Just to confirm, Beacon's Focused Blast is awesome at range 1, right?

I am at range 1 to my opponent. I roll 2,3,4,5. It gets converted to 8 1s. Because automisses have already been subtracted, this is 8 damage I'm throwing at my opponent, right?

Assuming you removed the automisses already, then yeah. It’s great at close range.

what does that mean? You have a choice when you remove auto misses?

Do you remove the auto missed 1s before of after beacons attack from focused beam changes the die to 1s

My group assumed that removing auto misses is the last thing you do before the defender rolls defense dice. Is this not true?

That is totally not true. If you look at Page 9 in the rulebook, it says the order of the steps.

Page 9 does not specifically say when the card's ability takes effect by changing the die roll results.  

Ahh! The card itself says after checking range... Or after step 7

Which is why the ideal focused Blast is an Aimed range 4 attack, you get one five and all the dice turn into 5's and then into 2 4's.

Only if you roll a 5.

I always roll 5s, doesn't everyone?

I Only roll 5s.

... have I mentioned I can't STAND playing as Ra?

This.  Completely this.  I love Ra in the card game.  I've played him once in Tactics, and while I'm willing to give him another shot - I'm also prone to rolling a lot of 5s and 2s.  This makes Ra my worst nightmare.

Welcome to the cult of the failing Ra, where fizzes are guaranteed ;-)

Ra (Staff of Ra, Flame Spike) and Unity (Reconfigure, Champion Bot) seemed pretty good to me. You fizz some, but throwing 6 + 5 and 6 + 5 with rerolls is pretty potent.

Come Along, You Belong, Feel the Fizz.

Wow that takes me back. 0_o

Yeah, you reroll the misses, but then I just roll another 5. Not too helpful, that.