Cautious Movement, Stealth, and Sixth Sense

Hmm. All the effects of Stealth involve various forms of "the user doesn't grant AROs in x circumstances." So where Sixth Sense says that "Stealth is not effective," it must mean "Stealth doesn't stop the Sixth Sense trooper from being granted AROs." I don't see any reason that wouldn't apply in the case of Cautious Movement.

So I would say that yes, B can declare AROs.

Follow-up question: reactive trooper C is also in ZoC and outside LoF of A. C doesn't have Sixth Sense. Can C declare AROs?

a) No. A's Cautious Movement is still successful, it just doesn't work against B.
b) Yes. A's Cautious Movement fails because of B being in ZoC with Sixth Sense. So A makes a normal movement which triggers AROs from all eligible reactive troopers, including C.

 

For the OP question, it is clearly B. Stealth does not work against that model.

For the follow up...
Standard CM need to start and end out of LoF/ZoC.
Stealth remove the ZoC from the equation, but against 6S is irrelevant.

So we have a model that fullfil the requirements for a valid CM against one enemy and miss the requirements against a second one.

Because of this line:

• If the Cautious Movement begins or ends within the LoF or ZoC of any enemy Models or Markers, the Trooper will generate AROs as usual.

the active model fails to fullfil the requirements and grants ARO to everybody and their mothers.

 

Maybe. The more I try to parse the Cautious Movement rule, the more confused I get.

Cautious Movement seems to say that you declare and execute the Cautious Movement skill regardless of where the enemy is. The skill has one of two effects:
1. You move your first MOV value and generate no AROs (this only happens if you begin and end outside the LoF and ZoC of all enemy troopers).
or
2. You move your first MOV value (this happens otherwise).

Either one is a Cautious Movement. The skill never gets converted to an Idle or a Move, it just has different effects depending on whether there's anyone in your LoF or ZoC.

Now, if a trooper with Stealth declares Cautious Movement, and an enemy trooper is in ZoC, what appears to happen is this. The Cautious movement rule is unchanged, so you still execute scenario (2), not scenario (1). But, the Stealth clause kicks in which says "If the user declares ... Cautious Movement within the Zone of Control of one or more enemies and stays outside their LoF, he does not grant AROs to those enemies" [emphasis added].

A weird consequence appears to be that a trooper with Stealth could actually declare Cautious Movement while in LoF of an enemy trooper, and ZoC of a different enemy trooper. The Cautious Movement would not "generate no AROs", i.e. scenario (2) would apply. However, the Stealth rule would apply and prevent the trooper in ZoC from being granted an ARO. So the trooper with LoF could react, but the trooper in ZoC could not. That's not actually a crazy outcome, since it's the same thing that would have happened if the Stealth trooper had declared Move in this situation (the situation would never arise in practice, because you would just declare Move instead of Cautious Movement in the first place).

I'm not confident about the above, but it's the best reading I've so far figured out of the interaction between Cautious Movement and Stealth. And if it's correct, then this is what happens when you add Sixth Sense into the mix (B and C are both outside LoF and inside ZoC, B has SS, C does not):

- A executes a Cautious Movement.
- Because there are troopers in ZoC, the Cautious Movement rule doesn't prevent A from granting AROs to B or C.
- But the Stealth rule prevents A from granting AROs "to those enemies" who are inside ZoC and outside LoF, i.e. both B and C.
- But the Stealth rule is not effective against B because of Sixth Sense, so A does grant an ARO to B.
- A is prevented from granting an ARO to C (not by the Cautious Movement rule, but by the Stealth rule).

To put it another way: Cautious Movement says "If the Cautious Movement begins or ends within the LoF or ZoC of any enemy Models or Markers, the Trooper will generate AROs as usual." The "usual" way that a trooper with Stealth generates AROs is that it generates them for units with Sixth Sense, but not for units without Sixth Sense that don't have LoF.

 

Hmm. Now that I've typed it out, I see that my reading can't be correct. If it was, then we'd have this scenario. A trooper with Stealth is inside ZoC of trooper R but outside all LoF. He wants to use Cautious Movement to cross a gap, passing through LoF of trooper S. He declares Cautious Movement, but because he's inside ZoC of R, the Cautious Movement doesn't prevent ARO generation. The Stealth rule prevents generating an ARO for R, but nothing prevents generating an ARO for S, so S gets to take a free shot.

That reading would render the Cautious Movement effect of Stealth meaningless, since the only purpose of a Stealthy trooper declaring Cautious Movement (rather than Move) would be to avoid LoF AROs.

So Stealth must actually be intended to say "if the user declares a Short Movement Skill or Cautious Movement within the Zone of Control of one or more enemies and stays outside their LoF, the ARO-preventing effect of Cautious Movement works." Even though that's not what it says.

It follows that @tox is probably correct. Stealth would allow Cautious Movement to prevent AROs, but Stealth is not effective against a trooper with Sixth Sense, so the SS trooper prevents Stealth from allowing Cautious Movement to prevent AROs.

 

Probably the sentence "Sixth sense prevents Stealth from allowing Cautious Movement to prevent AROs" is right, but it's I wonder if that was the easiest way to handle this interaction ^^!
My brain got tangled three times before I got it right :P