What to do with obvious rules errors

[evilamericorp]

Q: How do maelstroms, novas and beams – or indeed any weapon
that doesn’t need to roll To Hit or hits automatically – interact with
Zooming Flyers and Gliding Flying Monstrous Creatures? (p13)
A: Only Snap Shots can hit Zooming Flyers and Gliding
Flying Monstrous Creatures. Therefore, any attacks that use
blast markers, templates, create a line of/area of effect or
otherwise don’t roll to hit cannot target them. This includes
weapons such as the Necron Doom Scythe’s death ray or the
Deathstrike missile of the Imperial Guard, and psychic
powers that follow the rule for maelstroms, beams, and
novas.

So the new FAQ says Gliding FMC when it should say Swooping FMC. Clearly an error, but the FAQ word is law. Do we play that an FMC in any movement mode can only be hit by snap shots now? That's what the FAQ says...

How do you deal with obvious mistakes when there are so many that are less obvious?

[DarkLink]

Actually, FAQs are explicitly not binding. GW pansy-foots around that in their Shrine of Knowledge section. In a case like this, if your opponent makes a fuss then they're not an opponent worth playing.

[Wildeybeast]

Surely you treat it in the same way as any other rule which you feel doesn't work or is confusing and house rule it??? And if you are playing competitively, the TO should let you know their stance on FAQs and common rule issues. Not sure why this is thread, it's clearly a non-issue. And it should really be in the rules thread.

[Big_jon]

I like to do what is obviously intended, it really pisses me off hen people try to break poorly written rules, it seems not to be in the spirit of the game.

Like Swooping with MC's, and or LOSing Nobz with other Nobz.

[DarkLink]

Use it as a litmus test for the *********ness of your opponent.

[apahllo]

Actually, FAQs are explicitly not binding. GW pansy-foots around that in their Shrine of Knowledge section. In a case like this, if your opponent makes a fuss then they're not an opponent worth playing.
This really sums it up. It's one thing to not understand the rules completely and make mistakes but it's something else entirely to try to win through cheap tricks and gimmicks...
The game is for fun not for haggling small points that are loop holes. If someone wants to through a fit over every rule or disagreement, DON'T PLAY THEM.

[Nabterayl]

At the end of the day, you and your opponent are only playing by the rules because you agreed to. It can be valuable to know what the rules say, and even worth the effort to go through complicated discussions to figure out what the rules say, but only as a starting point for you and your opponent to decide what rules you want to play by.

[apahllo]

At the end of the day, you and your opponent are only playing by the rules because you agreed to. It can be valuable to know what the rules say, and even worth the effort to go through complicated discussions to figure out what the rules say, but only as a starting point for you and your opponent to decide what rules you want to play by.
Yes but it's hard to get a reasonably timed game with a stranger when they are contesting everything. Which is something I try to frequent... (the games against strangers, not rule contesting)

I have a pretty close group of friends and we always get into rule discussions over small mistyped rules or FAQ checks. but my random games are hard to manage because I have my head still in 5th rules. Things like double dice on MC pen roles, special force weapons, and small gaps such as signum effects on plasma cannons(bs scatter 5 vs 4)get us in a odd situation.

Luckily we have an agreement where if disagreements go beyond 5 minutes then we roll of to see whose right. We even decided to roll off to see who gets odds and who gets evens in the ruling of which way we will play a certain anomaly... This is all thanks to me bringing forward the belief that evens occur more than odds. I know right... It's all good spirited fun in the end and we have a good time. But this wasn't always the case..

[evilamericorp]

Yes but it's hard to get a reasonably timed game with a stranger when they are contesting everything. Which is something I try to frequent... (the games against strangers, not rule contesting)

This is pretty much why I brought it up. I don't like to have to make house rules, because I want to be able to go anywhere, take out my army, and play a game with a stranger without a lot of rules issues popping up. House rules are fine if you always play with the same few people, but I live in an area with a ton of players, and folks regularly traveling in from out of town for tournaments. It's hard to make and remember a bunch of house rules when you have so many different opponents. I just wish GW was better at interacting with their playerbase or had some sort of forum where issues like this could be brought to the attention of people with the power to make changes in a reasonable amount of time.

[Nabterayl]

my random games are hard to manage because I have my head still in 5th rules. Things like double dice on MC pen roles, special force weapons, and small gaps such as signum effects on plasma cannons(bs scatter 5 vs 4)get us in a odd situation.
Well, fortunately that sounds pretty fixable. I can't imagine you'll have your head in 5th edition rules forever.

evilamericorp, for whatever it's worth, my attitude towards your problem is threefold:

Have an extremely high threshold for saying, "Well, GW is just bad at writing rules." Even one believes this to be true, it short-circuits attempts to actually interpret the text without offering a consistent alternative interpretive scheme. If you have a high threshold for playing the bad writing card, you can carry around in your head your top one to five instances where you think GW is really obviously wrong and clear those up in about thirty seconds. I'm talking the "GW clearly meant swooping here, right?" level of obviously wrong.
Get on a rules forum where people have honest, adult, replicable rules interpretation discussions. I think there are a lot of rules questions that seem ambiguous, but extraordinarily few that don't have a demonstrably correct answer - or perhaps two demonstrably correct answers, depending on your premises (I find this can be important on the thornier questions. "If we believe X, the answer is Y; if we believe 1, the answer is 2" can short-circuit an otherwise contentious debate). Getting to that answer, though, is best done away from the table. The point of enlisting other people's aid is not to arrive at a consensus, but to arrive at an answer you can walk somebody through in about thirty seconds. If your rules forum of choice doesn't help you do this, it isn't useful.
If you can't (a) already demonstrate the answer to a question, (b) derive it in about thirty seconds of looking stuff up, or (c) get your opponent to see that your demonstrably correct answer is correct, cave on the point and demonstrate it later, or go derive the demonstrably correct answer later. After all, being a good sport means being willing to lose to avoid a rules argument during the game.
Don't know if that helps, but that's my approach.

[apahllo]

This is pretty much why I brought it up. I don't like to have to make house rules, because I want to be able to go anywhere, take out my army, and play a game with a stranger without a lot of rules issues popping up. House rules are fine if you always play with the same few people, but I live in an area with a ton of players, and folks regularly traveling in from out of town for tournaments. It's hard to make and remember a bunch of house rules when you have so many different opponents. I just wish GW was better at interacting with their playerbase or had some sort of forum where issues like this could be brought to the attention of people with the power to make changes in a reasonable amount of time. yes, yes and more yes. Gw really should be more involved with the fan base but the line has to be drawn. Despite all of our critisim and holes in the rules, I honestly think gw does a good job with the rules. The FAQs play a big part in this but they should be every six to nine months or so.


-don't worry nab, my 5th edition affliction is not terminal. With every game I learn more and get a better grip on 6th. I've found having the small rule book is helping me a lot because it can be transported with ease, so whenever I'm curious I just check cuz I have it with me most of the time.

[evilamericorp]

Well it looks like GW might have turned over a new leaf and actually hired someone to read some forums. The swooping/gliding mistype has been fixed already.

[apahllo]

Well it looks like GW might have turned over a new leaf and actually hired someone to read some forums. The swooping/gliding mistype has been fixed already.
+1 gw

+9001 this thread