Summoning With Cypher

[Kol Saresk]

Yes, you're right. The section labeled "reinforcements" that talks about units arriving as reinforcements in the Core Rules section of the rulebook obviously has nothing to do with reinforcement units because it does not mention the reinforcement points. Obviously the rule writers were just thinking out of their asses. Total idiots.

[Doom Herald]

The reason i ask is because page 177 of the BRB states that units that are not summoned from reserves are to be counted as destroyed.

Seems like a really weird thing for the rules to say, if what you say is true. Since it would mean your reinforcements are considered part of your army while still in the "reinforcement pool". And if they're considered part of your army.....

Suffice to say, however this goes, the Golden Rule that has applied for eons still applies: talk with your opponent before hand. Make sure they're okay.

Also, I still don't understand the Death Guard example. Death Guard armies by definition of the rules have to have the keywords Death Guard and Nurgle. Plague Bearers have the Nurgle keyword. That follows the army keyword restriction and follows the rules for daemonic rituals where Nurgle characters can only summon Nurgle daemons. So don't know what you're freaking out about there.

Also, we're talking about cross-faction summoning, not a Chaos character summoning Chaos daemons.

Unless you think Imperial Guardsmen should be capable of summoning Warp Talons from reinforcements? Because we're talking about things like that.

We are talking about a Chaos Character summoning Chaos Daemons though.

The only case im making here for reinforcements not being on the roster is for summoning Daemons because you dont have to commit to them before hand.

As for the Deathguard thing, it is an irrelevent point because Deathguard will still have Chaos faction, even if you use the Deathguard faction to set them up. I believe that is the point that hasnt been explicitly stated here.

Edited July 6, 2017 by ThanatosMalleus

[Commissar K.]

The continuous point Ive made and is factual is that a Keyword is NEVER another Keyword aswell.

 

You choose a Faction Keyword for Army Faction. Reinforcements are a part of your army aswell and have to follow the same Army Faction rules.

 

A legal army in matched play has to choose one Fation Keyword for army creation, including reinforcements who are part of ingame army creation. Chaos Keyword is not the same as Imperium and neither is <Mark of Chaos> Keyword the same as Khorne Keyword.

Edited July 6, 2017 by Commissar K.

[Kol Saresk]

@Thanatos: I completely understand your post, and that's what I'm trying to address. Everything I'm reading gives me the conclusion that somewhere, somehow, the units have to be considered part of your army. And in matched play and battle-forged armies, you have to use an army keyword that all units share, whether it be Chaos, Imperium, <Legion>, or <Mark of Chaos>(or <Legion> and <Mark of Chaos> in the case of four different Legions).

 

So to me, if reinforcements have to be considered part of your army, then they have to follow the restrictions. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe I'm not.

 

I did find something in the Designer's notes that might help? I'm not sure.

 

Q. What is the difference between a keyword and a Faction keyword?

A. The only real difference is that Faction keywords are used when building an army; when Battle-forging an army, for instance, you will often only be able to include units in the same detachment if they share the same Faction keyword. Also, if you are playing a matched play game, you will need to have an Army Faction – this is a Faction keyword that is shared by all of the units

in your entire army (with the exception of those that are Unaligned). Once the battle has begun, there is

no functional difference between a keyword and a Faction keyword.

For example, when creating a Battle-forged army for matched play, I take two Patrol Detachments; the rst contains only units with the Heretic Astartes Faction keyword, and the second contains only units with the Daemon Faction keyword. My Army Faction is ‘Chaos’ because this is a Faction keyword every unit in the entire army shares.

Once the battle has begun, the distinction between keywords and Faction keywords no longer has any effect – both are used to interact with abilities identically. Imagine, then, that the Heretic Astartes Detachment contains a unit of Possessed (which does not have the Daemon Faction keyword, but does have the Daemon keyword), and I choose for them to replace their <Mark of Chaos> keyword with Khorne. If the Daemon Detachment contained a Herald of Khorne, his ability to ‘add 1 to the Strength characteristic of all Khorne Daemons’ would also apply to the unit of Possessed, as they have both the Khorne and Daemon keywords.

Take from it what you will, if there's anything to take.

 

It mostly just reiterates the BRB that all units have to share keywords, but it also does say that keywords don't matter once the game starts. So not sure how to take it.

[Commissar K.]

Thake it like AoS, where when all units in an Army have one particular Keyword your army becomes such an army.

 

The only difference 40k presents is that of the additional Faction Keywords.

