Reveling BS MOD of a fireteam.

Disclaimer: The rules do not back this up with concrete evidence as far as i can find. But that's the nature of holomask; janky-as-fuck!

With Holomask, the profile you are impersonating is the information you would give someone.

eg: Your holomask is impersonating a profile with mim-6. Up until something actually shoots the holomask mini, it's going to look as if it has that mim-6, but once skills have been declared and steps of execution moved through that will no longer be the case.

Same would be for fireteam composition. If the profile that the holomask unit is copying does (or does not) have the keyword for the fireteam that it is in, then at that point the bonuses would be deduced. Again, the fireteam bonus would then be ratified during the rundown of skill execution.


tl;dr: Holo is meant for mind games. If a unit looks like it does (or does not) have a skill or ability, then that is the case until the holomask is revealed.

The arguments for each side hinge (as is often the case) on thematic & expected behaviour vs rules as written & found.

 

Holo is meant for mind games. If a unit looks like it does (or does not) have a skill or ability, then that is the case until said skill or ability is effectively called in a roll / iteraction (MOD calculation, Hacking area, LoF - if you are impersonating a Visor...)

 

I would caution against making presence or absence of MSV and being able to draw line of fire would give a unit, model, or marker away for reasons that should be obvious.
If the unit doesn't make the decision to use the LOF, the information whether the unit is able to draw the line of fire should remain private.

 

I agree.
But if a model is Holomasked as MSV2 equipped and an enemy activates inside of a Smoke (out of ZoC) in what-should-be-a-legal-LoF, you are required to disclose that the model DOESN'T HAVE an ARO, not that he forgoes his ARO.

Are we on the same page here?

 

We are not on the same page.

Whether a unit has an ARO or not is not information that needs to be disclosed. That is still under the property of the private label of the state the unit is in, whether that state is Holomask, Holoecho, Camouflage or Camouflage gained from Concealed trait. There is no mechanical difference between this and just asking "can this camo marker here draw LOF to this point on the building here or is it a mine?".

 

I don't really know why this conversation is still going on regarding fireteams, to be honest. We've established quite simply that the bonuses in a fireteam are open information and are established upon formation. Given this you can't fake a fireteam being pure or not pure when the opposite is true (by using holoecho).

You can absolutely fake the identity of a model, but you cant fake the bonuses that other (NOT holomasked) troops receive. This is because, as holomask says, you can't benefit from rules you don't actually have. And the fireteam tag you're faking is a rule it doesn't actually have.

 

Would be much funnier would be if the disguised model actually DID benefit from, and grant, the bonuses of the model it was pretending to be!

They are method actors. Pretending to be an impetuous model? Well, don't blow your cover (pun intended), make sure not to take cover when the enemy is shooting at you and be sure to rush out of cover at them so they don't suspect anything!

Pretending to be part of a pure link when you're actually a misfit? "Guys, Jim's spotting for us, and if he says the TR bot is over there and at that range, we'll fine to count on that additional +3 BS when we open up on it.

Makes holo WAY more interesting imo.

 

Because the question with Holomask is always when you tell the actual info and when you tell the info based on what it looks like.

 

"People" don't like Holomask.

So they spend lots of time invalidating it through 'clever' ways of sussing it out through mechanical reveals.

*shrug*

 

That's like saying "people don't like Mimetism, so they spend lots of time invalidating it through 'clever' inclusion of units with MSV in their lists."

 

I do like holomask but extending the ability to "pretend to a bonus and calculating otherwise" to non-masked members of the fireteam is crossing a line. It is not clever opposition.

But generally, I agree with your feeling, as I've seen in the past (in past versions) people use the fact you always know exactly which program is valid in your hacking area to suss out holomasked trooper and doing so in direct opposition of the rule team's game play example (that you can trick the opponent into making an invalid hack). At least using MSV to counter Mimetism is not going against game play example.

 

MSV invalidates Mimetism directly. Sussing Holo out indirectly through "does the opposing player realize he actually is or is not forced to disclose something about the suspicious miniature that I'm facing" is nothing like that, it's a shitty game of gotcha, and the above example with the mine and its LOF is perfectly on point.

