I never know when it's fair to measure ZoC for enemy koalas/madtraps/mines. When the following is true: * Opponent is compelled to trigger Boost ARO if legal. * No Premeasuring of ZoC allowed. And I don't want to recieve an ARO, but want to get as close as possible, can I with my short move get 'pretty close' to their guy, but clearly not enough that it should trigger, within a couple of inches maybe, demand my opponent measure to see if it triggers, and then see exactly where the boundary is and use that to inform my second move? How do you resolve this fairly and with rules written in such a way as to allow no wiggle room or abuse? The way I understand it now, you can't fulfil the first requirement without breaking the second condition. You HAVE to check to see if it's legal, which allows you to premeasure.
Yea, because there are many occasionions where S7 fat TAG want to move 10 inches without chance to defend itself against possible AROs :P (yes I know its possible, but as you are well aware it sucks, termendously as Seraph cannot "act" offensively and allow it's buddy to still advance for better position) It is really making you doubt if someone really playtested the thing properly...
Let's say we are playing with Terrain rules. You cannot repeat movement orders when using Very Difficult terrain, and you will jump 20 or 25 cm instead of moving 10... Sure, we are talking about strategic movements, which is never bad.
So. First, this is how you deal with 'Boost', based on my answer to this thread: 1. If it's at all close to ZOC the owning player declares Boost 2. During Resolution check whether the AROing Koala actually got an ARO*, if yes go to 2, if no there was no ARO, therefore no declaration was made and the 'ARO is lost'. 3. Check whether the requirements of the declaration were met, if yes go to 3, if no the Koala is Expended but there is no further effect. 4. Explosions! You measure ZOC during Resolution. So yes, it's perfectly legal to move to ~8" and go 'I think I've triggered Boost from your Koala'; your opponent has 2 options: a. declare Boost (as above), or b. go 'no, I don't think you have'. Then at Resolution you measure ZOC: if it turns out that you were inside 8" then Boost goes off, if you weren't then it doesn't. This is not 'pre-measuring' because it happens at the Resolution of the order. But, yes it does give you information that is valuable for subsequent actions; but that's not covered by the meaning of 'pre-measuring' and is no different from a player knowing the precise side of particular pieces of terrain. The way I play b is I expend the Koala with no effect; because I've broken the rules (by not Boosting when I should have). What this means is that I ALWAYS declare Boost at pretty much anything under 9". Playing Perimiter Items this way makes them actually playable: there's a fair bit of generous reading of RAW to make it playable as RAI but nothing is strictly against RAW (except the way I play B... but even then you can make an argument that by not declaring an ARO you've actually declared an invalid ARO that consequently becomes an Idle which would expend the Koala anyway). *Note, Koalas aren't Troops (they're Figures/Models) and therefore don't have LOF (outside of CC) so the only way they get AROs is via ZOC.
You'll jump 8" / 20cm. You still only use your second movement skill because of the Very Difficult Terrain.
I agree with all of this. To play devils avocado, B isn't an option if I think it's close. Me thinking it's close when its be 10" because "I've got bad spatial reasoning skills so we've got to check". The issue is that the skills is compulsory. Compulsory doesn't allow for ''I'm going to choose not to check". Okay, I end the second Move of a Move-Move 10"ish away from your crazy koala. You have to declare a boost if it's close, I say it's close even though you can clearly see it's not. The only fair way is to check at which point i've got the precise measurement I want. Not that I do or condone abusing this, or even argue to abuse it when you're clearly a third of the board away, but you can't legislate against people having poor distance estimation skills, so how do you resolve it Rules As Written?
B. is technically option if you don't think it's inside 8", you only know whether declining to declare Boost was legal or not at Resolution. Which is why the 1-4 steps I described is the best way of doing it: there is no incentive not to declare Boost, so you just do. This means that practically B is not an issue. Note B doesn't stop the check (the check happens whatever); it just means that you made an invalid declaration when you received an ARO. Yes. You get to measure it at Resolution. It's RAW (as per the FAQ). This is not pre-measuring: you have to spend a resource (the order / short skill) to be entitled to know this information (realistically, Koalas only cost a short skill to get rid of anyway, so they're achieving their intended effect). Also, because it's plausible you fucked up your estimation and just Move + BS Attacked/whatevered from inside 8" of a Koala.
Surely that means the best play is to not declare boost if it's at all iffy and hope for a 'gotcha' later when it turns out you had to retroactively Thinking about it a bit more, i'm not really convinced this is a water tight rule. The owner of the koala is forced to boost if it's likely that the opponent is in range, and in game terms that makes sense. However theres nothing in the rules that gives the authority to the players to disregard it. RAW, if the players disagree whether or not a model has breached ZoC surely the only fair way is to measure it because it IS a compulsory ARO. If my model is Approx 8~ away from a Koala, we measure it afterwards, baddabing we resolve it. Easy. If my model is Approx 10~ away, I reckon i'm safe but i'd like you to call it anyway just so we can be sure. It's easy to misjudge distances right? Okay. I now know I was actually 9.5inches away. Good. My model is 16 inches away, a full third of the board. I'm clearly not in ZoC but taking on the mantle of a WAAC player for a second, I'm going to say that I might be in range of your koala. You can clearly see i'm not, but now we're in disagreement. We have to measure it, right? The rules don't give precedence to one player to say what happens here, it has to be categorical. You can't have one persons estimation of a measurement be enshrined into rules, even if that person is a TO. A TO can come over and at a glance say, "that is not 8 inches", but that is a bad rule if it requires a second 'opinion'. And I highlight Opinion here, because until you measure it that's all it is. What prevents every compulsory Zone of Control equipment from allowing players to constantly ping check ranges against them? Just to be clear, i'd never do this, and i'd certainly raise eyebrows and probably call a TO if someone tried this against me. But lets not shirk how useful it is to know measurements down to quarter inches, it's the difference between a shotgun +6 or not, so if you can force ping a measurement to a unit it might help you know for certain you can reach the range you want with units nearby, with just some quick maths.