 

Currently this means that if you want an Daemon Army Faction units without Faction Keyword Daemon cannot be part of this unless they have it even if the Datasheet contains Keyword Daemon.

 

Somehow the persistent thought is at b&c is here that Keywords have multiple meanings. This is not the case here or in AoS.

 

Faction Keyword Chaos is not the same as Faction Keyword Imperium. The only difference between a Faction Keyword and regular Keyword in 40k is that only Faction Keywords matter for legal matched play army composition.

 

Keywords are simple. They are yes or no, never both. This is why e.g. Mark of Chaos as a Keyword can be replaced by Khorne which means there is no Mark of Chaos Keyword anymore.

[Lord Abaia]

Let's do this for a brain exercise.

 

I'm going to make an army with Cypher and two units of Fallen.

 

Accordig to Magpie, my army roster is going to be one Vanguard detachment. It is going to be 530 points between Cypher and three max strength, no wargear upgrade units of Fallen. That leaves 970 points for reserves.

 

Not included in my army roster, but brought with me, I'm going to bring some Warp Talons, some Daemonettes, and a Blood Angels Thunderhawk.

 

Since they're not a part of my army, they should be completely legal since all units can either be summoned or Deep Strike'd from reinforcements, using my reinforcement points. Although I have to actually roll for the daemons while I can just drop in the Warp Talons and Thunderhawk at the end of the movement phase.

 

This army should be RAW legal, no?

 

If not, then why not?

I'll humor you. It's not legal. The Blood Angels Thunderhawk does not have the Daemonic Ritual rule so it must arrive by mundane "deep-striking" therefore it would have to be included on your army roster and it is simply set up off the table. The same as if I put Chaos Terminators in teleport reserves. They would be on my roster. Arriving from reserves does not bypass the roster and nobody suggested otherwise. A unit summoned with the Daemonic Ritual rule cannot be included in your roster because it hasn't even been decided what it is yet.

 

@Commissar

Yeah. I'm with you on the keywords. And if what you are saying is true and spontaneously summoned reinforcements must match the roster's faction keyword, then wouldn't it be also true that the only legal faction keywords you could build an army on and still summon are either Chaos, Deamons, or one of the four gods' keywords?

 

I suppose that might be the case, but it would be very poor rules writing as it would exclude any CSM army using faction specific goodies from summoning the same as it would exclude Imperium ft. Cypher.

[Schlitzaf]

So been reading this and this made me realize. I assume nay because specific god Keyword is needed. But could you summon Daemonhost off Demonic Summoning?

[Doom Herald]

That designer note does raise a question though. If Faction keywords effectively become regular keywords after the battle begins, that would imply units you dont have to commit to before the battle effectively have no faction keyword and could be used as unaligned.

 

Im sure most armies this is a non issue in because you either have to commit to the unit before the fight or their rules prevent this sort of thing, but Cypher is an anomaly.

[Doom Herald]

So been reading this and this made me realize. I assume nay because specific god Keyword is needed. But could you summon Daemonhost off Demonic Summoning?

No, but thays because they lack daemonic ritual. That is a valid question for belakor though .

[Kol Saresk]

So been reading this and this made me realize. I assume nay because specific god Keyword is needed. But could you summon Daemonhost off Demonic Summoning?

You can only use daemonic ritual on units that have the daemonic ritual rule on their datasheet.

 

The only time daemonic ritual has a god restriction is if the character doing the summoning has a specific <Mark of Chaos> or Daemonic Allegience keyword, such as Khorne, Nurgle, Slaanesh, or Tzeentch. Ie, Khârn can only summon Khorne daemons.

 

@Thanatos, if it was that simple, I'd completely agree. The restriction comes into play when building the army, and so to me, the answer is completely dependent on whether or not the units you choose as possible reinforcements, are considered as part of your army roster. If not, then have it. If so, then the restriction applies.

 

And to me, personally, right here, right now, the rules have the intent that the reinforcements are to be considered part of your army, but are not considered deployed until you spend the reinforcement points necessary to deploy them. And so, they would follow the army restrictions.

 

In any case, until a formal reckoning, I'd argue the Golden Rule: Talk to your opponent and make sure everything is kosher.

[Kol Saresk]

Be'lakor has the daemonic ritual rule so he can be summoned. But he doesn't have any daemonic allegiances so I'm not sure how he fits into the whole god restriction. Especially since even if you have an unaligned character, you're still supposed to choose to summon Khorne, Nurgle, Slaanesh, or Tzeentch when you start to summon, and it does not give you the option to choose to summon a daemon without any of those keywords.

