Rites Of War and Alternste FOCs

[Lunar Centurion]

Can you take RoWs in non-AoD detachments? I was gonna try and take Pride alongside my IM to have an ace-in-the-hole fluffy marine squad, but I don't know if it's legal. Can I?

[Emperors Teeth]

Whilst you definitely can't use Rites of War with the alternate Age of Darkness charts (such as Onslaught), there doesn't appear to be any specific mention of not being able to use them if you're using the standard 40k Org chart.

 

What is 'IM' btw? You can't ally your 30k stuff to your 40k stuff if that's where you're going but I'm just guessing that that is 'Imperial Marines'?

 

The only specific reference I found was a line in a paragraph 'The Battles in the Age of Darkness Force Organisation Chart' that says "This Force Organisation chart has also been created to work in tandem with the Rites of War rules found in this book". But even that doesn't say you can only use them in Age of Darkness games.

 

Regardless, I would strongly recommend using the chart at least against other 30k opponents and only resorting to the standard 40k one if you are playing against a 40k opponent. For the fluffs and awesomes.

[Caillum]

Imperialis Militia?

 

Technically, there's no "Age of Darkness Detachment", but rather an "Age of Darkness Force Organisation Chart" that consists of a Primary Detachment, a Lord of War, a Fortification and an Allied Detachment.

 

Do you want to run Pride of the Legion on your Allied Detachment? Coz that's totally fine. :) Just need to meet the prerequisites as normal.

[Hesh Kadesh]

Those prerequisites being your Warlord having the Master of the Legion special rule which he gains by having the Master of the Legion rule already which he cannot actually have until he becomes a Warlord, so leading to a divide by zero/self qualification effect.

 

Oh, and it only affects the Primary Detachment anyway. The straightest amd most obvious bit is that bit about it only being Age of Darkness.

 

Rites of War are terribly written. Just do like everyone else when coming with a Takes all comers list, and use a Master of the Legion as your Warlord in a primary detachment of a Age of Detachment FoC. Nothing else gets affected by the Rite of War.

[Slips]

Those prerequisites being your Warlord having the Master of the Legion special rule which he gains by having the Master of the Legion rule already which he cannot actually have until he becomes a Warlord, so leading to a divide by zero/self qualification effect.

 

Oh, and it only affects the Primary Detachment anyway. The straightest amd most obvious bit is that bit about it only being Age of Darkness.

 

Rites of War are terribly written. Just do like everyone else when coming with a Takes all comers list, and use a Master of the Legion as your Warlord in a primary detachment of a Age of Detachment FoC. Nothing else gets affected by the Rite of War.

But what of the "Master Of The Legion" USR Present on the Profiles of the Primarchs and Preator / Preator-Level Characters?

[Caillum]

I think we can agree that Master of the Legion is supposed to mean:

- that you can only have 1 model with the rule per 1,000 points,

- that it allows you to take a Rite of War for your Detachment (which only affects that Detachment),

- that you may roll twice on your chosen Warlord Trait chart, and select one (provided you are also the Warlord).

 

e.g.; in a 2000-point list, you can take a Primary Detachment of Death Guard with a Praetor running "The Reaping", plus an Allied Detachment of Night Lords with Sevatar running "Terror Assault". The Death Guard Praetor is chosen to be the Warlord, so he gets to "roll twice and select one" Warlord Trait.

 

They've simply typo'd it in such a way that it makes no sense grammatically, but can be interpreted logically.

[Hesh Kadesh]

 

 

Those prerequisites being your Warlord having the Master of the Legion special rule which he gains by having the Master of the Legion rule already which he cannot actually have until he becomes a Warlord, so leading to a divide by zero/self qualification effect.

 

Oh, and it only affects the Primary Detachment anyway. The straightest amd most obvious bit is that bit about it only being Age of Darkness.

 

Rites of War are terribly written. Just do like everyone else when coming with a Takes all comers list, and use a Master of the Legion as your Warlord in a primary detachment of a Age of Detachment FoC. Nothing else gets affected by the Rite of War.

But what of the "Master Of The Legion" USR Present on the Profiles of the Primarchs and Preator / Preator-Level Characters?

The master of the legion rule self disqualifies itself, it is that brilliant of a rule. Only 1 per 1000pts (is that 1-1000, or 0-999pts brackets), but then only the warlord has that rule. Which means that it cannot have the rule until the point of appointing Walords, but it is the Master of the Legion rule which is reliant on having the Master of the Legion rule to get the Master of the Legion rule when Warlords are chosen, which it doesn't have because the master of the legion rule (again, which it doesn't have)only allows a warlord to have it.

 

It is why it has been rewritten locally to how everyone plays it.

 

Any model with the Master of the Legion rule may take a Legion Command Squad, or other unit as noted in the individual Legion entry and if chosen as the Warlord, he may roll twice on the same Trait table, and choose which of the two to take, rerolling only one of the dice of his choice if the two are tied.

