Rules Clarification, PLS no flame wars

[peter.cosgrove]

My local playing group has been looking at 8th edition and a couple questions have come up that are perceived to be detrimental to play.

First question. When a unit is embarked upon a transport and is setup during deployment, because the rules state that the unit is removed from play then the unit does not count towards the number of units set up at the beginning of match play. For example, if 3 tactical squads are embarked into transports and the 3 transports are set up during deployment then for counting purposes against the number of units in tactical reserve there are only 3 units set up (the 3 transports) therefore if you have an additional 6 units in tactical reserve you have an invalid set up (3 units on the board vs 6 units in tactical reserve). To clarify further, if you put a single model unit like a HQ unit that can embark upon a Rhino with the tactical squad, then when the Rhino is placed in setup with the HQ unit and the Tactical squad unit, instead of the transport/HQ/Tactical squad counting as 3 units placed in setup against 3 units in tactical reserve, because both the HQ and the Tactical squad are removed from play during setup you only have 1 unit (the Rhino) placed during setup against 3 units in tactical reserve thus invalidating the deployment. This seems to be incorrect unless this is deliberately intended. Unfortunately there is no specific phrasing in the core rule book that states that embarked units in transports that are set up during deployment either do or do not count as set up units that are numerically equivalent to units in tactical reserve. I respectfully request a rules clarification.

The second question. When a unit type is required to choose a keyword to gain a benefit then apparently the faction keyword for the detachment is then required to be that keyword for the detachment and for all units placed in that detachment for the detachment to be valid. For example, Rubric Marines have the ability to choose <Thousand Sons> as their legion choice. Upon choosing <Thousand Sons> as the legion choice the Rubric Marines can then be considered Troop instead of Elite for their battlefield role. Upon choosing a keyword for the unit then the detachment in which the unit is placed is then required to use that keyword and no other keyword, and therefore all other units placed in that detachment are also required to use that keyword and no other keyword. There does not appear to be any specified statement in the core rule book that actually requires this chain of keyword application across multiple units in a detachment. It does state that a single matching keyword across all units in the detachment is required, however it does not specifically state that upon choosing a keyword for a unit that chosen keyword and no other keyword is then also required or not required to be applied or present for all units in the detachment and that the chosen keyword and no other keyword is the required or not required keyword to be applied for the detachment. I respectfully request a rules clarification.

Yours,

Peter H. Cosgrove.
 

[WestRider]

I don't actually see anything stating that a Unit Deployed in a Transport isn't on the Battlefield. All the Transports section says is that they cannot interact with any other Units until they Disembark. As far as I can tell, they do count as Deployed Units for purposes of Tactical Reserves.

Similarly, I can't find anything that actually says that if you have Thousand Sons Rubric Marines, that whole Detachment has to be Thousand Sons. It's arguably implied by the heading "Thousand Sons Army Rules" on that page, but I can't find anything that explicitly adds a stronger restriction than the standard one that they must all have at least one Faction Keyword in common. It looks to me like you could, for example, take a couple of Squads of Thousand Sons Rubric Marines as Troops in an otherwise Khorne Daemon Detachment, since all the Units would still share the Chaos Faction Keyword.

I am absolutely not 100% sure on either of these, tho. I may well be missing something.

[SPaceORK]

20 minutes ago, WestRider said:

I don't actually see anything stating that a Unit Deployed in a Transport isn't on the Battlefield. All the Transports section says is that they cannot interact with any other Units until they Disembark. As far as I can tell, they do count as Deployed Units for purposes of Tactical Reserves.

Similarly, I can't find anything that actually says that if you have Thousand Sons Rubric Marines, that whole Detachment has to be Thousand Sons. It's arguably implied by the heading "Thousand Sons Army Rules" on that page, but I can't find anything that explicitly adds a stronger restriction than the standard one that they must all have at least one Faction Keyword in common. It looks to me like you could, for example, take a couple of Squads of Thousand Sons Rubric Marines as Troops in an otherwise Khorne Daemon Detachment, since all the Units would still share the Chaos Faction Keyword.

I am absolutely not 100% sure on either of these, tho. I may well be missing something.

I'm pretty sure you are 95% correct. Not sure how Thousand Sons become troops, but them having <Thousand Sons> keyword would not prevent them from being in a detachments that are mostly Khorne/Nurgle/Slaneesh as they all have the Chaos keyword. Now, maybe not being in an all Thousand Sons detachment would prevent them from being troops but I dunno. I don't have a book in front of me.

[Threejacks]

 Westrider is correct about the Transport thing:)

  The detatchement wording rules are certainly not very clear in more than just one area,AoS was the same way when Battalions were being released, they since have cleared it up with FaQs as they will need to do with 40k.My general take on the 40k version is that if you choose a (sub) faction keyword in order to obtain an ability or benifit ,as in being able to take a unit as a troop choice,,then all of the other dataslates in that detatchment need to have that chosen keyword.

