AB40k Maintainers

Heya,

I quite often use the new Tyrant Legion rules from IA 9. However, There is a couple of things that I would like to kindly ask the AB40k guys to do. Whilst this is something mainly of personal preference, I think it might help other people who are interested in the same rules.

The first thing is to ask that the Tyrant legion have access to other special characters. For one thing, the list is actually missing a character or two (Corien Sumartis and Armenneus Valthex, as the Astral Claws are the chapter who provide the Space Marine units to the Legion) plus there is a new one from the recent PDF releases by Forgeworld.

The second request is that there be the possible "alternate" legions, I.e Codex Space Marines / Codex Guard or Codex Chaos marines / Codex Guard.

The reasons for this is that there is a section at the front of the Legion rules that state about alternate uses for the Legions rules. Forgeworld say that it can represent forces on distant planets, where the Marines forces work with the PDF, or even to show traitor legions.

The reasons for the special characters is also part of this reason, and due to the fact that all the Marine units in the Legion have "Combat tactics" and thus can benefit from the abilities of chapter Masters and such.

As for the "alternate legions", FW suggest that you can simply swap out the legion units for their equivalents (where possible) in the published codices. I.e. Legion Auxiliary = Conscript squad. Marine Cohort = Tactical Squad for Marines with Guard, for Traitor forces, you'd have Chaos Tactical Squads instead of Cohorts.

If you do choose to add this possibility in, then I would suggest that you could do one of two things with the Tyrant legion option in AB. either have it as an option in the Space Marine, Guard and Chaos army options, or move them into the Guard options and have sub options for w/Marines and w/Chaos or something like that.

I know this is something that isn't a massive issue, but it's something that I would love to see as it would make my army building much easier, and also something that I do hope you guys consider.

Cheers,
Achillain

Generally speaking IA lists are intended for use "as is", no other units can be taken and units in it are exclusive to the lists. If units are meant to be used elsewhere, they are listed separately as well. Please be more specific, on what page are these alternate compositions listed? Also, which special characters are missing?

Homer

Corien Sumatris, page 162, is a HQ choice a Codex Space Marines army, and is not part of the Tyrants Legion list.

Armenneus Valthex, page 165, is a HQ for a Space Marine army, and is not part of the Tyrants Legion list.

As to the new characters, there is a one month embargo on new rules. Homer, for reference these are http://www.forgeworld.co.uk/Downloads/P ... mmodus.pdf (HQ for Space Marines, or Tyrants Legion) and http://www.forgeworld.co.uk/Downloads/P ... b/Shen.pdf (HQ for Space Marines). Given that Commodus explicitly lists the Tyrants Legion in his rules this makes it very clear that the other characters are not intended to be used in a Tyrants Legion list.


I also don't see any options for swapping units out. The notes on page 135 suggest swapping out entire codexes, not single units. I guess I could be looking at the wrong page though, which page are you refering to? If this exists then it is far from simple to implement - trying to account for every possible combination would be extremely difficult.

OK, have been reading under the Campaign rules and it my view is that the Tyrant's Legion is it's own codex or chapter (as it is on it's own when mentioned in the shaded textbox on 135). Also keeping with the statment under Selection Type 1 that the armies should be taken from the Codex SM and the "Lord of Destruction" should be taken with the special characters matching the chapter chosen (Astral Claws with the ones you mentioned). The selection type 3 also reinforces this under option A.

Selection Type 2 doesn't specifically repeat the information of Type 1, but infers it in the usually GW fashion (that is, refer but don't specify).

However, there is Option B (under selection type 3) - where you could use Codex SW to represent the Executioners and thus be able to take any Executioner's special characters. This is an example shown in there and it does not seem unreasonable to choose any variant SM chapter to stand in for whatever Loyalist or Seccessionist choice and then take whichever special character that matches the "historical" chapter you are choosing to portray in the campaign.

So there could be changes in the listing in the the Lords of Destruction should be made available to any and all variant SM chapters in keeping with Option B. However, you are stuck with what you have if you want to take the Tyrants Legion; get a buddy to take the Astral Claws and "loan" you a special character or two...or take the Tyrant's Legion in name only and base the army on Codex SM.

I can see that this will quickly descend into a Spirit vs Letter argument, having already seen both arguments presented, so I'm going to back off from this request as I don't want to get into a rules / design debate over this, as I tend to lean more to the spirit rather than the rules, which it seems a few people here do.

But for reference, I was describing the section on page 175/176 of the Badab war pt 2. That section talks about how the list can be used to represent a space marine army working closely with the local guardsmen. Later on the book specifically states about "swapping the Space marine units and options for their equivalents in Codex: Chaos Space Marines", which was what led me to the idea about also exchanging the Guard units as well.
The changes would reduce your squad sizes and special/heavy weapon choices, but would also keep the rules lawyers happy(er). I discussed the idea with some GW staff at my local store, and they found the idea to be very interesting, and suggested that I used it in one of their campaigns (re-creating one of the Armageddon wars).

