Is it, and it does. It's been answered several times in this thread, as well as previous thread. @Koval put it best - I'd suggest referring to his answer above. The way you've phrased it here is also good - your reading is correct.
From my understanding CB's take on it is "We can't ban looking at the ap during play." Individual TOs may have their opinions, but any of them that take the "rely on your memory not Army" tack are making the wrong call, imo.
You can't print lists on the android app. I don't know why they haven't enabled this function, since pretty much ALL of the android hardware available CAN send to a wireless printer. ALL of the other apps with a print function (office, pdf readers, emails, etc) on my phone or my tab can do this, EXCEPT army. Which stubbornly clings to the 11th century. Not even cans and string tech.
I think you're entangling yourself a bit too much here, information can't be open or private at the same time. Here's the gist of it; the full unit roster of O-12 army isn't part of the game being played. It's not open information, it's not private information. It's just information outside the game. You can ask about it, but your opponent isn't obliged to tell you. You can look it up yourself, but this may be bad form and depend heavily on how you do it. You can also know the answer to this by memorising it. Much like checking the schedule of the tournament or the take out options of the local pizza place, there is probably a good time to do it and a bad time to do it, and you should probably not do that when you're trying to overcome analysis paralysis in the middle of an order.
I find no difference between looking up the cost and swc of profiles in general and looking up prices and swc of the specific models on the table. To me, asking what is the price and swc of avatar in general and what is the price and swc of THAT avatar seems the same to me and so against the rules. I realize that the rules have no actual answer to this question however. In general rules are written to what is allowed (and exceptions inside what is allowed). What you are allowed to do with a tool outside of the game is a gray area. The game never says you aren't allowed to breathe but also doesn't say the dice in the game have to be balanced. So to me, using a tool to remove private information is against the rules. If the information is something you know, then fine. knowing a model has to be the LT because its one of the select few models in the game with WIP 17 or has public strategos. Even knowing the exact points or swc about some or all of the models from before the game has started is fine by me. But while the game has started, to me all of their faction's point and swc is private information.
The distinction is that in one case you are referring to information on what you believe might be present, in the other your are providing accurate information that might reveal that units aren’t what they appear to be or that they have other attributes such as the Lt. and CoC skills that are themselves Private Information. It’s the difference between perfect and imperfect information. It’s like being able to estimate distances. You may be good at estimating distances, but until you actually lay down the ruler or template you don’t know that your guess was correct.
There is no way in the rules to prevent you from observing the table and making judgements. so being able to estimate distance cannot be forbidden. There is absolutely a way to say it is against the rules to look up the opposing model's faction. I disagree that these situations are similar.
Private information is based on your models / troopers. Faction profiles are not private information. Does this mean that you can deduct a lot of private information? Yes. But you also could if you had a minimum of experience. Army builder is entirely independant of the game state, it only has facts about the factions and it is open knowledge to everyone. Preventing people from looking up facts about an army using outside tools (like army) is only going to hinder inexperienced player.
I’m not saying that the rules should prevent you from making guesses at distance. I’m trying to give an example of imperfect information versus perfect information. Knowing the Cost and SWC of a profile is similar to estimating range. Having your opponent tell you the actual Cost of their unit is like putting down your measuring tool to verify the distance. Even if I know that a Kappa with a Combi is 12 points, I have no way of knowing that the model you have on the board that appears to be a Kappa with a Combi is actually 12 points unless I ask you. Since that is Private Information, you don’t have to tell me that “That model is 20 points” when I ask about the cost of one of your Kappas with Combis.”. If the Cost and SWC of your specific Troopers wasn’t Private Information, other pieces of Private Information would be incredibly hard to keep secret. What I can’t wrap my head around is how one can argue that knowing the Cost and SWC of profiles in general is some sort of Private Information violation, when someone can know those pieces of trivia or they could have those Costs and SWC printed on their own army lists in the case of mirror matches.
You also don't know if that Kappa is actually Katherine Cho. There's a whole host of ways to obfuscate what's in your list even if you assume your opponent has perfect knowledge of Army. Most quality opponents have close to perfect knowledge of Army anyway (particularly for factions they play).
I agree that that's not a very strongly defensible position, since you can't make it illegal for people to know things. The main points of contention are really about in-game etiquette regarding how actively you're allowed to attempt to reconstruct lists.
It doesn’t really bother me if people want to decide that certain behaviors are considered a breach of etiquette and create house rules for their events that enforce etiquette. It just bugs me to see rules being twisted and misrepresented to justify their preferences.
Then be bugged. The rules do not address allowing or not allowing pulling up army to rebuild your opponents list. Atleast the tourneys i go and people i play say the answer is no. But to say the rules do not support it is false as the rules give no opinion in either direction to be able to do. And arguing being against it is easy, it is extremely rude to do, it borders on breaking the private information that swc and points are supposed to be. For dealing with mirror match, etiquette is super easy. Did you pull it up to look at your models or to look at models not in your list but to look at your opponents model's points because you don't remember for some reason's its points or swc. Arguing that points and swc are totally private but being able to look it up is a far weaker argument in my mind as it completely defeats the purpose in all but 1% to not be able to very quickly get points and swc for their entire army. But its totally still private.
Do you believe that trialing people on memory / experience / knowledge of armies and their possible inclusions is a skill you want to force in your games? Do you think that being able to gotcha your opponent because they do not know wether or not your faction has access to a certain rule is a thing you want in your games?
You can't meaningfully make and enforce a rule that prevents people from knowing that a basic rifle Kappa is 12 points. Everything beyond that is etiquette.
By the number of your posts, most of you have been playing for years, so let me give the point of view of a new player: this game already has one of the steepest entry level I have ever seen. Adding the need to memorize all the profiles of all armies is not going to help attract new players :)
Interpreting that bit of the Private Information rules to be that accessing any Cost or SWC information is against the rules doesn’t just prevent someone from using Army from rebuilding their opponent’s list to get an idea what HD or AD troops might show up, it also prevents checking to see what a secctorals possible Lt and CoC options are, checking to see what sort of stuff a faction might have as it’s Iniltrating Camo markers, or anything else you’d like to quickly check up on about a faction.
When the game is aiming to be a competitive match, yes. I expect them to either know or to play with those as possibilities. If they think they know and get gotcha'd, then they made the wrong call. The same thing for newer players, asking them to memorize each faction is harsh, but asking them to play as if all factions have hidden deployment and combat jump until they know better is by far an easier choice.
