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Hey guys,

please forgive the wall of text.. I tried to be as thorough as possible...

Alright, so it's pretty clear that exarch powers are only extended to autarchs and aspect warriors in the same unit as the model that owns the power. Because of this, I have been under the impression that, for an example, a farseer within a dire avenger unit, would not benefit from the "defend" power.

However, not all exarch powers affect the models in the aspect warrior unit. As an example, the banshee exarch's "warshout" affects enemy models, rather than the banshees. With this in mind, I read the "defend" rule more closely, and it appears that this power, rather than affecting the aspect warriors themselves, affects the enemy. If this is so, would the power not be required to be extended to the farseer, in order to work to his advantage?

The rule reads:

"Enemies directing their attacks towards the exarch's squad lose one attack in each assault phase (to a minimum of 1.)"

When broken down it appears:

Who is affected?- "Enemies directing their attacks towards the exarch's squad."
What triggers the power?- "directing...attacks towards the exarch's squad."
What happens to the affected model(s)?- "lose one attack in each assault phase."

It looks pretty solid to me, the only argument I can possibly see against it is that for the purposes of allocating attacks, independent characters are considered separate units and therefor the farseer is not a member of "the exarch's squad,"... how ever I do not believe the rule should be interpreted that way, because to do so would mean that a space marine chaplain could never let his unit re-roll hits in close combat, as he would be his own separate unit under that interpretation, and to accept that would be just silly.

What do you guys think?

The text which will defeat this is: "Note that Exarch powers can only ever effect Aspect Warriors and Autarchs in the same squad as the Exarch using them." This defeats the claim that Defend is somehow affecting the enemy squad because my quoted text now says "Okay, then it doesn't do anything to the enemy squad because it can only affect the squad."

The power affects the specified models in the squad by causing their opponents to lose attacks. Because the codex says that the power can't affect the farseer.

Better luck next time.

Also, in cc, the farseer is a separate unit (as an IC).
Models targetting him aren't targetting the DA squad so wouldn't be affected.

Either way he won't benefit.

Nope. Defend does not work with a Farseer, for the reasons already shown.

solkan wrote:The text which will defeat this is: "Note that Exarch powers can only ever effect Aspect Warriors and Autarchs in the same squad as the Exarch using them." This defeats the claim that Defend is somehow affecting the enemy squad because my quoted text now says "Okay, then it doesn't do anything to the enemy squad because it can only affect the squad."

The power affects the specified models in the squad by causing their opponents to lose attacks. Because the codex says that the power can't affect the farseer.

Better luck next time.

Yeah, the RAW here cannot be refuted, but then by RAW, neither defend nor the banshee's warshout powers work, ever, since they affect enemies, rather than the unit whos exarch uses the power.

chromedog wrote:Also, in cc, the farseer is a separate unit (as an IC).
Models targetting him aren't targetting the DA squad so wouldn't be affected.

Either way he won't benefit.

Well I suppose one could interpret the IC in close combat rule that way, but as I mentioned in the original post, if youre willing to interpret it that way, all the sudden you have chaplain and chaplain equivalents who are unable to give the units they are in their ability to re-roll attacks in close combat, because, by this interpretation, the chaplains (as IC's) are seperate units.

Falconlance wrote:

solkan wrote:The text which will defeat this is: "Note that Exarch powers can only ever effect Aspect Warriors and Autarchs in the same squad as the Exarch using them." This defeats the claim that Defend is somehow affecting the enemy squad because my quoted text now says "Okay, then it doesn't do anything to the enemy squad because it can only affect the squad."

The power affects the specified models in the squad by causing their opponents to lose attacks. Because the codex says that the power can't affect the farseer.

Better luck next time.

Yeah, the RAW here cannot be refuted, but then by RAW, neither defend nor the banshee's warshout powers work, ever, since they affect enemies, rather than the unit whos exarch uses the power.

What you write is true only if you attempt to use the interpretation of "affect" which you used in your original post. If one interprets "affect" as "is given the benefits or use of", then both Defend and War Shout work fine while still denying a Farseer the benefit of defend.

Complaining that your own argument breaks even more of your army's abilities isn't a winning strategy.