Come to think of it... does the rule against premeasuring even allow you to measure a 4" move for the Sphinx? You can measure to determine where the Sphinx can move to, but that might mean measuring out 6" along any path. If you look at the middle part of the ruler to find the 4" mark, and say "I move 4""... you might be cheating? You could try to move 4", but you might be required to eyeball it. In which case you couldn't claim to your opponent that you had moved 4" - you'd have to just say "I move to here" and hope it looks like 4" to them. But then if they think you moved 4.1" they might ask you to adjust your position and you can't... God I hate the rule against premeasuring.
I don't think that's going to realistically impact how most people play the game; if I tried to measure a 2" move and my opponent told me I wasn't allowed to because my model had a greater than 2" MOV, I honestly would just look at them funny and then continue doing it. Moving and Measuring says The sequence of events is: The player declares a Skill with the Movement Label. Measure to find out which locations the Trooper could reach with that Skill. Declare the final location, and the exact route that the Trooper is taking to reach it. Move the Trooper to the final location. Movement does allow limited premeasurement, and I would allow a player to measure any distance less than or equal to their first MOV value, as that falls under the umbrella of "locations the trooper could reach". Specifically, I do not think that #2 compels you to exhaustively measure to every possible point that you could reach; you may choose to limit yourself to only measuring routes to points you are interested in and capable of reaching.
Hmm. I think you're probably right. I agree that I only measure to points I'm interested in moving to. I guess I can achieve the Sphinx-Anathematic fakeout by measuring a point that's, say, around 3" away. It turns out to be 3.2", so then I measure a slightly further point and it's 3.3", and I just keep doing that until I reach 4" and then move to that point. That way I avoid ever measuring a point further than 4" away (because if I did, it would reveal that I have a Sphinx since if it was an Anathematic, I wouldn't be allowed to measure to a point more than 4" away, as soon as I hit the 4" mark I'd have to stop, having determined that the point was outside my movement range).
You're explicitly allowed to premeasure. You don't have to guess if a movement path is within your legal distance anymore. Why not just start with a 4" range, same as you would for a model with a 4" move?
I do not agree, because we are talking about a troop in marker state, which is an entirely different situation altogether. NCO requires to remove one LT order, and frankly, there are only 2 options there: you are activating your Lt or an NCO, and if you use said order to move a link, it's cristal clear which one was. There is a difference between facilitating info your opponent can know simply by experience (you would be helping newbies, in the end) and revealing Private Information for free (a skill a troop in marker state has). As for the movement measure, frankly I rarely use the tape (I have a movement ruler, and has convenient sides: one of 1'', other with 2'', other with 8'' and other with 4''), but when I do, I grab 3'' or so extra regardless of the MOV value to have some wiggle room.
I was talking about the Terrain skill in a marker. As for the NCO in marker state, I would not bother clarifying if that marker is an NCO or my Lt. Anyway, after a quick check I can see that the following units can NCO + marker state natively (the ones doing it through hacking don't really matter since their profile could be read before): Hac Tao (doesn't matter much, he's the only mimetism-6 unit able to spend Lt orders) Scots guard (could be Jacques Bruant, Vassily Plushenko, Scout, Foxtrot, Tankhunter) Patroclus (Holo) (could feign to be any of the possible Lts, the mimetism value is not relevant since it would only be revealed at the resolution phase) Then we have the Lt units that can go marker state (which I won't list, since it would necessarily include the CoC directly, and potentially all units capable of entering marker state, or start the game in marker state). By revealing the use of NCO (a skill hidden by the marker state) when the LT order is consumed, we are discarding that unit as a Lt. Which sounds simple, but... YJ has 3 lts capable of marker state, Aleph has been nerfed to 1 (Asura with cybermask) but has Patroclus, and then there is all the shenanigans Holomaks allows. For example, revealing you are using NCO when a Lt order gets expended reveals automatically that Asura Deva/Achilles as Patroclus disguised (using the Holomask option only without Holoecho). Or that Ariadnan camo as a Scots Guard instead of any of the 5 lt options.
The premise is that you need to reveal that you're using the NCO skill when you spend the Lt order on a Marker state Lt (based on IJWs advice).
I would argue that the most fair thing to do is to have any skill you actively use be declared openly. Keeping your 6" movement private means you have to avoid using more than 4" while moving if you want to pretend a Sphinx is an Anathematic (don't forget that Sphinx is missing Stealth, though!) and keeping your terrain skill private means opting not using it. Being able to use a skill shouldn't be revealing it, while actually using the skill should reveal that the particular skill is used. I don't see anything in the rules that would allow you to keep declarations private, so this is more a case of whether the use of automatic skills, particularly the optional ones, need to be declared or not.
I think that's what IJW was getting at. But with the way the rules are AFAICT there isn't actually any distinction between an Automatic Optional active skill and an Automatic Optional deployment skill from the POV of Open / Private Information. Any distinction is about intended play not based on anything I can find in the rules. It's more coherent if you don't have to declare the use of any Automatic Optional skill. Stealth is the most awkward interaction (although not unresolvable) if you don't declare its use (assuming that Stealth prevents AROs being valid and not AROs being declared).
You're explicitly allowed to premeasure "to find out which locations the Trooper could reach with that Skill." That allows you to measure out to the unit's movement range, but I don't see why it would allow you to measure a different distance that isn't the unit's movement range. But, I think it's moot, having figured out that you can achieve the same effect by gradually measuring points slightly further and further out until you hit the distance you're looking for. Presumably your opponent isn't going to make you walk through those measurements every time, so in practice I think you're right that you can measure out to a distance less than your full movement.
