I'm curious about this because of a thought I had recently regarding counterplay against possible threats to William Wallace. I thought of a game I'd played where my opponent placed an Impersonation marker right on the edge of my deployment. Counterplay to that would be having William Wallace in my link team for SSL2 and the associated bonuses. Normally I don't have him in my Fireteam: Core because I want to take advantage of his Inspiring Leadership coordinated order, but I do have him within 4-5" of the center of the Core to help rebuild it if a member dies. Then I realized that the impersonation marker I was worried about was definitely my opponent's reserve model, so I looked up when fireteams are declared and found it kind of vague. The rules say During the Deployment Phase, placing a Team Leader Marker (F: TEAM LEADER), or equivalent, next to one of the troopers that meet the Requirements of this rule. In that moment, the player can perform a Deployment Phase Coherency Check relative to the appointed Team Leader. but they don't say when during deployment you have to do that, and Deployment Phase lasts until both of the reserve models have been placed. Here's my question: when is it most commonly accepted I should declare a fireteam's creation and is there anything stopping me from waiting until my opponent has placed his reserve model to do so?
not sure about stopping you, but one thing against it is that if you wait for the reserve then you cannot bump/adjust the position of any member deployed in a previous step. For example you are specifically allowed to wait when you place your reserve model to then declare the fireteam and adjust the position of only your reserve model. Had you made the fireteam in your normal deployment you would have been allowed to adjust the position of the members.
When you are deploying your Reserve model, the only fireteams that you should be declaring are those that your Reserve model made legal to exist. If you want a group of 5 dudes to be in a Fireteam Core, declare that when you are passing deployment to your opponent. The standard method I've seen for deployment is to get everything in place, and then give your opponent the quick "OK, I'm deployed, and this is what you can see: blahblahblah" You should clearly state who is in what fireteams at this point, if you haven't already. Then your opponent deploys, and does the same quick review of units, and then you do your reserve, your opponent does their reserve. Then you move out of deployment phase.
Correct, the deployment of the reserve model would form the fireteam and the fireteam would need to include it.
I wish the wording was more tightly tuned because this explanation makes sense to me-- if the rule pared down 'Deployment phase', a phrase that spans four distinct steps across two players, to 'when the model is deployed' it would be a much more clear read. I've been skirting this issue by declaring my fireteams as 'a suspicious gathering of five individuals with fireteam: core' and placing team leader markers if I go second, but I've never had to check the rules viability of shaking up fireteam membership in deployment 'til now. I'll make sure to place down the token and make declarations and such (even if going first where it can immediately move) as it seems to be common courtesy. I'll also just make Wallace part of the Fireteam to begin with if I go second versus JSA, Shasvastii, USAriadna etc etc. Thanks for the quick answers everybody!
If you are adding the reserve troop to a pre-existing fireteam, the lead should already be declared. If the fireteam wasn't legal to form until the reserve model is added, then at that point you are declaring a fireteam, and I don't see a problem with declaring any one of the members as the leader.
No, the model can be used to create the fireteam, it does not need to be the link leader. I am not sure now that the model can be added to an already existing fireteam, will need to check it.
