Greetings, FAQ 1.2 states the following for the "ORDER EXPENDITURE SEQUENCE": Where does the idea come from that the active player may measure his ARO after he has declared his first order half? In my opinion this is cheating, it overvalues the Hacker and Grenade model and destroys the ORDER EXPENDITURE SEQUENCE. And back doors a kind of pre measuring. But back to the main problem. Is it here a grammatical formulation error and instead of "Players" it should actually be "The player" ? Or is that actually meant that both players may measure?
Are you asking if both players can measure, or are you asking if you can measure if a non-game-element (such as the future target of a smoke grenade) is inside the Zone of Control? The latter is not allowed by the strict reading of the rules, but I think they'll have to FAQ that if they want to stop players from measuring the entire damned zone of control regardless of what's where - because that's what's become the norm.
Either player can measure zone of control from the active trooper after a movement short skill, which effectively means the active trooper always "knows" what is or is not within 8 inches I wouldn't look at it as cheating or overvaluing one weapon over another, most of the time you know what is within or without 8 inches anyway, it's just kinda nice to know the cut off point for throwing a smoke or when to switch over to a heavy pistol
ZoC premeasuring!! | Corvus Belli Community Forum See also the Infinity Global League's ruling, which in addition to applying the obvious plain meaning of the rule, also explains why the alternate view would be unplayable: IGL Rules Clarifications - Google Docs It was resolved when the rule first came out, a year ago. We've now all been playing that way for a year, and it's all the more clear from experience that the rule is a huge quality of life improvement to the game. If you restricted players to measuring 8" towards existing game elements, I don't think it would change much. There are usually enough of game elements scattered around the table to allow measurement in most directions, especially directions you're likely to want to throw smoke. It might make it hard to nail 7.99" exactly, but it would still be easy enough to get 7.5" or so in most cases.
Restricting to game elements would make absolutely no sense. The entire point of this rule was so the reactive player can be sure their Hidden Deployed model is within ZoC before being able to declare an ARO. this rule was in response to Hidden Deployed troopers declaring invalid ARO (because no LoF or ZoC) so they could reveal themselves.
I mean, the argument isn't that the rules don't say it is game elements you're checking (and given how minelayer was changed and how mines work it's not inconceivable that you might be forced to telegraph the HD troopers position to make this check), because that's what the rules say, as you can see in the OP's quoted passage you check if there are Troopers or elements in range. The proper counter argument is that it's not entirely practical to check without getting a bunch if secondary info. I've seen the rule primarily be used as a tool to measure distances inside or just outside ZoC, not to check for AROs, in a very blatant way. I don't think that's intended.
I'd distinguish between purpose and intent here. I agree that CB's purpose in adding the rule was to make it so that players will always know which troopers have AROs, so that ARO declaration can be contingent on having a valid ARO. Being able to check 8" rangebands is a side effect, not the purpose of the rule. But, I don't agree that the side effect is unintended. Assuming that the CB rules team aren't complete idiots, they surely realized that allowing players to check a trooper's ZoC means they can check 8" rangebands too. They intentionally introduced the rule knowing what rule they were introducing - I'd say it's clear that they intend the rule to work the way it says it works. And they made a good call, since while the purpose of the rule improves the game somewhat, the side effect improves it even more. It's a double win.
I don't agree that a compromise begets intention, nor that making a compromise means you're an idiot. (Did you really consider CB to be idiots for most of N3 when they had a trial of this ZoC measuring and reverted it?) I also increasingly don't agree that this current system is a good call. It's sufficiently convoluted that each player comes in with their own preconception of when and how they are allowed to pre-measure and so far the most common interpretation has been to measure ZoC of any unit at any time unless the player spends way too much time debating rules on forums/discord. I've not had good experiences with these rules so far and this particular change feels like an over-reaction to something that was more a quirk than an actual issue.
Honestly - I've had no real issue with this in *any* context. Occasionally I've reminded people that the check is performed at Step 2.1 not after declaring the Short Skill at Step 3. But honestly, if you just accept 'Either player can measure ZOC of the Active Trooper at Step 2.1 and 4.1' as the practical application of the skill and move on it makes no real difference.
