Suppose we are playing the scenario Capture and Protect. The enemy Beacon has been Picked up once, but no one is carrying it now. The enemy Speculo Killer, uses an Entire Order to go into Impersonation State. She wants to go into Silhouette contact with the Beacon. According to ITS 13, Common rules of Beacons say: Markers cannot carry the Beacons. We don't know the exact meaning of 'Carrying', but if we interpret it as "You can go into Silhouette contact / but you can't declare 'Pick up beacon', or capture it", this happens. 1. She goes into Silhouette contact with the Beacon. 2. It is not considered captured by the opponent, since Markers don't count. 3. But she is in Silhouette contact with the Beacon. 4. So if I want to Pick up the Beacon, I have to Discover the Impersonaion Marker first, because the Requirements say the Beacon should not be in contact with any enemy Troops. What is the definition of 'carrying'? Can Markers go in Silhouette contact with the Beacon?
Come on man. Obviously markers in any shape way or form can’t interact (be in touch) with the beacon.
I checked rules but found nothing that prevents marker-state trooper B2B with a beacon. So if it is rules as written, we can 'actively defend' a friendly beacon with any marker state trooper, forcing opponent to discover it first to kill it and take a beacon. I don't like it either, but I'd like to know If CB actually intended and allowed this.
1: It's generally accepted that Markers can't really go B2B with anything that isn't a scenery element. 2: Even if they are allowed to go B2B with the Beacon, the Beacon is not in contact with an enemy troop. It's in contact with a Marker. It's not even an enemy marker, because Impersonation markers are counted as friendly. Therefore you can pick it up just fine. The rules might be weird but it works out to be the exact same as if they just stood the Impersonator right next to the marker.
That's the problem here. There's no rule which says "Generally Markers can't go into Silhouette contact with anything that isn't a scenary element". A Trooper does not ceases to be a Trooper only because it is in Marker State since... A Trooper is a 'Game element with Attributes which belongs to the Army List of any player, able to contribute and spend Orders...' A Marker means a 'Game element with Attributes represented on the table with a Marker as specified by a Special Skill, Weapon or Equipment'. Those two are not mutually exclusive. A Marker is still a Trooper, since it belongs to a certain player's Army list / can contribute, spend Orders. Also, the Impersonation text says "Impersonation Markers are considered Allied Troopers, so Attacks cannot be declared against them. + Enemies perceive an impersonator in the Impersonation State as an ally". Does this mean "You can pick up the Beacon which is in contact with an Impersonation Marker since it is not an enymy Trooper."? I hope so, but I'm not sure. Even if we assume that Impersonators don't prevent Picking up the Beacons, the same problems happen with Camouflaged Markers. They are Markers but also Enemy Troopers, which prevents you from Picking up the Beacons. All I hope is: The second line in the Common rules of Beacons changes into "Only Models, and not Markers(Camouflaged, Impersonation, Holoechoes...) can go into Silhouette contact with, pick up, and carry the Beacons." in the next season of ITS.
Did you check your heart? Search your feelings and you will find the truth. CB would not intend such stupidity. Bostria would not have it.
I get your point - although there is often some interpretation necessary. Sadly CBs rules aren’t very clear cut. Which is my point. Pretty much any rules set will break when people wilfully rules lawyers. I’m not saying OP is discussing in bad faith but a lot, imho, of the rules questions popping up is only a problem if you intentionally read the rules in bad faith. It has created a bad culture which is poisonous for the game. This particular case is a very clear example of that.
I couldn't disagree more. "The rules work as long as you don't think about them too hard" is a terrible approach. The point of this forum is to clarify the rules so that we reach consistent understandings that we can all rely on. Without it, you have to guess what each TO will think is the "good faith" reading of the rules instead of having actual rules. This question is an excellent example of that. Suppose I'm building a list for Capture and Protect for a tournament, and I'm considering a tactic where I move a camo marker onto my beacon to protect it. Will that work? I don't know! Obviously I now know that if @bladerunner_35 is the TO, my camo marker won't be able to hold the marker. But I have no idea whether a different TO will "check their heart" and reach the same conclusion. On the contrary, @Ugin 's reading is entirely possible, in fact I rate it a little more likely a TO will accept that reading although it's close to 50-50. "Shut up and do what I think makes intuitive sense" is just the opposite of productive rules discussion. Unfortunately, for a year now CB has left us to struggle through these questions on our own, which is hard, but the people who think the solution is to not try to figure out the rules ourselves have it completely backwards. That said, ultimately the blame lies with CB for failing to support their ruleset since @ijw 's departure.
