Pet Peeve: Avoidable Rules Confusion

[swarmofseals]

This may be an unpopular opinion, but I think it would be wise of GW to tighten up how they present new rules content going forward and explicitly try to avoid or explain situations that invite confusion.

To give a specific example: it looks like the new Khorne book contains the Gorechosen battalion which includes exactly 8 heroes. It also includes the Goretide battalion, which includes a minimum of 2 heroes and also specifies that it may contain 0-1 Gorechosen battalions. Now, this is all pretty innocuous until you realize that you can never actually field a Goretide containing a Gorechosen in pitched battle matched play because it would require you to take a minimum of 10 heroes.

Some thought will lead you to the conclusion that perhaps this rules option is just included for open play, but I guarantee there will be some folks who see this and try to rationalize it as a way around the leader limit. They will see the warscroll and say "it says I can take 0-1 Gorechosen, so therefore I should be able to take one if I want. It wouldn't specifically say that if the rules wouldn't let me do it."

Ultimately, this kind of thing leads to some feel-bad moments when players get into arguments about interpreting these kinds of rules and/or get disappointed when they find out that the thing they wanted to do isn't actually legal. 

I think GW would be well served to proofreed their new content for situations like this and add some sort of reminder text or asterisk that clarifies these situations. For example, consider if the rules for the Goretide specified 0-1 Gorechosen* and then at the bottom: *The Goretide cannot be fielded with a Gorechosen in pitched battles as that would exceed the leader limit OR *Open and Narrative Play Only. It's a little extra effort but it would go a long way towards getting this stuff sorted.

[Turragor]

Problem is it is an unending Pandoras box of clarification for a million different opinions out there now 

[RuneBrush]

Just throwing something into this.  Goretide is going to be at least 2500 points to field at the absolute minimum unit sizes - Gorechosen will add at least 640 points on top of this throwing it into the "unusually large" sized game (with upwards of 10 leaders).  I did price this up as it would have been ace to run it at 2k.  Scarily to max it out to gain all of the benefits on the battalion would be around 7000 points at minimum size!

It's possible we'll get some of these clarifications in the matched play section of the new Generals Handbook.  I don't think adding it to a Battletome is the right place as the battlefield roll limitations are specific to Matched Play (which is part of the GHb).  Pitched Battle points can be used in open or narrative play.

[swarmofseals]

1 hour ago, RuneBrush said:

Just throwing something into this.  Goretide is going to be at least 2500 points to field at the absolute minimum unit sizes

I don't think this is true. All you need for a Goretide is a Mighty Lord of Khorne and a Slaughterborn battalion (min 3 blood warriors).  That's only 920 points including battalion costs. 

I'm guessing you are getting tripped up by the 3-7 additional battalions, but those are listed under "may also contain" and not "must contain". It seems a little weird to me that they would word it like this, because the 3-7 additional battalions and 0-1 gorechosen battalions is completely redundant with the "and number of additional Khorne Bloodbound units or warscroll battalions".  I guess it matters for the extra rules for the max number of battalions?

Random aside: How do goreglaives work with blood warrior units given that they are listed as 1 in 10 models having a goreglaive but the min unit size is 5? Do you need 10 models in the unit to give one a goreglaive, or can you always have 1 goreglaive and just can't add a second until you hit 20 men? Or is it restricted across all units combined? Pretty basic question, but as a non-bloodbound player I haven't actually noticed this rule before!

[rokapoke]

17 minutes ago, swarmofseals said:

Random aside: How do goreglaives work with blood warrior units given that they are listed as 1 in 10 models having a goreglaive but the min unit size is 5? Do you need 10 models in the unit to give one a goreglaive, or can you always have 1 goreglaive and just can't add a second until you hit 20 men? Or is it restricted across all units combined? Pretty basic question, but as a non-bloodbound player I haven't actually noticed this rule before!

It works exactly as written. For matched play, the minimum unit size is 5. For a Goreglaive, the minimum number of models is 10 -- therefore, to include a Goreglaive, your unit has to be double the minimum size (10% of your models, rounded down, can have Goreglaives).

[Spinsane]

Who knows, with GHB2 coming soon, maybe there'll be more generic rules regarding Matched Play army comp that expand beyond 2500pts...

