N4 rules 2.0 and ARO shenanigans

A 2.0 rules release was as good a reason as it gets to re-read the rules to confirm how everything in the game actually works and try to clean up all the phantom rules of old from my head, but now I'm not 100% sure how the ARO actually works when it gets more complicated than "I activate, you see me, we both shoot" and I'm here for a little sanity check.

In plain english, after reading the ARO section of the rules it seems to me that there's no way for "aro baits" anymore and 5 man cores are full on bane of my existence again, but I'm not entirely sure if I understood it correctly so here we go, time for quotations and examples:

From pg21 in the 2.0 rules:

"The ARO declarations of the Reactive Player’s Troopers are considered valid in the
following situations:
◼ An enemy Trooper activates within its Line of Fire (LoF).
◼ An enemy Trooper activates within its Zone of Control (ZoC) or Hacking Area.
◼ It has a Special Skill, weapon, or piece of Equipment that specifies that the Trooper
can react to enemy actions without LoF or ZoC.
◼ It is affected by a Template Weapon, or is the target of a Hacking Program or other
Comms Attack."

and

"
ORDER EXPENDITURE SEQUENCE
Each time the Active Player decides to use an Order (of whatever type) to activate a
Trooper, follow these step:
1. Activation: The Active Player declares which Trooper will activate.
...
2. Reactive Player’s AROs
2.1. ARO Check. The Reactive Player checks if they are allowed to declare AROs
with their Troopers. Players can check from the Active Trooper if any Trooper or
Game Element is inside the Zone of Control (ZoC) of the Active Trooper.
2.2. ARO Declaration. The Reactive Player declares the AROs of those Troopers
that are allowed to declare one. Troopers are not forced to declare AROs, but if a
Trooper can declare an ARO and fails to do so, the chance to declare an ARO is lost.
...
5. Resolution: Check that the declared Skills and pieces of Equipment meet their
respective Requirements, measure all distances, determine MODs, and both players
make Rolls. If any Skill or piece of Equipment doesn’t meet its Requirements, the
Trooper performs an Idle."

I skipped over the parts that aren't relevant here, but as far as I understood it the first quote is a list of cases in which reactive player can declare an ARO, and until step 5 of the order expenditure sequence none of the requirements matter for any skills that you declare as a part of an order or ARO, which in practice means that any skill that could be declared can be declared, and if by the time you reach step 5 the declared skill is valid you move on and resolve all of the effects.

Here's some examples of how I understood this to working:

Exhibit A:
1) An active trooper with MSV declares Move in ZoC and in front of a LoF arc of a reactive trooper
2) Reactive trooper gets to declare an ARO, and declares BS Attack against an active trooper
3) If the active trooper with MSV declares an attack through a Zero Visibility Zone against that reactive trooper as its second short skill, the declared ARO becomes valid, if no attack is declared by the active trooper then the BS Attack ARO becomes idle

Then we add a coordinated order to the mix in Exhibit B:
1) An active trooper with albedo is a spearhead and declares Move as a first short skill, moving in front of a reactive trooper with an MSV, at the same time there's another active trooper participating in the same coordinated order, moving either in ZoC or in LoF of the same reactive trooper with MSV
2) The reactive trooper gets an ARO declaration because of a non-spearhead active trooper, and since the requirements of skills are checked in resolution, can declare BS attack against a trooper with albedo, and it all works pretty much the same as with exhibit A above, but if, for example an active player declared a hacking attack against the reactive trooper with an MSV the BS attack against an active trooper spearhead with albedo would fail to meet its requirements and it wold result in a normal roll with a hacking attack against the reactive trooper.

It seems that would work pretty much the same way for reactive models with sixth sense in case one of the coordinated models was in its back LoF arc, the reactive model with sixth sense could still declare a BS attack against an active model in its back LoF arc if there was another model activated in the same order in the LoF/ZoC/hacking area of that reactive trooper, and if BS attack was declared in that coordinated order then the reactive trooper with Sixth sense would have declared a valid ARO, otherwise it would become an idle.

Finally for Exhibit C, the only thing I could come up with that would work in the realm of "aro bait":
1) An active trooper declares Move in the back LoF arc of a reactive trooper with Sixth sense and enters Engaged state with that trooper, if the reactive trooper declares BS attack, the active one can declare CC attack and make the BS attack of a reactive trooper fail to meet its requirements, and if the reactive trooper declares a CC attack then you can declare a BS attack with the active trooper and although it'll still be a face to face roll, barring outliers like Phoenix and Teutons/Tankos the scary ARO units in fireteams usually don't fight you as well as they shoot, so that's a useful play for impersonators or Combat Jump troops.


There's also something in Camouflaged rules which I think was different:
"
► The only AROs that can be declared against a Camouflaged Marker are:
Discover, Dodge, Look Out! or Reset.
► When a Trooper in Camouflaged state is activated, each Reactive Trooper
can delay the declaration of their ARO until the second half of the Active
Trooper’s Order has been declared. In this case:
► If the Trooper in Camouflaged state reveals themselves with the second half
of their Order (by declaring a BS Attack, moving into Silhouette contact with
an enemy…), the delaying Trooper can declare their ARO.
► If the Trooper in Camouflaged state does not reveal themselves, the delaying
Trooper loses their right to declare an ARO."

If I understand this correctly, if a Camouflage marker is a part of a coordinated order, reactive troopers can get a valid ARO declaration from non-camouflaged active troopers participating in the same coordinated order and delay their ARO declaration even if the reactive trooper does not have the camouflaged trooper in its LoF/ZoC/Hacking area?

 

Yup, I totally blanked on including a Zero Visibility Zone in example A, good to know that I wasn't mistaken on how ARO works now.