Use of NCO and TacSense in Fireteam

The discussion in this thread supports that interpretation.

https://forum.corvusbelli.com/threads/tactical-awareness-and-fireteam-leader.26085/

 

Great place for a quick solved thread, two possible ways, which has a yes attached to it?

 

This is something that really needs official clarification so that it is explicitly spelled out.

Because (despite the order of events not quite working) activating the link with the NCO/Tactical Awareness order and making the user the Link Leader feels more intuitive than the other way. But due to timing and the wording of the rules it looks like you can use the current link leader's special order (either NCO or TA) to activate the unit, but since selecting a leader happens after this you can nominate a different leader to actually use that order.

To illustrate:

1) Tai Sheng starts as link leader. Things are clear and Taisheng activates the link with its NCO order. It then chooses to retain Team Leader status for the order and the unit moves up the field.
2) Coming to a corner, Tai Sheng uses the next NCO order to activate the link. After activation, the Zuyong HMG is made link leader (since activation and selecting a new leader are different steps and the latter happens after the former). If moves to the corner and opens fire.
3) The Zuyong HMG can use its Tactical Awareness order to activate the link again if it needs to, or it can activate the link and shift Team Lead to something else with Tactical Awareness if it took the target out.

I'm not sure if this was intended, but the wording of Tactical Awareness (and thus NCO which apparently follows the same use case) is such that using the order only cares about who the link leader starts as.

That's the main wrench right there. Does this mean currently designated or does it mean you must then go on to designate this model. It needs additional language, because if they mean the second one and not the first then it needs additional wording to actually explain how it alters the timing of events when activating a link and selecting its leader. Without knowing the designer's intent, the first one (i.e. currently designated) is the one Occam would suppose is the more correct reading (since it doesn't require us to suppose some sort of order-debt and requires no further explanation on whether or not also starting as link leader matters).

The first reading requires the least augmentation of the actual order of operations for link activation, but it allows for order chaining that makes combining things like NCO and Tactical Awareness a lot more efficient (which makes me wonder if it was intended or not).

The second reading would require a bit more language to explicitly state that the leader is basically chosen retroactively according to how it was activated, and then further language regarding whether or not them starting as the leader mattered (because the second version only covers which leader you're forced to designate and would require another clause about whether they needed to start as the leader or not as well). Either way, the rule is terribly ambiguous right now and needs more explanation and/or more explicit examples of it in play (alongside how the timings work out).

This needs a FAQ ASAP or at least some kind of official statement that it simply follows the already existing timings and that chaining is intended.

So which of these is the correct reading?

#1
In addition, if the owner of this Special Skill belongs to a Fireteam and is currently designated as the Team Leader, then this Order can be used to activate the Fireteam as if it were a Regular Order.

#2
In addition, if the owner of this Special Skill belongs to a Fireteam then you may activate this Fireteam with this Order as if it were a Regular Order, only if you then designate them as the Team Leader. They do not have to be Team Leader at the time they are activated, but they must be the model selected to be the Team Leader during the current activation.

#3
In addition, if the owner of this Special Skill belongs to a Fireteam then you may activate this Fireteam with this Order as if it were a Regular Order, only if you then designate them as the Team Leader. In addition, they must be the Team Leader at the time of activation.

Because it is one of these three for both NCO and Tactical Awareness, but the latter two require more extensive rewrites to remove ambiguity, while the first requires adding a single word and expecting folks to put the timing implications together themselves.

 

It really does. @HellLois we have people attempting to practice for a satellite tournament next month and knowing exactly how these new skills are meant to function would help everyone out.

 

i'm pretty sure it would be #2. the rule is simply is designated, not is currently designated at that step as if there was a reason to be super specific with the timing. And as everything happen at the same time, then we can easily understand* that a leader that is designated to be a leader counts as being designated for the whole** order including all steps of the order even if the act of designation itself, to be super specific, happen at a step later than activating a model (or group of models) with an order.
*Prior to TA and NCO, i always thought of my fireteam as having the leader be the leader for the whole Order, without any second thoughts about it.
**the opposite of that is to advance the idea that in an Order you actually have 2 fireteam leader in the same Order : one when you activate the link and a different one when declaring/executing your skills. Which is a very odd way to play or design a game.

And i also don't quite like the wording of #2 trying to be super specific that you'll designate them at a later stage; instead of just stating that to be designated means to be designated for the whole order. You could be more subtle by saying will be designated which would show that the writer is aware that the designation is a later step and would not need a FAQ. I agree of having a FAQ be answered as is designated using is rather than was or will be might mean the writer intended that he was designated in the previous Order and left in the state of being the leader, very unlikely, but possible.

 

You could ask the TO for the event what their ruling will be for it

 

You could, it'd be better if CB just take 5 minutes to decide and clarify how it works though.

 

That's kind of the problem though, the Team Leader isn't the same Team Leader for the whole order according to the rules as written.

This is the first step. The Fireteam is activated with a single Regular Order from the Order Pool. Right now, the Team Leader token is attached to whoever had it in the previous activation.

How does the Team Leader change?

So the Fireteam is activated first and then the Team Leader can be changed by placing the token next to them when declaring the first Skill of an Order.

