Questions about Selecting Detachments?

[Blood Shadow]

Selecting Detachments:
(pp565 iBook version)
Q1.
"You may take any Number and Type of Detachments in a Battle-Forged army"

I take this to mean I can take any number of Allied detachments in an army....

But does this mean I can take any number of Allied detachments that have different faction?

The rules restrictions on Allies is that they must be of a different Faction to the Primary Detachment, but not that they may or may not be different to one another.

Am I right in thinking I can take as many Allies with different Faction as I like, so long as they're different to the Primary detachment?

Q2.
The GK and BA FAQs (not SM or SW) state that combat squads count towards the total number of units in your detachment....

....does this mean I can't take more than 3 Tact squads in a Primary/Combined Arms detachment if I intend to combat squad them?

[hyudun]

Answer to Q1:
You are correct that the statement "You may take any Number of Type of Detachments..." means that you can take 2 or more Allied Detachments.
There are also no specific restrictions about the number of Allied Detachments you can take in the Allied Detachments section.
Additionally, there are no mentions of "Allied Detachment" (did a text search in the digital version), so there can be no further rules affecting this.
Finally, preceding the Allies Matrix, is this sentence - "You can include models from any number of different Factions in the same army if you wish"; the book does not restrict this sentence to unbound armies, lending further support to the idea that you can take multiple Allied Detachments in a Battle-Forged Army.


Answer to Q2:
The wording here is indeed poor, but I think the intention is quite obvious (that combat squad-ing does not increase your # of units taken in regards to FoC adherence). The text specifics that the counting of combat squads towards your total number of units in your detachment starts "now", which was previously defined as immediately before determining your Warlord Traits". Think of the sequence of events as such:
1. You choose/build your army
2. You set up for a game
3. The game starts and you and your opponent are playing the game until it ends
The rule only applies from step 2 onwards. This notion is further supported by the fact that several armies can create additional units mid-game (e.g. Daemonology, Tervigon spawning) without affecting their FoC adherence or battle-forged status. Additionally, it is unnecessarily encumbering, recursive, and redundant to force you to repeat Step 1 if you wanted to Combat Squad, which would make the alternative interpretation a very poorly-designed ruleset if it was indeed the correct case.

[John Bower]

As I read it though, you don't 'have' to take an Allied detachment to use a different army. You could take a separate army as a 2nd 'Combined Arms' detachment; still be battleforged and then of course your warlord could be from any of the 'combined arms' detachments. Of course allies restrictions still apply just as they do with Unbound lists. But it's not quite so clear cut now regarding detachments as there is no Primary, secondary etc.

[Blood Shadow]

Thanks guys, actually first time I read it it seemed as if you can have different Combined arm detachments made up of different Factions, however I get nervous that that may be in correct due to rules stating about having Faction at all. It would make the Allied detachment redundant?

I find the wording of the "All units must have the same Faction" in a CAD, does this mean within each CAD or the entire army....

As I read it, it sounds like you can as many Force Orgs as you like from any army you like....

[John Bower]

Thanks guys, actually first time I read it it seemed as if you can have different Combined arm detachments made up of different Factions, however I get nervous that that may be in correct due to rules stating about having Faction at all. It would make the Allied detachment redundant?

I find the wording of the "All units must have the same Faction" in a CAD, does this mean within each CAD or the entire army....

As I read it, it sounds like you can as many Force Orgs as you like from any army you like....

It does actually say 'all units in this detachment' must be from the same faction, which it also says under the 'allied' detachment too, then tells you that you can have as many detachments as you like and is pretty clear they don't all have to come from the same 1 or 2 armies. I don't think the Allied detachment is redundant, sometimes easier to take based on points than a full detachment would be as you only have to find 1 HQ and 1 Troops against 1 & 2 for a normal CAD

[Blood Shadow]

Yeah I suppose I can see a place for a 1/3 force org detachment, so the CAD is both primary and allied, where as the Allied Det is just for Factions other than the primary.

Just curious though where do you read it that it's pretty clear you can take more than two armies outside of formations, everyone seems to talk like this is obvious have I missed a key paragraph?

