Hidden Deployment LT and Aro Declaration

(sorry, but the Chipotle analogy was too funny for me not to make another funny one)

 

Hahaha, but in all seriousness... who puts mozzarella in a quesadilla, you can get the hell out right now!

This thread be like... well technically it's cheese. They could make it with any cheese if they wanted, the menu doesn't say it isn't cottage cheese. You're bad and wrong, everyone knows it's any kind of cheese, we've been ordering it with rock hard chhurpi cheese dog chews for 9 months now, why haven't you caught up?!

 

To be fair, the official rule is also weird.

 

Sometimes rules interact in such a way that a weird, unexpected result happens, in such cases it is better to rule the rules as is and errata it in the FAQ than make a ruling that does not follow the rules and open a floodgate of second guessing, even if it means things will be weird for a while.

 

Given COVID and all, by the time I can run proper events, I'm sure this whole thing will be blown over, FAQ'd, and no longer an issue.

In the meantime, since our play group is pretty limited, it's far easier to not bother dealing with it. No need to get worked up and introduce really un-fun mechanics when it's hard enough to get games in (seriously, who wants to get together for a game and lose because of some of these shenanigans). Why get worked up and bring these gimmicks fully into our play styles and lists, if it's something that could, and hopefully will, get removed in the next FAQ? That feels masochistic, haha.

 

Sounds reasonable.

 

Not trying to be pedantic, but how this works with Look Out! is also confusing.

If I declare Look Out! as an Invalid ARO, does that then let me declare Dodge with everything in my army? Then what if some of those Dodges become valid (like mines), but others do not. What if the entire Look Out! ARO was determined to be invalid?

Nevermind, LOF requirements for AROs are different than non-LOF requirements.

 

I'm sorry, I am trying not to be dishonest by trying to lure you into a trap, but if you don't want to discuss it then let's drop it.

Edit: Look Out requires LOF and LOF is checked before/while you are declaring the ARO, so you'll know it's invalid before you get to the point of using its effects

 

From my part it was not a tricky question at all, just trying to understand how you would have dealt with someone trying to apply the rule by the book.
Telling that technically they could do that, but it's something that isn't tolerated could work but exposes you to the issue of someone deciding that the rule is entirely legit and plays it anyway (maybe after reading this topic), lending to an event where people play different rules depending on the table. Not such a desirable situation.
But if you know well you community and are sure all players will abide by it, sure, as long as it works for you.

And again, no kind of traps here, just exploring this intricate issue.

 

@Mahtamori If this is going to get immortalized in the unresolved questions thread, it's probably worth also putting in a note about why you're allowed to do ZoC AROs without checking:

Scenario 1: You have an enemy trooper which looks like it's in your ZoC but it's actually 8.25" away. The enemy declares something, and you declare your ARO. You don't have any way of knowing that you've just declared an invalid ARO and now you're hozed, possibly because you're a worse judge of distance than the other player.

Scenario 2: You have an enemy trooper that looks like it's outside of your ZoC, but it's actually inside. You don't declare anything, and you lose your ARO because you're a worse judge of distance than the other player.

That's one of the big reasons for the "you can declare a ZoC ARO that may or may not be valid" rules mechanic change. Without either adding pre-measuring, or attempting to legislate how good of a judge of distance a player must be in order to play Infinity (e.g. legislating the death penalty if a player can't tell the difference between 12" and 8" on the table, or planetary bombardment at 15"...)... both of those scenarios get replaced with:

N4: You have an enemy trooper that you want to declare a ZoC ARO against. Maybe it's in your ZoC, maybe it's going to enter your ZoC, maybe you're just jumping the gun. You can just prematurely declare your ZoC ARO, if you want (it's debatably safer to do it early, in most cases).