There is no wording in there to interpret the Team Leader as being chosen when the Fireteam activates. There is no wording that can lead us to assume that the Team Leader the activation ends with is the same one throughout the order. A Fireteam can have two different leaders across a single activation because choosing a new leader happens after activation occurs.

I do agree, if the Fireteam chose its Team Leader when it activated then this would be more cut and dry. But that isn't how it was written and because this is the first time any kind of special order has ever interacted with the existing Fireteam system, we have absolutely zero precedent to go on.

LT special orders can't even activate a link and immediately knock the user out. Anything gaining an Impetuous order loses the whole status when linked. Hell, Irregular Orders can't even be used to activate them normally. This is new ground and because the whole role of Team Leader is self-evidently based around timing we need to know how NCO and Tactical Awareness work with that timing.

The simplest way is that the order spent to activate the link only cares about who the Team Leader is at the time it is spent but not about who ends as the Team Leader (since that is chosen after the order is spent). It is simple to explain in the context of the rules, but more convoluted in play because of the odd timing interactions allowing you to chain orders to each other.

The other way requires you to still answer the question of whether or not the special order requires the user to start as Team Leader, but also requires you to build in language locking in Team Leader choice based on having spent that special action.

Any of the three possibilities can be valid, but they all require CB to tell us exactly what's going on here because "is designated" is terribly ambiguous since it tells us nothing about the most important part: the timing.

"Is designated" in English can equally mean "is currently designated" or (somewhat more awkwardly mind you) "is to be designated". The first is just a standard value check allowing a course of action (if x=true then...) while the second is an edict to do something if something else happens (when A, then B). Either way, that sentence needs extra words to clarify what CB meant because no matter which way is simpler to interpret or easier in actual play, we have no idea what their intent was here and really need guidance.

 

I don't feel like it's as ambiguous as you make it out to be. I'm comfortable saying that you can spend the NCO or Tactical Awareness order on a fireteam, so long as you make the model with that skill/order the leader of the team for the duration of that order.

 

It is almost certain that the timing issues that have been brought up were not considered in creating the rule and this is correct. There is a smaller possibility that it was intended to only be used if you were already the leader, but considering the way that would affect the play with TA specifically it is far from likely. And trying to figure out if that was the case is what opened up the other ways the rule breaks mechanics.

 

It 100% is exactly that ambiguous, and I think @DukeofEarl is correct that the mechanics were written without considering or just straight up forgetting how they laid out the actual order of events in the Fireteam rules. The rules as written make a ton more sense if you assume that the Team Leader is chosen when you spend the order to activate the Fireteam.

Why the Team Leader selection rule was written the way it was, I can't tell. As written, the Fireteam rules make you choose the leader only after the order is spent and the unit is activated. This isn't usually an issue because no other rules interact with this part of the game. The only orders that are specifically noted as "that dude's order" (i.e. Impetuous, Irregular, and LT orders) were never allowed to activate a link and this question has never been a thing. So orders being tied to a specific unit being used to activate a link were never a problem (thus the rules don't cover the issue of who needs to be the leader if someone's specific order is spent to activate things).

I do think this was an oversight, I do think it got missed in QA because everyone assumed Team Leader was chosen in a more streamlined way than what is written, I do think it probably is #2 (i.e. they don't have to start as the Team Leader, but spending their special order activates the unit and forcibly nominates them as the Team Leader when it comes time to choose) because that just plays better. But the rules currently read better as #1 since that's the only one that doesn't mess with how timing works with Team Leader (even if the actual mechanics of it are awkward as hell and feel bad in play).

I just think CB need to take the five minutes to say "it works like X" because they should know how they've been playtesting it this whole time to tell us the way it is supposed to work on the table. I can't assume the cleanest-playing version because the game includes corner cases that let you shoot something in the back from its front and sneak attacks that work better when you turn your stealth off. So an answer to what should be a pretty simple question of intent in this case would be appreciated.

 

If you play it way 2 (Tac Awareness model has to already be team leader), then that leads to you being able to spend the TA order and make someone else the Link Lead which seems completely backwards.

The intent of the link lead restriction for TA should be to not pass the use of the skill to other models without having you risk your TA model if you want to shoot with that order.

Way 1 makes more intuitive sense since the team leader is changed at the point where you declare intent to do something with your order, "wishes to activate" being the key words here.

 

while you are talking of way 1 and way 2 from the opening post, i was talking about #1 #2 and #3 from Durandal post.

 

Just to add further fuel to the confusion @Koni did you not say on the Ora Critika podcast that NCO can be used without the NCO being the spearhead? Was this statement incorrect? Or just mistranslated by @Mc_Clane

https://forum.corvusbelli.com/threads/invincible-army-post-mortem.25451/page-55#post-176855

 

I haven't read all the posts yet, but this is my point.
I trully think that sometimes people just try to make something more difficult and hard than it should be !

 

And that's why you started a new thread on this: to make it clear and simple to understand?

I'm with @toadchild on what's intended but also agree that's not what the rules say. Which was exactly what the basic conclusion was in the last thread (also on FB where the TO of said national tournament provided a clear and unambiguous answer).

We have a situation where (basically)* everyone is going "just play it like X until CB sort themselves out". It's not that hard or even unique.

* I'm not aware of anyone advocating playing it strictly RAW.

 

Search "NCO" in IA. I know too many people with your first name so it's not showing up.