If I am reading idle, zone of control and hidden deployment right. I am running a list with Shinobu Kitsune as my Lieutenant. I'm going second and choose to deploy her in hidden deployment. On my opponents last order when they activate and move their trooper, no matter where Kitsune is hidden on the board I declare an ARO 'dodge'. I then check zone of control and find that Kistune is not within zone of control of the model that just moved and she declares an 'idle' skill instead. Idle should then leave her on the board in a non-camo state. The obvious practical advantage is I can start my turn outside of loss of LT without my opponent knowing that I have a hidden deployment trooper on their turn 1. This could also be used to reveal a number of hidden deployment models in latter turns as well so that I can have a surprise number of orders appear on the board. It's also a bit niche in that there is the wide drawback of the models being in a non-camo state. Is there anything I am misreading that would prevent me from doing this? Thank you in advance.
Unless I missed something, the result is the same as it was in the last edition. Kitsune didn't declare an ARO in which the requirements weren't met (which would then result in an "idle")... she didn't have an ARO to even declare anything to begin with. Therefore she never could have appeared, and thus you have not only signaled to your opponent that you have an HD troop right there, as soon as you go LoL at the start of your next turn, they will also know exactly where your Lt is when she finally does pop up. Edit: we also now have an example of a similar situation codified in the rules RE: mines. If you think an enemy is within range of a mine, you can get out your template to check, but if it turns out they weren't in range, the camo marker remains unrevealed as if what you just did didn't actually happen (with the opponent now fully aware that the mine is there).
Bold emphasis added by me I'm actually not sure that's entirely true though for troopers. In steps 2 and 4 of the Order expenditure sequence the reactive player does this: "Declaration of AROs: The Reactive Player checks Lines of Fire to the Active Trooper, and declares AROs. Troopers are not forced to declare the AROs, but if a Trooper can declare an ARO and fails to do so, the chance to declare an ARO is lost." pg. 21 ** Strangely this doesn't mention checking Zone of Control only Line of Fire, but it is brought up in Step 6: "5. ARO Check: Check that each Trooper that declared an ARO has been in one of the situations that makes their ARO declaration valid. If they have not, they are considered to have declared an Idle." "6. Resolution: Check that the declared Skills, Special Skills, and pieces of Equipment meet their respective Requirements, measure all distances and Zones of Control, determine MODs, and make Rolls. If any Skill, Special Skill, or piece of Equipment does not meet its Requirements, the Trooper is considered to have declared an Idle." pg.21 Under the ARO validity section we have these bullet points on whether or not an ARO is Valid: "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). ◼ It has a Special Skill, weapon, or piece of Equipment allowing it to react to enemy actions without LoF. ◼ It is affected by a Template Weapon, or is the target of a Hacking Program or other Comms Attack." pg.21 The section for mines has an explicit rule to determine what happens if the mine is found to have made an illegal ARO, but this is explicitly laid out and different from Step 6 and the ARO checks above and overrides the Equipment idle stated in the resolution stage. "Once on the game table, Mines must trigger when an enemy Model or Marker declares or executes a Skill or ARO inside their Trigger Area, checking it at that moment by placing the Small Teardrop Template. If it is determined that the Model or Marker is not within the Trigger Area, the Mine will neither detonate nor be revealed." pg.76
Hmm, that does seem a little fishy. If true that would probably be an over-large buff to TO HD Lt. options (damn N3 mindset and verbiage), essentially guaranteeing you can't go into LoL during your first turn going second. That said, I play a faction that would benefit HEAVILY from this.
In N3 it was not possible. The wording in N4 makes it possible. If it becomes a problem, people would start skipping their last order, I guess. There are different types of Lieutenants: aggressive obvious ones, cheap bystanders and the hidden ones. The hidden Lieutenants are expensive and are rarely the target number one, because they are difficult to reach and order expensive to dig out. I guess this idea just makes it one step more hidden in Round one and then obvious in the following rounds. It's special but not gamebreaking.
for each such a "treaky" man i have my own trick. if I'll start to suspect HD leitenant, i give him No ARO at all to reveal himself. it for sure easy - just not spend last two orders & say "turn". Look at his face. Also cautious movement specialy state it can't be reacted by HD troopers even in LoF, so you can move troops & capture position without any chance for his Liutenant to reveal. Have a nice day with your trick.
To be honest I see the TO Shinobu thing as more of fun novelty than a strong play and I will dearly miss my games against you Papa Boy :P. The stronger (but again still niche) play is when you look to be down on orders in some objective game like Armory or Acquisition and then reveal a few clipsos on the last order of their last turn to get that slight more oomph to be able to complete an objective. If this means a crazy mind game meta where people are forgoing their last order in a turn to trap nefarious hidden deployment lovers, that sounds like a fun and fitting net plus to the game no? As for the cautious move, that is interesting, what would happen if I tried my dirty dodge anyway? Would I have to put the model back in the carrying case, or would it still turn into 'Idle' too? **I realize that these kinds of plays are 'dark arts' and not exactly what meets most people's definition of sportsmen like play. That's why it's even more important to bring them up here in the light of the rules forums, rather than out in the violent streets and clubs where mercenary cyberpunks play their sci-fi miniature games. Just look at how quickly and firmly Corvus Belli responded to the unintended consequences of the Camo/Holomask repeater.
