I was asked this and wasn’t 100% so I thought I would ask here. In the mission Firefight: Let’s say you field three Proxies (mk1 Engineer, mk2 hacker, and mk5 FO). You kill one of your opponent’s specialist. Your opponent kills the mk1 Engineer, and mk5 FO (both specialist), but does not kill the mk2 hacker. Who gets the mission points for have killed more specialists? Option A: your opponent, they killed two specialists. Option B: you do, proxies only count as one trooper and it’s still alive at the end of the game due to the mk2 hacker being alive. I have always assumed this is played as option A, but Troop and Trooper are used pretty loosely, so I could so it the other way too. Relevant rules: Spoiler: From ITS12 mission pack: KILLING Troopers are considered Killed by the adversary when they enter Dead State, or they are in a Null State at the end of the game. Troopers that have not been deployed on the game table, as a Model or Marker, at the end of the game will be considered to be Killed by the adversary. Spoiler: From the rulebook: G: JUMPER AUTOMATIC SKILL Obligatory Requirements The player must enlist either two or three Proxies available to a Trooper with this Special Skill. All the Proxies of a G: Jumper Trooper must be in the same Combat Group, where they are counted as only one Trooper. Effects This Special Skill allows its user to have several Models called Proxies. A G: Jumper Trooper provides a single Order no matter how many Proxy Models he has. This Special Skill allows G: Jumper Troopers to deploy two or three Proxies, applying any Deployment Special Skills they might have (Airborne Deployment, Infiltration...). Players do not need to place the Active Proxy Token in the Deployment Phase. During the Active Turn, the G: Jumper Trooper can activate any of his Proxies by placing the Active Proxy Token beside the Proxy he wants to activate when declaring the Order. The only Proxy that can declare Orders is the one with the Active Proxy Token. During the Reactive Turn, the G: Jumper Trooper can activate a Proxy by placing the Active Proxy Token beside it if an enemy Trooper declares an Order in LoF or ZoC, which allows this Proxy to declare an ARO normally. If an Order is declared in LoF or ZoC of several Proxies that belong to the same G: Jumper Trooper, then the player can activate only one of them. Inactive Proxies can react in ARO to any Order declared in LoF or ZoC by declaring Dodge, or Reset, if possible. At the end of the Order in which a Proxy entered Isolated State, or any Null State, the player can place the Active Proxy Token beside any of the G: Jumper Trooper's other Proxies which is not in Isolated State, or any Null State. A G: Jumper Trooper cannot activate a Proxy in Isolated State, or any Null State, until the State is cancelled. If all the Proxies of a G: Jumper Trooper are in Isolated State, or any Null State, then the G: Jumper Trooper will be considered a casualty until at least one of his Proxies recovers from the State. Edit: finally learned how spoilers work.
The scenario rules say "...Hackers, Doctors, Engineers, ... are considered Specialist Troops." I would say, the mk1 is an Engineer so it's a Specialist Troop. The mk2 is a Hacker so it's a Specialist Troop. If your opponent kills both of them, they've killed two Specialist Troops. It might be harder if the scenario rules referred to Specialist Troopers rather than Specialist Troops :-) But with the actual wording, I'd say that a posthuman can be one Trooper which consists of three Specialist Troops.
I think I agree with your conclusion, but not your reasoning. The rules for killing in Firefight says "Troopers are considered Killed by the adversary when they enter Dead State, or they are in a Null State at the end of the game." (my added emphasis in bold). So it only counts if a trooper is killed. I think the root question is: When is a proxy killed in Firefight?
Hmm, interesting. The scoring is for "kill more lieutenants," "kill more Specialist Troops," and "kill more army points." Then there's a separate entry that defines when "troopers" are considered killed, but doesn't say when that matters. It certainly applies to the "kill more lieutenants" objective, since a lieutenant is always a Trooper. It presumably doesn't apply to the "kill more army points" objective - if I kill your mk1 that would give me 13 army points killed, even if the rest of the posthuman was still alive. The "kill more army points" objective doesn't say anything about the army points having to be Troopers. So then there's the "kill more Specialist Troops" objective, which also doesn't make any reference to Troopers. So I would still argue that each proxy is a separate Specialist Troop, even though the posthuman Trooper isn't killed unless all its proxies are killed. But you're right, the wording is weird. On the other hand, if you designate the posthuman as your Lieutenant, to score an Lt kill I'd have to take out all the proxies I guess. My reasoning may be a bit of a stretch :-) But I think it would be pretty weird if one could kill a proxy hacker and not have killed a specialist, or killed a proxy engineer and hacker and only killed one specialist. (Although to be fair, if you kill Dr. Worm you've killed a doctor and an engineer but only one specialist.)
