No, if it can't work, you can't do it, therefore it doesn't apply (it has to be able to affect the enemy unit in some manner -- note that breaking armour does affect the enemy unit, so an armoured unit that can block an attack with its armour does not count as being able to affect the enemy unit without repercussion (depending on the situation, of course)). Sorry if this was ambiguous.

I'll go ahead and accept the results for these based on how you understood the rules (unless you both want to replay them), but any subsequent games should not count any abilities toward positional penalties if they cannot be performed.

I haven't watched the games yet -- I'll look them over tonight.