Antipodes and Handler - BS Attack

Variation on this came up in a game today...
One of the three Antipodes was discovered and wants to return to a camouflaged state. He is outside of LoF of any enemies. The other two Antipodes are currently camouflaged, but their camouflage markers are within LoF of an enemy. They have no need to return to a camouflaged state. However, if the non-camouflaged Antipode uses an entire order skill to return to Camo'd what happens to them? They're in LoF of an enemy but they don't need to perform the skill, and they're in a marker state. Do they idle and thus un-camo?
Do all three Antipodes need to be outside LoF of any enemies for a single one of them to Camo without potentially breaking existing camo on the others?

 

The Antipodes must execute the same skills and declaring the Entire Order skill to re-camouflage means they have declared an Entire Order skill that is not Cautious Movement, so those Antipodes will lose Camouflage upon declaration and regain it at the end of the order unless they were observed.
Idle is only something the peripheral does when it can not perform the skill declared, but that doesn't stop them from declaring said skill in the first place.

So yeah, they all need to be outside enemy LOF (or Disabled) in order to not lose camo state.

 

Antipode assault pack is an amazing unit, but sadly(?) not in killing stuff. CB should probably name it differently, like “Antipode jam enemy into melee with non-spearhead trooper pack” or “Antipode it takes at least 3 orders to kill us and that doesn’t affect my order pool pack”

 

Anti-Dodge Summersault Dance Pack most of the time. Usually one remains alive and spends upwards of 10 orders dodging around the enemy's DZ while the opponent tries their best not to spend orders on killing it :p

 

For me they've been "Super-Jump Suicide into a Sniper Nest Pack" - mixed results on killing things but at 15 points for the lot of them (and not losing the order or tac-aware order that the handler creates once they're all dead as you said @Tanan), they usually manage to at least pay for themselves. Maybe I'm a sucker but I want to get as many of the wolf-type figures as I can and eventually create an all-Doggo Ariadna list. It will probably be terrible.

 

Don't get me wrong, using smoke from controller and camo from antipodes was great in N3. Little help from friendly TO ruling and you could easily take down anything in close combat. Those glory days are long gone ;(

In N4, it's more about hiding the controller and putting antipodes in a position where enemy is forced to use orders to kill them. Because of 15 order cap, enemy can rarely afford that. Depending on TO ruling on how unconcious/dead spearhead affects the pack, the spearhead is usually hidden way behind the spearheading non-spearhead antipode trooper. After her antipodes are killed, the controller goes on a killing spree using her trusty rifle and badass attitude. The smoke grenade laucher is only needed* as a last resort ARO when enemy tries to dig her out of your deployment zone.

* And even then, the rifle is usually a better option because most attack pieces have MSV1. I mean if an Avatar is shooting you with HMG, then ofc use the smoke grenade launcher.

 

I didn't realize there was controversy about how Spearhead worked. Maybe i'm in the dark, but since a spearhead gets assigned every time the unit activates, I figured it doesn't matter if the previous spearhead died. Is there a different school of thought on this?

 

Yes, you are in the dark. The rules don’t tell what happens if the spearhead dies or goes unconscious. What we have are rulings that are made in absence of rules. You can find several threads in this forum about this subject. Ruling A is perhaps the most popular(?) but also the most silly.

Ruling A: If spearhead goes to dead state, spearhead token is removed, which causes other antipodes to go Disconnected state. Disconnected state is removed after end of the order, so antipodes will be idling and provoking AROs if spearhead is killed. Unconscious doesn’t remove spearhead, because antipode telepathy or something.

Ruling B: Just like ruling A, except Unconscious state removes peripheral skill, which means that while spearhead token is technically on the table, other antipodes can’t be in coherency with spearhead antipode because spearhead antipode doesn’t have the peripheral skill.

Ruling C: This is all BS. Nominate new spearhead when spearhead goes unconscious or dead state.

 

AFAIK the consensus was B, but disconnected dogs don't even activate so they don't provide aro during order in which you assign new spearhead. But I can't trust my memory and I'm bad at searching for stuff.

 

Sure they do. Disconnected doesn’t prevent order declaration. It only prevents executing it. Disconnected antipodes perform idle, which also removes camouflage.

 

I *think* the answer from IJW was A. Not sure if he answered one way or another about B, but arguably the conscious Antipodes should only care about being in coherency with the unit with the Spearhead Marker, and shouldn't care whether that trooper is a peripheral or not.

Edit: Disconnected prevents the trooper from executing orders. Performing an Idle means they've executed an order, which they are not allowed to do.

 

@Mahtamori AROs only care about declaring orders, not executing them. Disconnected isn’t a requirement that causes idle, but perhaps it should be.

But yeah, disconnected state leaves room for interpretations. Declare something, execute nothing.

 

Ah right, yeah. The limited amount of other places where execute is used it is used typically in sequence of "declare and execute". Yeah, they'd still activate along with the primary unit even when they've failed coherency.