GW dropped a surprise Monday morning FAQ on us! Remember when these used to come out at regular times in the two weeks following a book?
If I seem a little salty this morning it’s because well, this FAQ is awful. Not only do I long for the days when we had a regular FAQ release schedule, I also long for the days when those FAQs would address real issues and make rulings. Instead we wait an indeterminate number of weeks for a document that completely misses some major issues. Yes, the Hunt stratagem was fixed (though that has some stupid implications), and we got our missing Aura tags but other things – like Grim Resolve and Remain Stationary abilities, and scoring on the Stubborn Defiance and Death on the Wind secondaries – have been left untouched. I can understand if Games Workshop is trying to keep books as close to their original states as possible so people don’t feel like the $40 book they bought is immediately out of date, but at least use your FAQs to address actual Frequently Asked Questions if you aren’t going to issue errata! There’s nothing stopping you from just saying “this is how this works based on the rules we wrote.”
*sigh*
Alright, if you’re looking for the FAQ itself, you can find it here.
With that out of the way, let’s look at what did get fixed, and how that impacts the game:
Rites of Initiation – Repulsor Executioners can now be upgraded for 10 points (or 1 RP in Crusade)
Repulsor Executioners were added to the list of vehicles you can upgrade with Rites of Initiation. This was necessary because they do not have the REPULSOR keyword, and so previously couldn’t be upgraded. That has now been fixed and so you are free to include Repulsor Executioners in your all-Deathwing detachments if you want to. Which you probably won’t, but I do think that bone-colored RepExes will look cool on the table.
The Hunt Stratagem – can now only be used once
OK, so Games Workshop did address one of our key issues with the Codex, which was namely whether you could use The Hunt Stratagem multiple times on the same unit to give it multiple regular moves pre-battle (so long as it ended up more than 9″ away from an enemy unit). Rather than just write a clarification for this saying that it only gives each unit a single move however, they’ve added errata stating that the Stratagem can only be used once. This, unfortunately, has a few knock-on effects. The first being that now you can only pick a single unit for the Stratagem and the second being that the crowd saying that stratagems like Apoplectic Frenzy could be used multiple times on a unit now have a slightly stronger (but still dumb) argument for using it multiple times on the same unit. Either way this particular problem is solved, just not in what I’d suggest is the best way. That said, The Hunt was already not getting much double-use since it’s an expensive Stratagem, at 2 CP/3 CP.
Missing Aura Tag Added on Cup of Retribution
We pointed out Cup of Retribution’s Feast of Malediction aura ability in a prior Ruleshammer article on the Codex – both of these act exactly like auras and meet the rulebook definition for them, so it’s good to see at least one of them get tagged as such. This doesn’t quite solve the “do all Aura abilities have to have the Aura tag debate” however, and may only make it worse, since it’s clearly the case that they can miss rules where it should be added for convenience. That said, more clarification is always better and now you can look forward to Mortarion turning off the +1 Attack ability generated by the Cup’s litany.
Range reduced on Ravenwing/Deathwing Narthecium
Surprising no one, the Narthecium on both the Deathwing and Ravenwing Apothecaries has been brought in line with all the other apothecaries, by having its range cut from 6″ to 3″. We can’t say we didn’t see this coming, but it is kind of funny that it made it into the book (twice!) in the first place.
Paragon of the Chapter can be used to give a Deathwing or Ravenwing Warlord Trait to a Character
This is a good clarification, and something that was missing prior, given how the Stratagem specified that you had to take a trait from the Dark Angels Warlord Traits table. Always seemed like something that should have been viable, so fixing this is a good thing.
…and that’s it. This addresses some important things, but still leaves us with other questions. Fortunately they didn’t nerf much of anything, which means that Goonhammer’s favorite army is still advancing 12″ and staying perfectly still, at the top tables where it belongs.
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