Private information: Cost and SWC

Easier choice than what? Letting them access a ressource that tells them what is available in the game?

That honestly just sounds like gatekeeping to me. Telling a new player to play as if their opponent has something that might not even exist in their opponent factions just sounds outrageous to me.

I don't even understand the competitive arguments to it either. Every competitive games I can think of lets you have access to the game ressources that lets you know what exists in the game.

 

If you, your local group, and the tournaments you attend want to play by those practices, that's fine. I'm not saying people can't or shouldn't ever restrict the use of online tools. But I do think it's disingenuous to try and argue that the core rules of Infinity forbid referring to Army during a game to see what various capabilities exist for a faction you're not familiar with.

 

Damn, 40k tournaments are sanctuaries against WAAC compared to some of you lot.

Seriously, "memorize each and every faction's units and their profiles, weapons, costs and SWC or you're a cheater for looking those up in the official app"?

prime /r/gatekeeping material, right there

 

Respectfully, I do not agree at all.
New players are already at a disadvantage by not knowing most of the fine strategies of the game (which has many, here's the good news). Adding to that the HUGE difference of now knowing every model in the game will just convey a worse game experience.
And saying they should expect opponent to potentially have "everything there is to be afraid of" is, to me, both unfair and, again, not helping in addressing the first games. And with first, I don't mean the first two or three, but easily the first six months of play at the very least (considering a consistent and well disposed player).
Experienced players are already at a big advantage in both list design and tactical/strategical gameplay (as they should be), adding the armies' knowledge derived from years of play is not really necessary.

Just to give an external example, Magic the Gathering, the game that probably has the most professional and elaborate tournament rules, allows to consult the official online resources for every card. To make the right comparison about private information, this does not mean knowing what the opponent deck list is, or even consulting similar builds on the web, but, at least, been able to make accurate guesses strarting from the knowledge of the singular cards.

 

You've got the usual WGC clique arguing that accessing Infinity Army during a tournament is grounds for being expelled on the basis of slowing down the game, even if you don't slow down the game.

CB really needs to explicitly tell those people they are wrong.

 

As a (former) warcor, bringing new people into the game is important to me. Telling people to fear the worst and "git gud" isn't how you make a welcoming environment and grow the community.

 

It's also just people who want to be needlessly obfuscatory about hidden information, to the point of being antagonistic and childish to their opponent.

 

Army isn't just an outside app. Infinity army is a rule reference for the game. It is essentially the army list rule book, as CB doesn't waste paper anymore printing them.

There is no part of the rules that becomes private information because you are playing the game. It not illegal for my opponent to read nomad profiles before the game, it's not illegal for them to look at it during the game either, the profiles are what they are, the rules of the game.

If I am playing Nomads against someone nothing in the rules makes the whole nomad rules secret while we play that game, but make it okay to look before and after we play.

My list is secret. I could have a halomask spec ops, or hidden deployment, that camo marker could have a zero khd or a intruder hmg under it.

If someone asked me how much swc an intruder hmg is, well it's open information it's in the published rule set. How much swc is that intruder hmg on th table, technically secret. But with other units that technical secrecy is useful, just not in this case.

 

the alternative is this: Tell new players about how private information works and how you are able to keep models secret to be able to be used against your opponent at a later time without them knowing about it. Except it will not work as the standard is to recreate their list during deployment, see how their list is missing a significant number of points, swc missing, see what profiles have hidden deployment or combat jump and be able to find what their hidden models do before the first order is spent. and unless they built into their lists the ability to hide specific models due to variable costs. you will know exactly what all the models do before the game starts.

This isn't a hypothetical. If the game does allow recreating their list, it will become standard to do that during your opponents deployment. The information about missing an order is a huge red flag that the opponent has a hidden model, now you will be able to figure out to within 1 or 2 gun configurations exactly which profile it is.

The amount of effort that would have to go into building a comprehensive list that can have useful and meaningful hidden models that will not be able to be detected by recreating your opponents list is staggering.

And to change topics to new players, I do not think it is that far fetched to just tell the new players to expect both hidden deployment and combat jump if you are unsure. because for most factions in the game, that is exactly what people do regardless of if they are new or not. If I see my opponent playing pano, yujing, haqq, or nomads and they have an order missing, I have to expect both possibilities during the game. If I recreated his list, you are right, i would know longer have to expect both. So, the game is lessened by that.

So yes, I will continue to state that I would be absolutely against the idea of the standard for recreating your list. There is also no rules discussion here, as I stated before, there are no rules discussing what you can and cannot do with army during the game. There are no rules discussing army at all.