 

And yet, Be'lakor's datasheet does say that he can be summoned with Daemonic Ritual. So..... yeah. I think he can?

[Doom Herald]

Well, after a brief fluff lesson on Be'lakor, you would have to be playing a total ass for them not to allow you to summon him since him having the rule pretty clearly implies he should be summonable, but total asses do exist.

 

But I do believe we have hit the crux of the issue and come to the same place we started.

[Kol Saresk]

Agreed. Honestly, considering Be'lakor's fluff, I'm surprised they didn't do with him what they did with Abaddon where they gave him all four <Mark of Chaos> options.

 

Honestly, maybe if enough people bug their facebook page, then it might make it into the next FAQ or Codex.

[Kol Saresk]

Actually, I think I may have an answer. This is again from the Designer's Notes.

 

Q: If I can choose a keyword for a unit, such as <Regiment> for Astra Militarum, could I choose that keyword to be, for example ‘Blood Angels’ or ‘Death Guard’?

A: No.

In the example above, ‘Blood Angels’ is a Chapter of the Adeptus Astartes and ‘Death Guard’ is a Legion of the Heretic Astartes – neither of which are Regiments of the Astra Militarum.

Q: If I create an Astra Militarum Regiment of my own and name them, for example, the ‘Emperor’s Finest’, and I then also create an Adeptus Astartes Chapter of my own choosing, and also call them the ‘Emperor’s Finest’, do the abilities that work on the <Regiment> and/or <Chapter> keywords now work on both the Astra Militarum and Adeptus Astartes units?

A: No.

The intent of naming Regiments, Chapters, etc. of your own creation is to personalise your collections and not to enable players to circumvent the restrictions on what abilities affect what units. It is also not intended to circumvent the restrictions on which units are able to be included in the same Detachment.

Now, the reason I believe this applies is because what we are trying to find out is if you can avoid the Faction restrictions of army building via reinforcement summoning.

 

Now, this specific part of the notes just has to do with naming and the response is that naming is not supposed to be used to bypass Detachment restrictions.

 

But in essence, that's kind of what we're trying to do, by using a "Chaos character" that can be in an Imperial army, to summon more Chaos units into said Imperial army.

 

It also says that even though the AM Regiment and SM Chapter would share the same name, one is a <Regiment> and the other is a <Chapter>, and the response is that the two cannot cross abilities.

 

So to me, this can be applied to our situation because we are trying to apply a Chaos faction ability to an Imperium faction army, via a unit that can exist in both armies.

 

And the Designer's Notes say that armies are not meant to cross abilities.

 

I think that all makes sense.

[Doom Herald]

So, page 114 of Index: Chaos states that your army roster holds the points and name of your dettachments and what points you set aside for reinforcements, but that you need to compose a dettachment roster for each dettachment which includes your unit details. The dettachment roster only includes unit profiles that are a part of a dettachment and the army roster does not record reinforcement units, only points and dettachments. Based on this, reinforcements that are not a part of dettachments are not a part of your army until played.

[Doom Herald]

Actually, I think I may have an answer. This is again from the Designer's Notes.

 

 

Q: If I can choose a keyword for a unit, such as <Regiment> for Astra Militarum, could I choose that keyword to be, for example ‘Blood Angels’ or ‘Death Guard’?

A: No.

In the example above, ‘Blood Angels’ is a Chapter of the Adeptus Astartes and ‘Death Guard’ is a Legion of the Heretic Astartes – neither of which are Regiments of the Astra Militarum.

Q: If I create an Astra Militarum Regiment of my own and name them, for example, the ‘Emperor’s Finest’, and I then also create an Adeptus Astartes Chapter of my own choosing, and also call them the ‘Emperor’s Finest’, do the abilities that work on the <Regiment> and/or <Chapter> keywords now work on both the Astra Militarum and Adeptus Astartes units?

A: No.

The intent of naming Regiments, Chapters, etc. of your own creation is to personalise your collections and not to enable players to circumvent the restrictions on what abilities affect what units. It is also not intended to circumvent the restrictions on which units are able to be included in the same Detachment.

Now, the reason I believe this applies is because what we are trying to find out is if you can avoid the Faction restrictions of army building via reinforcement summoning.

 

Now, this specific part of the notes just has to do with naming and the response is that naming is not supposed to be used to bypass Detachment restrictions.

