The same conversation has come up on WGC Infinity at least three times in the past month.  It’s apparently a squirrelier subject than it should be.  I get it: the first time it came up, I thought, “That’s wrong and BS!” until the rule was pointed out to me and now I get it.

I don’t especially like the rule, but the rule is the rule, and it’s unambiguous.

Specifically, there are several scenarios win which Model A might be in Model B’s front arc, but Model B cannot draw LoF to Model A from their front arc due to terrain.

This boils down to positioning, but gets trickier when it comes to elevation or, more easily, Super-Jump, where a player can say, “I’m Jumping just high enough to only draw LoF to the back half of your volume.”

This really seems to drive people over a cliff.  Uncharitable character judgments are being made, posturing about how they’d never play someone again, etc… and I think it’s unreasonable: one of the great things about Infinity is there isn’t really RAI, just RAW.  That RAW might be a little tortured, but it’s rarely ambiguous.

It’s frustrating that it’s come up so many times, and people get really worked up over it, so I threw together some diagrams that might help.  It won’t, but I can hope.

The key rule to this is from the first FAQ on the Line of Fire entry: “In summary: For a miniature can ARO must be within its 180˚ front half base and be able to draw the LoF from those 180˚.”

The standard move in Infinity is to place your model facing directly at the wall in front of them, perfectly parallel to it: that way, if someone comes around either side, they’ll be in their front arc.  This means that the back half of the volume of the silhouette is exposed from above.

If the model rotate’s 90˚, they can cover one direction and be protected from above… but leave the other direction exposed. I don’t think that’s a bad thing: the idea of a perfect defense doesn’t feel right in Infinity.  You have to make choices, take risks.