 

Nah. If I'm playing OCF, and I have 35-ish points and 1.5 SWC missing, they still have to guess as to whether it's a Spitfire Fraacta or ML Noctifer. You can't solve for that by recreating a list.

 

The fact that you have a 14 point 0.5 SWC Lt in your list is private information.

The fact that a 14 point 0.5 SWC Lt exists in your faction/sectoral is not private information, its just the rules. I'm allowed to look at the rules.

There's no functional difference between memorizing profiles and looking them up.

 

13 Troopers on the table, and you can happily spend your time hiding from a Swiss but it's something else.

Even if you have Army, running the detailed permutations across multiple different HD / AD and Camo will take a bunch of time. I know that you can fit 2 troopers into a Swiss sized hole, but there's lots of options in 1.5 SWC and 63pts.

 

I have always viewed army builder as open information, and have no problem with people looking up stuff or even building my list in games.

I would never consider looking stuff up as bad etiquette and would offer help to build the army for the oponent (based on open info of course). If someone ask for points in my zone I would gladly answer based on open info to speed things up. But then I would expect the same back.

My only reservation would be that the thinkering with armybuilder shouldnt delay the game to much.

 

It certainly isn't a hypothetical. The game does allow it, and it hasn't become standard. Not in my experience, anyway. There just isn't time at the table to recreate a list. You don't know what your opponent has until they finish their deployment and walk you through it, and then it's time to start your own deployment.

I've heard of people doing it on occasion, especially on TTS, and while I cannot fathom why that would be a problem, it's just empirically incorrect to say that it's standard.

Basically, for people who are bothered by the idea, the time constraints of the game should be a sufficient solution to their problem.

That's because, as others have stated, Army is itself part of the rules. The rules don't need to explicitly say that the rules are accessible during the game. Otherwise, next time you ask me the rangeband on my Ohotnik, I'll refuse to tell you until you walk in front of it and find out. And you're not allowed to look it up.

 

I've literally only had positive interactions with this. Whether it was me figuring out the CA opponent had a huge ~100-110 gap in points and I wondered if that was a Sphinx or (as it turned out) a HL Noctifer and an Anathematics hacker who went after my two Raichos - or when I was subjected to this and the guy was "oh shit, that's Mirage-5 coming :o" and adjusted his deployment accordingly, making my frontal assault that tiny bit easier.

 

Yeah, it's much faster to bang out the existing unit+loadout combinations on a side screen browser when you play against something that usually has hidden unit shenanigans.

LOL, yeah, that's gonna be my default answer the next time this comes up.

 

How much is possible or not to guess what's missing is not even the point.
The point is: the player at the table with years of experience is able to get as close as possible to limit the options to plausbile ones. The newer player is not. And there is not a reason in the world not to give him the chance to close at least this gap by knowing everything there is to know about his opponent army list.
I believe you are cherry-picking in the examples you made. If I am playing against JSA I should be able to check and see they cannot have combat jump or see that Phalanx has no HD, but the examples could go on and on, there is plenty of useful information on the opponent army list that should be able to be integrated in the game strategy, even by players who have not memorized everything. And really, it takes years to be able to know hundred of models and options, do we really want people that have played those having this edge? What for? Isn't it enough they already have that much experience in actual playing, eye-measuring, list building and the like?

 

I might as well reiterate my complaints about looking private shit up in army seeing as everyone else is doing it, the concept of private information such as points costs largely fails to function if people cheat by looking it up. The cost of my unit being 27 points is supposed to be private, if you can simply look it up in army and instantly know that you need a 28pt+ unit to outscore them in a zone and win, what the fuck was the point of it being private then? Might as well have printed it on the courtesy list.

It's largely taking the game as it's intended to be played in a constant state of uncertainty instead of gaming it for any advantage you can squeeze out. Things are supposed to be uncertain. It's funny as I find people with WAAC attitudes more driven to get the perfect move through a perfect information advantage through abusing the army app rather than people who say either you can remember it, or you don't and it doesn't matter just play the game and see what happens. If you were wrong you were wrong, nobody cares making the wrong choice is part of the game move on and roll the next set of dice.

It's in your courtesy list, so you'd have to refuse to hand that over I guess. Yes even though they're camo the courtesy list prints the weapons attached to the units, it was brought up as an issue I believe but I don't remember seeing any official answers about it.

 

Dude - it's been established that this is your house rules don't say "if people cheat".

I know I certainly respond well to being called a cheater when I'm not doing anything in contravention of the rules.