Supplement weirdness

[Henderson85]

How the blessed fick, do the chaos supplements work now for chaos? In the core rule book the limitation for a CAD says they must be from the same faction. Several pages before that it specifically says that supplements are the same faction as the parent faction. Does this mean I can pick and choose elements from multiple supplements and the CSM book in one CAD?

[Krakasus]

Just thought I'd put this here...

 

 

From: Malisteen

 

Open your Crimson Slaughter and/or Black Legion supplement, and identify all of the unit entries.  You will find that there are none.  Yes, Crimson Slaughter and Black Legion are both part of the Chaos Space Marine faction, but you cannot select units from them in a mixed detachment because there are no units from them to select.

 

Instead the CSM supplement rules take the form of modifications made to CSM detachments.  "All units in a Crimson Slaughter detachment must" do this or "One unit of chaos terminators in a Black Legion detachment that includes Abaddon the Despoiler may" do that.  Basically, the supplement changes are made to entire CSM detachments, not to individual CSM units.  You select a detachment of Chaos Space Marines, and then select whether the entire detachment is a 'Black Legion' or 'Crimson Slaughter' detachment, or neither.  Then you select units for the detachment from Codex: Chaos Space Marines using the restrictions and rules modifications of the supplement you chose, if any.  If the entire detachment uses a supplement, then the rules and restrictions of that supplement apply to the entire detachment - including vet tax, vet ban, and alternative artifact list.  The new detachment rules are not a 'get out of vet tax' free card for Black Legion, nor are they an invitation to include a mace prince within a Crimson Slaughter detachment.

 

Since all colors of CSM are the same faction, however, you may include an army with, say, two combined arms detachments, one of which you apply a supplement to, and the other you apply the other supplement to, or none at all.  Likewise, until some ruling says otherwise, you can declare any CSM formation to use one of the supplements, since formations are their own detachments.  This lets you have fear causing fallen or helcults for example.  Note that you can make fallen troops by applying the black legion supplement, but that this doesn't actually do anything for them, since they're scoring anyway now, and since the the units are from a formation and not from a combined arms or allied detachment, they will not gain objective secured.

 

On the subject of allied detachments, there's considerable contention as to whether you can take an allied detachment of a different flavor of chaos marine if your main army is already of the chaos marine faction.  Normally an allied detachment must be of a different faction.  However the supplements specifically state they can 'ally with' the parent book and vice versa.  That said, 'allying with' does not necessarily mean 'may be taken as an allied detachment for'.  And letting one supplement primary take an allied detachment of the other supplement is even more murky - the interpretations that would allow it (ie, you take a CSM allied detachment, then apply the other supplements rules to that detachment) would also allow supplement primary armies to take allied detachments of themselves!  If you want to stay completely kosher, stick to combined arms detachments for now, and save allied detachments for daemons or the like.

 

An interesting problem is raised by unbound armies.  In an unbound army, all the forces you take from each individual faction are collected into a single detachment of that faction.  As a result, by a strict reading of the rules, this means that in an unbound army all of your CSM units that are not within a formation (which still count as their own, separate detachments), must all use the same supplement, or none at all, making unbound armies less flexible than battleforged armies in this regard.  On the one hand, it means you aren't getting around your restrictions for free, which is good.  On the other hand, it really doesn't fit with the entire purpose of unbound armies, which is bad.  However, games of 40k using unbound armies require considerable advance communication and cooperation by participating players, much like Apocalypse games, so I'm confident players can work out an individual fix for this problem on a case by case basis with your opponent.

 

 

Note that the fine details of the 8th edition detachment rules are rather murky a this point (don't get me started on what detachment conjured daemons are part of!), so all of the above is subject to change should we see any form of official clarification or errata to the contrary.

 

[Henderson85]

Thanks, reasonable logic. Still not clean or pretty, but most rules with GW aren't. I think that the allying with vs allied detachment is a bad case of arguing semantics, but that's just me.

[Kol Saresk]

As intended: However you want to do it.

 

As written: Read above post.

 

Moral of the story: Always check with your opponent beforehand.

[Disciple of Fulgrim]

As I understand it (and I think this is the most common view, though I could be wrong) here is how it works for Battle-forged Armies:

Each army must have at least one Primary Detachment (pg. 117) which must be a CAD (pg. 122.) You can have multiple CAD's in your army, and your Warlord can come from any CAD, which automatically becomes your Primary Detachment (pg. 117 combined with pg. 124.)

So if you want to go all CAD's (meaning one HQ and two Troop choices) you can mix and match as you see fit. (i.e. a CSM CAD, a BL CAD and a CS CAD would be perfectly legal, and you get to pick who the Warlord is - though if one of your HQ's is Abby, he may have to be your Warlord.  Don't have the CSM dex handy, so I might edit my thoughts on that based on RAW and his Special Rules.)

Regarding Allied Detachments, per pg. 122, AD's (one HQ and only one Troop) can't be from the same faction - and CSM, BL and CS are all the same faction  (pg. 118.)

 

But, per special rules in the BL and CS supplements (don't have those supplements handy, will try to edit in the refs later) they may ally with CSM (at least until it's FAQed) but not each other.  So a CSM/BL alliance (your choice who the ally is) would be legit, as would a CSM/CS alliance (ditto), but not a BL/CS alliance (which may/may not make fluff sense to you, depending.)

 

Clear as mud?  Welcome to 7th!

[Redtoof]

Pretty sure you don't have to have a CAD. You just can't have an allied detachment as your primary. This is essentially the same thing for chaos, since the CAD is the only other detachment available, unless you want to build an army of formations. However with the newer codexes having access to alternative detachments, I'd assume sooner or later we will have other options for our primary detachments.

[daboarder]

yeah you dont need a cad, your warlord can be from a formation etc ,making that your primary if you want