I suspect the general answer to this question is that players have an obligation to not attempt to declare AROs they absolutely and in no uncertain terms know isn't legal.
This is certainly a grey area. By reading all of the rules except cautious movement, you'd get the impression that declaring a skill while obviously not able to perform it should revert to idle (there's also pre-emptive declaration, since requirements are only checked once, during resolution). However, reading CM and language about generating no AROs (and, specifically, the reminder box that states that HD troopers cannot react to a CM) casts doubt on that. Of course, it's not like this isn't an argument we haven't had before.
Would you consider instead having an adult conversation in which both parties assume a reasonable degree of mutual good faith?
I am really not sure why this question keeps coming up in different threads. to me it is clear. no you can not do what you are describing. I highlighted the applicable parts. you cannot declare an ARO unless you meet the requirements to declare the ARO. The idle clause in step 5 is there for troops with template weapons that maybe don't quite reach. I can't declare shoot against a camo marker for example, it is not a valid ARO. look at dodge rules for example too. how do you declare an ARO without an enemy trooper doing something that generates that ARO?
I'm allowed to declare an ARO because I 'believe' that my model might be in zone of control of your model. How can I check that I am in your zone of control to declare a valid dodge when we don't check that until after I declare it? Then when we go to check if my ARO was valid, we find that my model is actually just outside of the 8 inch zone of your model. Since we can't know if I was in Zone of Control until after we check in steps 5 and 6, the game needs some way of handing the situation when the player is wrong (this goes for the active turn, if say you thought you moved into my zone of control and tried to jammer me, but it turns out you were just outside.) In those case the game forces the player who guessed wrong to 'idle' and that 'idle' skill has punishments for guessing wrong which include, but are not limited to, camo troopers losing their marker state, or hidden deployment models being stuck out of hidden deployment. To use a reasonable non-abusive example. Let's say you moved a model that looked very close to my jammer zulu-cobra in camo. I declare an ARO Jammer against your model and you choose whatever you want for second short skill, it doesn't matter for this example. When we measure and see that my Zulu is just out of our zone of control for your entire move, my ARO turns into an 'idle' in step 6 because it wasn't valid, because we measured the zone just then and I'm out side of it. Now I am stuck with my my Zulu out of camo looking silly and exposed. There are tons more example of aros, beyond just templates out of range, that could turn out to be invalid: Hacks against people who aren't hackable, BS attacks against people out of range, dodge out of line of sight when I'm not in ZoC of control, Reset when I'm not in zone of control, etc. The point I'm making is the current N4 configuration doesn't consider that a player like me might actually want to have the 'punishment' of my trooper being revealed by an idle and that might not declare ARO I have a very reasonable guess will turn out to be invalid.
I mean maybe its not RAI, but RAW this seems to work. It's also a bit of a tradeoff as well, because in doing so you ARE voluntarily revealing your LT to your opponent and losing hidden deployment on one of your troopers.
There are two things going on here, I think. On the one side, there's a problem with ZoC ARO's (and by extension hacking AROs) where you had to guess whether you were in ZoC to have a valid ARO. If the other player's a better judge of 8" than you, then they get to negate your ARO. That's one of the reasons why there's now an "ARO Check" step: You can declare an ARO hoping that it's valid, or will become valid. On the other side, I think letting the reactive player jump the gun on declaring ARO's ends up being completely harmless 90% of the time. Of the 10%, disposable or limited skills are a bit of a deterrent, and most of the time you only lose advantages cancelling marker states. On the gripping hand, however, there's a difference between declaring an ARO that you're not sure is going to be valid and being prohibited from declaring AROs. For things like Cautious Movement or Stealth, there effectively is no ARO step. To be honest, I wouldn't be surprised if the ARO rules got FAQ'd so that only "uncertain" requirements were allowed to be stretched in these situations: - The target may or may not be disguised as a different trooper. So those requirements can be guessed away. - You're not allowed to pre-measure, so ZoC and distance related requirements are uncertain. So those requirements can be guessed away (within reason). - Line of fire is NOT uncertain. So there's no reason to allow those requirements to be guessed away. In other words, I think declaring ARO BS Attack when you can't see is unlikely to be upheld. Likewise declaring ARO Reset two feet away from anything that could possibly be a repeater is unlikely to be upheld.
This is how I read it as well. "5. ARO Check: Check that each Trooper that declared an ARO has been in one of the situations that makes their ARO declaration valid. If they have not, they are considered to have declared an Idle." Same as checking if a mine triggers, if it's out of range just pretend it never triggered. If the model turns out it wasn't in range to declare an ARO, then it never had a chance to declare an ARO that doesn't work in the first place. To me step 5 exists for situations where you do something like try to hack a non hackable target that's disguised by Holomask.
Camo is lost as soon as you declare Dodge. Declare is written in bold in the rules. Doesn't matter that it turns into Idle. The Camouflaged State is cancelled whenever: ► The Camouflaged Marker declares an Attack, Look Out!, or any Skill that requires a Roll.
True, but the discussion is whether you should be considered to have been allowed to declare the dodge in the first place. This is probably one of those things that will need @HellLois or @Koni to come in and shed some light what was actually intended.
