Quick rules check from a tournament. I have my Kanren, Killer Hacker in the Hacking area of an E-Drone EVO Hacker (via a repeater). 1st Short skill - I declare move inside 8@ of the repeater. ARO - E-Drone Declares Breakwater 2nd Short Skill - I target the E-Drone with Red Rum. I thought this was wrong as Breakwater says you may only use this when you are targeted by a Hacking Attack and since in the 1st Short Skill I haven’t yet targeted the E-Drone it can’t ARO with Breakwater? Am I right?
You are correct. Breakwater only works in these cases: The hacker declared hacking attack as first skill (silly player, if possible always move or idle first) The hacker used Stealth during first skill (silly hacker, don't use Stealth if you plan on hacking someone) The defender has Sixth Sense and could delay ARO The defender has a White Hacking Device and could delay ARO Mandatory disclaimer: I might have forgotten something, but those should cover nearly all situations where Breakwater can be declared. For most situations it can not be declared.
I'd say that, with what you provided, you both did it wrong... 1) short movement order: Kanren moves inside ZoC of E-Drone, no LoS involved => you are using Stealth, so no ARO is possible by E-Drone. On second short order, you declare Hacking, so E-Drone declares Breakwater legally. LoS involved => the E-Drone can Breakwater and you shoot it. Or shoots at you and you have options here (hacking, shooting). The way you should have played it is: Kanren declares short movement order, out of LoS, WITHOUT using Stealth (it's optional, but you have to declare if you don't use it, since the standard is to use it). Now the E-Drone has to declare ARO or lose it. Kanren hacks. Resolution. Otherwise, it is correct that with the current wording Breakwater is quite... useless.
Technically you're correct, but this is one of the cases that CB pretty clearly cocked up, so you'd be better off ignoring the "requirements" part of it and just going ahead and using it.
Whoever wrote Breakwater had no idea what they were doing. I'm fine with smoothing over their mistake.
Counterstrike and Zero Pain are also defunct. Not dissimilar from not being allowed to smoke bomb as a reaction to ZOC activation, to be honest.
White Hacking Device is very useful. I'd positively love to have it in Yu Jing (particularly IA). It gives you quasi*-sixth sense 1 and access to Fairy Dust on a very hacking-resilient platform. Only drawback is the cost for something that doesn't do anything aggressively, but I'm almost hoping the Shang-Ji hacker changes to a White Hacker. * It doesn't protect against Surprise Attack, only Surprise Shot, but you can delay and do something other than hack.
They are essentially a "I am an unhackable hacker, but don't count on me to do anything to the enemy". It might be useful in certain situations, but...
None of my forces can use it and I've never seen one on the table, so Mahtamori's post gave me the first good idea about its uses.
most DHDs have SS (either natively or possible through linking) so this is usually a non issue, it affects only aelis keesan and the EVOs (Who can brain blast anyway)
1. Create Hacking Device which has no use in game. 2. Realise poor guy having it is now also vulnerable to all kinds of nasty things KHD being on top of them. 3. Throw some mediocre defences. 4. Profit ?o0
Well we already have specialists with best personal anti-hacking defense (hint: hacking immunity): doctors, FO, paramedics, engineers etc. Why the heck we need hacked who's only point is to defend ITSELF from other hackers ?o0
More like "I have a device that does little besides trying to maybe defend myself from things I would've been invulnerable to if I hadn't it at all". Now, IIRC you can do stuff like U-turn (?) and pseudo-SS, but then again, the issue with rules smack a good nail into the coffin of questionable design. I can understand if DHD was introduced before KHD though, but I don't know what happened when.
WHD allows delaying ARO in the Reactive turn, so you can wait till your attacked and then declare Breakwater If I'm correct. So for certain scenarios you have a hacker who is much more survivable.
Well... I prefer a FO in the middle of the table, but some need that hacker bonus... or it's the only hacker for that "do two WP-3 rolls to mark the HVT in order to achieve this seconday objective", so.... :/
So... 1 of 3 have Sixth Sense, 1 of 3 can get it if in home sectorial and 1 of 3 can't get Sixth Sense at all. Then we have EVO, HD, and HD+ which can use Breakwater to get a strong hacking ARO without suffering Firewall MODs (as far as I can tell). I'd say that's pretty significant, not because the 2 models and the generic EVO are very important in this role, but because it's hindering most DHD from being decent for future models and to some extent hindering at least two of the above from being used to capacity. They were. KHD, EVO and WHD were introduced simultaneously, but we had DHDs prior to that. Though Counterstrike is probably more fun to answer with. Again, Counterstrike is not an Attack so I think that means it doesn't trigger Firewall MOD (though I'm less certain about the BTS MOD)
So I guess breakwater has an ARO option tacked on as a cherry, and but really you are supposed to use it in your active turn to stay alive harder?
I'm fairly certain it was intended to be used as an ARO, but whoever wrote it didn't understand that putting that requirement there is a crippling drawback.