Situation: a highly suspicious Celestial Guard is making their way towards your DZ and where your Hackers are. On their way there, they accidentally/intentionally step near a Repeater. As your first ARO opportunity you become uncertain. You're KHD can declare a Hacking Attack and you know that this attack will work if this trooper is a Kanren with a Hacking Device, but...; Question 1: If the Holomask trooper is in fact a Hacker and you do nothing here; will this count as having missed your first opportunity to ARO should they reveal on the second Short Skill? Question 2: If the Holomask trooper is not a Hacker and walks closer, and probably into your Hackers' actual Zone of Control or Line of Fire; will this count as having missed your first opportunity to ARO? Basically I'm asking whether Killer Hackers get legitimate AROs from people acting in Hacking Area regardless if they appear to be Hackers or not. I realise as I'm writing this that these questions aren't as profound since regular Hackers have Spotlight and will thus always get an ARO, so altering it to the only device where it actually makes a difference.
This seems to be yet another situation where the "ARO Check" feature applies, because you're in the situation where you're not sure whether you have an ARO and are trying to decide whether to declare one. Answer 1: Yep. Answer 2: Did you declare an ARO when it walked past the repeater or not? If the hacking ARO example in the book isn't an error, at the first or second ARO opportunity there's a certain amount of guessing on the part of the reactive player permitted, and it's permitted to declare AROs where the requirements aren't fulfilled. Because you can't actually know whether all of the various requirements are fulfilled when you have troopers disguised as different types of troopers, and no pre-measuring. So in the "You Smell Like a Hacker" scenario: * Smelly trooper activates and moves into ZoC of the repeater * KHD declares ARO presuming that it's a hacker. * Smelly trooper walks closer, into LoF of the KHD * KHD has already declared an ARO. You don't get to declare a second may ARO * ARO Check: The active player has to admit whether the declared hacking skill works on the target. Or "You don't smell like a hacker": * Smelly trooper activates and moves into ZoC of the repeater * KHD decides Smelly isn't a hacker and doesn't declare * Smelly trooper walks closer, into LoF of the KDH * KHD declares ARO BS Attack. * ARO Check: The active player has to admit whether Smelly is hackable by the KHD. If it is, then the BS Attack ARO is lost.
This is gonna be one of those "can you actually declare AROs when you don't have an ARO" questions that really needs @HellLois to step in and clear up CB's intent
I believe previously it worked as such : A "Celestial guard FO" holomasked unit that walks into a range of a repeater. 1. The enemy thinks its a hacker, declares carbonite 2. If the unit Is hacker or hackable, you'd better counter or reset or risk taking the normal roll Or if you are Not hackable, the aro is wasted and the opponent gets to confirm that you are in fact, not hackable. I believe the hackable trait is hidden until you present an opportunity to become hacked a dn then the opponent gets to roll the dice and guess.
Yup, I think vs armies with possible Holo Hackers you need to randomly Trinity everything inside your Hacking Area just in case.
So... what if the ARO declaring player doesn't have the knowledge to possibly declare the Hacking ARO? Like are they cheating by not even knowing to do it?
As always, the first time you confront something it always feel weird or overpowered. In a friendly game, you should at least suggest the chance that you can have one or more holomasked models...
With questions like this it becomes apparent that we are starting again from scratch at a point in time where N3 had just been FAQed into playability.
Considering that I’ve been playing N3 since release (and N2 before that), I find your statement a bit hyperbolic. There’s a short list of issues that could use a post-release FAQ/errata, but I feel like N4 seems to hold up pretty well so far.
Well, I'll admit to being a bit biased towards new editions that want to simplify a game. I still remember when we stopped playing Warhammer 40k when 3rd Edition came out because it "ruined" the game. And the problems N4 has are nothing compared to when N3 came out, I'll give you that. The problem at hand is easily fixable if they just copy the N3 FAQ into the N4 FAQ.