 

But in essence, that's kind of what we're trying to do, by using a "Chaos character" that can be in an Imperial army, to summon more Chaos units into said Imperial army.

 

It also says that even though the AM Regiment and SM Chapter would share the same name, one is a <Regiment> and the other is a <Chapter>, and the response is that the two cannot cross abilities.

 

So to me, this can be applied to our situation because we are trying to apply a Chaos faction ability to an Imperium faction army, via a unit that can exist in both armies.

 

And the Designer's Notes say that armies are not meant to cross abilities.

 

I think that all makes sense.

But that assumes that the ability to summon is not a feature inherrent to Cypher himself. The ability to blur the lines of faction by using a model who already blurs the lines of faction with his fixed keywords doesnt seem the same to me as trying to manipulate open named keywords.

 

Just as a matter of griping, I will say that it seams like a fair trade for not being able to use transports.

 

The Fallen probably should have had their own little 2-page section to avoid the issues with them.

Edited July 6, 2017 by ThanatosMalleus

[Kol Saresk]

I mean, I get what you're saying at, but daemonic ritual is just a Chaos ability all daemonic characters can use whether they be daemons, Chaos Marines, or Cypher. So I'd kinda argue that it is a faction ability.

But it's possible that it's griping.

And where I can see where you are coming from with page 114, I'd also argue that it's no different from the page in the BRB where there's no explicit description one way or another. Both say include all units, both say include points, but neither says if reinforcement units are included in the "all".

I'm just including a picture of the page so others can see and draw their own conclusions.

To me, I'd operate on the "talk with your opponents beforehand" rule. Just to be courteous. It clears up a lot of issues.

[Doom Herald]

I will talk to them anyway, i just like to know how rational my case is first.

 

Btw, i noticed page 214 (The Rules) under reserves does actually indicate that these are not added to the army until after the battle starts.

 

The beginning of the second paragraph reads: "Each time a unit is added to an army during battle..."

 

Also, whether in an Imperium or Chaos army, Cypher is allways both a Chaos and Imperium unit. Death to the False Emperor still works on him if hes in a Chaos army right?

Edited July 6, 2017 by ThanatosMalleus

[Kol Saresk]

I'm agreeing that units don't have to be written down in detachments, but I'm not agreeing that they aren't "part of the army" to the point that faction restrictions don't apply in a matched play battle-forge army.

 

I personally would never allow an Imperial army to summon daemons in a matched playlist. Narrative or Open? Go for it, even with a battle-forged army. I can pull 900 narrative reasons why daemons could be showing up in an Imperium army. Same reasons apply to Genestealers pretty much, but without all the faction questions.

 

I honestly do not know. Cypher is definitely one of those units that needs his own dataslate again. Just to explain how they expect him to work as a functional unit when he has to footslog everywhere and no real army synergy.

[Doom Herald]

One last question, partially for the sake of arguement and partially for completeness, what if all non-Chaos Imperium units in the army were dead? In otherwords, what if the only units still active as a part of the army were Cypher and maybe some Fallen? Everything currently in the army would then share the Chaos keyword.

[Gordon Shumway]

One last question, partially for the sake of arguement and partially for completeness, what if all non-Chaos Imperium units in the army were dead? In otherwords, what if the only units still active as a part of the army were Cypher and maybe some Fallen? Everything currently in the army would then share the Chaos keyword.

Then the rule about faction keywords coming into play only at army creation stage. I have to say, this is an interesting discussion. After reading the relevant rules and FAQs and commentaries, I think that RAW, Cypher could legally summon daemons in an Imperium list; however, I think RAI, absolutely not. I really like the idea of keywords and think they can be made to work great, but right now, GWs rules writers seem to be a bit out of their element to make it seamless. On the one hand, this makes perfect sense considering this is the first edition of 40k with them, on the other hand, one would think they would have learned from their experience with fantasy. Does anybody know how much GW's 40k rules team overlaps with their fantasy team?

[sanityimpaired]

I mean, I get what you're saying at, but daemonic ritual is just a Chaos ability all daemonic characters can use whether they be daemons, Chaos Marines, or Cypher. So I'd kinda argue that it is a faction ability.

But it's possible that it's griping.

And where I can see where you are coming from with page 114, I'd also argue that it's no different from the page in the BRB where there's no explicit description one way or another. Both say include all units, both say include points, but neither says if reinforcement units are included in the "all".

I'm just including a picture of the page so others can see and draw their own conclusions.

To me, I'd operate on the "talk with your opponents beforehand" rule. Just to be courteous. It clears up a lot of issues.