Agreed 100%. I don't know why, but I feel that since about N4, there is so many "this is RAW, this is how we must play it, even if we don't like" (ex: discover must be played as +6 until we can find a solid counter-argument) that Infinity feels like it is a bad game with that poisonous culture. I'm surprised the game attracts new players. I don't know if it is due to globalization, of course it always was an international game, but with TTS and Discord the communities and meta are much more interconnected than when it was limited to a discussion on a forum. Or it might be an effect of past interactions between players and CB. Sometime players saw obviously unintended rule interaction and were playing it RAI until a FAQ told them otherwise surprising everyone present. Sometime FAQ switched rulings around. All that teach the lessons that no one knows what is truly intended and thus we may as well play with broken RAW because CB only fixes what is problematic while rules interactions that are played RAI are continuously ignored as they don't cause any problems.
The reason is because RAW is not debatable, but RAI is. You don’t want debates on tournament tables, so RAW is what you have to enforce. There are other games that do a much better job than CB; for example, Warmachine. There is no wiggle room on the RAW vs RAI debate there, everything is keyworded and game terms have clear definitions. CB writes rules using terms that they then fail to define, leaving room for people who interpret words differently and things get messy. A good example is the recent thread about what “enclosed room” means. To anyone who has played for a while, it’s obvious that this means a room with no walls or windows. But that’s not actually in the rules, and in the English language rooms can be enclosed even if they have walls or windows. Heck, you can enclose an area by putting a fence around it. Aaannnnddd now you have a debate at a tournament table, and if there is no FAQ or Errata that addresses it how should the TO rule? The way the vets say it works, or the way the dictionary defines the word? Leaving space between RAW and RAI is undesirable in a game like DND, but it can be deadly to competitive scenes. In DND the DM can make a call after discussing it with the players and you just go from there; everyone wants to have a fun gaming experience, so generally it will work out. But at a gaming table, the TO can be essentially deciding which player wins the game, and that can get ugly.
He's back though you're right, CB could do a much better job of sorting out questions in the rules forum.
If I should go for a decision during a tournament, i would go with this one: This is clearly an oversight in the ITS rules. In my view, if a model is not qualified to carry the beacon, he should not be able to prevent the enemy to do it. We have the same empasse with re-camo. Please remember that CB is on holiday for the next 7 days, so do not expect an official answer before.
You can do that and it is not a problem. Impersonation Markers are considered FRIENDLY. It's not really an oversight, it just works. It's hard to get right and you need to sift through a few rules to understand the RAW interaction. Like OP and the first answers all not immedeately catching this suggest. But you can definitely pick up a beacon in contact with an emey IMP Marker, because to you it's an Ally. PICK UP BEACON REQUIREMENTS The Trooper must be in one of the following situations: ► The Trooper is in Silhouette contact with a Model in a Null State that has an Enemy Beacon. ► The Trooper is in Silhouette contact with a friendly Trooper in a Normal State that has an Enemy Beacon. ► The Trooper is in Silhouette contact with an Enemy Beacon with no enemy Troops also in contact with it. Markers used to be prevented from entering base contact with Objectives in previous ITS Seasons. And I think that might cause some confusion. In ITS 13 that's gone. You can enter contact with an Objective as a Marker. I just checked and all the Exceptions for Markers in ITS13 directly prevent Marker States from achieving the Objective itself. All the previous season's indirect inhibition to achieve this by preventing Marker States to get BTB are gone from what I can find. i.e. for Techcoffins, only Models and not Markers count when in BTB, but nothing prevents a Marker from being BTB to i.e. claim Cover or being restricted from carrying while in Marker as it is the case for the Beacons here. You can block an enemy Trooper from picking up a Beacon with a Camo Marker, or Holoecho in ITS13, however IMP Marker doesn't work. /edit: Quick reminder that Objectives generally forbid all troopers to deploy BTB with them. So you do need to have a turn and need to spend Orders to set it up. OP's title is misleading as Marker States can't carry Beacons, which is clearly stated. Holding isn't used in game. Carrying or BTB is.
Being perceived as a friend does not make the unit a friend - it's still an enemy unit! I'm positive I've seen IJW clarify this more than once over the years. The mission is definitely lacking in specificity, both in clarifying if a Marker Trooper can prevent picking up and in how the objective is moved and positioned on the table when carried. With that said, I do not think we can tell the intent here. It's entirely possible the intent of the mission is to let players bog down the objectives' movement with Markers, but not actually allow them to score or move them without revealing. You have to admit that this would be an interesting trade-off for IMP2 and Camo troopers, buuuut... kind of crummy with IMP1s. As usual.
