Can I intuitive attack an Impersonation Marker?

Edit: Ninja'd

http://infinitythewiki.com/en/index.php?title=Game_Elements:_Terminology_and_Alignment&redirect=no

Alignment
In Infinity it is important to define which game elements belong to each player side, and which ones belong to none. This determines if those game elements are capable of being attacked, and if so, from whom these attacks may come.

The Alignment adjectives help the players know the extent of the rules over certain game elements, like Troopers, Models...

Enemy. Troopers that belong to the opposing player's Army List or to his team mate or team mates if the game is played in pairs or groups.

Friendly. Troopers that belong to the player's Army List, or to those of a team mate, or team mates if the game is played in pairs or groups.

Hostile. Civilians or game elements that do not belong to the Army Lists of either the player or the opponent, which are not a threat to them and are not capable of declaring Attacks but apply negative MODs to Troopers interacting with them. Hostile is considered a subgroup within Neutral, and therefore any rule mentioning the term Neutral also applies to the Hostile elements.

Neutral. Civilians or game elements that do not belong to the Army Lists of either the player or the opponent, which are not a threat to them and are not capable of declaring Attacks.

 

I did know that those are important distinctions, but I didn't know that page was there, so that's handy, thank you.

I wasn't trying to suggest that there aren't distinctions, just that I think rephrasing, or some way to highlight the word, like capitalization, or bold font, could make it more clear when a word is an important game element and when it's just a word.

 

Partly it's a downside of the wiki system, a page like that can be missed compared to reading the rules in book/linear format, and having each sentence be a Web of hyperlinks is also not desirable.

Capitalisation would be a good effort though.

 

Let's read the Spanish rules.
For Discover where IJW claims the English rules calls out Discover + Shoot manoeuvre specifically (for reference, the quoted text is, abbreviated, "without previous discovery") the Spanish rules removes any ambiguity by stating that you're not allowed to declare an attack against the trooper because "it is necessary to discover the trooper first"
Further, reading Spanish rules, Discover-Shoot manoeuvre subtly different from English "to try to discover an enemy troop and make a CD Attack against it, but only if it has passed the Discover Roll". Where English say "enemy", Spanish says "Enemy Trooper" and we all know that a Marker is not a Trooper so we know the rules are not talking about the Marker being the target here and while perception is one thing, the rules here clearly speak in future perfect tense meaning that while the Marker is currently might be perceived as an ally, by Discovering it it will be a Enemy Trooper and would as such be an eligible target.

Simply put, I can't find that the Spanish rules support the line of reasoning that an IMP-2 Marker can't be Discover-Shot in any way shape or form.

 

This is a very good point.

The spanish ruling explicitely mentions to discover "the special Discover + CD Attack maneuver allows, in the same Order, to try to discover an enemy troop and make a CD Attack against it", which does not care about the state that the enemy -currently- is, but what you are trying to discover.

@ijw is the english page a translation error, where the intent got lost in translation?


Edit: reread the Spanish rules and I think this is wrong, see my next response lower, but Markers can be considered “tropa” in the Spanish rules.

 

Just to note, it's usually been ruled the opposite way. As in, the English rules override the Spanish ones when they are in conflict. Who knows with this one, however.

 

Yes, but it's often also a case of an official ruling being given typically only when the issue is present in the Spanish rules, so if the Spanish rules does not have an issue it's a lot less likely to be brought up or being treated as an issue.

 

I said discover shoot, which specifies enemy.

 

Not in previous forum discussions.

 

Was there not a rules discrepancy somewhat recently between the Spanish and English rules that got FAQ'd to the English version or the Spanish rules got errata'd to be more like the English rules? I could have sworn that's happened more than once...

 

Sorry, I thought you were talking about previous discussions about Discover-BS Attack on Impersonators. Because as far as I can remember the previous discussion came to exactly the same conclusion.

 

My bad. I should have quoted the idea that Spanish rules would trump the English rules in my response.

 

http://infinitythewiki.com/es/Elementos_de_Juego:_Terminología_y_Alineamiento

A marker can be a “tropa”. It is not “figura” though, but that word is not used in Discover-Shoot.

We even have a clear example of Impersonator state being described as a “tropa”.

http://wiki.infinitythegame.com/es/Suplantación

“Una tropa con cualquier Nivel de Suplantación que se encuentre en estado Suplantación-1 o Suplantación-2 (Marcador IMP-1 o IMP-2) debe ser considerado como una tropa amiga por su adversario.”

“considerado como una tropa amiga por su adversario” translates to “considered a friendly troop by his adversary”.

