Warscroll Battalion fulfilment - Keywords

[Dawnstar]

What are people's thoughts on this?

It has been FAQ'd that special characters with the relevant keywords can fulfill Warscroll Battalion requirements.

But what about non-special characters? Would you allow someone to take a Lord-celestant on Stardrake to fulfill the "Lord-Celestant" requirement for Skyborne Slayers?

Furthermore, if the "Lord-Celestant" keyword can be fulfilled by any unit with the keyword, why would the distinction of "Lord-Celestant or Lord-celestant on Dracoth"  in the Lords of the Storm Warscroll need to exist?

I've seen talk that this sort of thing is considered legal, but for me it is clearly against the intended use of the warscroll.

I will happily make an exception for a special character with the correct keyword that roughly matches the Battalion requirement, (for example, Skarbrand is quite obviously a bloodthirster and should be treated as such for Batallions) but someone taking a Stardrake as part of the "Lord Celestant" requirement, or An Engine of the Gods to fulfill a requirement of "skink" is taking the ******. 

 

[rokapoke]

I think some of the newer books -- say, post-General's Handbook -- may have battalions that were specifically written to use keywords. However, earlier books (such as the Stormcast battletome you referenced) were clearly written for named warscrolls. Unfortunately, the FAQ didn't recognize the obvious dichotomy.

DBAD. We still need Wheaton's Law. 

[Thomas Lyons]

1 hour ago, rokapoke said:

I think some of the newer books -- say, post-General's Handbook -- may have battalions that were specifically written to use keywords. However, earlier books (such as the Stormcast battletome you referenced) were clearly written for named warscrolls. Unfortunately, the FAQ didn't recognize the obvious dichotomy.

DBAD. We still need Wheaton's Law. 

It is worth noting that even with the older ones, the names of units are in the unit's keywords 95% of the time, so that even the keyword interpretation applies 99% of the time with the old battalion scrolls.  The main problem is with unit names that aren't in the keywords of a unit (this is a problem for a number of the compendium scrolls).

My rule of thumb is that you can't break a keyword apart within the keywords section of a war scroll; all breaks have to happen at the comma.  The corollary is that all requirements are inherently multiple keywords, unless they aren't.

So, for example:

• Chaos Wizard could be fulfilled by a unit that has both the Chaos and Wizard keywords or one that has both the Chaos Wizard keyword.
• Skinks could be fulfilled by a unit with the Skinks keyword (which happens to be a unit name) but not the Skink keyword, which is on things like the Engine of the Gods.  

So, for the Lord-Celestant example, the Lord-Celestant on Dracoth would have to have the Lord-Celestant keyword isolated from the Lord-Celestant on Dracoth keyword.  They can't extract the Lord-Celestant out of the Lord-Celestant on Dracoth keyword.  

To piggy back on an example from the FAQ, the Anointed on Flamespyre Phoenix (unit name) has both the Anointed and Flamespyre Phoenix keywords, so it fulfills both the Anointed and Flamespyre Phoenix keyword requirements of the Phoenix Temple battalion separately (i.e. counts as both).  If it just had the Anointed on Flamespyre Phoenix keyword (it doesn't) and not those other two keywords separately, it couldn't use the Anointed on Flamespyre Phoenix to fulfill an Anointed keyword requirement unless it also had the Anointed keyword.

The bottom line is a keyword is everything between a set of commas on a war scroll; you cannot extract words out of these multiword keywords and use them piecemeal.  Each entire keyword has to meet the given requirement.  

[Dawnstar]

1 hour ago, Thomas Lyons said:

 

So, for the Lord-Celestant example, the Lord-Celestant on Dracoth would have to have the Lord-Celestant keyword isolated from the Lord-Celestant on Dracoth keyword.  They can't extract the Lord-Celestant out of the Lord-Celestant on Dracoth keyword.  

To piggy back on an example from the FAQ, the Anointed on Flamespyre Phoenix (unit name) has both the Anointed and Flamespyre Phoenix keywords, so it fulfills both the Anointed and Flamespyre Phoenix keyword requirements of the Phoenix Temple battalion separately (i.e. counts as both).  If it just had the Anointed on Flamespyre Phoenix keyword (it doesn't) and not those other two keywords separately, it couldn't use the Anointed on Flamespyre Phoenix to fulfill an Anointed keyword requirement unless it also had the Anointed keyword.

The bottom line is a keyword is everything between a set of commas on a war scroll; you cannot extract words out of these multiword keywords and use them piecemeal.  Each entire keyword has to meet the given requirement.  

How does one fulfill the Batallion requirements for Lords of the Storm of  "Lord-Celestant or Lord-celestant on Dracoth"?

"Lord-Celestant on Dracoth" as a keyword simply doesn't exist, it only exists as the unit name (the unit bears the keywords ORDER, CELESTIAL, HUMAN, STORMCAST ETERNAL, HERO, LORD-CELESTANT).

In an example like this, the Batallion can only possibly be referring to the specific unit name, why should it be different for any other Battalion?

[Thomas Lyons]

5 hours ago, Dawnstar said:

How does one fulfill the Batallion requirements for Lords of the Storm of  "Lord-Celestant or Lord-celestant on Dracoth"?

"Lord-Celestant on Dracoth" as a keyword simply doesn't exist, it only exists as the unit name (the unit bears the keywords ORDER, CELESTIAL, HUMAN, STORMCAST ETERNAL, HERO, LORD-CELESTANT).

In an example like this, the Batallion can only possibly be referring to the specific unit name, why should it be different for any other Battalion?

How?  Easily.  The Lord-Celestant on Dracoth has the Lord-Celestant keyword so he can automatically fulfill the requirement of "Lord-Celestant or Lord-celestant on Dracoth."  Now, if that is the case, you are likely to ask why even include the Lord-Celestant on Dracoth as a possible fulfillment of the requirement?  Because this is an old battalion from the very earliest days of AOS and the designer didn't have the same vision for how the battalion requirements were supposed to function as the rules team who clarified how these function.  It is clear that as battalions have been released, they have begun to be more systematic with this...but one can certainly find redundancies in the early compendium scrolls and early books.  

Why should it be different for any other Battalion?  Because the FAQ has explicitly clarified on multiple occasions the at the requirements should be treated as keywords, if they can be.  Some clearly cannot, and when that happens, they are unit names.  This is right out of the FAQ. This is why.  

[Nico]

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They can't extract the Lord-Celestant out of the Lord-Celestant on Dracothkeyword.  

The LCoD doesn't actually have any mention of Dracoth in his keywords - it's just "Lord Celestant". Ditto for the LCoSD.

Where there is a deliberate distinction being made (e.g. Treelord as opposed to Treelord Ancient in the Sylvaneth books where it's entirely clear that they mean one and not the other, e.g. see the Gnarlroot formation) you shouldn't try to sneak the other one in. If there's a Stormcast formation which is simply "Lord-Celestant" with nothing else pointing the other way (e.g. not distinguishing it from the one on Dracoth which implies that it's the one on foot), then I would say that any of the 3 could fulfil that keyword.

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Skinks could be fulfilled by a unit with the Skinks keyword (which happens to be a unit name) but not the Skinkkeyword, which is on things like the Engine of the Gods. 

This is probably right, but a buff that works on a "Skink" unit would affect both Skink and Skinks, which is hard to square with this.