Scenario 1. Two Holoechoes move into ZOC of a Perimeter Item, in lieu of immediately declaring Boost the Perimeter Item 'delays their ARO due Holo L2'. Q: is this permitted? The Holoechoes declare Move as their second short skill declaration. Q: the Perimeter Item cannot declare Boost because the Holoechoes were not revealed, what happens? Scenario 2. A Camo Marker and a Trooper Move into ZOC of a Perimeter Item, in lieu of immediately declaring Boost the Perimeter Item 'delays their ARO due Camo'? Q: is this permitted? (This is different to Scenario 1, because in this example Boost - the only possible ARO - is not a valid ARO in response to the Camo token) The Camo Marker and Trooper declare Move as the second short skill declaration. Q: what happens?
Scenario 1: Boost is obligatory, if you can declare it you must. Delaying would mean not declaring boost, so you can't delay Scenario 2: A Perimeter weapon has no valid ARO against a Camouflage token there is no ARO to delay (compare unhackable target walks into an enemy repeater's ZOC)
That was largely my thinking. But I'm not certain that you can't delay and then obligatorialy declare Boost when the Holo'd Trooper declares a short skill other than Move, which is why I asked. It's basically a question of whether the specific obligation of Boost override the permissive exception of Marker-states. Although (for Scenario 2), it's worth pointing out that a Camo Trooper and a Non-Camo HI both move into the Hacking Area of a Hacker you can absolutely choose to delay against the Camo marker even though, at that point, there isn't a valid ARO against the Camo marker.
There's nothing in any ARO-skill rule to infer that delaying an ARO is possible at all. That's not the way the rules are written. But I take your point, and I do think it results in cleaner gameplay. The question resulted from an errant thought (discussing Holoechoes I stated "Only Troopers get AROs, so only Troopers can delay AROs", which raised the obvious exception), so I'm more than happy to cede the point. Tangental: I think at it's core there's a problem with treating Boost as an ARO: obligatory AROs are conceptually unique so it's probably easier to conceive of it as Triggering.
Second to last bullet point of Boost: Perimeter Items are not activated by enemy Camouflage, TO or ImpersonationMarkers, nor by any Special Skill or piece of Equipment whose description specifies so. So the Perimeter item does effectively delay reacting because it doesn’t react until the marker is revealed. But it’s not using the “delay your ARO” mechanism in the Camo or Impersonation rules, it’s simply not having an ARO yet. Because, from the Perimeter rules: In the Reactive Turn, a Perimeter Item can only perform a Boost. If the Perimeter Item is able to declare Boost, its ARO will be always different from the bearer's.
We never thought of delaying Boost when facing Holos. And I don't think it is allowed because of the rules already mentioned These Holos were even used to clear Koalas, for example.