 

Do you also think players should refrain from sussing out Holomask indirectly by noticing other available information, like that the unit is suspiciously out of position, or that there are three identical units within 8" of each other, or that the unit appears to have Infiltration but is deployed in the DZ, or that it appears to be Impetuous but doesn't have an Impetuous token next to it in the Impetuous phase, or that it generates an Irregular order but appears to be Regular?

If so, then the Bashi Bazouk just got a whole lot better. I'm gonna deploy her as 3 Lasiq snipers, and tell my opponent that he's obligated to believe they're all real and fight them one by one. He's not allowed to indirectly suss out that they're holoprojected.

 

You don't seem to understand the difference at all, do you?

Placing the model "out of position" is my decision. Pretending I'm a non-Impet character when I really am Impet and have to place an Impet token next to the mini is my own misplay. Placing three unlikely clones right next to one another where they can't pretend they're ready to become a fireteam when another one goes down is my choice.

There's no gotcha. I'm not forced to disclose what I didn't want to by a trick question from the opposing player.

"Who generated that Irregular Order?" is a trick and an illegal question. I don't have to tell you that. It's in this or the other Combat Group. Figure the rest out yourself.

"Does this camo token have LOF to this corner?" is a trick question as well. Yes, currently as an S2 camo token silhouette it does. Does whatever is underneath it have LOF to that place when it's unveiled? Well, I dunno, how about you Discover it and find out?

Asking pointed questions about rule minutiae, in order to make the opponent disclose Private information by answering in good faith or even considering his options aloud or reading this from his expression and lack of immediate answer is a shit trick move and poor sportsmanship. This is a tactical miniatures game not a social bluff game of Mafia.

Stop trying to lure the other player into revealing too much and play the game. Take your risks and move on.

 

That's all fine and nice. Its cute to have an ideological discussion, but this isn't one. The BS and other fireteam bonuses available to the members of the fireteam is open information. So, there you go. Stop trying to trick people with information that's not allowed to be hidden. Accept that it's open and move on.

The rules say what they say. Purposefully withholding open information is far more problematic than giving too much away. Maybe we should move away from what we believe ought to be true with holomask ideologically, and actually engage with the rules of the game. This is a question in a rules forum, after all. Not a wish list.

Edit: listen, I'm really sorry to be short and rude. I shouldn't be. But I must say I'm tired of this moral posturing about what should or shouldn't be asked, or what should or shouldn't be revealed. We all know that open information absolutely must be shared. So we don't need to have a discussion here. It shouldn't be about good sportsmanship or bad sportsmanship or anything like that. It's just playing the game by the rules.

 

Masking as a comp bonus/non comp bonus troop is also your choice. If the masked model does not provide comp bonus, then you can holo as any other wildcard. If he does provide comp bonus, you can holo as any other comp providing units. If you give it away by masking as the wrong unit, that is all on you. As a bonus, if you already have another comp-breaking wildcard in the team, then you are free to mask as anything (that is linkable... i mean you could mask a non-linkable troop and give yourself away too)

 

Is that so? Albedo considers the trooper in a white noise zone, but there is none. No one else if profiting from this "zone". This is what I read in the rules text.

This.

Wouldn´t it also mean I can "lie" about my composition bonus, if my opponent ask me out, (we do this regulary, becaue no one can remember all the possiblitys of the opponents army) but my privat information marker make it looks like it has comp-boni (or not).

Tian in a Zhanshi team, would make them look stronger than they are, not the best solution maybe ;-)

 

One of the effects of Albedo is placing an Albedo-A token next to the trooper when it is deployed, Holomask cannot mimic tokens so it would be immediately obvious that its a Holomask, just like Masking as Hector would be obvious because you can't mimic the Tinbot.

 

I'd have agreed if this had been a simple MOD that would only be determined in the regular order resolution, but the rules tell us to tally up the fireteam bonuses whenever the team members change.

REMEMBER
When the number of Fireteam members changes, the player must check both
the Size and Composition Bonuses that the members can apply during the
Order (see Fireteam Integrity, page 6).​

 

This is also a pretty new rules question that didn’t exist until the recent fireteam composition rewrite. I haven’t checked every army with access to holomask, but in QK, the Hafza are carefully keyworded to be able to pretend to be the majority unit of whatever fireteam they’re in. The issue is that in HB, Yasbir FTO is a wildcard, but only gets comp bonuses as a Ghulam. This means he can drop into teams where he doesn’t add to comp bonuses even though he looks like he should, which feels weird.