So the argument that the Spanish wording is different because a marker cannot be a trooper is incorrect.

 

Arguably, a Impersonation Marker can not be a trooper because it is not capable of receiving an attack ;)

But strictly speaking, the Impersonation Marker is not a game element that belongs to the army list, either.

 

What about an "enemy trooper benefitting from a marker state"?

An IMP-Marker is not considered an enemy by the opposing player.
But the rules for Bio-Visor do not talk about "fake ally" or some thing like this,
but about "enemy benefiting from any of the Impersonation (IMP-1 or IMP-2) or Holoecho states".

Isn't it true that an IMP-Marker is an enemy trooper benefitting from a marker state?

 

Wouldn't be best if they just removed completely useless Biometric Visor for start. They added equipment, leveled equipment at that, that counters 2 units in the game ( at the time only Fiday and Speculo had IMP ). Even now it's basically useless.
So why just not make Impersonation work exactly the same as Camo, just with 2 levels you have to discover like now ? And make MSV affect IMP same as Camo. Problem solved, rules simplified, redundant equipment removed from the game, GG WP.

 

Not sure who you're asking, but an IMP marker isn't a trooper as we can read regarding Private Information the Trooper is the contents of the Marker, though that's beside the point. Impersonation causes enemies to consider the impersonator to be an ally so to them there can't ever be any "enemy benefiting from Impersonation [...] states" since as far as your own troopers are concerned they're all enemies that suddenly became "allies benefiting from the Impersonation state".

IMPORTANT!
Enemies perceive an impersonator in the Impersonation-1 or Impersonation-2 state (IMP-1 or IMP-2 Marker) as an ally.​

Not gonna make a full defence of Bio-V but keep in mind that Bio-V also makes the trooper immune to Surprise Shot from Holoecho and that Cybermask was a thing when it was introduced. Plus, it's very handy to have around if you start cranking out more Basic Impersonators or if you make changes to Holoecho...

 

"enemy benefiting from Impersonation [...] states" is the only way you could define it. It goes beyond saying "an enemy" or "an ally" for the purpose of the ability. It's a lot more precise and a valid way of letting the skill be used on it.

If something simply said "an enemy" it would not be valid.

If something simply said "an ally" it would apply to any friendly trooper in your army, which would not make sense in the scope of using Biometric.

But using "enemy benefiting from Impersonation [...] states" is the most explicit way of describing an impersonator in a way that makes the use of Biometric Visor valid.

Also worth noting that regardless of the outcome of how we are to rule the "Impersonator are friendly" debate, the other points in Biometric (the ones that negate Surprise Attack and Surprise Shot) are still valid, because once the enemy reveals to attack from Impersonation state and apply a Surprise Skill to you, it is then considered an Enemy.

So biometric visors are completely affected by the strick RAW of Discover-Shoot that was presented in the thread.

 

This is kind of what I'm arguing. As long as you take the stance that Impersonation makes the opponent's trooper view the enemy trooper as a friendly trooper and apply that far too liberally, as I consider is the case with how Discover-Shoot has been debated, you inevitably run into the problem that an Impersonator can never ever be described in terms of a hostile trooper within the rules because such a unit when in Impersonation states will never ever exist.

I argue that there is no problem with Bio-V because an enemy impersonator is an enemy and that the protection offered by impersonation should never be applied outside of validating direct attacks or template weapons, unless specifically mentioned, or when the action is described specifically from the perspective of the performing trooper, which is to say in the most minimal terms you can afford it. In the specific case of Discover-Shoot I argue, further, that it not only makes sense but is important to describe the target of Discover-Shoot in terms of an enemy, (after discovery - future perfect tense) because otherwise you're giving players permission to circumvent IMP-2 by Discover-Shooting IMP-1!

 

I disagree, saying an “enemy benefiting from impersonation” is obviously a sentence that transcends what the trooper perceives. It explains that the unit has Impersonation, which is what makes it be seen as a friendly.

In the same way that you try to argue that a “Trooper” can’t be in marker state using the Spanish rule and that it refers to what is inside the marker, this uses the same logic.

Simply saying “enemy though” is always from the trooper perspective.

I actually think that if you allow Discover-Shoot to only care that what is under the marker is an enemy and considered an enemy for Discover-Shoot, we’ll now be able to argue that you actually can Discover-Shoot vs IMP1 and IMP2.

The maneuver just needs a rewrite to be clear about what CBs intention is, like a dozen other rules. (which I personally think is that it is intended to allow you to Discover-Shoot impersonators)

There is so many holes in the rule text for Discover-Shoot and Impersonators and the rules break at some point regardless of the language you choose to use to rule it.