Introduction Special Dodge states: Smoke and Special Dodge Unlike other Special Ammunition, Smoke can be used to avoid enemy Attacks, but only if those Attacks require LoF and a Roll, and their LoF is blocked by the Smoke Circular Template being placed. It seems there might be some disagreement in reading the 'and their LoF is blocked by the Smoke Circular Template being placed' part. I've always read it literally -- the template must completely block any line of fire originating from the firing troop to the troop throwing Smoke. But yesterday we had an argument with another player, and he presented a quite logical base to his version -- if you're touching the Smoke template, you benefit from its effects, therefore LoF is blocked. Situation Troop A belongs to the Active Player. Troops B, C and D belong to the Reactive Player. Troop A declares a BS Attack with an Eclipse Smoke Grenade, placing the template as shown. Troops B, C and D declare they will ARO with BS Attacks. Blue line denotes Trooper D's LoF. Question Does Special Dodge apply to the interaction between Troops A and D and therefore, is this interaction a Face-to-Face roll?
Did A move during his order ? If "no", then A is included in the no visibility zone of the smoke (as he is under the template) so LoF is blocked so => special dodge If "yes", then we will have to check the movement path and we need to know at which point of the movement D is shooting A
Please, @ijw, Infinity rules are ambiguous enough, and the last thing I want is the added difficulty of trying to understand the meaning of your answer. A simple 'yes' or 'no' to asnwer the question would be sufficient.
Do you mean that if there is a point during the Troop A's movement path where Troop A doesn't benefit from the Smoke template being placed, Troop D would be able shoot back at Troop A at that point with a Normal roll?
The template has been placed where it blocks LoF, because A will be inside the Zero Visibility Zone. Therefore the Special Dodge rule applies.
Yep. Let's imagine that A first action was move and that he started 10 cm up than in your picture. With a template placed like this, D could shoot him before he entered the template, resulting in a normal roll. Of course after D declared his ARO attack and specified at which point of A movement he shoot, A could easily place his template in a way to cover all LoF Edit : after reading @colbrook answer I checked the BS attack page and he is right. D will only specify at which point of A he shoot at resolution so A will need to cover all of his movement to have special dodge
Thanks everyone. I would like to note the poor word choice for this paragraph, because in its current form it implies that the player somehow knows that blocked in "and their LoF is blocked by the Smoke Circular Template being placed" means benefits from the effects of Smoke Special Ammunition, and not literally blocked. It's a high-context wording, which only adds difficulty to understanding the already convoluted rules. I think the paragraph would be much more clear if it was written like this: Unlike other Special Ammunition, Smoke can be used to avoid enemy Attacks, but only those that meet all of these requirements: the opposed Attack requires LoF and a Roll during Reactive turn: the Troop using Smoke Special Ammunition benefits from the Zero Visibility Zone the Circular Template being placed would create during Active turn: same as for Reactive turn, but the requirement must also be met at any point of movement path of the Active troop, to which LoF can be drawn by enemy Troops
LoF is blocked to anyone that touches the template, that's just using more words to say the same thing IMHO.
Sure, but that is much more clear and less prone for multiple interpretations. If anything, rules for complex games benefit from wordy rules. Imagine if MTG ruleset was written like Infinity.