Soulblight's Swift Death and "can always move as if they can fly".

[TMS]

Hello everyone.

The Soulblight faction can choose the Swift Death bloodline that gives additional movement to all units and this little bonus...

"In addition, Swift Death models can always move as if they can fly."

How does this interact with things that prohibit flying, such as the Skaven vortex spell?

There are two different aspects to this question.

1) Blood Knights and Vampire Lords on foot and on nightmares do not have the FLY keyword on their warscrolls, and the Swift Death bloodline does not give that keyword. As such they never actually fly, they only ever move as though they were flying.

2) All other Soulblight units have the FLY keyword native on their warscrolls. These are all actually flying when they move and follow all the normal rules for fliers.

Does the "always" part of the Swift Death ability trump any attempts to stop any Swift Death models from flying? Or would it be only Blood Knights and Vampire Lords without FLY? Or are they all stopped from "flying", even the ones who never actually were flying?

[King Taloren]

Would depend on the ability/spell that is prohibiting the flying rules. And also how the abilities are stacked with how and when they take effect.

And does seem like the rule was intended solely for the pieces of the faction that cannot natively fly.

For instance Ritual of Tempest in Idoneth Deepkin simply states that enemy models cannot fly. Since the Swift Death ability is a constant effect it is always applied to be treated as flying and then the cannot fly rule comes in and removes the ability to fly since it comes afterward.

I think the always part of the rule is just saying it’s a constant effect for the entire battle not necessarily meaning it overrides other rules/abilities in the game.

Course I could be wrong and GW says always means always.

[TMS]

Thanks for weighing in!

Over the past weekend we had an event where it was ruled that the "always" part trumped everything else. It only came up a little bit in one of the games, against Skaven with the vortex as predicted.

I've also written to the AoS FAQ team and asked for a clarification, so let's see if that leads anywhere.