 

Finally, a Primary Detachment with a Master of the Legion as the Warlord may take a single Rite of War. Unless otherwise noted, this Rite of War has no effect on models in allied Detachments.

 

Compare my rule to how it is written. Easybake.

[Lunar Centurion]

Okay... so I can take allied ROWs? That was what I was asking. And IM means Imperial Militia.

[Hesh Kadesh]

No-one knows.

 

But no.

[Caillum]

Personally, I think you can. Otherwise they wouldn't have mentioned the point. "...allied forces eligible to do so may use different rites, or none at all..." But the writing is abysmal, so best to run it by your usual opponents.

 

Makes it hard when you're tying to buy an army with a list in mind, and you don't even know if you can legally run it!

[Terminus]

I also think you can.

 

The sentence that "self-disqualifies" itself isn't even a sentence.

 

If the army's Warlord, they have the Master of the Legion special rule.

If the army's warlord what? This doesn't say anything at all.

 

Did they mean a model that is the Warlord gets that rule, so non-warlord praetors don't? Or did they want to say if the Warlord also has the Master of the Legion rule, he gets rerolls? At what point do you unlock Rites? In fact, the book technically never says Master of the Legion opens up rites of war, it's just obliquely implied by being on the same page. The 1 per 1000 limit isn't defined either.

 

Basically do whatever your local group decides.

[Hesh Kadesh]

Models which have the Master of the Legion gain the Master of the Legion rule if they are the warlord. Until they are the warlord, they don't get the Master of the Legion rule as a result of this (because they aren't the warlord). If they don't have Madter of the Legion, they don't get Master of the Legion.

[Terminus]

That is never stated by the rules.

[Hesh Kadesh]

Sadly. It is. If you have Master of the Legion but only gain it when you are the warlord, QED, you don't have it when you're not the Warlord.

[Raktra]

I also think you can.

 

The sentence that "self-disqualifies" itself isn't even a sentence.

 

If the army's Warlord, they have the Master of the Legion special rule.

If the army's warlord what? This doesn't say anything at all.

 

It's just a grammatical choice to save unnecessary repetition/keeping the sentence tidier. Hesh has got the right of it there.

 

I'm agreeing with you, Hesh, it's a New Year's miracle!

[Terminus]

Grammar is not a choice, it's either grammatically sound or not. That sentence is incomplete.

[Raktra]

In order, it is, it isn't, and it isn't. "If the army's Warlord" is as valid as "if they are the army's warlord", provided the context is correct (which this one is).

[Caillum]

But why mention Allies being able to take "different Rites"? If only a Warlord can take Rites, that allowance is completely moot.

 

Hesh, you're advocating the premise that "if your Warlord has the Master of the Legion rule, he gains the Master of the Legion rule"; if he has the rule listed, he has the rule regardless. What I think FW meant to say is the following:

 

- 3rd paragraph: "If the army's Warlord (see the Warhammer 40,000 Rulebook) HAS the Master of the Legion special rule, they may roll twice on their chosen Warlord Traits chart (re-rolling any doubled result) and select which of the two results they wish to use."

(i.e.: any MotL can take a Rite of War, but your Warlord only gets the Warlord Trait roll benefit if he has MotL)

 

- 5th paragraph: "Only one Rite of War may be used by a detachment, regardless of whether multiple characters with this rule are included, and the Rite of War chosen only affects the detachment the character is drawn from. However, allied forces eligible to do so may use different rites or none at all - effects do not carry over to an Allied Detachment from the Primary Detachment or vice versa."

(i.e.: Death Guard Praetor from a Primary Detachment can run The Reaping, while Sevatar in his Allied Detachment of Night Lords can run Orbital Assault. Neither Rites have any effect outside their detachments)

 

This is, IMHO, the most appropriate way to play it. It's not game-breaking (given how few Rites allow Legion allies) and it is more-than-likely RAI. Sticking to RAW here won't work due to poor grammar, so I'm trying to think laterally.

 

Thoughts?

[Hesh Kadesh]

If he has the rule, then why does he explicity gain the rule when he becomes Warlord?

 

RAW and common sense aren't on speaking terms, and what FW intentioned isn't really any of our business (after all, look at the Reaping, what they intentioned there was to create a fluffy DG force with big guns and slow moving heavy infantry, and instead promoted Rhino Rush Jump Packs, and Librarians, while their best character gives them infiltrate). We also have the issues of the allies table having White Scars and Sons of Horus having different levels of alliance from one another depending on which way you look at the table, as do DG and NL, and no rules outside of reading from Left to Right being the usually appropriate method in books which are written in a language which follows that convention.

