And thus we go back - round and round - to the problem of whether Holomasking as a Minelayer with 2 Mines is OK in the light of the N4 rules, or is it not...
I go with what goes against myself. I'd rather not take advantage of something than try to pull something over on my opponent.
Don’t have to. The rules tell you what you can do and not the other way around. They tell you that you “duplicate” a profile from your faction/sectorial. The text doesn’t mention anything about deployables, after deployment or the like. While I know I can come of as categorical sometimes this for me is pretty clear cut - there is no rules text that makes this legal and therefore you are the one that have to show a FAQ or clarification that suggests it is legal to duplicate a specific profile from your army list after deployment. Instead of your factions/sectorial army.
I will have to agree with that, until a rules rewrite or a FAQ saying otherwise, the entire profile must be replicated. and since this exists one can assume that since it cannot replicate them been deployed it cannot replicate them been expended.
Would it be bad form then, when your opponent asks about your holomasked minelayer, to say "yeah, this is a minelayer with three mines in the profile. I forgot to deploy the mine. Let's move on..."?
Ok, then the question is how much can we deceive the opponent before it becomes bad sportsmanship, as someone already mentioned before? After all, holomasking is already a deception and a lie. Would it be better if I say " this is a minelayer profile with three mines, but I'm declining to lay a mine during deployment"? I feel that may be giving away too much though. And if we can't lie about the holomask, what's the point of the skill then?
Infinity’s gotchas are incorporated in its rules. Holomask is perfectly usable as long as you stay away from Minelayer. Play with your opponent and not against. Use Hidden Deployment, Combat Jump, Holomask and the like for mind games. Don’t make it complicated. Don’t make it weird.
And that's exactly why I'd love to see CB FAQing this question. If they say it is allowed, good. If they say is isn't, that's another good from me.
I go with what's on a Courtesy list. Minelayer is not shown, but mines are. If it shows mines, I say how many there are because mines are on the list. But Minelayer is an optional skill, so you don't need to put a mine down if you don't want to. You can do a fake-out by keeping your mines and having a beasthunter nearby ready to Panzerfaust something. Or a Vidocq Sniper.
Yes sorry. It's not under the skills so I didn't see it. But I think it still stands. You don't need to say you actually used the skill. You do need to say how many mines they have.
So, did CB give the raveneye both minelayer and holomask to give you options, or do they think it works differently than we’ve interpreted in this thread?
Or perhaps, and hear me out here, you can mix it in with other camo tokens you have out on the field. Torchlight has access to 16pt minelayers that also stay in camo. And roughly 30pt camo HI that also have access to minelayer. You could even opt to take the light shotgun (+1B) FO Strider, deploy it close enough to the mine, and now it's not entirely obvious is that mine is from the Raveneye. Heck, we even have a camo sniper model that is restricted to being in the deployment zone. If you got 2 or 3 camo tokens in your deployment zone with multiple having long ARO lines, it's again not obvious where the Raveneye is. And it's not as if all those camo tokens have to be in the deployment zone. As long as it makes sense positionally to have some mines covering corners, it wouldn't be unreasonable to have a forward deploying minelayer drop a mine further back if it covers a better angle. And you can do this in reverse also. You can put some shock mines from your many minelayers near other regular S2 models in your force and inside the deployment zone. Now your opponent if they are aware of your faction has to treat every single one of those as an E/M mine until they find it. The whole debate of hiding a Raveneye as a Beasthunter and tap-dancing around mine counts is a very valid one rules wise but from a practical sense not really that useful in my view. There are much more varied and honestly more effective ways of concealing that E/M mine while also projecting a greater threat profile. And many of those options don't even require a major investment in points for your list. It's a very Shasvastii style of play :)