   This will probably be more clear once we start seeing more sub-faction benifits/abilities as new codexes are released,,the problem now is that the rules seem to imply that we need to follow the specific keywords chosen but dont have much of a reason to in most cases.

[WestRider]

11 hours ago, Spaceork said:

I'm pretty sure you are 95% correct. Not sure how Thousand Sons become troops, but them having <Thousand Sons> keyword would not prevent them from being in a detachments that are mostly Khorne/Nurgle/Slaneesh as they all have the Chaos keyword. Now, maybe not being in an all Thousand Sons detachment would prevent them from being troops but I dunno. I don't have a book in front of me.

There's just a note that Rubric Marines with the Thousand Sons keyword are Troops instead of Elites. That's the only thing I can find on the matter.

[InfestedKerrigan]

You are all wrong. Build a wall, we need some Change! Impeach Hillary and Bill! Read my lips! Multiple transports of mass destruction have been found.

[peter.cosgrove]

I was told that because of the wording "once a unit is embarked upon a transport the unit is removed from play"  partial sentence in the transport section of the core rule book then automatically according to both GW and Frontline Games that unit no longer counts as a unit set up during deployment. I was even told "what part of removed from play don't you understand?" and "go ahead and bring a list that has units in transports counting against units in tactical reserve, we [the two people I was having a discussion list] will make sure your list is invalidated"

The discussion point regarding optional factions determining detachment faction composition is perhaps more esoteric excepting the point that you typically gain 1-2 "USR's" by giving a unit a faction that is generically optional AND does it mean you can ONLY take certain units by that faction?

For example, Blood Angels Death Company, are they a unit that can ONLY be taken in a Blood Angles detachment where all the units in the detachment are required to be Blood Angels? or can I slice them out into other faction detachments?

[WestRider]

Who were you told this by? I haven't seen that anywhere written from FLG. I don't follow GW's stuff too closely, so I might well have missed that.

Without more support, that's extrapolating a lot from a sentence fragment that only actually refers to Embarking during the Game.

[InfestedKerrigan]

2 hours ago, peter.cosgrove said:

For example, Blood Angels Death Company, are they a unit that can ONLY be taken in a Blood Angles detachment where all the units in the detachment are required to be Blood Angels? or can I slice them out into other faction detachments?

They can be taken in any battle forged detachment that contains only units that share at least 1 Keyword, but they all have to have that keyword. You can mix and match all imperium. You can mix and match all Astartes. You can mix and match all Blood Angles, or you can go all Death Company. The choice is yours, unless a TO or EO takes that choice away from you. Then they are ass hats.

[peter.cosgrove]

The discussion point then begs the question of, if you take Rubric Marines and choose Thousand Sons as the optional legion choice, can you then put them into Troops Battlefield Roles for a detachment that uses, for example, Chaos as the unifying keyword for the detachment. I haven't looked closely at Khorne Zerkers, but if they also have the World Eaters or whatever option, then can you take both Thousand Sons and World Eater Zerkers as troop choices. There are some added benefits to making certain choices, Ahriman for example lets Thousand Sons units reroll 1's for invuln saves, etc.

I/e What added restrictions become representative of fluff>crunch when choosing keyword applications if filling the detachment is not actually based on the choosing of the keyword and benefits thereby gained. If there is no real or perceived negatives to choosing a keyword then why even have the option to choose; it seems inefficient.

[InfestedKerrigan]

No, then it's not a Thousand Sons detachment, it's a chaos detachment, as I understand it.

 

Like the Elves. You can take a complete mix of E and DE, but if you choose to not take HCoven, you can take the Death ability.

[InfestedKerrigan]

Although, it looks like World Eaters can take Sorcs...

[InfestedKerrigan]

Right now, there isn't a huge benefit for being a 1k Son or Ultramarines force. When codex come out, I bet we see benefits come into play. As it stands, from what I am seeing, you can take a Chaos Detachment and have World Eater Berzerkers and 1k Son Rubrics as troops. It is a Chaos or Heretic Astartes Detachment, depending on the addition of daemons or not. 

[Lyraeus]

So units in transports behave a few ways. 

 

First, those embarked into a transport don't count as separate drops. So 10 Nobz, Pain Boy, and Weirdboy count as 1 deployment when you deploy the Transport. 

Those in vehicles are not in reserves, they are set aside and can shoot from open top vehicles. 

