The crew that's against Intent play, though, would rather have an unplayable Infinity then one in which they couldn't "Gotcha!" opponents...
That's a very manipulated "definition". Essentially, the phrase comes from early 40k (introduced in 3e 40k I believe) and it always meant simply "the act of seeing through your shooting models eyes and determining what they can actually see". Whether pose, weapons, gear, antennas or barrels on tanks counted as part of what you can shoot has changed throughout editions of 40k as well as other games which followed the same design concept. In this Infinity iteration it is defined as "whether you can see at least 3mm of the enemy Silhouette from your shooting model's eyes". Abstracting model vs model positioning to "intended" - rather than actual, physical positions - essentially removes the possibility of Line of Sight, completely. If your model isn't where I can see it but in the nebulous "intended" spot, I can't check whether my own model sees your model or its Silhouette. And the Silhouette can't even be substituted for the model, because it'd have to be placed "exactly where intended". The only way to have actual Line of Sight rules followed it to have the active player place the model where intended, to the best of their ability, with some possible leniency and fair play from the Reactive player, and go from there. I'm happy then that you'd agree to share your statistical data, the makeup and size of your sample and the methodology of your testing? Or will you finally admit you've made up all the "100%s" and "everyones", etc., completely and wholesale, jsut to boost your point and have an attempt at swaying the CB employee to your side of the argument? Yeah, Super Jumping to enable you to see "just the rear half of the Silhouette cylinder" was a really nasty piece of rules-lawyering, I agree. Unplayable? What's unplayable, asking you to make your own guesses about where exactly you should place your models and then working from those decisions, as represented by physical models placed in their final positions? You jest :D
No, I'm talking about the one where you have three models angled to see a corner about 40" away, and you have have no way of knowing which of them a model rounding the corner can see. Because if you can't declaratively state the LoF there, there's no way to know if you are or aren't in LoF of any particular model. Declarative LoF is necessary in Infinity, since sub-mm distances can actually matter and have severe gameplay ramifications. Intent deals with this very well.
But there is a way. You move and check LoF. What you mean is there is no way before you move. Which is correct, and good.
I see you've conceded on all of the other points, thank you for proving me right and retracting your ridiculous claims. Naw, man. If you're facing three backline snipers along the whole length of a map and you want to pie slice them from your side, I'm calling BS. Place the model, take the risk, trust your skill or go around the safer route. There's nothing in the rules that allows you to pick and choose which of the three potential Reactive models you will be engaged by in ARO, aside from final model placement. Make the placement. It's a game, play it well instead of depending on me to allow you to pick and choose. If you can place the model at such an angle that only one of them has LoS - kudos, well played. Intent play may be helpful in ijw's #1 case, to speed things up, but this what you're suggesting is what I'd agree with one of the posters above to be borderline cheating. You want to get the advantage of perfect model placement "as intended" (which takes no inhuman dexterity, you can shove the model around to get your final placement - it only takes the ability to correctly estimate angles of LoF and that's a mental skill of a good player) for completely free and while you achieve that for free, you want to be safe from my opportunity to surprise you with anything but an HD ARO? Get out of here.
You don't understand. I'm talking about LoF where the angle is such that it's difficult to determine who is in LoF of who, even with a laser guide, but there are theoretically positions where one is visible to all, some, or none of the enemy troopers. The only practical way to resolve a situation like that is to say "I scoot around far enough to see this guy but not this guy." Otherwise it would just have to be resolved with a coin toss.
If you don't have the skill to pull off that move, do not attempt it. I'm sorry but this is you essentially demanding training wheels in the game "because making the correct model placement is too hard". Cry me a river, I've placed those three snipers in the back very well, I've paid points for them, they're doing their job - making your movement hard. Or can I also say that I place my snipers in "an intended, geometrically possible way" and they're not where you can see the models, but where they can see all the exits from your DZ? Is that the game we're playing now?
What, so it should be considered an impassable wall because of geometry Well, that's how real 3d space works. Except you can't tell if they're in LoF either - it's too fine an angle to measure with a hand-held laser guide. So instead of agreeing that a measurement can't be that precise you're saying "I get what I want" - that's the pinnacle of poor sportsmanship. And, fundamentally, that's the position of the "Gotcha!" players - trying to create ambiguity in movement on the table, to where they can insist that their opponent actually moved in a way that was advantageous to them. It's behavior consistent with how cheaters behave, and our community is better off without players like that. When you place the models, you can say where you intend them to have LoF, and that's the opportunity I'd have to say that I think such a positioning is impossible, or to say that you need to move your models slightly to achieve such an outcome. So there's nothing wrong with that - as long as you don't spring it on your opponent mid-game or try to move your minis without moving them. That's always been the position of the Intent crowd, and it's telling that you have to misrepresent that position to make your argument. If someone says "I place my model seeing this corner and this corner" and then places their model in a way that makes that not true, that's a good time to speak up and say "Hey if you want to do that you should be over here." If you don't say anything, and then count on them not actually being able to see what they said, that's poor sportsmanship, but again, exactly what you'd expect from the "Gotcha!" crowd.
But this is a very specific edge case, which from a lot of what I see often tends to be a running theme. I mean this without malice; I’m relatively new, started learning very late N3 and then now get to be in the start of N4. I can’t speak a lor to old arguments, other than having looked back and read them, but in the modern talks there seems to be these assumptions like this, where the existance of an potentially unpalatable or difficult, or seemingly impossible to resolve situation is used to justify more general behavior. In the case you describe, then resolution would be talking out with your opponent and, barring agreement, yes a coin flip or roll off or some other way. The use of the term ‘practical’ is a weasel word, here. There are ways to resolve it, with various degrees of palatability, and it may be the answer you find agreeable of practical is simply not right, as I think it is. To quote Camus, “Seeking what is true is not seeking what is desirable.”
