So hypothetically, if you had the SMG Lei Gong on the table and I decided I wanted to know if that was the Chain of Command profile for him because I couldn't remember off the top of my head, if I reached across the table and picked your army list up and had a look in front of you you'd be cool with that? You wouldn't be annoyed by that?
Being able to look up unit information and being able to remember it correctly or sufficiently correctly is functionally no different. Private only means you don't have to inform your opponent about it, and only information relating to the specific game element is private. Whether a Kazak AP HMG can potentially be LT or not isn't part of private information. Taking the stance that it is poor etiquette to look stuff up is fine, but I do think you're walking a very fine line when you say it's "cheating" to go against it. And I mean walking it perpendicular like.
Hah! No, that's not a functional skill of the game - it's a functional skill of the type of rule subset that you prefer to play with. Big difference. Just because it adds difficulty doesn't mean it's part of the rules. Speak to your opponent about it and come to an agreement instead of calling them a cheater. It doesn't bother me if someone looks up what miniatures could potentially be my LT as long as they're not a dick about it. I'll even tell them if they ask.
Neither is having another person advise you on how to play in the middle of a game covered in the rulebook, but if I started telling your opponent how to beat you in the middle of a tournament you'd probably call a TO over to have me removed.
That's a terrible argument, mate. It's possible to do stuff without being a dick about it. It's like whether I think it's okay to pick up my miniatures - yes it's okay as long as you do it respectfully and don't first dip your hand into a cheetos bag and pick the Yan Huo up by the HRMC. Looking up information can be done unobtrusively and respecting the flow of the game, or it can be done without respect, delaying the game, fighting the app's menus more than your opponent etc. One is okay, the other is not. That said, making yourself a third party of a two-player game is actually breaking the game's rules.
You're missing the point entirely by trying to argue about something else completely unrelated. The point isn't that you're interrupting game flow by looking stuff up, the point is you're cheating by accessing information you're not supposed to have on hand. You're supposed to be playing the game, not your mate standing next to you, not your ipad or your phone. If you can't remember something and make a mistake, oh well, that's part of playing the game. We don't print private information like points costs and stuff on courtesy lists for a reason. The point I was making to @SpectralOwl is in that situation the breach of etiquette is very much you're looking at private information. Whether or not you spend 5 seconds or take ages and hold shit up is irrelevant, the bit that causes a problem is that you are looking at private information. I don't distinguish looking that information up on a phone instead of just looking at a printed list to be functionally different. The ITS rules don't actually explicitly forbade you from picking up your opponent's printed army list and perusing it, but I'd be equally annoyed if I caught someone doing that and I feel like it's very much in the realms of common sense that is a no no.
@Mahtamori is obviously correct about the rules. But more to the point, why would anyone want to gain an advantaged based on having memorized more sectorial rosters than their opponent? What an utterly lame concept of skill. I'll win or lose based on strategy and tactics, thanks.
To be fair while CB made Lts more obvious, they also made them a little safer by removing Strategos2 + impersonator combo (afaik). Since as a defending player you are always guaranteed to get the last reserve, save it for the Lt if he is obvious. Sure, they can still brute force towards, but if Lt is deep enough it might not be worth it. So even if I dislike the open Lt Wip info all is not doom and gloom. Actually if I had a choice between N3 and N4 way (private wip, but strategos 2 denies reserve or public wip but strategos doesn't deny reserve) I would probably choose N4.
Spoken like someone who hasn't had his LT killed in a 3 order combo of a pitcher, into spotlight, into a guided missile. Which incidentally are alot more common/viable this edition. How dare you use your brain sir! I accept defeat only at the hands of.... *checks notes* ...someone using their brain? Yes, brain. But not too much. Too much and you will be considered a lame nerd.
True. I haven't played a lot of N4, so it is possible that new GML is a problem combined with open Wip. I guess I'll add it to the list of reasons to take Interventor Lt. It's legal. It might win someone a tournament. People will do it. Even if we look poorly at the practice.
Imagine thinking memorizing thousands of profiles to check the enemy model vs potential LT loadouts is a "skill" and looking up the very same info in the app is "cheating".
The purpose of keeping a points cost private is so your opponent can't point to a Myrmidon Officer or Umbra Legate on the table and demand it's points cost, thereby revealing if they are the Lt. or not. The idea that looking up that a Myrmidon Officer could be either 29 or 34 points is somehow illegal is kind of bizarre to me, you still wouldn't know which the opponent has on the table.
I don't think hacking/guided this edition will specifically be a problem in regards to the WIP change, it's just going to a problem for many reasons in general. My point was just if you thought your LT was safer this edition just because Strategos changed (it was probably a change for the better, sure) then to think again, they're really not. Presumably in this situation you would be looking up the points cost of your opponents unit to figure out whether or not you were successfully dominating an objective, such as a zone in Supremacy, which could well mean the difference between wasting orders to kill something you don't need to or spending orders to do something else to win the game. For other missions like firefight knowing the exact amount of points killed allows you to know whether or not you can simply go on the defensive or if you have to keep attacking otherwise you lose.
Since most profiles are mirrored by non-LT ones, I could only get "Ha, this X model with SMG and LSG might be a Lieutenant" from this anyway. And if there's a single LT profile of that model with THAT loadout, therefore an obvious LT, what's the actual damage between me looking at Army before the game and during the game? Even in a quadrant control a quick glance at loadouts present on the table and going "OK, so this plus this plus this, he has about ~150 pts more or less in that quadrant, so I need to push my TAG in there to contest it" - how's that cheating and how's memorizing the same not? If using Army as profile reference is cheating then memorizing point values / profiles surely is like card counting in a casino, right? ;)
Here's how I view it: Infinity's ruleset comes in four parts; the Core Rules and Annex (which are also often referenced via the wiki) which contain the game resolution processes, plus Army and the Sectorial Charts which contain the profiles we use. A given profile's presence in an opposing list is Private Information, but the existence and capabilities of the profile are certainly not- they're in the game rules, and the game rules must be accessible to run a fair game. Trying to stop my opponent knowing the legal capabilities of my potential list is equivalent to not telling them how Markers or BS Attacks work in my eyes.
No no, there's nothing wrong with memorizing information and using it in a game! What's wrong is to then demand that your opponent not look at publicly available information, because you want to get a super lame advantage from having memorized the information and want to keep it all to yourself. And in addition to being wrong and lame, that practice is also in fact not legal.
No it's not. I'd argue that getting bothered when your opponent takes a look at army is extremely poor sportsmanship.
No it doesn't. Private information isn't in Army, it's on your army list. The WIP of potential Lieutenants in a given sectorial is not private information.