That's... odd. That page does not appear in my epub copy of the core rule book, so it's the first time I've ever seen it. What page/section is it?

[sanityimpaired]

There is a precedent for this from 7E.  Space Marine Librarians (other than Grey Knights) could take malefic daemonology powers and summon daemons.  The FAQ confirmed it was permitted.

Faction keywords only matter when putting together your army list.  Your summoning pool doesn't have any faction keywords, and it doesn't say that any summoned daemons must be added to an existing detachment which would require sharing a keyword.  There's nothing in the rules that I can see stopping you from using Cypher to summon daemons.

That said, Kol's image above worries me, since it implies there's content missing from my rule book.

[Commissar K.]

 

@Commissar

Yeah. I'm with you on the keywords. And if what you are saying is true and spontaneously summoned reinforcements must match the roster's faction keyword, then wouldn't it be also true that the only legal faction keywords you could build an army on and still summon are either Chaos, Deamons, or one of the four gods' keywords?

 

I suppose that might be the case, but it would be very poor rules writing as it would exclude any CSM army using faction specific goodies from summoning the same as it would exclude Imperium ft. Cypher.

 

It´s not a matter of spontaneously having a rosters faction Keyword. As the Army Roster is the last step in creating the army. The steps that come before that are:

1. Choosing a Faction Keyword for your army, one that matches all units (Daemons do not have Imperium).

2. Reinforcements are additions to your army, an army can only "remain" legal if it has the Faction Keyword the rest of the army shares aswell.

 

For Daemons found in Index Chaos we can indeed confirm that the only armies that can summon them are indeed armies who follow Faction Keyword:

- Chaos

- Daemons

- Khorne

- Tzeentch

- Nurgle

- Slaanesh

 

Note that <Mark of Chaos> Keyword doesn't appear on Daemons either, it is a seperate Keyword. However this doesn't mean that "Chaos Undivided" armies cannot summon them, because all units in Index Daemons still share the Chaos Keyword and Summonning Daemons doesn't require anything more as Keyword Chaos and Keyword Character. However this is in addition to having a legal army for Matched Play which also requires you to have all units in your army share a Faction Keyword.

 

In regards to <Mark of Chaos> Keyword, we also have the option to replace it, which in turn is an option to obtain Keyword Khorne, Tzeentch, Nurgle or Slaanesh. Which by all means are all different Keywords, don't mean the same and arn't the same.

 

Sources:

 

Steps to follow

0. Understand Keywords, Faction Keywords do not 'dissapear' or change to regular Keywords. All that is said is that Faction Keywords also count as regular Keywords but not vice versa.

1. Decide army Faction, based on Faction Keyword.

2. Decide point value for army.

3. Decide points left for army to fill in with Reinforcements, there is nothing that suggests that this does not have to follow the same rules to create a legal army.

4. Create army Roster.

 

The prime difference between Reinforcements and Tactical Reserves is that Reinforcements do not have to be "pre selected" but otherwise still follow the same rules that are required for a legal army in Matched Play.

 

--

 

There are several exclusions for summonning, such as that only models without Keyword Khorne, Tzeentch, Slaanesh or Nurgle can choose, otherwise the Character who does the summonning can only summon units that have the same alliance Keyword.

 

Cypher can be taken all the same in an Imperium army, so can the Fallen but the moment the Keyword Imperium is chosen as the Faction Keyword you see that the whole army has to abide by that rule. Which applies for all armies within Matched play.

 

Again this is also the example why Keywords like <Mark of Chaos> are not the same as that of Khorne etc. Nor is Chaos the same Keyword as <Mark of Chaos> or Imperium. The same approach applies to AoS. It's a simple yes and no. For army creation (including reinforcements, who are essentially a sub-part of army creation) you need to have the same chosen Faction Keyword.

 

Cheers,

Edited July 7, 2017 by Commissar K.

[Commissar K.]

 

Faction keywords only matter when putting together your army list.  Your summoning pool doesn't have any faction keywords.

False.

 

- Faction Keywords matter constantly. They are Keywords aswell. They create a legal army. 

- Reinforcements, clearified with Reinforcement Points, are additions to your army. Nothing states that they would not have to follow the same rules as a legal army. 

 

Using Reinforcements is adding units to your army in a battle, as it specifically states so on page 214. This also confirms that creating an army does not stop after you've created an army roster. That's the whole reason why you need to leave points aside. Reinforcements boil down to the fact that you can partially create your army during a battle.