As I edited (you might've caught the quote right after I edited it), the ARO declaration may be Dodge, but the trooper will perform Idle if they don't fulfil the requirements. (My mistake was in confusing it with that Idle is now on the list of things you're allowed to do while Engaged)
We do not check to see if the ARO is valid until step 5 of the order sequence, so we do not know if their dodge is valid or not, this means a player can always wait until the second skill is declared in step 4 before they declare their ARO. Again, this is only if we go by the ruling that an intentional illegitimate ARO declaration is an intended part of the game. Which is why I believe it breaks the game. Potentially, but remember that a model that dodge successfully gets to move which could put them in a better position for your next order. So if you want your unit to get into base to base stealth is better for sneaking up.
Don't worry about it, this thread makes me think that during COVID people have forgotten how to play, and forgotten how to socialize, lol. Purposely declaring a skill which is not legal to execute so that you can instead use a different skill that isn't even an ARO as an ARO feels like some of the bickering that drove me out of 40k.
If someone does that and you discover that they had a valid ARO at step 2, their Step 4 ARO would be invalid and converted to an Idle.
Not knowing and having to make a judgement call is part of the core game play experience... ..which has nothing to do with this ruling (is it even a ruling?). The rules do not provide any way of judging whether the player is good or bad at judging distances, it doesn't allow for any function checks on whether the declaration is a pisstake or not prior to declaring it, because if it was to do that it'd have far reaching other consequences that would take the game in a direction that they don't want it to take.
This has been in the rules for a very long time. I remember it cropping up on the forums not long after they did the double-negative ruling on pre-measuring zone of control during N3.
Rules that were a mess and forced players to negotiate interpretations all the times drove you out of 40k. It's not up to the players to discuss intentions of the designers and try to figure out what they should and what they should not apply. Else we really would reach the abysmal extremes seen in 40k: "You cannot play that list because it is known it's too strong. Build a worse one!". This thread alone is 6 pages long, and it's now clear beyond any doubt that rules do allow table-wide ARO. If the designers wanted to faq it out, they would have already.
Sure, though it didn't really have the explicit approval of our rules guru until now (maybe it did, I don't remember it getting this much attention though). An easy FAQ option that could be included would be to chance the second bullet under cancellation of Hidden Deployment to: The Hidden Deployment State is automatically cancelled whenever the Trooper declares any Short Skill, Entire Order or valid ARO. So go ahead and declare something, if it's invalid, then you're still in hidden deployment and just gave up your position. That might be a slight buff to hidden hackers, but strongly disincentivizes the kind of shenanigans people are bringing up here. Not sure if that pans out. That's assuming things are intentionally broken until someone fixes it. Not everything is FAQ'd at once, multiple FAQs happen over time as more issues are brought up. Even things which are argued with absolute certainty with no room for discussion can get changed.. which is why I don't take the conclusions here as gospel, but as guidance. Check out Berserk while Engaged. This is a ruling which I will happily ignore until an FAQ supports changing the game this drastically.
Like IJW detailed, changing the cancellation of Hidden Deployment to not be removed on invalid AROs is stupendously disruptive and advantageous to the Hidden Deployment trooper, particularly if it's a hacker.
Is it more disruptive than having 3 levels deep of rules cancellation and exceptions inception to find something which is "intended"? lol Expecting players to know that it's a part of the rules that you can purposely declare a skill you cannot perform, as an ARO which you weren't eligible to declare, which then allows you to perform a non-ARO skill as an ARO, for the purpose of cancelling a state is pretty contrived, you have to admit. Furthermore the implications seem to be very far reaching to more than just state cancellation.
I'm not sure how this changes anything. The quirk of being able to declare any ARO regardless of the position stems from the way the ARO are checked on resolution. Adding this line to Hidden Deployment creates even more incentive to do weird ARO declaration. Backtracking and removing things from the table seems like a nightmare to manage and even more complicated to deal with than just cancelling the ARO.
This is literally all detailed in the OES and HD. OES tells you how and when to declare AROs, HD tells you what happens when you declare an ARO, OES explains what happens when it's discovered that that ARO was invalid. It's not rules inception.
It would mean the Hidden Deployment state isn't cancelled, the model isn't on the board, so the player would start their turn in Loss of Lieutenant. It disincentivizes the main topic of this thread.
Saying they can intentionally declare an invalid ARO in order to cancel Hidden Deployment is stupendously advantageous to the Hidden Deployment Trooper in missions were controlling area or an objective is worth objective points, particularly if they belong to the player going first. Giving away your position is still not great.
*Sigh*. The N4 ARO system does not break the game. It just doesn't. It's clear, consistent, and easy to understand and apply. Just declare whatever AROs you decide to declare. 99% of the time, it will be obvious whether or not they're valid. The other 1% of the time, you'll measure and find out at Resolution. In terms of clarity and playability, it's a huge improvement over the N3 ARO system. You don't have to like that hidden guys can reveal themselves. Maybe you would have preferred a different fix. (Personally, I would have preferred ZoC pre-measuring). But claiming it breaks the game is flat-out false. We've been playing N4 for half a year. It isn't broken. It's disingenuous to pretend it's broken just because you would have preferred a different fix.
Still trying to sort everything in this thread out, but how does this not result in having to declare an ARO with every model in my army, legal or not?
My only issue with this rule isn't that revealing hidden deployed trooper for order generation can be a tactical advantage in some cases (even if it's pretty rare tbh). It's that a new player getting into the game will probably find the interaction very unintuitive. (Purposefully failing something that is obviously not going to work to get a boon) I really just wish there was a way to reveal Hidden Deployed trooper between turns. It would remove the incentive to do the unintuitive play. If you could just reveal your troopers from Hidden Deployed at the State Phase between turns (without having it get in marker state). You'd solve the main issue people have. The only difference if you allowed this, would be to remove the counterplay of not spending your orders at the end of your turn so your opponent cannot fail ZoC ARO. But I seriously doubt anyone finds "skip turn with 2 orders left to avoid opponent from doing a failed declaration" to be a very interesting tactical choice to test in the game.
Because you never have to declare an ARO, and you won't waste your time declaring AROs for no reason.
Why would you? There is literally no upside to declaring ARO on things that you know will fail their ARO (outside of revealing a hidden deployed trooper).
I don't follow. The rules for ARO say: "The Reactive Player must declare AROs for all eligible Models or Markers immediately after the Active Player declares his Entire Order or the first Short Skill of his Order (see: Order Expenditure Sequence). Troopers that fail to do so lose their ARO against that Order. If, by declaring the second Short Skill of its Order, the active Trooper gives an ARO to enemy Troopers that did not have ARO against the first Short Skill, then those enemy Troopers can declare their AROs." The main argument I've found in this thread is that ARO Validity is not a requirement of Eligibility to declare an ARO. From what people are saying on this thread, you are eligible to declare an ARO any time the enemy does something (like declaring dodge with a hidden model across the table), but then when the ARO is determined to not be valid, it turns into an Idle. The rules require models to declare an ARO when eligible, not when they are valid. For it to be true that you are eligible to declare Dodge with your hidden model that is out of LOF/ZOC, then it also needs to be true that your other models in the army are also eligible to ARO. If they don't declare an ARO when they're eligible, then they lose their ARO.
