attack.
• Resolve the damage all at once, not 1 at a time. This means if the character receiving the Retaliate damage is Tough, all of the damage is prevented by tough, not just one damage.

When Does Retaliate Damage Resolve?

• Previously, Retaliate had its own timing window.
• Now, Retaliate triggers as a Force Response to the damage, which means it will trigger before any other Responses can be triggered.
• For example, Retaliate will trigger before Drax’s Payback, despite functionally having the same response window.
• If there are multiple Forced Responses, you can choose the order in which to resolve them (remember that the villain’s forced responses always go first).

If the attacker does 0 damage, do they still take damage from retaliate?

Yes. Retaliate’s trigger is “When this character is attacked”, so it does not matter how much damage that attack results in. Notably, this also applies if a minion’s ATK is reduced to 0, as an enemy with 0 ATK will still perform an attack.