Lieutenant and FairPlay

We actually don't check in army builder who can be what and what a unit costs and so on. We use army builder during play, but only to access the wiki. And if I, for instance need the rule of, say Veteran L1 from the Bolts I don't go in PanO and check the Bolts to click on the rule, but instead I go to ... Haqq and search for a troop with Veteran L1 and access the rule from there.

Only regarding enemy units of course. If I need a rule from my own units I can get it right from my unit. Though most of the time I still use "neutral" units.

So regarding lieutenant ... the opponent has to guess who can be lieutenant and who not.
If it is important to him, he can learn who can be lieutenant between the games. For me ... it's not, I usually only guess.

 

Is there a cheat sheet on possible lieutenants somewhere in the internets? I mean there aren’t that many.

 

Weeell....on tournaments, experienced players DO know who can be a LT in your army. In my point of view it is a good and fair\polite way to play to let your opponent to know who is a potential LT. Aaaa-aa-a-and...unfortunately in rules there is no bullets for "your opponent can't view army builder during the game" ... so...

 

There usually is something like stalling. Going though the list in armybiuider - I find it as stalling and when I am TO this means penalty.

You can always say, that more experienced player will know the armies and that gives him unfair advantege. True.
The same way advanced player is better in positioning units so he can pick one enemy at the time instead of getting multiple aro. He is better in eyeballing distances, and many other things. Is this unfair advantage? No, this comes from playing the game and getting better with it.

Kaeltar with mates has CoC. This is not open information. IF my oponent do not know that before the game it is up to him. Allowing him to check armybuilder will give him information that is not open!

 

Yeah this is your opponents issue not yours, slap a chess clock down and let him burn his time going through army, I'd go as far as to say it's not in the spirit of the game to essentially bully you into revealing closed information.

 

To be perfectly honest, I find I can either help my opponent out if he asks and if they don't want to do the same I can just reconstruct their army in Army during their chess clock time and thus get a lot more information than I should.

It's mostly a pointless memory exercise that's not interesting to try and hide.

 

We do the same as the OP: we usually tell each other which are the potential options (and no bullying involved). I don't think it's compulsory in any way, but we're still beginners, we still often buy new models, and the "gotcha" moment of a previously unknown potential Lieutenant is not that interesting.

To each his own, I'd say, but considering the list of potential Lieutenants is not private, and that this is something you'd know with more experience, we feel it's nice to give each other a leg up until such a time we understand lists better.

 

I've never used time to explain who my leutinent could be and nither my oponents. Most time it is one basic troop but we truat wach other to admit when we lost a leutinent.

 

It's not required in any way by the rules, but for a group of new players it can be useful to say who can be the Lieutenant. In particular, putting stuff into an army builder as you play can be a good way for everyone to learn how the different units and armies work.

Once your group is more experienced, it's up to players to know, and if they don't then looking things up is going to be up to how your group decides to play - but in a tournament taking twenty minutes to look up potential LTs is going to be seen as time-wasting and likely to get a referee called over.

 

I don't see any problem in knowing which troopers are candidates to be lieutenant. Actually I see more problem in loosing time checking in army than telling the enemy that info. Yes, lieutenant is hidden info, but not the entire army

If I go with bakunin and my enemy ask if there is one or more kind of troopers that can be camo, I think I can tell him that there are zeros, prowlers and bran do castro, but what is actually below each marker still remains as hidden information

 

It's not something you should feel compelled to volunteer. Simple questions like "The Boarding Shotgun Mobile Brigada has a Lieutenant option, right?" can be answered, or your opponent could look that up themselves. There's an unfortunate and misguided attitude that some people have that looking at the army builder during play should be verboten; as long as they're not slowing the game down it should be allowed.

 

I find it annoying when people use the "closed information" rule to start hide stuff that is actually publicly available on the Army Builder.

As an experienced player I can guess / know most of the point and SWC cost of units and their options as well but I don't think it's fun, fair play or even interesting to expect people to know all that. I don't think that is what the private info rule is trying to archieve.

I will very often ask questions such as "who on the table could be your lt ? Can you have a camo lt ? Do you have acces to AD or TO troopers with your army ?" and I will gladly answer this kind of questions, and voluntarily give away obvious info*.

Same goes with the pts cost of units in missions like frontline / quadrant control. The point cost is hidden because your unit may be using holo, or be a camo, or have some hidden skill that change the cost of the unit. But I don't see any reason not to speed the game telling and asking the opponent what is the "supposed / theorical" cost a X unit.



* Exemple of obvious info : in Ariadna, if Vasily is forward observer, that means he is the lt. My opponent may not know that. That may be a litlle extreme but I will usually remind him.

 

Sorry, but point cost in missions like Frontline etc is exactly why you should not be albo to use Army during the game.
I personally saw a player that used army for couple of minutes, calculated exactly whitch unit costs how many, then moved around and won the game.
At different game I lost because I assumed Nagas cost less than it actually is.
Kaeltar specialis with mates has CoC. Private information is not private if you allow to use Army.

 

Sorry but this whole thing just seems gamey and pedantic. Asking if a particular piece could be a lieutenant should be fine, expecting to be told exactly which profiles in a list are potential lieutenants or spending 20 minutes digging through army before a game is the kind of annoying behavior that makes people stop getting invited to games

 

I always freely give away any informations they could get by opening the army builder.

 

Why is it a problem ? I would have save him the time and work with him how much things cost (except for camo troops that didn't reveal).

In this specific instance, knowing and remembering all the point costs would have lead to the same result. Do you think it's good for the gaming experience to incent people to memorize that kind of things ? What is teh added value of retaining that info ?

Anybody that played with or against the Tohaa know that. I agree that there is no point for chain of command to be hidden info for this specific profile. But do you really think it's a good gaming etiquette or experience to retain that information and misslead a newer player ?

Or refusing to do that is the kind of things that make me not want to play the game with that person anymore ... well not me personally as I know and remember like 80 or 90% of these things after 9 years playing the game. But I could understand a newer player frustation.

And I don't understand what you are trying to archieve refusing to disclose that kind of information. Having several potential Lt is part of the list building process. If you only have one obvious Lt that is part of your list weakness. Assume it and deal with it ...

 

Usually I'll just point out that my army has X things that can be LT if I'm playing against someone who's obviously new. I've never been asked, but it helps people with a knowledge gap play well and leads to a better game all around.

 

I would estimate there is around 250 possible Lieutenant Profiles in the whole game so I dont think anyone has ever bothered to go through and list them all like that.

 

@TheRedZealot if you take into account that you know what sectoral you are playing against, it’s not that long of a list to through.

Someone should make an app.