I politely suggest that you go and read the N4 ARO rules again. Nothing in this thread has rewritten them. This is not N3, where one of the ‘triggers’ for an ARO had to be fulfilled before you could declare an ARO. This is N4. You declare AROs, and then in the whole new ARO Check step added to the Order Expenditure Sequence for this specific purpose, you check if those AROs were valid. I wanted it spelled out more explicitly, but I don’t get to decide what is and isn’t included.
At this point I am not arguing the conclusion; I am simply trying to highlight the lack of discoverability by a person reading the rules text. See also people getting confused about whether this affects your ability to wait until after the second skill to ARO, and see how much more complicated your step 5 is than the equivalent in the book. We now have three tiers of ARO declaration: Valid - an ARO was granted, and all skill requirements were met Invalid - the active troop's skill declaration allowed the declaration of AROs, but this model's declaration failed to meet some requirement Illegal - the active troop's skill declaration did not grant AROs, so the player may not even attempt to declare one There's probably some sort of weird sixth sense interaction here, but Look Out requires LoF, so I don't think I can come up with anything clever.
If the validity of an ARO is not checked until step 5, I am curious about this interaction: There is a Hidden Deployment troop in the reactive turn. In step 1 the active unit moves into the LoS of a hidden deployment troop. In Step 2 the Hidden Deployment troop declares no ARO. In Step 3 the active troop declares its second skill, another Move. In Step 4 the HD troop declares Dodge. In Step 5 we check to see ARO validity, and see that the HD troop was within LoS during Step 2, so its declaration of Dodge becomes Idle and the Hidden Deployment Troop is now on the table? Or by failing to declare its ARO during Step 2 did it forfeit its chance to ARO for the entire order, and if so, does it go back into Hidden Deployment? Does this change if the active trooper was only moved into the the ZoC of the HD trooper in Step 1?
Correct, the chance to ARO has been forfeited. In theory this would already be known before step 5 as LoF is checked at the start of each ARO step.
That's a nasty one. For a start, I would say that there is a difference between LoS and ZoC, since the HD state is canceled in declaration and LoS is public information. So, as far as I understood, the model should be placed on the table as soon as the declaration happens and so it would be immediately clear if there is LoS or not. But am I correct in saying the model should be placed immediately upon declaration and not in resolution?
Yes, the declaration of the ARO is what reveals the model and puts it on the table. It is put right away and should the opponent have LoF to it, it could freely shoot it.
So if it is not in LoF for either of the skills, and declared a dodge in Step 4, would it go back into hidden deployment at Step 5 it is found that it was in ZoC during Step 2?
This is skipping steps though. LoF is not private for a HD model, so in the scenario I am curious about it would not be found out until step 5 of the Order Expenditure Sequence.
Sorry, I wasn't saying you were arguing the conclusion I was providing that sequence to make it obvious how to go about making the various checks in practice. ARO validity and what you are permitted to Declare are two separate checks. Making that clear (and teaching it as two separate checks) makes this easier to parse. For instance: Alice is a trooper without C+ and is on a wall. Bob, an enemy Chimera, activates and Moves to S2S of Alice. Does Alice have a valid ARO? At Step 5 you check and discover that yes Alice had LOF to Bob and Bob activated without Stealth inside Alice's ZOC: Alice has a valid ARO. What AROs can Alice declare? The fact that Alice is hanging onto a wall means she is prevented from declaring any Skill or ARO other than Climb: she has no AROs that she is permitted to declare. That is to say: * You can have permitted Valid AROs. These are resolved normally. These are the only class of ARO you must "use or lose". * You can have permitted Invalid AROs. These are resolved as an Idle. * You can have not-permitted Valid AROs. These aren't resolved as they can't be declared - you instead declare a permitted Valid ARO or wait to step 4 to see if you get a permitted Valid ARO. * You can have not-permitted not-Valid AROs. These aren't resolved as they can't be declared. This gets the same 3 outcomes you describe, but by asking the two questions it's consistent across all interactions. BTW, I completely agree that how "you can't declare an ARO" is resolved did need clarification: my initial understanding was to treat any "not permitted declaration" as in the same way as any other invalid ARO.
