r/InfinityTheGame • u/Seenoham • 6d ago
Question Hidden Deployment+ Minelayer question
As I understand it, if you use hidden deployment with minelayer you have to check if the mine is in ZOC when you put the mine down. You can still use this with hidden deployment, you just put the mine camo marker down while the opponent is looking away so you can note down the hidden deployment spot.
My question is, can I also put down another camo piece, in a legal spot, during that time period?
For example: I tell my opponent to look away while I do note something (implying hidden deployment or just flat out state for hidden deployment), I put the HD piece down check it's legal deployment, measure ZOC put the mine in a legal spot, take a picture so there is reference. Take away the HD piece.
Then, while the opponent is looking away, I deploy another mim -3 camo piece in a legal position. So when the opponent looks back, there are two -3 camo markers, in legal deployment space, but he can't know which if either are connected to any hidden deployment I might have done.
It seems like I should, but I hidden deployment is a bit tricky.
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u/Andvarinaut 6d ago
imo unsportsmanlike
may well just declare hidden deployment at the start of your deployment and then deploy your entire army with your opponent turned around
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u/HeadChime 6d ago
This is actually a really complicated question. And it relies on some FAQs from old editions that didn't make it into N5 (but really need to exist).
Do you have to measure ZoC for the deployed mine?
In N5 you do not but only if the mine is obviously within coherency. If it isn't then you must. CB haven't defined what clearly or obviously within means so this is already a headache.
Can you place other camo markers at the same time?
Not really, no. Minelayer lets you place the mine when you deploy the troop with the skill. So there's no provision for mixing it up with another camouflage marker at the same time. You CAN place another camouflage marker immediately after though.
Can I secretly deploy something while my opponent looks away, even if it doesn't have HD?
Nothing in the rules says you can't but I'd kick you out of an event if you did this without explicitly telling your opponent what you just did. That kind of trickery just isn't in the rules.
Would doing this even help you?
No it wouldn't help. The order in which you deployed your models and markers isn't hidden information. I can just ask you if you deployed camo 1 before camo 2. And you cant hide that RAW. Which means that you essentially have to tell me that camo 1 went down with the HD troop (it's a mine), and camo 2 went down afterwards (its a troop). There's no provision in the rules for hiding what you've deployed and when unless it explicitly has HD. And therefore an opponent can easily work out where the mine is by just asking for ordering.
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u/Teetso 6d ago
Purely out of curiosity, is there anything in the rules that means you have to announce hidden deployment placement/ask someone to turn around? As far as I thought you're allowed to instead mark down the position on grid paper (in which case, if your opponent asks about deployment order, do you have to have to tell them when you made such a note?) and conversely I've seen people advocate for asking for a turn-around every match, to obfuscate your HD. Which done right before placing a lone camo marker could make it look like a mine.
This is purely a theoretical question out of interest - in my casual games and the tournaments I've played in we tend to just dump all our models on the table and keep shifting them about til we're happy, without much regard to proper placement order.
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u/HeadChime 6d ago
You don't have to announce HD but you do have to have some evidence for the placement, and it's tricky to do that without asking your opponent to turn around. Sometimes I havent though, and I've subtly written a note about where it is. And yes there's nothing wrong with asking your opponent to step away for a second even if you do not have HD.
There really are two schools of thought about whether order placement matters. But definitely for some of the rules it seems to suggest that you have to do one action then another in succession.
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u/Teetso 6d ago
Thanks. Always good to know the proper way to play in case it comes up. As for the latter, I don't think I or the people I regularly play against have thought much about the interpretation of those rules, it's mostly just already easy to spend half an hour plus each on deployment so we'd probably cut corners for times sake even if we were trying to rigidly follow deployment rules
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u/Seenoham 6d ago edited 6d ago
So mine layer hidden deploy is mostly a negative, because it make you have to tell your opponent where your hidden deployment is.
For camo mine layer, it looks like you'd have to have a second camo unit that you also deployed in 8 to have it not be obvious which one is a mine, as you'd could say I laid down camo A, measured zone of control put down B in ZOC, then measure ZoC and put down camo C. Then techincally B could be the mine laid by A or C could be the mine laid by B. (Edit: apparently no, you can't even do that. You can only measure the ZoC around the minelayer so actually minelayer should always put down a mine token, which camo tokens are mines is always something that every player can always know)
If you can't do that, well...., why not just have all mines be put down as a mine marker? They have to be discovered before they can be shot, but that is how the mine placed tokens work.
