Rules Question - Agent of the Imperium, 1st Company ability

[Angel of Solitude]

Hello Brothers,

 

I'm looking for some opinions on how people believe the following rules interact:

 

Authority of the Inquisition (War Zone Octarius 1)

• The inclusion of an AGENT OF THE IMPERIUM unit does not prevent other units from their Detachment from benefiting from Detachment abilities...

 

Detachment Abilities (Dark Angels Codex)

• If every unit your army (except UNALIGNED units) has the DARK ANGELS keyword, then DARK ANGELS Vanguard detachments that only contain models with the DEATHWING and/or INNER CIRCLE keywords gain the 1st Company ability.

 

My initial interpretation of this is that by taking an Inquisitor in my Deathwing Vanguard detachment, I won't get ObSec on my Deathwing Termies. This is based on the AGENT OF THE IMPERIUM being explicitly included in the Detachment Abilities section. However, I'm questioning this given the wording of the Authority of the Inquisition bullet - 1st Company is a Detachment ability.

 

So...what are everybody's thoughts on this?

[Karhedron]

I think this is a case of a special rule overriding a more general rule.

 

The general rule is that the detachment requires certain keywords on all units to gain benefits.

 

The special rule is that AGENT OF THE IMPERIUM allows a detachment to ignore that restriction in the case of this specific unit.

 

So I think that a Deathwing Detachment would continue to gain its normal bonuses, even if you include an Inquisitor. This is just my take and I could be persuaded otherwise if anyone has a compelling case to make.

[phandaal]

Going to say your initial interpretation is correct.

 

The Detachment Abilities section says:

 

• "A DARK ANGELS Detachment is one that only includes models with the DARK ANGELS keyword (excluding models with the AGENT OF THE IMPERIUM or UNALIGNED keywords)."

 

That means having an Inquisitor does not prevent the detachment from being a Dark Angels detachment and benefitting from Detachment Abilities as a whole.

 

There are further restrictions on Dark Angels abilities:

 

• "If every unit in your army (except AGENT OF THE IMPERIUM or UNALIGNED units) has the DARK ANGELS keyword, then every unit in a DARK ANGELS Detachment that has the Combat Doctrines ability gains the Sons of the Lion ability."

 

• "If every unit in your army (except UNALIGNED units) has the DARK ANGELS keyword, then DARK ANGELS Vanguard Detachments that only contain models with the DEATHWING and/or INNER CIRCLE keywords gain the 1st Company ability."

 

• "If every unit in your army (except UNALIGNED units) has the DARK ANGELS keyword, then DARK ANGELS Outrider Detachments that only contain models with the RAVENWING keyword gain the 2nd Company ability."

 

Notice that the Sons of the Lion ability specifically mentions Agent of the Imperium, while 1st Company and 2nd Company do not. Also note the use of "models" compared to "units."

 

So the use of an Inquisitor would not prevent your detachment from benefitting from Detachment Abilities in general, but it would prevent that detachment from gaining the 1st Company or 2nd Company ability.

[Angel of Solitude]

Thanks for the replies. @phandall your reasoning is where I'm at, and is the more cautious approach when it comes to tournament play. However, I believe that @Karhedron's perspective has some merit, and could be used to argue it the other way. 

 

Having said that, after I re-read the entry in Octarius, I noted a particularly relevant clause to the above that I had previously missed:

• "An AGENT OF THE IMPERIUM unit included in a Patrol, Battalion or Brigade Detachment in this manner is ignored for any rules that state all units from that Detachment must have at least one Faction keyword in common, and when determining your Army Faction."

I've added the bold bit, because the 1st Company ability comes from having a Vanguard detachment. Given that an Inquisitor and Deathwing don't share a faction keyword, I'm guessing this means such an army won't be battleforged.

 

Whooops!

[Galthan Ironsturm]

Yeah, sadly...but nobody want an inquisitor-spy on our Deathwing rank