 

Choosing Keyword designation happens during list building. So you decided your Chapter, your Legion, Sept, Dynasty, etc as you build your list. Of you have let's say 2 Captains, one White Scars and one Blood Ravens, then you would specify that during the list creation 

[Threejacks]

 Pete,,not sure about the info you got from those guys regarding transports..but the rulebook description even states "when you set up a transport,units can start the battle within it instead of being set up separetaly-declare which units are being set up within the transports when you set up"

 Further,there is no such statement within the transport rules stating that the unit being transported is "removed from play",,,if there is would someone please show me were it says that.Now "removed from the battlefield" and " removed from play" are two different things,especially when considering that units mounted in some transports can shoot out of it in the shooting phase.

  So as far as I can see, there is not statement of "removed from play" for you to not understand:)

EIther way though,,its still very early,,actually the game is still on the shelf till next week,so yeah,,probably not worth getting into it too intensly at this point.

 

 

[Swan-of-War]

Also, units embark into fortifications - how could they shoot from it if they are "removed from play"?

[peter.cosgrove]

3 hours ago, Lyraeus said:

So units in transports behave a few ways. 

 

First, those embarked into a transport don't count as separate drops. So 10 Nobz, Pain Boy, and Weirdboy count as 1 deployment when you deploy the Transport. 

Those in vehicles are not in reserves, they are set aside and can shoot from open top vehicles. 

 

Choosing Keyword designation happens during list building. So you decided your Chapter, your Legion, Sept, Dynasty, etc as you build your list. Of you have let's say 2 Captains, one White Scars and one Blood Ravens, then you would specify that during the list creation 

So, you are saying that an HQ unit, a Troop unit, deployed (set up) in a transport unit only count as one unit instead of 3 units against your required half total Tactical reserve units? So instead of having 3 units deployed for 3 other units in tactical reserve, by embarking the HQ unit and the Troop unit into the Transport unit and setting them up during deployment means you cannot have 3 units in tactical reserve you can only have 1?

Where exactly does it state that in the core rulebook?

[peter.cosgrove]

48 minutes ago, Threejacks said:

 Pete,,not sure about the info you got from those guys regarding transports..but the rulebook description even states "when you set up a transport,units can start the battle within it instead of being set up separetaly-declare which units are being set up within the transports when you set up"

 Further,there is no such statement within the transport rules stating that the unit being transported is "removed from play",,,if there is would someone please show me were it says that.Now "removed from the battlefield" and " removed from play" are two different things,especially when considering that units mounted in some transports can shoot out of it in the shooting phase.

  So as far as I can see, there is not statement of "removed from play" for you to not understand:)

EIther way though,,its still very early,,actually the game is still on the shelf till next week,so yeah,,probably not worth getting into it too intensly at this point.

 

 

Evidently, because the unit is removed from battlefield it no longer counts as a unit set up during deployment which means it no longer counts against units in tactical reserve. That's what I was told.

Evidently.

[Swan-of-War]

Actually, I read the transport rules again and can kinda see their interpretation.  

[peter.cosgrove]

It does beg the question therefore, if a unit is removed from the battlefield upon embarking then they cannot shoot out of open topped vehicles or fortifications since they are not actually there.

[Lyraeus]

16 hours ago, peter.cosgrove said:

So, you are saying that an HQ unit, a Troop unit, deployed (set up) in a transport unit only count as one unit instead of 3 units against your required half total Tactical reserve units? So instead of having 3 units deployed for 3 other units in tactical reserve, by embarking the HQ unit and the Troop unit into the Transport unit and setting them up during deployment means you cannot have 3 units in tactical reserve you can only have 1?

Where exactly does it state that in the core rulebook?

They don't count as anything for tactical reserves. 

Tactical Reserves are the special rules like Manta Strike, teleportarium, etc. 

[peter.cosgrove]

In 8th edition you have to set up half of your units during your deployment aka 6th edition style. Those units that are set up are counted against the number of units in Tactical Reserve. In order to have 3 units in Tactical Reserve you have to have 3 units set up during deployment. That's why I used the word against. As in if you have 3 units set up (2 in a transport plus the transport) that counts as 3 units against the units in tactical reserve.

[Lyraeus]

Transports don't count the as tactical reserves. It is not setting models into reserves in any way, why can be interacted with in a limited number of ways. 

 

Tactical Reserves are, as I stated before, abilities like Manta Strike, It's After Me!, Death From Below, etc. 

Basically abilities that state "During Deployment...." in the abilities section. 

[InfestedKerrigan]

Ly, you're misunderstanding what pete is saying.

[InfestedKerrigan]

Only half your army can be in reserve. He's talking about the half that gets deployed on table.  He's asking if a Ded Trans, deployed with 5 sternguard and 5 librarians counts as deploying 11 units ( meaning you can have 11 in Tac Res) or if it counts as a single deployment resulting in a single unit getting to benefit from Tact Reserve special rule.