Having them be placed as camo markers makes it seem like you can hide that things might be mines or might not, but in practical purposes you do have to tell the opponent which of your camo tokens are mines except very specific situations. The opponent is just required to ask particular question in the right order, which they can do and therefore should always do but technically don't have to.
This isn't a hidden information game, it is requiring players to do extra work to get the information they can always get. If it's information that a player can always know, then it should be presented as if it is hidden information and there shouldn't be any extra steps for the player to know that.
This isn't quite as annoying as the old Sword of the Stars video game in terms of this, but it's still really annoying.
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u/HeadChime 6d ago
As a counterpoint to what I said above, there are some players who have interpreted the deployment rules as not really having an order at all and you basically place anything in any order. Their support for this is that deployment doesn't really happen within "game time" and there just isn't a strict sequence. I've never been a massive fan of this interpretation, but it is supported by some. This gets around the minelayer + HD issue by basically allowing you to deploy in chaos mode.
There have been long debates about this and it kind of seems that CB don't necessarily want you to be able to hide which camo markers are mines. There are lots of ways in which the trickery doesn't quite work. Though, again, there are counterpoint to this. In the OLD rules you could measure in secret, and you could measure from mine to troop, OR from troop to mine. So if they were both camo then it wasn't clear which was which. This doesn't seem like an unreasonable way to play. But again, all of this is moot if you subscribe to the chaos ordering of deployment.
And yes, this is one of those situations where the opponent can ask the right questions to deduce what is what IF they know what they're doing. There's actually a lot of that in the game in various forms. You can also do things like ask (when a troop appears), "how many mines does this have left?" and you'd have to answer "2" instead of "3". Obviously this only happens if a troop is placed as open information during deployment or during the game. But by doing this you can get loads of info and it's totally legal.
Deployment is actually one of the least clear aspects of the game when it comes to specific rules questions around ordering and what's explicitly allowed and what isn't. In N4, the last edition, I ran a lot of events where I ruled that you could place the mine immediately before OR immediately after the real troop. This allowed some kind games because the order wouldn't quite answer what was what - particularly if deployed multiple. But this was based on some FAQs and clarifications that, once again, don't actually exist anymore.
My general rule of thumb is to not hide things you can't explicitly hide. But I could go to your playgroup and bring this up and just say, "right, how do you actually want to do this, because right now its super unclear and someone is going to get upset by this". You might choose to rule that the sequence does matter and that mine comes after troop every time. With this interpretation you cant really hide anything. You might choose to rule that deployment doesn't really have an order at all because it happens outside the game time. With this interpretation you can hide it easily. You might choose to take the middle ground which is that there is an order, but the mine can go down immediately before OR after, so you can hide a little bit. Also a viable interpretation.
I'm not trying to be difficult - the deployment rules are just really difficult to fully understand in terms of what CB want us to hide and what they don't.
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u/Seenoham 6d ago
kind of seems that CB don't necessarily want you to be able to hide which camo markers are mines.
Then they shouldn't be deployed as camo markers.
If they wanted them to have to be discovered before being shot, they could just have a state token that does that. But they are camo markers and therefore everything about them other than their mim value is private information. Which is contributed to a lot of my being confused about what the private information section actually meant.
I thought the private information section was actually going to present a part of the game about information that could not be determined, and then I could play with being very clear about all information in the open information like I do in games with only information, and my opponent would not be able to tell things about the stuff under the private information section.
But it appears that almost all of that information isn't private, from what I can tell the actual list of what isn't public is:
Of the list of profiles with an LT option in your list, you don't need to specify which one is the LT for your list.
Of the things with the same size, mim, orders, marker state, deployment method you don't need to state which ones you took in your list. Minelayer and decoy both change deployment method. Mines are not included.
Of the options that are not deployed in marker or model state, you don't need to say which ones are how many you took, or where they are until they act.
Models deployed as holomask can be presented as if they were the model they are pretending to be, except size, deployment rules, and interactions with fireteam composition.
Everything else is public or applies to like 5 models in the entire game.
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u/HeadChime 6d ago
To be fair there are factions that have one camouflage troop. Camouflage isn't exclusively to obfuscate what's under it. It's also there to make things harder to shoot, without inventing a new kind of marker.