Based on an advice he made for a non-marker situation, he specified a few posts later not to extrapolate his previous post (with no mention to marker state) to all situations... I wouldn't jump to conclusions here, since to me that has an undertone of "wait for a FAQ".
I couldn't preserve the formatting for nested quotes, but here is the full post: Mahtamori: Does using NCO reveal that you are using NCO? Unclear at this point. It is not clear whether NCO is a skill you need to declare; "I'll NCO this LT order to activate my Camouflage Marker here" ijw: I very strongly advise that you don't go down this route. NCO does not have the Private Information Label. Your opponent will know if it's being used. Seems pretty clear to me that ijw was talking about an NCO trooper in camo state.
That is not, as you say, clear. After all, what you are getting from there is that "only skills with the label Private Information can ever be so". This is not correct, first because there are no such "label", and second because the private information section states, very clearly, that the contents of your markers are private information. By claiming NCO must be revealed if used by a unit in marker state, you are claiming that I must reveal whatever I use from a marker, which implies by default that I should reveal my MOV value every time I move (thus revealing certain troops, for example Patroclus disguised as a lot of things, or a S6 camo marker in Vanilla CA, as was mentioned before). Furthermore, I would need to specify if I'm not using Stealth or the unit does not have said skill (the Sphinx doesn't, the Anathematic does, and the Libertos doesn't too; and there are more units in this situation). Even more worrying, I would need to specify in deployment what I'm using: infiltration, or Advanced Deployment (and which value!). EDIT: I'm not saying this as a reason for "use of NCO by a troop in marker state must not be public", but as an argument against "the marker is doing something". I also want to add that you must keep public the status of your orders (unused/used) and warn your opponent each time you spend an order, including the Lt Order. So I would say "I spend the Lt order with this marker" (or disguised Patroclus), but not necessarily "as a NCO". In fact, I've not found anywhere that in N4 the expenditure of the Lt order reveals your Lt.
Sounds like you just disagree with ijw's very strong advice. Fair enough. But it's still clear that what he was recommending was that you have to declare the use of NCO, even if the user is in marker state. Yes, others have been discussing those potential implications above in this thread. That approach would be contrary to ijw's very strong advice, but since it's only advice, technically yes you could still play that way. Hopefully in the future we'll get a FAQ or other ruling that's stronger than very strong advice.
IJW is specifically not claiming these things, he very politely requests that we take his advice about when Private Information must be revealed to apply only in the scenario of NCO in a Marker or Holomask state and not more generally. As he was specifically referring to the NCO scenario. I've been discussing them because I can see no distinction in the rules between Automatic Optional active skills and Automatic Optional deployment skills from the POV of Open/Private Information. Attributes, however, aren't skills so you can clearly argue that they're distinct from a use POV: you're using Move which allows the Marker to move up to a secret value. Re: Stealth. The "You don't have to announce the use of Stealth while in a Marker state" implications are either slightly awkward (your opponent is prevented from generating an ARO which means that they can't declare an ARO - so if they attempt to declare an ARO they don't have you inform them of that fact - due Stealth - and the ARO doesn't take place) or relatively simple - if non-intuitive - (Player declares an ARO and at Step 5 you tell them that the Marker had Stealth and the ARO wasn't valid because Stealth prevents them from generating valid AROs, and as a result they idle). It's an open question as to which way Stealth (and Cautious Move) interacts with AROs. I much prefer that Stealth prevents valid AROs not that Stealth prevents ARO declarations. But what this means is that not informing your opponent that a Marker is using Stealth is more complicated than requiring the use of Stealth to always be announced, despite the implications for revealing information to your opponents. Note: I've come round to "active turn use of Automatic Skills by Markers/Holos needs to be announced; use of Deployment Skills by troops in Marker/Holo state does not (but may be)" as being the best way to play this but that distinction is not at all supported by the rules AFAICT. I think the rules treat all Automatic, Optional skills the same: either the use of any Automatic, Optional skill needs to be announced or none.
1. This is the Private Information Label, used by Chain of Command, Counterintelligence etc: https://infinitythewiki.com/Labels#Private_Information Whether or not any troopers have Special Skills or Equipment with this Label is Private Information and a player is not required to reveal it to his opponent until it is used, or the game is over. 2. I was specifically talking about spending the Lieutenant Order on a Trooper in Camouflaged State, who has the NCO Special Skill. You appear to have misread several posts in the thread. 3. To expand on what inane.imp said, yes, you absolutely MUST declare that Stealth is not being used. Because Stealth doesn't stop AROs from being valid, it stops them from being declared. Active Player: I move the Camo Marker. Reactive Player: OK I have a Trooper on the other side of the wall. Are you using Stealth, or can I declare an ARO? AP: I'm not telling you, that's Private Information. RP: So what do we do now? I have to know if I can declare an ARO before you can declare your next Short Skill. Use of Stealth not being declared literally breaks the game.
On a general note, I think the simplest practical solution is that all Automatic Skills etc. that affect the spending of an Order*, or declaration of AROs, needs to be declared when used in a Marker State. So far, I think that's just NCO and Stealth. Tactical Awareness changes how Orders are spent, but the Irregular Order for that is already Open Information and is placed directly by the Model/Marker, so there is no way for that to be ambiguous. EDIT for clarity - affect how an Order Token is spent to activate the Trooper.
Terrain Skills. Are obligatory skills included, because they hits 360 Visor / lack of 360 Visor (Holomask) and Hacker? Which actually would clean up some interactions.
