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You "upgrade" a veteran to an Apothecary "taking a narthecium .
As shown with the emperor's champion they refer to the standard items that get replaced.
Only the standard gear are "assumed" when the upgrade is done.
Then the Apothecary is not eligible as a "veteran" to choose from the ranged weapons list (same as the champion).
If you notice when they write these rules they have a logical flow of progression from one line to the next.
Anyway, if this is just to get a grav-gun on the guy, they are better spent on anything with "relentless".

 lord_blackfang wrote:
It's not an issue of timing at all. The end result of your interpretation is an illegal game state: a model type with wargear that cannot be accessed by that model type.

You're begging the question. You are claiming that the model is not allowed to have the piece of wargear because he isn't allowed to have it. Admittedly, the rules are poorly written, but there is absolutely nothing in the rules that supports the idea that such a "game state" is "illegal". The Codex explicitly gives you permission to perform the upgrades, and whether you consider them simultaneous or sequential, you are legally following the Codex to obtain the model. Nowhere are you breaking any written rules, or doing something that you are not given explicit permission to do, so how is it "illegal"?

DogofWar1 wrote:Perhaps, but the alternative is that Tactical Marines get a free ccw based on the no specified melee weapon rule on page 51. If a bolt pistol is merely a melee multiplier, and not a melee weapon, then tactical marines would, as per that rule, be considered not to have a weapon of the melee type in their wargear, and therefore be treated as being armed with a ccw, which when combined with the bolt pistol means they have 2 melee weapons.

This definitely won't work! If they have a pistol (which has the melee rule) then you have a melee weapon.
Therefore there is no way to claim the non-specified CCW.

Kommissar Kel wrote:I was talking about giving a nob eavy armour then upgrading him to a painboy, keeping the armour. The painboy cannot purchase the armour but the nob he was could. And this is supported elsewhere in the FAQ.

You mean support from his FAQ?

Q: Can a Painboy in a unit of Nobs take the ‘eavy armour, bosspole, Waaagh! Banner or ammo runt upgrades? (p98)
A: No.

 Talizvar wrote:
Anyway, if this is just to get a grav-gun on the guy, they are better spent on anything with "relentless".

Like, say, a Command Squad on Bikes?

TehCheator wrote:

 Talizvar wrote:
Anyway, if this is just to get a grav-gun on the guy, they are better spent on anything with "relentless".

Like, say, a Command Squad on Bikes?

Yep, only way they should ever use them, but not with an Apothecary OR Emp. Champ. they have other tasks...

 Talizvar wrote:
You "upgrade" a veteran to an Apothecary "taking a narthecium .
As shown with the emperor's champion they refer to the standard items that get replaced.
Only the standard gear are "assumed" when the upgrade is done.
Then the Apothecary is not eligible as a "veteran" to choose from the ranged weapons list (same as the champion).
If you notice when they write these rules they have a logical flow of progression from one line to the next.
Anyway, if this is just to get a grav-gun on the guy, they are better spent on anything with "relentless".

1. Don't you mean Company Champion?
2. It's not the same as the Champion since he has to trade in his Chainsword.
3. Relentless, like an Apothecary on a bike?
4. FAQ says they can replace the pistol with a Chainsword, where should we place that line? Logic says it's at the bottom, but if we "have to use a flow from one line to the next" that would mean none can take special weapons.

 Talizvar wrote:
Yep, only way they should ever use them, but not with an Apothecary OR Emp. Champ. they have other tasks...

Five Grav-guns with T5, 3+, 5+ cover and FnP is how I want to use them.

 grendel083 wrote:

DogofWar1 wrote:Perhaps, but the alternative is that Tactical Marines get a free ccw based on the no specified melee weapon rule on page 51. If a bolt pistol is merely a melee multiplier, and not a melee weapon, then tactical marines would, as per that rule, be considered not to have a weapon of the melee type in their wargear, and therefore be treated as being armed with a ccw, which when combined with the bolt pistol means they have 2 melee weapons.

This definitely won't work! If they have a pistol (which has the melee rule) then you have a melee weapon.
Therefore there is no way to claim the non-specified CCW.