I guess I have a few counterpoints: 1. Why does each proxy model count as a troop? As far as I can tell "Troop" is not defined in N4. Trooper is defined as "Game element with Attributes which belongs to the Army List of any player, able to contribute and spend Orders, as well as declaring and receiving Attacks." That would make it seem like each proxy model is a trooper, but the the rule for G: Jumper defines proxies as one trooper... Anyways, I think "Troop" and "Trooper" are more or less the same, but I'd like to know if they're not. 2. I think the most relevant rule is what counts as killed in Firefight (i.e. when a trooper is in a Dead State, or Null State at the end of the game). The 'kill' keyword defines when specialist, LTs, or army points are considered killed. Again, the question is: When is a proxy considered killed in Firefight? Either each model becomes a trooper on the game table and counts as killed when each model dies or only when all three models are dead/null.
My reasoning, FWIW, isn't that the word "Troop" has any meaning. Rather, the phrase "Specialist Troop" has a defined meaning. The rules don't refer to anything as just a Troop, or a non-specialist Troop, or whatever. Specialist Troop is its own category of thing. And its definition includes a "Hacker" and and "Engineer." So the mk1 meets the definition of Specialist Troop because it's an Engineer, and the mk2 meets the definition because it's a Hacker, and it doesn't matter whether they're Troops (undefined term) or Troopers (irrelevant term), it only matters that they're Specialist Troops.
ah, totally! Specialist Troop is a thing that's defined. That makes sense. Still, Trooper seems relevant as its the only thing that is defined as possible to kill.
Good point. If the Killing rule didn't apply to Specialist Troops, then we could probably still safely assume they were Killed when they entered the Dead state, but we wouldn't know if being in a null state at the end of the game counted as being Killed. So, my logic is far from perfect :-) Also CB probably wasn't thinking about Posthumans when they wrote the scenario rules. Ultimately it's TO's choice I suppose, though I'm guessing most would rule it as each proxy is its own killable specialist.
There was also a thread about TAGs with specialist pilots that’s relevant. I believe the conclusion was that if the pilot dismounts and you kill them, it’s a specialist kill, but if you just kill the TAG (even with the pilot inside) it’s not. Edit: never mind, I seem to have imagined this rules thread.
https://infinitythewiki.com/G:_Jumper?version=n4 Details: Rules specify all proxy bodies count as a single trooper, at least regarding combat groups AND LT isolation. Rules call "trooper" the "G: Jumper Trooper", the bodies in the field are Proxies only. Rules say each Proxy body is counted separately for Victory Points. The "Posthuman trooper" is no longer separated into an entity able to provide his order when all the bodies are Null (if there is a Netrod present). HellLois specified some ITS seasons back that the Datatracker position is tied to the body, not the "posthuman trooper". Can't remember if he said anything about Decapitation/Hunting Party. Personally, I see three options here: Each body gives Objective Points as if it each is a separate trooper (so up to 3). You need to hunt all bodies, but when you finally do it, each body counts as a separate troop (so you would earn 0 for 1-2 bodies, but jump to 3 once all have been hunted down). Hunt all three bodies and get 1 "specialist down". Personally, I'd go for #1, despite not being fully supported by the rules. Because of HellLois' past ruling, and because it feels the most balanced. #2 would be my second option, and #3, while possible, my "no-go".
Option A: two Specialists. If you don't count the Proxies as Troopers for this kind of thing, you're going to have much bigger problems than scoring in ITS missions! Like them not falling Unconscious when they're reduced to 0 Wounds, or giving Burst bonuses for multiple CC combatants, or each being in separate States, or Inactive Proxies being allowed to declare AROs etc. etc...
