Greetings, While some rejoice at the departure of "MSV1 through smoke in ZoC bait" (which isn't yet gone, btw ) I'm trying to see what option baits, if they're intended, and how do we prevent them. With the re-inclusion of requirement check at resolution, we are back with CC Bait. The issue however, is that as some have pointed, BS Attack is not a valid declaration for troopers behind total cover. "If the target is in Total Cover, the attacker may not declare a BS Attack with Weapons, Special Skills, or Equipment, that requires LoF." - - - - - This means that the following bait is possible... Active player declares CC Attack Reactive player can only Dodge, Reset or CC Attack Active player moves into base contact Active player gets to CC the reactive player without them being able to template them or shoot them, and in a single order. Before 1.1.1, first scenario Active player declares Dodge Reactive player declares Dodge Active player moves into base contact Active player gets to reach base to base, but the reactive player has a chance to break out of it and get a good position to potentially template the reactive player. (Reactive player is also rolling to Dodge, but the reactive player moves after so they get the positioning advantage) If both player ends in base to base, then the CC trooper can slice the other trooper up, but the interaction took at least 2 orders to do. Before 1.1.1, second scenario Active player declares move Reactive players has access to every ARO they could imagine Active player declared CC Attack Active players gets to CC the reactive player, but they have every option they could want. - - - - - This interaction makes CC trooper a lot scarier, if you can be within engagement range of a trooper and in total cover, you can cut down their options significantly.
@Diphoration I think that the new FAQ rule of: "5. Resolution: Check that the declared Skills and pieces of Equipment meet their respective Requirements, measure all distances, determine MODs, and both players make Rolls. If any Skill or piece of Equipment doesn’t meet its Requirements, the Trooper performs an Idle." Superseeds any other previous intrepretation of any written rule in the rulebook that says anything in the like of 'you can not declare X if Z'. Now you can declare anything, and only later check if you can perform or it is an Idle during resolution. Any mention of the like in the rulebook should be taken as 'as a requirement to perfom this ability you need Y' or 'In case of Y you can not perfom the ability, and therefore is an idle', and is de facto an 'artifact' of evolving rules that need a clean-up. I sincerely say this as @HellLois post in your other thread, if read through the logic lense I apport here, seems to imply that this is the intention of the new rule. If that is not the case I apologise. EDIT, the quoute of @HellLois that leads me into this thinking: When we delete the first question of the faqs, was because that dosent fit with the order sequence. You declare an order/ARO, and then during the resolution is when you check that the declared Skills and pieces of Equipment meet their respective Requirements.
The rules is really good, to read. But on board it really takes some baits, most of them cutting down the reactive player's effective choice in fact. As facing the baits, you wil find that there nearly no good choice for you, that's why we called them baits. "Always your turn" is great, that base on the reactive player always have choice. So I think find a way to stop the baits , let reactive player has more effective choice is important for the game. if there's too many "but you have no choice" in a game...it's not cool at all.
Adapting declare and perform in the ruleset would be a good way to fix the issues of 1.1.1, but since the game currently makes a distinction between declaration and resolution, and that those behave differently, we can't really handwave them as "this is the intent".
Actually, the exception of Total Cover preventing the declaration of BS attacks feels off place with the consistency of the rules after the FAQs and the intent explained in the other thread. Also, since it is a BIG exception, if that was still the case, I would suspect that rule would have been included in the BS ATTACK skill description in the FAQs.
Who knows? It's been asked countless times, but we had no answers from anybody. @ijw @Koni @HellLois Are interim valid until a FAQ comes out? Are interim valid until a FAQ comes out and says they're not longer valid? Are interim valid until someone official adds an extra reply to say they aren't any more?
Let me see if I understand the matter. At the beginning of the Order, the Reactive Miniature is in Full Coverage with respect to the Active Miniature. Active Miniature Declares Move + CC against Reactive Miniature. And the question is to know if the Reactive Miniature can respond with a BS ARO, right?