 

wouldn't be simpler and healthier to just allowed HD troop to reveal themselves at the states phase like the automatic reactivation of the holo echo ?
EDIT:derp I've read the entire topic and I'm a little late xD

 

I have amended the reasoning, they got slightly wordier, but I want to try and avoid making them too wordy for two reasons; 1) space simply put and 2) higher risk of errors. If people are interested in deeper reasoning they'll have to read this thread, which is less of a pain than it sounds considering the reasons why are located close to IJW's definitive answer on the topic.

 

Haha, I suggested the same thing!

The upside would be the interaction of revealing HD troopers would be a lot simpler, a lot cleaner and a lot more intuitive to new player.

The downside would be that it removes the counterplay of forfeiting your last orders. (I personally think that counterplaying by not playing is a very poor game interaction, both from a competitive and casual perspective)

 

SImpler? Sure it is. But it would be SAFER for the HD model too. There would be a grand total of ZERO downside in taking HD Lieutenants or TAGs (just to name the two biggest winner with this version)

I would really NOT go down that road.

 

On the other hand, what's the purposo of a HD Liutenant if I can never deploy it in HD?
I'm asking to understand not to provide a feedback, since I'm quite new to the game and wonder how the two abilities are even put together in the first place? Deploy in HD in a way that hopefully allows me to ARO by LoS with one of the last orders? Seems preposterous.
Am I missing something?

 

My two cents ...

I prefer the more intuitive solution to be the rule. It makes the game more appealing to newer player. If a new player was to discover this thread he would probably stay away from the game. Lot of people are already doing this when they read the rules ...

To me it's more intuitive to say that if no ARO was possible after checking ZoC and LoS, then no ARO happened cancelling ARO effects. Active player skills that where not possible because of this cancelling (like shooting or hacking the revealed HD model) become idle skills.

The so called win win situation of a HD hacker revealing and going back to HD if outside of ZoC doesn't seem to be win-win to me. You just revealed a private information. The opponent probably won't send his TAG or heavy infantry in this spot.

Am I the only one to find this more intuitive ?

Also I heard some game designers like Mac mullough and Ash Barker say in a recent podcast that wargame rules should not try to cover all situation and corner cases ... I feel that the more infinity rules are trying to cover all cases, the more unreadable they become. Even if it satisfies hardcore tournament players like us it deters more casual player imho.

 

With a HD Lieutenants you are forced to do this trick if you go second and don't want to start in LoL. And your opponent had the major part of the turn being unable to harm him. It is not a small perk. And you wanna give this advantage for free?

 

No, I am honestly asking what the purpose of having both HD and Liutenant on the same model if it's suicidal to deploy in HD (without this interaction).
Again, rather new to the game, wonder how they are even played together. Is HD just paid for nothing usually?

Mine was a REAL question :)

 

Pretty much, yeah. The design philosophy for the most part is that lt profiles are copies of non-lt profiles, with the lt skill added. Look at almost any lt profile in the game, and you'll see that that unit has an identical non-lt profile, usually for the same point cost. In the case of an lt with HD, that philosophy results in a lt with a skill that it can't use if you go first, and if you go second, can only use if you're willing to risk LoL by revealing partway through the turn per this thread.

Also, in N3 HD wasn't a separate skill. It was part of the Thermo-Optic Camo skill which has, in N4, been split into HD, Camo, and Mimetism (-6). But you'll see that almost all troopers in N4 still get those three skills grouped together as if they had TO Camo (the only exceptions I can think of are the Hundun and Nadhir, which don't have lt profiles).

With TO camo, the idea was that you would sometimes choose to deploy in marker state rather than in HD, so that the trooper would generate an order for your pool. HD was conceptualized as optional. I think that philosophy has carried over into N4. So, you take a Cutter, you're paying for HD but you might not use it. You take a Cutter Lt, you're paying for HD and are even less likely to use it. But you'll certainly still use the Cutter's Camo and Mim(-6), and HD is just sort of part of that package.

 

Because it is an option, and as (almost) every option in this game, it has a risk/reward formula.