A quick primer on Raid

Given Raid is making a comeback in Rebellion in the Rim, it seems like the right moment to have a short rules article on exactly what raid does, as I've seen a number of different people get it wrong lately when discussing the new stuff.

Kills ants, roaches, and squadron commands with minimal hassle!

Let's start with a text drop from RitR:

I'll be taking some lines from the above and posting them in bold text, which I will then add some commentary underneath. Let's go!

While a ship has a raid token, it cannot resolve the command matching that raid token.

• There's nothing stopping a ship that has been raided for (whatever) from storing tokens of that command and/or using tokens or dials of that type of command for non-command-resolution purposes. 
• For example, a ship that has an anti-nav raid token can still store navigate tokens and feed them to Entrapment Formation just fine, as none of that involves a navigate command. A ship with an anti-squadrons raid token can still discard a squadron dial or token to trigger Boarding Troopers, a flotilla can still take a raided command as a token and send it to another ship using Comms Net, etc.

When a ship with a raid token reveals a command dial, it may discard that dial to discard all of its raid tokens, or it may discard a command token to discard that matching raid token.

• This trigger happens upon revealing a command dial, which is the same step where you decide if you want to turn it into a token or not (and the inherent ability of huge ships as well as upgrades like Raymus kick in, etc.).
• Because huge ships get a free token of whatever command they revealed, they can spend the token they get after revealing to clear away the raid token. Same with Raymus.
• Because it's the same timing window, you could also discard a command token you already had after revealing the command dial to clear the raid token and then choose to gain the free Raymus/SSD token after that.
• Because dials and tokens are discarded and not spent, some upgrades like Wulff Yularen won't save them.
• Discarding tokens and dials isn't a command resolution and obviously means they won't be around to execute that command later if you wanted to.
• Remember that dials wipe all raid tokens and tokens wipe only the matching raid token (if applicable). 
• You can, of course, spend a Command X token to clear an anti-X raid token which then frees you up to resolve your Command X dial. That works just fine.
• Because this is a "when" effect, it has a single trigger and can be resolved once per triggering event. What that means in practical terms is when you reveal a command dial you get to choose one of the following:
• Discard a dial to remove all raid tokens.
• Discard a single command token to remove one raid token matching that command token.
• This means if you have multiple raid tokens and multiple corresponding command tokens and you choose not to discard your dial upon revealing it, you don't get to discard multiple different command tokens to clear multiple matching raid tokens. You can only discard one command token to discard one matching raid token.

A ship cannot have more than one raid token of each type.

• Fairly straightforward, but that means even if you're up against Executor, which can hold hypothetically infinite command tokens, you can't give it more than one raid token of each type.
• If you try to give an anti-X raid token to a ship that already has a raid token of that type (typically in Surprise Attack), it bounces right off and does nothing.

And that's it! If you're looking to dodge the worst elements of Raid, try to keep a token of your most valuable command handy to clear the raid token. If you're looking to really twist the knife with Raid, clearing command tokens (with upgrades like Ion Cannon Batteries), destroying Comms Net flotillas, and using Slicer Tools in addition to Raid can help make it hit much harder.