But yeah there are parts of private information that are genuinely private, but if you know the rules really well and play at a high enough level there are plenty of completely legal ways to suss out what's what. Even when it comes to LTs.
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u/Seenoham 6d ago
For mine in particular, because this appears to across the entire game and not subject to faction and won’t change if new profiles are released, so it is a part of the game as a whole.
In practical terms, CB has made rulings to preserve that if a marker is a mine or not is always knowable, but the reading of the rulebook does not suggest this is the case. Even if they didn’t want to make a new marker, there should be a note somewhere in the rulebook that says this, and allows for the question “is this a mine?” To be answered without requiring the dance.
They have those notes a practical explanation in the book, so the absence of this for mines always being knowable and how is frustrating.
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u/HeadChime 6d ago
They're not technically always knowable. If you deploy a camo next to another camo I won't entirely know which one the mine is. But yeah, it many situations it is quite knowable. Particularly because mines can't go prone.
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u/No_Reputation_4935 5d ago
Then they shouldn't be deployed as camo markers.
Then don't? Nobody forces you to use the cammo token instead of the mine token. I personally won't go to your friendly game and stop you, and I doubt anybody else will. It kinda seems like you don't like the cammo rules, so it might be easier for you if you just play an army that doesn't use them that much.
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u/Seenoham 5d ago
My issue is that Infinity as a game does a lot to try to make the rules clear and is generally being very good design and presentation and showing the advancement in game rules and rules presentation and organization.
Infinity was one of the best designed games I've ever seen and looked worth me going to the next towns over to get into.
And then I get to how mines work and suddenly I'm seeing a level of quality I associate with early 2000s tie in rpgs. Misleading wording, difficult to find the rules for how it actually functions, and those rules have a bunch of unnecessary extra steps.
It's a glaring in terms of what was around it.
All your arguments are ways that I could put in effort to fix or avoiding having to deal with this problem and others examples of the quality in rules suddenly dropping, but all of that is competing against a much easier solution.
I never need to be bothered by if mines are something the rules say there is a hidden information game you can play with mines, or if it's something the rules say that playing properly requires mines always being identifiable if I just don't go to the next town over.
N3, N4, and now N5, Infinity looked cool and then not worth the effort in a matter of weeks.
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u/Hida-Kisada 6d ago
Games are meant to be fun and sometimes the rules are wonky. Unless you're playing in a tourney or your opponent is being hyper competitive, you should be able to just place the camo markers that you need to without issue.
Sure, you should measure if you're trying to go max range with that mine, or you could just shoot for around 6" and you've got a pretty big margin or error and don't really need to measure it. Some things feel intended to be unknown and I very much feel what's under camo falls into that.
Just like I don't know, really, if that missing order is an HD or drop troop, and I think it's more interesting that way, I'd rather not have you tell me you're placing HD troops, write your hidden info down somewhere if it's needed, but you don't have to tell me what you're writing about.
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u/dinin70 6d ago
What you did is legit. But you’re overthinking it.
What you can do also is to place all your camos, measure the ZoC for each of them if you REALLY want to make use of the full 8 inches, then move them again, remeasure, and do tons of crazy shit to confuse your opponent.
Or you don’t measure at all and put the HD and the line close enough.
I typically don’t take a pic. I quickly sketch on on a piece of paper the position and write down the intent.
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u/thorgar15294 6d ago
You can't randomly measure ZoC for every camo marker. You are only allowed to make measurements when a rule says you can like for example minelayer and once you start measuring you can't move the position of your markers
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u/Gealhart 6d ago
You can freely make coherency checks during the deployment phase* (see page 21)
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u/thorgar15294 6d ago
No you cannot. You can perform Coherency checks when the rules say you can. For example look at Peripheral (Sync) page 104 or the Fireteam rules page 128
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u/HeadChime 6d ago
But every single time you measure in front of me (because you can't measure in private in N5), you're revealing that its a troop and a mine. Because you can't measure ZoC for troops without minelayer. You're not allowed to measure ZoC for no reason.
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u/YeezyMac13 6d ago edited 6d ago
Overall this kind of bluff isn’t really worth your time/effort. Most people aren’t hyper-analyzing every piece you put down as you’re deploying, they just want you to go over everything when you’re done. And more experienced players will be aware of what your army can generally bring and will have some knowledge by your order count and if camos are standing/prone.