 

One thing many people who come to the rules section is that they expect "RAW" to be this "king" of all argument settlers, but RAW is written by potato neckbeards who dream up cool ideas for models and try to put some rules to them. It don't work like that, and when RAW is dissected as such, it can be broken. Look at the Psychic phase.

 

There is no real consensus for Rites of War, but the most common local houserule is Rite of War for primary detachment only provided there is a Master of the Legion as a Warlord. Others believe opposite - after all, they were pretty much lifted straight out of book 1, without any work being done on them, and book 1 was a bit of a mess with rules that were only half removed at release.

 

And I don't mean to offend, when I say it doesn't really matter what you think - as language is inviolate (albeit, limited to the precision of the words). My job is basically combing through contracts to find out potential loopholes that could cost my clients lots of money based on this, so I like to think I have a reasonably good grasp of how that works. If words are imprecise or clauses badly written that would allow the contractees to wriggle out of paying or force payment on the clients, then they need to be rewritten, with potential scenarios also accounted for.

 

Having an eye for such detail can be a bit of a pain, and often leads to people butting their heads in events like this "yeah, but common sense says otherwise". I repeat earlier, RAW and common sense are not on speaking terms. So, follow Rules As Common Sense Dictates - basically do what the rules feel like they're telling you to do. I'm not this curmudgeonly hidebound figure people seem to have me pegged at in game either. In game, it's "eh whatever, let's do it". After all, it's 3-4 hours a game, and you've spent time collecting it. If you're taking the gaming a bit more seriously, then it pays to learn a bit more about it - and more serious gaming involves getting in touch with the Tournament Organizers who can comment one way or the next, or if in doubt, using them as arbitration on the day (although that can lead to disappointment if your uber tactic fails).

 

The rules section cannot often be used to answer questions with RAW, because those questions that can be answered with RAW are usually those questions which have not been properly checked by the person asking the question. A case of "RTFM", to be blunt. Others are "my opponent did X tactic, is this legal?" where the answer should most likely be "ask him to show you the rules pages that allow him to do it" before giving them the straight forward yes or no that 2-3 minutes of fact checking entails.

 

Those where people come looking for answers outside of that are not going to - or else you get answers where the actual rules turns out to be non functional as in this case. At the end of the day, few of us are actually playing competitively or require such arbitration enough that houserules cannot be put in place or requested from a tournament organiser to require the in depth discussions that these threads turn into, where it is literally people discussing semantics and (on one occasion I've seen) the actual origin of a particular word.

 

TLDR; RAW is wrong. Play as common sense dictates.

[Excessus]

 

However, allied forces eligible to do so may use different rites or none at all - effects do not carry over to allied forces from the primary detachement and vice versa.

That's from page 15 in the red book, personally I think their intention is clear.

[Terminus]

RAW in this case is not so much wrong, as garbled nonsense. What common sense dictates seems to differ from area to area.

[Tychii]

The allies table is intended to not be symmetrical, it's to represent how different legions feel/treat each other. A legion can trust another legion without having that trust returned to them.

[Hesh Kadesh]

That maybe true in theory, but the rules don't allow allies to work that way.

 

Take DG and NL for example. As sworn brothers, DG and NL should be free to join each others units with independent characters, but if one way the table is read, it allows that and the other it stops that occuring, which one takes precedence? Is it according to which one is the Primary detachment? If that is the case, which way does it get read?

 

FW don't have a clue what they are doing with the rules. They have cool ideas but don't know the game well enough to actually create those rules.

[1ncarnadine]

That maybe true in theory, but the rules don't allow allies to work that way.

 

Take DG and NL for example. As sworn brothers, DG and NL should be free to join each others units with independent characters, but if one way the table is read, it allows that and the other it stops that occuring, which one takes precedence? Is it according to which one is the Primary detachment? If that is the case, which way does it get read?

 

FW don't have a clue what they are doing with the rules. They have cool ideas but don't know the game well enough to actually create those rules.

 

This is purely interpretation, but I'm pretty certain the table is supposed to be read as left side primary force, top secondary. It makes sense with the DG/NL pairing in particular. The Night Lords are happy to have allied DG in their command as they can run them well in their terror tactics, but if there is a DG officer in charge the Night Lords don't give a damn.

 

Pretty sure this theme continues with the other mis-matched pairings. Reading from the Alpha Legion on the left, they are NOT Sworn Brothers with the Imperial Army. But the Imperial Army considers them Sworn Brothers? The Alpha Legion will put out small detachments to make sure the Army isn't screwing up and integrate well with whatever operation is happening on that field, but when it comes to their show, the Alpha Legion's pride is on the line and they won't allow the IA to interfere as much. 

[Hesh Kadesh]

There is nothing saying that, and in the English language we read from left to right before going to the next line, as opposed to say Japanese which reads from top to bottom and right to left.

 

There just isn't the information there that allows people to make an informed decision, and it basically just looks like an error.