[hyudun]

Just curious though where do you read it that it's pretty clear you can take more than two armies outside of formations, everyone seems to talk like this is obvious have I missed a key paragraph?

Choosing Your Army; Detachments (red underline); 4th paragraph, starting in bold.
I'm assuming by "more than two armies" you mean "more than two detachments". An army is simply a collection of detachments in the specific lexicon of the 40k 7th edition rulebook.

[Blood Shadow]

Choosing Your Army; Detachments (red underline); 4th paragraph, starting in bold.
I'm assuming by "more than two armies" you mean "more than two detachments". An army is simply a collection of detachments in the specific lexicon of the 40k 7th edition rulebook.

Actually I mean more than two Factions rather than detachments. Specifically where does it say I can have multiple detachments with different Factions (so more than two as in 6th)?

I'm thinking of an Ordo Xenos list including Sternguard, MT Scions, GK and AM...

[Caitsidhe]

The rules are very vague and unclear in regards to this. It could easily be read to say you can have as many detachments as you like from as many different armies as you like with the only restriction being that within that specific detachment all models are from the same army. The only reason you would go to Allied Detachment over Combined Arms is that you only want (1) HQ, (1) Troop, and (1) of other things. I've read the damn section on creating an army several times and seen it can be read a few ways and it is very frustrating.

[John Bower]

It is vague, but it is there if you read 'all' the bits related;

1st off it shows 2 types of Detachment; Combined Arms being 1, Allied being the other. The wording says you can take as many detachments as you like (not least you may have to now with there being no upper limit on points in normal games). Okay, the only caveat to that is written quite clearly in the 2 detachments, and since it's the same wording I'll just quote it 1ce, "All units in the detachment must be from the same faction". That's pretty clear; to me at least it means 'within' that detachment. Now points can be limited, but you could for example have 3 CADS and an AD in your army if you wanted (or more but let's run with this for a moment).

1st CAD; Imperial Guard, 1 HQ and 2 Troops minimum
2nd CAD: Dark Angels same Caveat as the first, Battle Brothers to the 1st.
3rd CAD: Grey Knights, again 1 HQ and 2 Troops again Battle Bros to the first 2

From these 3 any can contain your warlord, it matters not and you don't have to decide that until you arrive for the game and are preparing warlord traits etc.

Finally we have chosen an Allied Detachment; 1 HQ and 1 troops plus any extras as allowed; our warlord cannot come from this detachment, but for our purposes we've rolleld with a Militarum Tempestus platoon and command squad. Why would we choose this instead of a 4th CAD? Points maybe? By now we could seriously be lacking in points and although we'd like to take more that 2nd troops just may push us over the limit taking into account what we want to add.

That's how I read it anyway. Other people may have other ideas but I can't see any limiting factors that suggest any other way of interpreting it.

[Caitsidhe]

It is vague, but it is there if you read 'all' the bits related;

1st CAD; Imperial Guard, 1 HQ and 2 Troops minimum
2nd CAD: Dark Angels same Caveat as the first, Battle Brothers to the 1st.
3rd CAD: Grey Knights, again 1 HQ and 2 Troops again Battle Bros to the first 2

But this doesn't answer the fundamental question, the point which is vague. There is nothing in the rules which prevents me from doing this:

Primary Detachment: Imperial Guard (HQ & 2 Troops)
1st Additional Combined Arms Detachment: Chaos Daemons (HQ & 2 Troops)
2nd Additional Combined Arms Detachment: Tyranids (HQ & 2 Troops)
3rd Additional Combined Arms Detachment: Tau (HQ & 2 Troops)
Allied Detachment: Black Legion (1 HQ & 1 Troop)
2nd Allied Detachment: Crimson Slaughter (1 HQ & 1 Troop)

The only restriction based on Faction is within the Detachment itself, not the army.

[Blood Shadow]

That's exactly as I've read it, but it seems weird to be intended this way....

For the meantime I'll work on a list as I want it, if people complain I'll play it is as unbound.....though objective secured is a pretty big loss when I mostly want troop choices bar Sternguard....but then there's the ambiguous Kantor FAQ as to whether Sternguard get OS in unbound lists....