This was exactly my point, the bolt pistol is a melee weapon and can therefore be replaced for a special weapon. If something has the melee rule, it has range " - ". If something has range " - " it is a melee weapon (page 50). The reasonable logical conclusion is that it is both a melee and ranged weapon which keeps from invoking the no specified melee weapon rule for tactical marines (among others).

They've created sufficient workarounds where you don't NEED to replace the bolt pistol, but the logical progression still stands such that you CAN.

 juraigamer wrote:
Apothecary can now take special weapons, thank god I've been waiting for this day to re-create my deathwatch character.

It's all down to the order of operations

Veteran ---> upgrade with power fist ----> upgrade to apothecary ----> great success

Thankfully the apothecary entry doesn't say he replaces his wargear, so he's good.

Works the same way as giving a nob a big shoota

Ork boy ----> big shoota ----> upgrade to nob ----> great success

False. If it were legal for this codex, then why wasn't it legal for the previous codex?

And as has been pointed out already, the Nob can take the big shoota after becoming a Nob because he's still an ork.

 Ghaz wrote:

False. If it were legal for this codex, then why wasn't it legal for the previous codex?

And as has been pointed out already, the Nob can take the big shoota after becoming a Nob because he's still an ork.

Didn't you have to swap out wargear for the apothecary in the previous codex? I'm not sure, but I seem to remember them saying you replace stuff with a narthecium, which meant you had to have that wargear in the first place and not have replaced it, and obviously couldn't replace it afterwards since you no longer had it. Here, you don't do any replacing, you just add, so you don't eliminate any prerequisites for becoming an apothecary prior to the upgrade by swapping for a special weapon.

 Ghaz wrote:
False. If it were legal for this codex, then why wasn't it legal for the previous codex?

It wasn't legal for the previous codex because in the previous one the Apothecary was automatically in the squad, it wasn't a Veteran upgrade. In this version both the Apothecary AND the special weapons are upgrades for a veteran, so you can take both.

 Ghaz wrote:

False. If it were legal for this codex, then why wasn't it legal for the previous codex?

In the previous codex, the apothecary wasn't a veteran, he was an apothecary. There was no option to give him anything, as he had no listed upgrades, nor was he an upgrade for the unit. As such the apothecary wasn't allowed anything more than standard wargear.

DogofWar1 wrote:

 Ghaz wrote:

False. If it were legal for this codex, then why wasn't it legal for the previous codex?

And as has been pointed out already, the Nob can take the big shoota after becoming a Nob because he's still an ork.

Didn't you have to swap out wargear for the apothecary in the previous codex? I'm not sure, but I seem to remember them saying you replace stuff with a narthecium, which meant you had to have that wargear in the first place and not have replaced it, and obviously couldn't replace it afterwards since you no longer had it. Here, you don't do any replacing, you just add, so you don't eliminate any prerequisites for becoming an apothecary prior to the upgrade by swapping for a special weapon.

In that case, Dark Eldar can have "sergeants" running around with Dark Lances, the situation is identical. Not to mention the other 15 years of precedent, including the 2002 CSM Codex.

Since I've never seen anyone try to pull that off, I'm going to assume this is some sort of Marine entitlement issue.

It's not an entitlement issue.

When I asked this question some months ago about Nob Bikerz, I was told that it worked one way. Now, the exact same issue comes up with apothecaries, and there seems to be some contention, with some people saying that it works the exact opposite way.

 Jimsolo wrote:
It's not an entitlement issue.

When I asked this question some months ago about Nob Bikerz, I was told that it worked one way. Now, the exact same issue comes up with apothecaries, and there seems to be some contention, with some people saying that it works the exact opposite way.

Ah, I see your frustration. The Ork codex is a real piece of work, with 3 different ways of how wargear and model upgrades interact (Kommandos, Nobs and Boyz). I'd chalk that up to Phil Kelly simply being a chump.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
In that case, Dark Eldar can have "sergeants" running around with Dark Lances, the situation is identical. Not to mention the other 15 years of precedent, including the 2002 CSM Codex.

Since I've never seen anyone try to pull that off, I'm going to assume this is some sort of Marine entitlement issue.

