ARO: Automatic Reaction Order

In Infinity games, thanks to the Automatic Reaction Order (ARO) mechanic, the action and decision-making never stops. Even during their opponent's Active Turn, a player's Troopers, Models and Markers can react each time the opponent activates one of his Troopers by spending an Order.

The Reactive Player's Troopers may declare an ARO whenever they meet any of the following criteria:

An enemy Trooper activates within its Line of Fire (LoF).
An enemy Trooper activates within its Zone of Control (ZoC) or Hacking Area.
It has a Special Skill, weapon, or piece of Equipment that specifies that the Trooper can react to enemy actions without LoF or ZoC.
It is affected by a Template Weapon, or is the target of a Comms Attack.

The Reactive Player must declare AROs for all eligible Troopers, Models, or Markers immediately after the Active Player declares his Long Skill, or the Basic Short Skill he intends to perform first (see: Order Expenditure Sequence). Troopers that fail to do so lose their ARO against that Order. If, by declaring the second Short Skill of its Order, the active Trooper gives an ARO to enemy Troopers that did not have ARO against the first Basic Short Skill, then those enemy Troopers can declare their AROs.

Each time the Active Player activates a Trooper by spending an Order, each eligible enemy Trooper gets one single ARO, regardless of the number of Skills the Active Player declares during that Order.

The target of an ARO must always be one of the Troopers that have been activated by the Order.

Troopers may not react to AROs, since only the Active Player's Orders give AROs and only the Reactive Player may declare AROs.

There is no limit to the number of Troopers that may react to an Order being spent on an enemy Trooper.

IMPORTANT

Using an ARO, the Reactive Player can only declare Skills that specifically state they are usable in ARO (check the Summary Chart).

Unless a Special Skill, Equipment or scenario rule states otherwise, AROs always have Burst B1. In such a situation, if the Reactive Trooper has a Burst value higher than one in ARO, they cannot split it amongst different targets.

All at Once

In Infinity, Orders and AROs are simultaneous regardless of the Skills declared.

For example, if an activated Trooper declares Move + BS Attack and chooses to shoot from its starting position (to take advantage of a favorable Range), and its target reacts with a BS Attack, choosing to shoot at the end of the Movement (again, for Range purposes), then both actions are still considered to be simultaneous for all game purposes.

IMPORTANT

All AROs are also simultaneous. This means that, if a Camouflage Marker declares a Move, the opponent can declare Discover with Troopers that have LoF to it, but they cannot declare Discover with one of the Troopers and BS Attack with the rest, waiting for the Discover Roll to be successful (see: Camouflaged State).