[generalchaos34]

Or maybe, JUST MAYBE, in the book none of us have seen they will clarify the use of this rule. I would imagine that like previous books they will introduce the point values (like they did in the the Tzeentch book or the SoD box). They may even have notes saying what can and can't be used in regular play. You even point that out in the end of your opening statement. I suggest we wait and see whats in the book before we complain about its rule content. 

[BaldoBeardo]

Who knows, with GHB2 coming soon, maybe there'll be more generic rules regarding Matched Play army comp that expand beyond 2500pts...

O/T, but I'd have thought if you're looking at playing beyond 2.5k you're not really after a knife edge encounter and open might get more appealing...

[swarmofseals]

23 minutes ago, generalchaos34 said:

Or maybe, JUST MAYBE, in the book none of us have seen they will clarify the use of this rule. I would imagine that like previous books they will introduce the point values (like they did in the the Tzeentch book or the SoD box). They may even have notes saying what can and can't be used in regular play. You even point that out in the end of your opening statement. I suggest we wait and see whats in the book before we complain about its rule content. 

I've seen the page with the points values and the battalions etc. There aren't any notes there, although it's possible there is something on a different page that I haven't seen. Regardless, the point I'm trying to make is a broad one and not just specific to this battalion or this book. This is just an example.

49 minutes ago, Auticus said:

I'm not seeing the issue honestly.  I don't see the need to be pedantic in the rules-writing to appease that level of rules-lawyering.  Quite plainly, the rules are very clear.  

I think that they are quite clear too, but then again I've been playing GW games for around 20 years now and I'm very used to the way GW writes. IIRC you've been playing GW games for ages too. I think our experience colors our perception quite a bit. I see people asking questions and arguing about this kind of rules problem on a frequent basis. Sometimes it's in the form of people writing to clarify a rules question. More troubling are the situations where people (usually newer players) write explaining that their opponent crushed them by using some sketchy composition that they justified using a tortured interpretation of the rules, but the new  player was too inexperienced to really be able to argue their case or even know that their opponent was misconstruing things. Sometimes these situations are the result of malicious rules-lawyering, while other times it's just plain wishful thinking where people delude themselves into thinking a line of argument is reasonable because they want to be allowed to do whatever thing they are trying to justify. 

Regardless, the level of work it would take on GWs part to proactively clear up these kinds of things would be truly minimal. They manage to find space to squeeze reminder text onto many magic cards where space is at a tremendous premium. Most warscrolls have PLENTY of space on them for reminder or explanatory text. I also suspect that the majority if not the vast majority of these situations could be caught with just a few hours of proofreading. 

To me, this level of additional work is justified even if it only prevents a few situations of confusion among new players, saves TOs from having to answer a few questions about what is or isn't allowed, or saves a few gamers from having bad experiences with opponents who are trying to push the rules (whether with ill intent or not). 

 

 

55 minutes ago, rokapoke said:

*explanation*

Thanks! 

[RuneBrush]

13 hours ago, swarmofseals said:

I don't think this is true. All you need for a Goretide is a Mighty Lord of Khorne and a Slaughterborn battalion (min 3 blood warriors).  That's only 920 points including battalion costs. 

I'm guessing you are getting tripped up by the 3-7 additional battalions, but those are listed under "may also contain" and not "must contain". It seems a little weird to me that they would word it like this, because the 3-7 additional battalions and 0-1 gorechosen battalions is completely redundant with the "and number of additional Khorne Bloodbound units or warscroll battalions".  I guess it matters for the extra rules for the max number of battalions?

I'd completely missed the sub-headings for that...  The 3-7 is quite odd in truth, but think you're right it's there purely for maxing out the battalion

You could knock it out at 720 points too - wow, just realised that means it's actually really easy to make a Bloodbound army single drop with D6 movement in the hero phase   This makes me very happy!  

[AGPO]

Last I checked, Azyr doesn't allow you to take Gorechosen for matched play for probably exactly this reason.

If a time of war for tunnel fighting  or dungeon crawling was released that forbade any flyers, the fact that a Battletome had rules for flyers wouldn't permit you to use them. Plenty of war scrolls say that a unit can include any number of models, but matched play pegs them at minimum and maximum size. There's more than enough examples of this.