I know it sounds crazy, but, I really think the game is in a better place when the Requirements of Skills must be met at Declaration, instead of Resolution. It will eliminate a lot of issues that are now arising in the existing FAQs and will make the game clear and really intuitive. Also, bonus making super simple to explain to new players.
I think the word "requirements" is messing with rules intuition a bit. If a few skills (it really doesn't have to be many) had explicit "Pre-requirements" section to gatekeep those skills, that'd probably nudge that problem right out the window. E.g. Place Deployable could have a pre-requirement of having a piece of equipment with the deployable trait. (Having such an equipment is a requirement atm, which means you can declare it with a Zhanshi, who famously don't have any such equipment.) That said, I'm looking forward to more games to form my opinion on this.
I'm running a tournament on TTS later this month, and it will be a hard ruling that for BS attacks and CC attacks in particular, requirements (target not being in total cover, and target being in silhouette contact, respectively) will need to be met at declaration for those skills. We'll bite the bullet on the classic ARO baits (such as ko dali smoke) as a result. We could take it further and make visibility zones work differently to help out with that last point, but keeping it minimal for now.
You could also have the position of the attacker for the BS attack or CC attack chosen at declaration, but only from position that you occupied as you declared them. This is way to force Move first without actually forcing it. It would remove the possibility to do the 1.2 baits. It still prevents the N3 / Ko Dali baits. It preserves the niche Shoot->Move plays.
This is such a big deal. I've had the "change facing shenanigans means I can walk past your guy into CC" conversation with so many new players over the years and it sucked every single time. And yes, I didn't tend to actually do it. I'd explain what could be done and tell them I wasn't going to do it that time because they didn't know. But the looks on their faces when the new ruleset fell to shit in one go...
This is what I've been saying. Reqs before decs is so simple its fail proof and with my suggestion to allow a Hold ARO for ZoC penetration and activity behind smoke or whitenoise, all baits allow for free attacks are gone too. It's just really simple and consistent for players and it works.
