Quick question - if a Core Hollowman Link with a Stempler (so 4 HMs + 1 Rem) are in Loss of Lieutenant, what happens? Does the link stay together (since the majority of members are religious) and can act with 5 regular orders or does the link break apart if it tries to do anything with the Stempler. Unsure... Thanks in advance.
Religious ignores Retreat, not LoL. They would generate irregular orders, but the link is not broken unless you use an irregular order. You can use Command tokens to turn orders regular and activate the link team as per normal
on the other hand, Veteran ignores LoL, so in the case of a securitate link with a grenzer, you can activate the whole link spending the regular orders provided by the securitates, but if the grenzer spends his irregular order he would leave the link.
Correct, though you could also spend a CT to make the Grenzer's order Regular and then use it to activate the Fireteam.
Except for the whole other part of Religious. Or did you forget that? Troopers with this Special Skill pass all their Guts Rolls automatically without rolling any dice. This means that troopers with this Special Skill are forced to hold their position and cannot withdraw or seek cover after surviving one or more ARM or BTS Rolls. However, the user has the chance to voluntarily make a Guts Roll after surviving one or more ARM or BTS Rolls or a Non-Lethal Attack. In that case, the Religious Troop Special Skill makes that Guts Roll have the opposite effect, that is, the user must pass his Guts Roll in order to go Prone or move up to 2 inches to abandon the danger zone, gain Cover or improve his Cover. This movement can never be towards the enemy who declared the Attack, nor can it be used to enter base to base contact with an enemy.
Valour lets them choose to pass or fail the guts check at will negating the above. Valour basically cancels the downside of Religious, in addition to both of them ignoring Retreat, which is probably why Religious doesn't seem to cost any points.
Not entirely, since Religious stays regular in Retreat, whereas Valour doesn't. Now, on Shaolin Religious does do nothing since they are always ireegular.
Now, I know we can both agree that trashy writing is CB's trademark, but I'm pretty sure I got this one. Religious Troop Troopers with the Religious Troop Special Skill are unaffected by the Retreat! rules, acting normally until the end of the game. Courage Troopers with the V: Courage Special Skill are unaffected by the Retreat! state, acting normally until the end of the game. However, even in a Retreat! situation, troops possessing V: Courage are affected by Loss of Lieutenant. Veteran If the user's army enters a Retreat! situation, the user remains Regular and is not affected by the Retreat! state, acting normally until the end of the game. I'm pretty sure that the only reason Religious isn't written like Veteran 1 is because of the two troops that get zero content from it, Mutts and Shaolin, since both are Irregular and Courage.
CB has kindly provided a neat graphic for this. Look at page 248 or here: http://infinitythewiki.com/en/Retreat#Retreat_Summary_Chart
I'm fairly certain that the intent of Religious was to make the bearer immune to the Retreat! state like Valor, but I'll chalk it up to CB not proofreading.
Or a purely thematic one tossed in to indicate that they don't treat their "bodies" the way a normal person would
They... are? Refer to the chart. The reason Religious is written differently is that by being immune to Retreat rules, a Religious troop will also ignore LoL that's induced by Retreat rules and won't even have the Retreat state touch them. Valour L2+ is only immune to the effects of Retreat state, which isn't what's triggering LoL effect, that's the one that prevents you from declaring attacks and allows you to move off the table).
Do you think a Religious Impetuous trooper would still be able to spend an impetuous order if the controlling player was in Retreat?
Goooood question. No, that's the one mechanic that they can't mechanically be immune to that I can see, simply because it affects the player.
Interesting distinction there. That's some deep level parsing that actually gives a play reasoning. Thanks!
Yeah, but so does LoL. The chart says what it says, but iirc Retreat! wasn't a state in N2, and the Religious ability seems copy-pasted from that. So it's one of those rules artifacts...
