Bear with me a second here. We know that Guard can benefit from multiple units in CC. We also know that: During the Reactive Turn: When declaring AROs, if the Reactive player decides to declare CC Attack they must select only one Trooper or Peripheral in Engaged State with the Active Trooper. The selected Trooper performs a CC Attack and will have a +1 MOD to B for each Allied Trooper or Peripheral in Engaged State with the Active Trooper. The MOD is only applied for those allies that are not in a Null or Immobilized State, and have not declared Dodge, Idle or Reset. Now obviously the easy way to interpret this is that the Guard unit would be considered Engaged, chose which unit is rolling and move on. But since Guard doesn't mention the Engaged State at all it could be interpreted that the Guard unit and the Engaged Reactive unit (don't ask me how that poor active trooper got wrapped up like that, ouch) could both CC Attack independently, possibly (due to RAW) with the Guard unit getting B+1 as there is a unit Engaged with the Active Trooper. It differs from Active Turn situations in that the Active Turn wording specifically calls out "the Player must select one Trooper or Peripheral activated by the Order" as well as the interactions of Fireteam and Coordinated Orders rules. Not arguing for the interaction to play out like this, but checking my mental math against others and potentially bringing it up as it seems likely that Guard is going to get a little reworking of language once the ARO situation is cleaned up.
Counter point from a previous discussion thread: https://forum.corvusbelli.com/threads/guard-and-gang-up.38686/#post-381981 Short version: No.
Counter-counterpoint, there are four ways to read the pertinent rules. #1. The gang-up bonus only applies when multiple allies are Engaged, despite “engaged” not being capitalized in the initial clause of the rule. In this reading, Guard units can’t benefit from the allied CC Burst bonus at all, in active or ARO. This is absolutely the simplest solution. #2, the gang-up bonus rule doesn’t require the Engaged state, but in ARO it applies to Guard as if it were Engaged. RAW this isn’t actually supported AFAIK, but it would work as solkan described. Note that Guard doesn’t allow the user to be in Silhouette contact at a distance, so declaring Guard does not cause the Guard unit to be Engaged even briefly. The Effects of Guard allow the user and target to ignore the requirement of Silhouette contact for the purposes of using Skills on each other that normally require Silhouette contact and therefore the Engaged state. #3, the gang-up bonus rule doesn’t require the Engaged state, and the Guard unit isn’t Engaged, so it plays out asymmetrically. In the case of a Guard ARO, a single allied Engaged ARO, and an active trooper in Engaged state with the ally: only one Engaged Trooper is declaring CC ARO, the other trooper is not Engaged but has a special skill that permits a CC ARO without being Engaged. There doesn’t actually seem to be a rule that requires the Engaged trooper to forfeit their ARO in order for the Guard trooper to declare and execute a CC Attack ARO with a +1B bonus. That means the Engaged ARO is a regular CC Attack ARO with no burst bonus, and the Guard unit declares a totally independent ARO that could be BS Attack, Dodge, Reset, or (because Guard) CC Attack. If CC Attack, it meets the requirement of allies in the Engaged state with the active trooper and gets +1B. #4, as #3 but the phrase “if the Reactive player decides to declare CC Attack they must select only one Trooper or Peripheral in Engaged State with the Active Trooper” means troopers must be in the Engaged state to be designated to perform a CC ARO at all, in which case Guard doesn’t apply to AROs. Nothing in Guard mentions AROs or Engaged, so under this reading nothing in Guard would bypass the requirement to be Engaged in order to CC Attack ARO. So...that’s cool.
Why not a much simpler read? Gang-up bonus is gained from all other troopers that are Engaged with the target of your CC Attack.
I’m pretty sure that part is the bit we all agree on, more or less? The question is more about how that actually plays out around Guard users as part of the equation...
Again. Simpler read. The Guard user is not Engaged. Gang-Up is gained from anyone Engaged with the target. Simple.
That’s just reading #3, which I’m pretty sure is also RAW at the moment, but it seems like there’s not a community consensus on how it works in practice. It’s what OP was getting at. Simple example: Andromeda is not Engaged, a Myrmidon is Engaged, both declare CC Attack as their ARO against a Squalo that’s in Silhouette contact with the Myrm. Andromeda gets the gang-up bonus vs. the Squalo because the Myrm is Engaged with her target. The Myrm does not because Andromeda is not Engaged with the Squalo. Both are allowed to declare that ARO because only one of them is Engaged (which respects the limit of declaring with one Engaged trooper) and the other uses Guard to bypass that restriction. Slightly more complicated version: If there were 2 Myrms Engaged with the Squalo, one Myrm could CC Attack ARO with +1B for gang-up, the other is just a helper, and Andromeda gets +2B when she simultaneously declares a CC Attack ARO with Guard since she has two allies Engaged with the Squalo. If three Myrms were murder-hugging the Squalo then one would attack at +2B and Andromeda would get +3B, for a net 7 dice of CC Attack in ARO. I’m cool with this since it’s not exactly trivial to arrange and it rapidly escalates into pointless overkill territory, but ymmv...
