If when engaged I choose not to perform an action with the first short skill of an order does that become idle as per the idle rules? I've seen a number of users state that the engaged rule overrides this. Whenever a trooper that received an Order in the Active Turn chooses not to perform an action with one of the two Short Skills of that Order, that trooper is considered to declare Idle. I'm aware that there are arguments both ways neither of which seem to bring any closure to the subject. Edit: Same question as above for immobilised.
For this reason, they can only declare CC Attack, Coup de Grâce, Dodge and those Skills which specify that they can be used in CC Combat or in the Engaged state, as Reset. So nothing allows you to declare Idle as first part of your short skill, when Engaged.
You don't declare Idle, you say "I choose to do nothing with my first action" and trigger the third bullet point of Idle. The effect is the same as being able to declare Idle but it's technically different.
In which case if I choose not to use the skill, which means I idle, which isn't allowed by the rules, so is then considered idle. The trooper is also considered to perform an Idle when he has declared a Skill not allowed by the rules. I understand the engaged trumping the idle rules reading, but given one creates wonky situations would like clarification which is correct from a proper source.
I don't know where the "I choose to do nothing with my first skill" business comes from, either. I just know that a long, long time ago, Bostria did an intro video for N3 and did a lot of things wrong concerning close combat.
You also can't declare it as a second short skill, and CC Attack is only a short skill out of your order. So in either case you eventually have to declare inaction (or the lack of any action; which is not the same as declaring the act of performing an Idle). see opening post, the rule says you are allowed to "chooses not to perform an action with one of the two Short Skills". It doesn't say that you are only allowed to forfeit the use of your second short skill.
I know people like to maximize their active turn control, but 99.9% of the time if you’re already engaged you can just declare your CC attack and it’s fine. The cases where you would benefit from selecting second are very few.
It's mainly a thing for G Sync and Antipodes to force normal rolls. In both cases you can generally declare Move+CC anyway unless you have literally every model in the group engaged. It's cleaner to just always permit it.
In the Engaged State it states clearly you may only do CC Attacks, Dodge, Reset or any skill that says it is allowed during the Engaged State. Idle is a skill. you can’t chose to do nothing (looking under order declaration in the rules). You have to choose Idle + Shoot or Shoot + Idle. Idle also happens when there is no legal skill possible e.g. activating an IMM-2 HI Here is an important REAL example fo you: Example A: A Fiday is in an Engaged State with a Tokusetsu Doctor (yes he failed to kill her in his first attack). Shinobu as standing 1” away . 1st Short Skill he declares a CC attack vs the Tokusetsu. Tokusetsu Declares CC attack Shinobu declares Engage 2nd Short Skill - no valid choice. Example B A Fiday is in an Engaged State with a Tokusetsu Doctor (yes he failed to kill her in his first attack). Shinobu as standing 1” away . 1st Short Skill he declares Idle Tokusetsu Declares CC attack Shinobu declares Engage 2nd Short Skill - He declares CC vs Shinobu and gets a F2F roll vs her Engage. Example A is the correct application of the rules.
Yea, my understanding of the rules is that if you spend an Order to Activate a Trooper, you must declare skills. If you want to ‘do nothing’, you declare Idle. But Idle is not a valid declaration in the Engaged state. Any declared skill that you cannot “perform” is treated as Idle. This is a little muddled when it comes to synched units that must declare the same skills. If a synched model must declare a skill it cannot perform, it is treated as Idle. But in most cases, technically the skill could not be declared, such as a Lunokhod declaring Climb as a Short Skill. The Koalas do not have Climbing Plus, and so cannot declare Climb as a Short Skill, yes? Technically, this causes the rules to malfunction. But in practice we just treat this invalid declaration as an inability to “perform” and call it Idle. This is what, in my opinion, leads the the mistaken interpretation that a Trooper can always perform Idle even when it cannot declare the skill. The mistake is thinking that you can declare Idle (or any other invalid skill), and it is treated AS Idle, because you can’t “perform” it. But that’s not how the rules function, in my understanding. It IS, however, how synched models function, so...
However the Idle rule itself provides the answer for what happens if you "choose to do nothing", so it is a possibility covered by the rules. This is from the Order Expenditure Sequence: "Declaration of the First Skill: The Active Player declares the first Short Skill of the Order, or the Entire Order he wants to use. If movements are declared, the player measures the movement distance and places the trooper at the final point of its movement" It certainly reads to me as permissive, if it obliged the declaration of a skill it should read as "must declare". However, this section contradicts that impression that you must declare 2 Short Skills: "In other words, the expenditure of an Order allows the activated trooper to declare one of the following combinations of Skills: Any one Entire Order Skill. Any one Short Movement Skill plus any one Short Movement Skill. Any one Short Movement Skill plus any one Short Skill (and vice versa)." There's also the related issue of whether you can voluntarily declare a Short Skill or ARO you know to be invalid to perform Idle. To my knowledge this has never been resolved. Again, we know that some troopers can perform a Short Movement skill + CC Attack while Engaged, and Idle gives us a means of making that general (by interpreting the 3rd bullet point as providing permission to choose to do nothing). It seems easier to me to permit that rather than: "When a Hospitaller Dr is Engaged they may not declare Move + CC unless they have a G-Servant unless that G-Servant is also Engaged."
Robock explained it well, if you spend an order to activate a trooper who is already in the engaged state one of the two short skills they will perform is mandatorily idle as there is no other valid combination of possible short skills. You may not declare a move as you are engaged; you may not declare a combination of dodge, reset, CC attack, etc. Therefore we must assume idle is a valid skill declaration else you can never progress to the resolution phase of the order as the active model can’t declare a valid second skill....
A more pressing question is: can you declare an illegal skill when there is a legal skill available to you - simply because you know you will eventually be forced to declare an illegal skill?
as it is more a question of forfeiting (or choosing to not perform an action with) one of your short skill, i'd phrase it as : can you choose to not perform a short skill when there are legal skills available to you - or can you only forfeit a short skill when there is nothing left available to declare ?