Seriously, this level of reading between the lines is absolutely not approachable for veterans, let alone new players. If it took us 6 months just to figure out how to declare an ARO legally, then it desperately needs to be addressed. I don't remember them talking about this cool new ARO mechanic in any of the videos leading up to and for. ;-)
Another question regarding the this. If an out of LoF troop declares the ARO Dodge in reaction to an active troopers order, in step 5 does the Reactive Trooper get to measure its full ZoC?
Hang on, it's a long day and my brain's glitching. Under what circumstances can a HD trooper that wrongly declares an ARO be removed from the table and reverted to HD? I've been operating under the assumption that HD is cancelled by a skill declaration, regardless of what happens to the skill afterward, so by declaring it the player puts the HD model on the table immediately, and there it remains. Which is the basis for the whole thing this thread is about. But this answer reads like...if the ARO was found to be illegal (not invalid, but straight up should-not-have-been-declared, due to late declaration or declaration vs. Stealth without Sixth Sense, or whatever) the model retroactively goes back into Hidden Deployment? I get that the correct play is something like reminding your opponent "you can't declare that because from there you had LOF before and you passed on declaring then" or "you can't declare that unless you have Sixth Sense because of Stealth" and they go "ope, okay, never mind" and now you know where their ninja is lurking. So it sort of makes sense in terms of the actual play environment. But if they insist "no, that's my declaration and I'm sticking to it" and leave the model on the table, I have to explain why they needed to do that trick with a ZoC ARO and it doesn't work with a forfeited ARO and...like...how do I do that? I need a pamphlet for that. I'm not saying it's unplayable or wrong. It's sort of weird to privilege obviously bad-faith unmeasurable ZoC AROs over obviously bad-faith illegal ARO declarations. I get why it annoys people, and it's counterintuitive AF. I'm just legit surprised that anything causes retroactive re-Hiding of exposed HD troops in N4.
You forgot the exception to Fireteams that have Stealth and non-Stealth. Where it turns Illegal ARO into conditionally valid/invalid ARO!
Bearing in mind that it's the responsibility of the active player to provide the public information that a model or marker they're activating is using stealth, the exchange should probably be something like: "Ok, I'm moving here-" "Alright I'll declare hack with my noctifier" "-wait wait a sec dammit I'm moving with stealth" "Oh shit forget you heard that" Revealing a hidden model in response to an enemy moving stealth is illegal in the same way that moving a model with 6-4 MOV seven inches during its first movement is illegal - you need to restore the game state accordingly (but, the rules don't really articulate how to solve problems that arise from not following the rules, which is probably fair enough).
To be fair, this is a take-back akin to like "I shoot you with my ML"... "Oh wait, this is my combi fusilier, I don't have a ML"... Or even like, spending an extra order that you don't have. (And maybe even your opponent revealing a Hidden Deployed trooper on that order) It's not as much something that the rule allow you to do as a takeback because you just did an illegal game action. The ruleset doesn't cover how to manage those situations, it's really just about figuring out what impacts the integrity of the game the least and moving on. Now purposefully declaring "illegal" knowingly is just cheating.
Part of the issue is that the rules don't necessarily make clear what is illegal and what is just invalid. Is declaring an ARO at Step 4 after you know (due checking LOF) that you had an ARO at Step 2 illegal or invalid? Is declaring an ARO at Step 4 after you received a valid ARO in Step 2 due to ZOC (measured at Step 5) illegal or invalid?
Unless I'm missing something, both are legal declarations determined to be invalid AROs at resolution. And the second example is something that the N4 ARO rules are specifically designed to avoid players having to deal with.
IJW indicated that in the first example the declaration would be undone (as if a "woops, that wasn't legal"). I *think* in this situation just playing it as invalid and leaving the HD in position is cleanest.