The 1 month embargo, I can understand that, with GW having the same rule when it comes to tournaments and such, and I wasn't aware of it, so my apologies there.

The main reason why I was asking about this was as that is how I understood what the book to be saying, and I have talked with other players and even GW staff about the ideas and it is generally seen to be a pretty cool idea to show a different style of army as opposed to what is usually seen in games.

Thanks guys for at least having a look at my request.

OK, that's a chapter of a different colour - the maintainer in question (me) does not have IA10 so I am reserving the previous statements against IA9.

achillain wrote:I can see that this will quickly descend into a Spirit vs Letter argument, having already seen both arguments presented, so I'm going to back off from this request as I don't want to get into a rules / design debate over this, as I tend to lean more to the spirit rather than the rules, which it seems a few people here do.

The files are written as closely to the letter of the rules as possible - trying to infer intent or "spirit" will just make things confusing as everyone seems to have different opinions on how the 40k rules should be interpreted. I got to speak with Jervis Johnson in 2009 at Warhammer World during one of the events I'd organised, and he was very adamant that players should stick to the rules as they are written and not to try to second guess the developers as attempting to do so would just lead to players using different rules and the game falling apart.

While I understand that many players have their own house rules, or ignore some rules just because they think they are silly, the AB40k files need to reflect the rules as they are written in order to minimise the chance of players misusing them. There are plenty of posts on various forums that make it clear that players often use AB without checking their codexes and rulebooks and get caught out if they don't realise they've been caught out by a bug, and by dropping in even more changes that are personal interpretations rather than "rules as written" then things just end spiralling out of control.

That said, if one of us manages to get hold of IA10 (I've got everything up to IA9, I've not got IA10 yet due to a lack of spare cash) then we'll take a look over the pages in question and see whether it would be possible to implement, assuming it's not something vague with and almost infinite number of combinations.

achillain wrote:But for reference, I was describing the section on page 175/176 of the Badab war pt 2. That section talks about how the list can be used to represent a space marine army working closely with the local guardsmen. Later on the book specifically states about "swapping the Space marine units and options for their equivalents in Codex: Chaos Space Marines", which was what led me to the idea about also exchanging the Guard units as well.
The changes would reduce your squad sizes and special/heavy weapon choices, but would also keep the rules lawyers happy(er). I discussed the idea with some GW staff at my local store, and they found the idea to be very interesting, and suggested that I used it in one of their campaigns (re-creating one of the Armageddon wars).

Thanks guys for at least having a look at my request.

Can you check your page numbers please. I REALLY like the Tyrant list, but page 175 of IA 10 is High Chaplain Thulsa Kane and page 176 is Chaplain Ivanus Enkomi. I can't find anything on either page anything like you are describing. What is the title of the section?

Navar wrote:Can you check your page numbers please. I REALLY like the Tyrant list, but page 175 of IA 10 is High Chaplain Thulsa Kane and page 176 is Chaplain Ivanus Enkomi. I can't find anything on either page anything like you are describing. What is the title of the section?

As was noted before, there may be a small discrepancy between references as some of us don't have IA10. So when Spack and myself are quoting pages, they refer to IA9.

I have already ordered IA10 and probably expect it in a week and modifications to the files will follow shortly...

I think they've referenced the wrong book; pages 175 and 176 of IA vIX do contain a reference to using the Tyrant's Legion to represent a more regular SM army, or even a chaos force, but I think they are strictly suggestions (they're listed under the "why play this army" bit) as no explicit rules for doing this are provided.

yeah, sorry, I meant IA9, not 10. My mistake.

About the Rules/Spirit. That's fair enough. i can understand that stance. And whilst I do agree with the GW guys that the rules do need to be adheard to. I just perosnall think that at the end of the day, it's a game, and it's meant to be fun. And i don't find rules lawyering, like a lot of people I've plaid against seem to do, to be fun.

But at the end of the day, it comes downt o the fatc that it's personal preferance. I wasn't expecting much to happen from this request, I just wanted to raise the idea and see what people thought.

If you and your friends want to do something outside of the rules, that's fine - nothing is stopping you from doing so, and you can edit the AB40k files to fit what you want to do.

The Army Builder files are used by tournaments and players who don't have our level of understanding about the game though.

The Tyrant Legion army list is very specific. If you have IA 10 you can contrast the Siege Assault Vanguard with the Tyrant Legion.

In the Tyrant Legion there are only 3 HQ units listed. The Tyrant Legion in the fluff was separate from the Astral Claws main force as well. There is no reason that Astral Claws character X should be usable with the Tyrant Legion because that character may not have even known about it.

Like Spack said if you want to deviate from the published materials in the name of fun then PLEASE do, but the AB40k files need to be as accurate as possible when they are downloaded from this site, or updated directly through Army Builder.

What you are asking would be like me asking to have my custom Space Marine chapter be included in the general AB40k files as a unique playable army.

Remember, you can always make a list as an Apocaplyse force and get some of what you want done, via Allies.

Homer