Yes, I'm fairly certain that RAW you're just allowed to always measure ZOC of active models during Resolution (and maybe Hacking Area if the active model was a Hacker). Note, that previously you were allowed to measure ZOC during the execution of the order as it was an exception to 'no pre-measuring'. The only thing that stops me doing this on every order as a matter of course is simply that my meta has told me that they would not appreciate it; so I apply DBAD. RAW I see no reason why one can't: indeed, as you point out, it is arguably the only sane interpretation. DBAD = 'don't be a dick'
Haha, I think that's the long and the short of it. Pretty sure the etiquette section in the rules might as well say DBAD. I would quickly find myself without people to play against if I nit picked over obtuse interpretations like this, but yaknow, if there was ever an Infinity Las Vegas Open finals round sort of controversy.... I think it works okay with Hackers though because thats an optional skill, my choice is to choose to ARO hack and hope that you were in range, measure and it might fail. My hacker isn't consumed or runs out of ammo or anything, and he might have done that instead of change facing or a potentially more useful skill. It's just the compulsory nature of Boost that makes rules bend.
Order 1: I push my Lunokhod (which has a Repeater) into ~8" of your Squallo. I measure ZOC at Resolution to check whether you were granted an ARO and could have declared Change Facing (which you had opted not to do). It is inside 8" and had an ARO (me: hmm, how interesting). Order 2: I activate my Spektr AHD and Surprise Shot Total Control you.
Just this whole thread I started: https://forum.corvusbelli.com/threads/shooting-the-back-of-silhouettes-and-facing.2043
Stumbled upon an interesting discussion in the WGC group today. Assume this: 1) You have your Active turn. You activate a trooper. 2) Your opponent, knowing that they have a HD trooper nearby exclaims: "Ah-ha! I declare an ARO with my XXXX that jumps on your YYYY from Hidden Deployment!" 3) You both then proceed to check whether the ARO declaration is legal, and in fact, you find that your opponent had a brainfart and their ARO declaration was illegal (as in they tried to declare Surprise Shot when they didn't have LoF or something like this that doesn't require any measurments). Question: What to do with the HD trooper? I'd say that since getting the HD trooper off the battlefield back to HD would create an extremely awkward situation (you kind of know it is there, but you don't want to abuse the mistake), the best solution would be to forfeit the ARO declaration and place the marker on the battlefield.
Hidden Deployment and Camouflaged states are lost on declaration of certain skills, so if your opponent declares Engage but ends up being out of range, then they lose their Marker state and stands there with a long nose.
Why was the declaration invalid? Ie A or B A. Was the declaration invalid because it turns out that the HD model did not actually get an ARO? Or, B. Was the declaration invalid because the HD model got an ARO but did not fulfill the requirements of Engage? If A. there was never an ARO so the HD model was never revealed. Continue as if ARO never happened. If B then the Engage becomes an Idle, and the HD model is revealed in it's original position. Re: abusing it if A. Well your opponent has made a tactical mistake; my personal opinion is (unless your opponent is really new) you punish your opponent's tactical mistakes harshly. Edit: For example, imagine this situation, Opponent: I reveal a HD trooper in <this position> and Declare.... actually, I'm not going to declare anything. You saw nothing. Me: Ok... So no AROs then?.... So I Move with my second skill and walk out to here, my intent is to be out of LOF from a S2 mini in "hypothetically" <this position> I can pretty much guarantee my regular opponents would laugh at that, and we'd get on with playing. I'd then take the HD model into account until it revealed itself, and I'm basically certain that my opponents would expect me to.
I've fixed the description. Basically, I'm speaking about situations where you don't make any measurements. Like, when you declare Surpsire Shot while you don't have LoF.
The issue doesn't seem to be that 'the ARO declaration was illegal' but rather that 'there was no ARO'. In which case nothing happened. Although, since you're declaring Surprise Shot, it's the active trooper.... so, if you declared Surprise Shot without LOF it would become an Idle and you would be revealed.
Okay, I understand what you're getting at, though I can't think of a single situation where this should be an issue. If your opponent insists on declaring an ARO that they can't rightly estimate whether it's legal then they've still declared it, disposable ammo ticks down, camo is lost, HD is lost, etc. I mean, they are allowed to check ARO for that Surprise Shot, but here I guess you have an awkward interaction - how to check LOF to/from your HD troops*. * Particularly if you are of the opinion that ad hoc LOF may not be checked in That Other Debate(TM)
*cough* Perimeter Weapons *cough* You need to be able to distinguish between AROs that are invalid but actually happened and AROs that never happened at all. The way to resolve this is to place a Sil, establish if there is LOF first and then declare the BS Attack (not Surprise Shot). Yes this reveals that you have a HD model in that location, but tough: HD is still extremely strong. By establishing LOF prior to declaring the BS Attack you don't reveal what th model is. However, if you suscribe to LOF not actually being able to be checked... then yeah, I can't help that... I suspose the game breaks?