You've probably never seen it because you can still only have one Dark Lance, and putting all of your points on a single model is a bad idea. Plus there's no benefit to doing it, so what would be the point?

That still doesn't disprove the rules as they are written. You keep saying "But it never worked like this before!" Without actually making an argument for why it doesn't work like that now.

TehCheator wrote:

 lord_blackfang wrote:
In that case, Dark Eldar can have "sergeants" running around with Dark Lances, the situation is identical. Not to mention the other 15 years of precedent, including the 2002 CSM Codex.

Since I've never seen anyone try to pull that off, I'm going to assume this is some sort of Marine entitlement issue.

You've probably never seen it because you can still only have one Dark Lance, and putting all of your points on a single model is a bad idea. Plus there's no benefit to doing it, so what would be the point?

So you can have the last model to die be both the heavy weapon guy and the high Leadership guy?

That still doesn't disprove the rules as they are written. You keep saying "But it never worked like this before!" Without actually making an argument for why it doesn't work like that now.

Because it didn't before? The interpretation of the wording doesn't suddenly reverse just because it got printed in a Space Marine book.

 Jimsolo wrote:
It's not an entitlement issue.

When I asked this question some months ago about Nob Bikerz, I was told that it worked one way. Now, the exact same issue comes up with apothecaries, and there seems to be some contention, with some people saying that it works the exact opposite way.

It is because a Nob biker is still a Nob, notice how there's no separate profile for a Nob biker. This is not the case with the Apotechary.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
GW is very careful with wording their squad upgrades ...

*Cough*
*Cough*

Are we talking about the same GW?

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Because it didn't before? The interpretation of the wording doesn't suddenly reverse just because it got printed in a Space Marine book.

What wording are you referring to? If you're talking about the Dark Eldar you just mentioned, then I would say it absolutely did work that way before, and still does. Just because nobody did it doesn't mean it wasn't possible, it just didn't have enough benefits for people to say "Hey why don't I do that?"

The codexes in question very clearly give you the option of several different upgrades, that you can take any or all of, so there's no reason to artificially assume that you can do some combinations but not others, without other rules prohibiting it. There are no rules in the game or any of the codexes that say "You have to perform character upgrades first" or "You can't combine character upgrades with other upgrades."

Yeah, the Dark Eldar example seems like something you COULD do, it just wouldn't be a good idea.

 Grugknuckle wrote:

 lord_blackfang wrote:
GW is very careful with wording their squad upgrades ...

*Cough*
*Cough*

Are we talking about the same GW?

Yeah, they're so careful that they had to do a day 2 FAQ just to make sure ANYONE in a command squad could take a special weapon, and to avoid a massive debate about whether bikers can take special weapons.

GW makes mistakes or leaves things ambiguous all the time. That's why going purely RAW tends to be a bad idea, because pure RAW has all sorts of nit-picky problems. RAI, when RAI is obvious and consistent with one interpretation of RAW, is better to follow. The problem with RAI here, at least based on RAI of previous codices, is that it appears to stand in opposition to RAW.

The thing is, we don't know if GW's RAI changed between editions. For me personally, where RAI and RAW stand in opposition, I tend to opt towards the more liberal, permissive approach. Telling someone they CANNOT do something, when that something is ambiguous, is not something I like doing.

It's worth noting that I don't really have a horse in this race. While I play SM, I don't really plan on taking a command squad at any point. I tend to opt towards MSU, and with the proliferation of AP3 or gbetter weapons I'd rather my bikers be cheaper. A command squad on a bike is 135 points. For that same price I can get 5 bikes that are scoring with 2 special weapons built in. They have fewer attacks, but to match with special weapons I have to pay 165 on the command squad, and I'd be daft to not take an apothecary, which increases it further. Basically, I just feel it's more cost than I feel comfy paying, I prefer to shove as much as possible in there.

 lord_blackfang wrote:

 Kommissar Kel wrote:
I was talking about giving a nob eavy armour then upgrading him to a painboy, keeping the armour. The painboy cannot purchase the armour but the nob he was could. And this is supported elsewhere in the FAQ.