But thats not cheating, merely an asshole move, and there are ways to resolve it without engaging in behavior that, even if for ostensibly good intentions, is actually against the rules.
It's not a weasel word at all. There are limits to what kinds of measurements we can take on the table, and models and terrain get jostled during play. In a game like Infinity where a fraction of a millimeter can matter, declarative statements of intent with respect to positioning are required to play the game. Camus didn't play Infinity.
It is cheating, if it's insisting that something that can't be resolved at the table (extremely fine positioning) is always resolved in a way that benefits the cheater. It's lying about the game state, which is a form of cheating. Like I said, there's nothing in the rules that says you can't check LoF at times other than certain steps of the order resolution sequence, and rules like Berserk presume that you can check LoF at other times. An emergent property of these rules is the ability to play by intent. So there's no violation of the rules here.
Don't even make me laugh. Poor Hecaton, you can't figure out how to engage three snipers at a distance if you can't have a foolproof guarantee of engaging them on your own rules, one by one? Oh, dearie... :D Bullshit. I can and I will. As soon as your model is in the final position, I will check it with a laser. If I didn't have my morning vodka and my hands are shaky, I will ask you to grab the end of my measuring tape, flip it to the side so that only I can see the values (or use a piece of twine or whatever else to that effect) and using this physical straight line I can directly indicate whether I can see your model with one or more of mine. The one who's demanding to get "what they want" is the player demanding to play the Active and Reactive fully on his terms, leaving nothing to the Reactive player. And that, indeed, is very poor form. There's nothing less ambiguous than a physical model or Silhouette in the final position. It's the wishy-washy "I would place the model there if I could" virtual "geometrically possible" model placement that creates a huge heap of uncertainty. Will you place the non-virtual model where it is or where it more or less is? Where will you start movement, from the intended or the physical position? If from the physical - why? Why are you allowed to potentially gain movement range or avoid later ARO, since your model at the start of the next Order simply ISN'T where we've just assumed for LoF / ARO purposes it was "supposed to" be? And you have the gall to call non-intent players cheaters? And advocate for shunning them from the community? Appalling.
They're really not. If you're encountering such an impossiblly well-defended sniper tower or hardpoint and your solution is that you need to warp the rules so that you can cheese it to death rather than just seeking an alternative path or dealing with it some other way by flankers, smoking it up so you can get closer, or landing a drop trooper behind the sniper tower. The game is a game of tactics, and smashing your face against a defensive strongpoint but demanding that you be able to win the fight via loophole abuse says that you don't actually want to have to engage in tactical play.
I mean, it is one. There is no way to really define practical here beyond ‘what I think is proper and reasonable.’ Its doing a lot of lifting. But in your stated scenario you’re describing a situation where you have attempted a move that due to reasons the exact LoF cannot be determined between four different models, in such a way that neither you nor your opponent can really say. In this edge case, yes, you could say ‘well, my goal was to achieve X,’ and your opponent may agree that was possible, in the sense that in assisting you in checking LoF, they can’t tell either. But in this scenario, you’ve already moved and comitted, and the issue is arising due to issues checking LoF. The answer is “resolve it in a fair and sportsmanlike way.” Its not a general license to rewrite the rules.
But, see, he'd want to have his cake and eat it too. There's no fair or sportsmanlike way to resolve the situation where an intent player demands you to assume he's made the perfect play, a perfect placement and demands that you give him the result he "deserves" - only one ARO. Just because such a result was geometrically possible. "I've participated, so you have to assume I've done perfectly and won this battle of wits" is the really unfair and unsportsmanlike stance, bordering on cheating or at the very least demanding some sort of a permanent handicap. Stop demanding the participation trophy and place the bloody model where you think it should go.
Then you'd be lying. There's nobody arguing for Intent that wouldn't give their opponent the same courtesy. So again, you're lying. Go figure. Incorrect. There's imprecision in all real-world measurements. That's a basic fact of the world we live in. An abstracted statement of position can be much less ambiguous. Infinity would do better if there wasn't a gameplay advantage to making extremely precise quantitative measurements - what, should I get out my electronic calipers to engage enemy ARO pieces? Please. Again, you're misrepresenting my position, and that of other people who advocate for playing by intent. Everyone's saying to correct any discrepancies between the intended and actual position of a model as soon as possible, thus sidestepping what you're suggesting would be the problem here. To be frank, every "Gotcha" player who has explained their position to me has eventually resolved it into one form of cheating or another. I don't think the community wants or needs those people.
Saying that you've deployed your two snipers close together, so you're going to contest any attempt by your opponent to engage only one, is both poor sportsmanship *and* avoiding engaging in tactical play. To be clear, you've still misunderstood my point - when a measurement is so finicky that it's impossible to determine if two troopers are in LoF or not, why would the defensive player have primacy? Why wouldn't it be ambiguous? If it is ambiguous, why don't we just resolve the ambiguity by asking the active player who he intended to engage? If your answer is "If there's ambiguity, it should default to me having the advantage" that's abominable sportsmanship.
Essentially it comes off as you being frustrated with a basic mechanic of the game i.e. the Active Player has control of movement. You want to be able to dictate where the Active Player moves their models by forcing an argument over LoF every time it's ambiguous.
So wait, do you think that putting down a laser guide and then moving a trooper to it is cheating or no?