I think many of us (I am certainly guilty of this) have jumped on the line: “You declare an order/ARO, and then during the resolution is when you check that the declared Skills and pieces of Equipment meet their respective Requirements.” because it initially sounds so promising. But while the idea of the order sequence unifying and having a clear point in which all requirements are checked is appealing, I fear that HellLois may have either misspoke or was simply referring to ‘check at resolution’ in a much more limited scope than was implied by the statement itself. As we’ve established in other threads, a number of things are still checked (and presumably MUST be checked) at various times before resolution: - ARO legality is checked PRIOR to declaration (but any* ARO can be declared if ARO is legal) - *Total Cover is checked PRIOR to BS Attack declaration (I know some people disagree with this but I'm with @Diphoration on this one) - CC Attacks... I don't know when these are checked. They technically don't require LoF so there's a question of when Silhouette contact is checked. If it's only checked at the end (it doesn't have any restrictions in the rules for declaration the same way BS Attacks do), you do have an issue where you can pre-emptively declare CC as in the above example. - Berserk LoF is (presumably) checked PRIOR to declaration (there would seem to be no point in it requiring LoF if it’s only checked after you charge in, except in the corner case of being used inside smoke where you presumably don’t have LoF even when in Silhouette contact) - Origin of BS Attacks is locked in AT declaration - Direct Templates are placed (and maybe checked) AT declaration (if DTWs are placed and then immediately go away if they aren't in contact with anything, it means that they can't be used to combat CC baiting from behind Total Cover, even if BS Attacks are allowed) - Impact Templates are placed AT Declaration So what is actually checked at Resolution that wasn’t before? If we use the now struck-out line from FAQ 1.1 as a guide, it seems to suggest only LoF Requirements (except for Berserk probably, or else it would become too powerful)? If the goal of the the FAQ is simply to: Prevent uncertainty about ZoC AROs Prevent HD ARO abuse Prevent dodge ARO baiting through smoke Then I’d argue that whether requirements are checked at declaration or resolution is irrelevant. Some requirements are still checked at both points depending on the skill in question. All we actually need is an addendum to the Zero Visibility Zone rules that say: Zero Visibility Zones block LoF, but do not provide Total Cover, and they do not prevent the Declaration of skills that require LoF - instead, check to see if a Zero Visibility Zone is (still) blocking LoF during resolution for the purpose of that skill’s requirements.
I did a dig through the interim rulings and there's a few that should still be valid and a few that are clearly outdated while most have been enshrined in FAQ already. The particular one you are quoting is part of a bigger ruling where some of it is obsolete so it's very difficult to know if that one applies. https://forum.corvusbelli.com/threads/n4-questions-answered.39595/#post-407389 Dunno how far along the work on archiving old answers have gotten, though.
"Interim rules" published in the forum have the same value as any clarification posted in the forum (that is, zero for ITS events). The ITS document is clear (pg 5) on what is a valid source of rules: (Emphasis not mine) Since the forum is not listed as a source for rules, it has no value as such, and even if Interruptor were to publish that "now, the lowest number always wins, and a 1 is a always a crit" in the forum, it would have no value unless the ITS document were to be changed to support rules from the forum, or that change were added to the Rules, the FAQ, or the Wiki. Incidentally, it will be funny when a typo willl show up and offer a different effect of a rule in the wiki against the rulebooks...XD
More specifically, the Active player declares "CC Attack" first, which triggers an ARO but does not allow the Reactive player to declare "BS Attack," because the triggering model is in total cover, thus forcing them to declare dodge (or CC attack) and letting the Active player declare "Move" as the second short skill, walk into melee, and obliterate the poor corner guard with their CC specialist. It's one of the sillier rules interactions IMO, as it basically amounts to the Ninja shouting "I'm going to stab you!" from around the corner, resulting in the other guy going "welp guess that's that, lemme just put my shotgun down and die." The provisional ruling stated that all Silhouette Contact requirements would need to be met at time of skill declaration, thereby fixing the issue, but that line didn't make it into the FAQ, and now it's unclear if the provisional ruling still applies or not.
Except for the part where the interim rules were posted explicitely by members of CB with a note that clearly mentioned how interim rules changes are changes to the rules.
Oh, okay. This raises new questions for me: Have we read the Rulebook? If it has been done, have we realized that although the Rulebook expressly indicate several times that the BS attack can be made at any point of movement (at the beginning in the middle or at the end), does not indicate it at all for the CC Attack? In conclusion: If the attacker wants to perform a CC attack at the beginning of the movement it seems to me correct that hits the air.
Unfortunately it's not that simple (though I wish it was). As you said, CC Attacks do not state that they are done at a specific point along the path, and they do not require a point of origin defined at declaration like BS Attacks do - furthermore CC Attacks do not require LoF (which further suggests that there's no need to define their point of origin). The only thing they really check for is silhouette contact. So IF (and this is a big IF) requirements ONLY need to be fulfilled at resolution, it's possible to argue (whether it's correct or not) that all of the requirements are fulfilled if the second short skill is to run around the corner into silhouette contact. I'm not saying I like it or have a preference, but there is bit at stake here for melee IMHO. One interpretation of the rules makes Dodge or a reciprocal pre-emptive CC the only option for figures getting 'surprised' by a Melee character rushing them from cover. The other option (particularly a version that would push DTW checks to resolution) allows the defensive figure the full scope of options.
And then the 29th of March (AFTER the image you just linked), there was a official announcement of a interim ruling. Note that those were expressively stated to be different than regular forum answers and to be treated as official.
Sure, it is very logical to have a game with an official FAQ + Errata, and then this: https://forum.corvusbelli.com/tags/provisional-rules-answer/ 14 results. I can't wait to say to prospective new players "oh, btw, dust off your english, because in the forum there are a second set of FAQs that might have been or not superceded by the published FAQs". I already see the people lining up to join the game, yep.
Just because you don't like the forum format for provisional answers doesn't make them invalid. It's better to have temporary answers to the questions until a FAQ clears it up than have people make up house rules to patch things.
