That’s not been my experience, so we’ll have to agree to disagree on how unanimously players regard those three points.
Wow, I didn't know that there were situations that had reached that point. What a pity, Now I understand some things that years ago would have seemed strange to me.
Okay, show me where in the N4 rulebook it says that you can check LOF an any time? N3 had a specific little blurb that said that you could. N4 removed that text and completely rewrote it. It matters for tournament play. If I go to a tournament outside my local meta, be it at a con or just travelling further than normal, I should know what the rules are before going in. Corvus belli clarifying these issues prevents problems in that regard. This thread isn't even close to the most vitriolic I've seen when it comes to discussion of these issues, and part of that is because CB has yet to actually clarify. The thing is that if we get an actual definitive ruling, then it removes any ambiguity. Any future arguments can be solved quite simply by pointing at the official statement on the matter, and play can proceed from there. As it is now, it's pretty much guaranteed to cause continued arguments. Like think about it, this was apparently supposed to be clarified two YEARS ago and people are still arguing about it because it was never clarified. If it had been clarified back then, then there'd be no cause for the ongoing fighting about it.
During N3, it reached the point where all discussion of the topic had to be restricted to a single designated thread, and even that thread ended up getting locked.
You're telling me that the game that has you replace models with milimeter accurate Silhouette volumes to check if you can see at least 3mm sized portions of said Silhouette volume from your own millimeter accurate Silhouette volume is not a game of True Line of Sight? Get out of here :D As above, this can explicitly only be resolved by a CB declaring whether the intent play types you've listed below are legal or not. And it's high time that they did with the damage the 'discussion' has done to the community. #1 is fine, #2 and #3 really need CB making a definite call. #2 is aggressive rules-lawyering and #3 means straight up you're demanding that the opponent plays the game for you. Since the relevant rules were completely rephrased in N4, they can't be expected to be "legally" approached with the same meaning as the completely N3 rules. Especially when N4 rules specifically mention a sequence of when actual LOF / ARO are checked, measured and decided.
As @colbrook has been trying to point out, the problem with this statement is that it is fundamentally incompatible with how this game is physically played. In order to defend your position, you need to be able to clearly define how “looking at the table” and “checking model LoS” are different, so that it’s actually possible to police this interaction. Otherwise, the logical conclusion is “it’s impossible to play Infinity N4”, at which point you really need to go back and re-evaluate your prior assumptions.
Yea, naw, mate. You're making those numbers up wholesale and demand we treat those statements seriously? What a lark.
To make the distinction easier to comprehend (no dig, I'm trying to facilitate communication here) - I think the misunderstanding is because "checking", as in "estimating, guessing, gauging", LoF can be done on the fly and from just using your Mk 1 Eyeball over the table. The "check LoF" phrase used in the rules seems to mean more towards "confirm, measure, ascertain". And I can well see how that can only be done in particular moments in the sequence (e.g. after the final position of the active model is established by model placement and possible relevant Silhouette substitution).
What if our opponent suffers from Dwarfism and their field of view is perfect for LOF? Should we bring a step stool for them until it's time to check? I'm already packing a ton of tokens, devices and miniatures around tables but I want to be prepared.
Ultimately, if my opponent wants to cheat I can't really do much to stop him. If you catch him in the act of doing something like this you call him on it. Same if someone does something like overmeasure their units, submits a fake courtesy list and brings more to the table than he actually can afford, anything like that, then calling him out and exerting social pressure can stop him, just don't play with him again, or get him thrown out if it's taking place in a tournament. But "you can't stop a cheater from cheating" is terrible logic to try and justify not playing RAW. Then that's his natural field of view, and I have certain advantages when it comes to looking down at the table, he has certain advantages when it comes to looking across it. And again, this is overblowing a nearly-nonexistant problem to create a false equivalence. We all know that this really only matters for pie-slicing nonsense where the LOF is determined by less than a milimeter and people want to pre-measure it so that they only ever take exactly 1 ARO. Making LoF only after movement has concluded kills that dead because people just have to move their models and then LoF gets checked after. If they moved well, then they take 1 ARO, and get the weight of fire advantage. If they moved poorly, they take more.
Seems to me like intent play was not, pardon the pun, intended by CB. However it's managed to get so normalized that people dare to make up "everyone plays like that and even if they don't, they agree they should!" kinds of statements. Also seems like because of the above CB has placed rules directly forbidding intent play into N4 and hoped the thing would resolve but it didn't materialize, the issue is so entrenched that people downright refuse to abandon their N3 rule interpretations in the rephrased ruleset. And in the meantime, CB can't or won't say "Hey, this is not how we want Infinity to be played", whichever way was their actual plan and preference.
The way True LoS is defined, yeah. It typically means that the pose of the model has gameplay implications. This was Infinity in early N2, where Noctifers were a headache to deal with because their stairway extended out past their base.
It's more likely that, like the ability to pie slice to shoot people in the ass with Super Jump for a while in N3, it wasn't explicitly intended, but it's an inevitable consequence of other rules they put into print. Just like the Rodok Rear Attack, though, there will be people who pretend it doesn't exist even though it's a logical consequence of the rules elements of the game.
Imagine saying this with a straight face, despite the fact that all the gameplay videos made by CB are using intent Yes, leave you cheater! Oh, and take your cheating eyes with you!