It should do.
But like I saidhard wall is not designed to be tiled straight on to.
You're dead right, but beer crates are not designed to stand on either!!
Aimes was not designed for making good, but it works.
So without being too much of a a smart a**e -
Hardwall is designed to be skimmed, but that's only to give it a surface to receive paint, not because of any intrinsic problem with hardwall. When hardwall was introduced in about 89(?) BG told us it was designed to replace 6:1:1 sand n cement for internal work, (float and set)
This was because bonding was terrible stuff to use and browning was, not to put too fine a point on it, sh1te (although lovely to mix and use), and BG were not making any money from internal sand n cement, of which there was plenty at the time.
By skimming it you are introducing another layer - the bond between tile adhesive and hardwall will be as strong. This is why you tile onto render rather than skimmed render if possible .The bond between skim and render is weaker than that of adhesive and render or adhesive and skim ie you are introducing a waker bond into the system.A tiler will prefer a skimmed wall as he uses less adhesive (in the same way they don't like devilled up sand n cement to tile on) and ordinary hardwall to receive skim will use a lot of adhesive, and is a bit more porous/more suction.
If you are part tiling a wall of hardwall, you are obviously better to skim it all. Any skim you are tiling, as prentice says , better to leave it matt.
If you want a surface to tile, sand and cement is the one, but any sound skimmed surface will do you.
You can tile onto hardwall and it will last, and you can get hardwall closed in good enough with fat to help the tiler. I'm sitting about 5 yards from some that was done 13 years ago
And as regards hardwall on to smooth tiles, I wouldn't like it at all. But if you cleaned the tiles, so no grease/dust etc, chipped with a hammer , slurried them well and tested the slurry, you would be fine. Personally, I'd have it off, though. If you used bondit it and after a day or so you could peel it off - could you trust it?
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