In certain situations an Antipode assault pack is called upon to make a WIP roll at the start of your turn, the consequences of failing this WIP roll are: "If the Pack fails the WIP-3 Roll, it enters the Retreat! state (place a Retreat! Marker beside it) and must attempt to retreat through the nearest edge of the play area. Members of an Assault Pack in this state cannot declare Skills other than Move or Dodge." However, Command Tokens, and the FAQ for them, offer the following solution: "Have one troop be unaffected by Retreat! This troop ignores the effects of the Retreat! situation until the end of the game." "A: The Token cancels all the effects of the Retreat! state for the trooper." These combined make me quite confident that you could use a command token to cancel the retreat state caused by the Antipode rule, allowing them to act normally. However, I'm not entirely clear how many tokens it would take. The Antipode rules tell us: "All members of an Assault Pack belong to the same Combat Group, where they count as one single trooper." Also, as quoted earlier, the pack collectively WIP rolls (not each member) and collectively enters retreat placing a single retreat marker beside the whole pack. It seems to me that a single command token should be sufficient, but I've certainly encountered differing opinions.
The line regarding Combat Group has been clarified by IJW to mean they count as a single troop in the combat group, but they do not for other purposes. (The same or very similar appears in Servant for instance). If they were the same troop for Command Token usage due to that line, would they also not be the same troop for order expenditure and a few others?
Maybe I'm not understanding you here, but Antipodes do count as the same troop for order expenditure.
Yeah... I didn't read the Antipode rules, only that which was quoted. Reading it, I'd say it gets really weird if you can remove Retreat! from only one member specifically because of: All members of an Assault Pack generate one single Order between them and activate in unison with a single Order.
ANTIPODE AUTOMATIC SKILL Obligatory. REQUIREMENTS In order to field troopers with this Special Skill, you must include a trooper with an Antipode Control Device in the same Combat Group. All members of an Assault Pack belong to the same Combat Group, where they count as one single trooper. Troopers with this Special Skill deploy in Assault Packs of at least three members. When you declare an Order, name one member of the Assault Pack as that Order's Spearhead, and place a Spearhead Marker (SPEARHEAD) beside him. EFFECTS All members of an Assault Pack generate one single Order between them and activate in unison with a single Order. All members of an Assault Pack must declare and execute the exact same sequence of Skills. If one of the Skills of the Order demands a target, all members of the Assault Pack must act against the same single target. Should one of the members of the Assault Pack be unable to execute the Entire Order (or both Short Skills of the Order) declared, then that member must remain idle while the rest act normally. Should one of the members of the Assault Pack be unable to execute either of the two Short Skills of the Order declared, then that member must carry out the other Short Skill while the rest of the Pack carry out the full Order. Since they activate with a single Order, all members of an Assault Pack generate one ARO only to enemies with LoF or in ZoC to them. In Close Combat, only one of the Antipodes may make a CC Roll, but that one Antipode benefits from a MOD of +1 B and +1 Damage per other member of the Pack in base to base contact with the target, and in Engaged state. The adversary can select any member of the Pack as a target, but only one of them. During their Reactive Turn, each member of the Assault Pack that has an enemy declare or execute an Order in their LoF or ZoC may react in ARO. All eligible members of the Assault Pack must declare the same ARO and follow the Antipode rules for Order execution. Each member of an Assault Pack must always be within the Zone of Control (ZoC) of another member of the same Pack that is not in a Null state. For example, in a three-strong Assault Pack, each member must always have at least one of the other two in their ZoC. A member of a Pack who is outside the ZoC of other member enters the Immobilized-2 state at the end of the Order that happened. Place an Immobilized-2 Marker (IMM-2) beside the straggler's base. The Immobilized-2 state is canceled automatically at the end of any Order in which the isolated Antipode is within the ZoC of at least one other member of his Pack. At the start of each Active Turn, if one of your Assault Packs has lost its Controller or at least one of its members (i.e.: they are Unconscious or Dead), or if the Control Device is Disabled, make a single WIP-3 Roll for the whole Pack. If the Pack passes the WIP-3 Roll, it continues to act normally. If the Pack fails the WIP-3 Roll, it enters the Retreat! state (place a Retreat! Marker beside it) and must attempt to retreat through the nearest edge of the play area. Members of an Assault Pack in this state cannot declare Skills other than Move or Dodge. For what is worth, rules seem to works with the "One CT per Antipode". The one you spend the CT on is free to do what it wants, while the others are retreating. Disclaimer: i'd be more at ease the with "One CT per Pack" solution, even if with my hate for Ariadna...
Note how the latter few bullet points all refer to "the Pack" as a singular entity, making one WIP-3 Roll for the whole pack, and going into Retreat or not as a single entity. It's part of the whole hive mind 3-makes-a-person thing Antipodes have going on. I would find it a bit strange if a Command Token turned off Retreat on only one Pack member at a time, because at that point you're talking about literally 1 part of your brain being in Retreat while the other part of the same brain is not.