Why exactly would they bother to explicitly say that Painboyz can't buy wargear if they intended to allow this workaround? You can't support your creative reading by misapplying some other FAQ answer that directly contradicts the answer actually dealing with the issue at hand.

Because Painboys cannot buy that gear.

It doesn't say they cannot have the gear only that they cannot buy it.

The exact same "workaround" is required for nob bikers to purchace anything other than Stickbombs(including for one of them to be made a painboy before getting on a bike).

Sorry, but you don't get points for clever list building. It dosnt matter what order you take the upgrades in, if at the end a model has a piece of wargear he's not allowed to have then your list is illegal.

 juraigamer wrote:
Apothecary can now take special weapons, thank god I've been waiting for this day to re-create my deathwatch character.

It's all down to the order of operations

Veteran ---> upgrade with power fist ----> upgrade to apothecary ----> great success

Thankfully the apothecary entry doesn't say he replaces his wargear, so he's good.

Works the same way as giving a nob a big shoota

Ork boy ----> big shoota ----> upgrade to nob ----> great success

" Veteran ---> upgrade with power fist ----> upgrade to apothecary ----> great success "

This... So much this. The apothecary starts as a veteran able to purachas upgrades, the Apothicary upgrade does not require you to loose anything, and simply gives him a narthecium. He keeps that sweet grav gun.

 Ghaz wrote:
Sorry, but you don't get points for clever list building. It dosnt matter what order you take the upgrades in, if at the end a model has a piece of wargear he's not allowed to have then your list is illegal.

Show me a rule that says he isn't "Allowed" to have it and I'll believe you. The only rule I see is the one that lists which upgrades can be taken, so I follow those rules and take a set of upgrades (which just so happens to include the Apothecary upgrade, as well as others). There are no rules that say the Apothecary upgrade is somehow "different" from the others or that you can't take it in combination with the others.

The rules give explicit permission for a Veteran to take all of these different upgrades, with no restrictions on how many you can take. If you are arguing that he can't take the Apothecary one and one of the others at the same time, then you are basically saying that you can't take more than one upgrade on any character ever, which is obviously absurd.

Since the apothecary has his own stat line he is not a veteran otherwise he would be called something like veteran apothercary not just apothercary

wargamer1985 wrote:
Since the apothecary has his own stat line he is not a veteran otherwise he would be called something like veteran apothercary not just apothercary

Then why the difference in wording between the apothecary and the champion? Where the champion specifically gives up and replaces pieces of wargear the apothecary does not.

 Ghaz wrote:
Sorry, but you don't get points for clever list building. It dosnt matter what order you take the upgrades in, if at the end a model has a piece of wargear he's not allowed to have then your list is illegal.

Except it never says an apothecary can't have upgrades if it already has them. Upgrade order is a thing, some units use it. Heck, some units have to use it to get certain upgrades. Bikes can use it for special weapons, CSM squads use it for icons, HQs take terminator armor and then swap stuff etc. etc.

The funny thing is, GW could have kept the whole "apothecary is built-in" and solved the issue, but they didn't. That makes me think there is some change in RAI. What that change is we don't quite know, but it may well be that they wanted to let apothecaries and company champions have somewhat varied wargear.

Or they could write it that you "Exchange one Veteran for an Apothecary", very easy fix.

 Ghaz wrote:
Sorry, but you don't get points for clever list building. It dosnt matter what order you take the upgrades in, if at the end a model has a piece of wargear he's not allowed to have then your list is illegal.

Do you have a source for that ruling?

And how about Bikers with Special weapons? They can:
1) Switch Pistol to Chainsword
2) Switch Chainsword to Special Weapon.
End-result: They changed a Pistol to a Special Weapon, which would be illegal if you are right.

Page 88: lists the apoth's wargear

Page 164: (paraphrased slightly but in order from the book)
One vet may take company standard or relic

One vet may be upgraded to a champ....

One vet maybe upgraded to an apothecary takin a narth

The entire squad may take bikes

Any veteran may take bombs/shield

Any veteran may replace

Any veteran may take items from

Thee are 3 stat lines in the command squad entry

Veteran
Company Champion
Apothecary

The upgrade changes the models.classification due to the fact it has its own stat line