Three troopers who are also part of a single entity that goes into Retreat based on one WIP roll... It's definitely not a simple and clearly defined interaction.
If I had to make an off-the-cuff ruling I would definitely say one token cancels retreat for the entire pack as a single entity.
I'd like to say that one order fixes them all, as one order activates all of them. The issue that I've had in the past that makes it really tricky and was never answered is what happens when only 1 or 2 of them gets isolated.
You can't isolate them. It does not affect Antipodes. Edit: Let me elaborate. An individual Antipode does not generate or receive orders, which is what Isolated messes with. Antipode is an obligatory Automatic Special Skill, which Isolated explicitly does not effect unless it is also Comms Equipment, which Antipode is not. The ability to generate an Order and to spend Orders come from the Antipode skill, (in other words, the pack as a whole) not from the individual Antipode members. What you CAN do is Isolate the Controller, to force the control device to become Disabled, thus cutting off the Controller from the Order pool, removing their regular Order from the pool, and ALSO forcing the Pack to make it's WIP-3 roll to not go into Retreat. Sort of a two for one there, to make up for the other side of the coin.
While I'm all for anything that messes Muttawiahs up, that interpretation sounds a lot like the interpretation that people were suggesting would allow Isolated troops from participating in a coordinated order (because you're not spending orders on the troop itself.)
You can absolutely Isolate them. It's just whether that'll actually have an effect that's at question. Off the cuff ruling: if they're all Isolated then the team can't receive regular Orders but if one or more non-Null Antipodes aren't isolated then the Pack can still receive Orders But that's absolutely a 'vibe' ruling based on the fluff of how their inter-squad and Inter-pack communications work (ie if the controller can talk to one of them, they can effectively talk to all of them). Thinking about the Rules though: the Pack is the thing that receives orders and the Pack doesn't go Isolated (just it's members). I would, however, argue that if all members of the Pack are in a particular state then the Pack is in that same state ie. if all members of the Pack are Unc then the Pack is Unc. This is also true of the original question: The Pack generates an Order. The Pack goes into retreat. You'd need to spend a Command Token on the Pack to reverse retreat. Note that you spend the Command Token on a troop not a Trooper: the Pack is a troop but not a Trooper ergo it is a valid target for the Command Token.
Even if "the Pack" is in the Isolated State, Isolated still doesn't have any affect on the Antipode Automatic Skill because it's not Comms Equipment, and that skill is what allows The Pack to interact with the Order Pool.
If you're going to be that cute then they all count as 'one single Trooper' and Isolated states 'While Isolated, troopers cannot receive Orders from their Order Pool.' Ergo if one Antipode is Isolated then the Trooper is in an Isolated state and none of the Pack can receive Orders from their order pool. That 'count as a single Trooper' interpretation also solves the question at hand, so it's neat.
No it's not. It's a bullshit interpretation designed to give immunity to Isolation to something that doesn't have it. Or 'cute'. Explain why my response is wrong. Because the only reason that Antipodes are allowed to receive Orders is because they're a Trooper. Nothing in the Effects of Antipode discusses changes to receiving Orders* (the thing that Isolated affects) it only changes what gets activated by that Order. * The section on Unconscious and Dead inherently does, but not explicitly.
No, actually, what allows them to receive orders is the antipode skill where it has effects allowing an order to be spent on the pack which includes all three members at once. The exact same functionality happens with the ghost sync skill, you will note that the rules there explicitly call out isolating the controller as causing the disconnected state in the controlled unit, and notably absent is any reference to the controlled unit being isolated. Because, again, the skill is an automatic special skill that is not comms equipment. Just like with the wolves, you need to isolate the controller for it to have an effect on the controlled. @HellLois is welcome to come in here and tell us all that this is an unintended interaction, however the isolated State specifically and explicitly says that automatic skills are not impacted unless they are comms equipment. And the only reason that ghost synchronized troops or antipodes work at all is because of their automatic skill.
No. The Antipode skill allows them all to activate when they receive an Order. "EFFECTS All members of an Assault Pack generate one single Order between them and activate in unison with a single Order." But you appear to be correct about the effects of my argument on G:Sync, when you Isolate a G:Sync Trooper then effectively, the "single Trooper" (consisting of the Synchronised and Controlling Trooper) is in an Isolated state. This looks to be an unintended side-effect of removing Comms Equipment from G:Sync. (Previously the skill would be Disabled breaking the relationship between the Synchronisee and Controller). So for the same reason that an Assault Pack would be Isolated if an Anitoide is Isolated (they all count as a single Trooper) an Uberfalls would be Isolated if a Pup was.
