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Neither impossible, nor unlikely. And stating: "Unit X will hit on 2+ " is linguistically the same as saying "Unit X will always hit on 2+" They're both absolutes.

It doesn't say "Unit X will hit on 2+ unless something else prevents it from doing so." It says it "WILL" hit, or they "DO" harness. All of these are linguistically absolute. The discussion of "always" taking precedence is similar to arguing whether the word "amazing" takes precedence over "awesome". They're both functionally the same.

Insofar as this never happening, what if you WANT it to happen?

Scenario:
It is your turn, your seer council has gate of infinity and is well outside the range of your culexus assassin. In the psychic phase, your council generates it's full warp charge, casts all it's buffs on other units, then gates over near the culexus. It then may still cast witchfires at targets within the AoE of the Culexus(on either a 6+/3+). Now, still during your psychic phase, the culexus gets to fire his weapon, which is now charged by all of the mastery levels of the seer council, allowing him to fire up to 10 times. The Culexus then is able to run in his shooting phase, getting away from the seer council so that you may rinse and repeat.

Will and always are not linguistically the same.

Always means at all times.

Will is a modal verb and therefore deals with degrees of likelihood or desirability. One sense of will refers to habitual behaviour. Habitually, they cast on 3+. Until the culexus' rule comes into play.

If "will" meant the same as "will always", the phrase "will always" would be redundant.

 BetrayTheWorld wrote:

Insofar as this never happening, what if you WANT it to happen?

Scenario:
It is your turn, your seer council has gate of infinity and is well outside the range of your culexus assassin. In the psychic phase, your council generates it's full warp charge, casts all it's buffs on other units, then gates over near the culexus. It then may still cast witchfires at targets within the AoE of the Culexus(on either a 6+/3+). Now, still during your psychic phase, the culexus gets to fire his weapon, which is now charged by all of the mastery levels of the seer council, allowing him to fire up to 10 times. The Culexus then is able to run in his shooting phase, getting away from the seer council so that you may rinse and repeat.

I am not super familiar with the Culexus's rules. Would you need Gate to do this? Could you not move both units apart, Seer Council casts all it's powers on 3+, then in the shooting phase they turbo-boost into range of the Culexus to "charge" it's weapon?

You could look at it as though in order to cast you must pass both conditions.

You must pass the 3+ for the formation ability, but you must also pass the 6+ from the Culexus.

When you roll a 5 it fulfills the criteria "results of a 3+ will harness a warp charge point"

but you cannot ignore the Culexus rule

"and only harness warp charge points on a 6+" - this rule is not fulfilled therefore you cannot cast

Anything different is utterly ignoring the Culexus requirement to cast.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
When you try to do something, you have to consider all the requirements.

-They have the power you want to cast

-You have enough warp charge points

-They aren't in a state that would not let them cast

-You roll a 3+ to harness

-You only harness on a 6+

Otherwise what you are saying is that if they were in some sort of a state that wouldn't allow them to cast, then a 3+ would still cast because of that statement.

What if there was a rule that said add 2 to the result needed to cast. What you are saying is that it would still pass on a 3+ because that is what it says.

You have to consider all the factors and requirements

JamesY wrote:Will and always are not linguistically the same.

Always means at all times.

Will is a modal verb and therefore deals with degrees of likelihood or desirability.

Incorrect. "Will" doesn't deal with degrees of likelihood. There are only 2 states: "Will" and "Will not". That makes either of those an absolute.

Galef wrote:
I am not super familiar with the Culexus's rules. Would you need Gate to do this? Could you not move both units apart, Seer Council casts all it's powers on 3+, then in the shooting phase they turbo-boost into range of the Culexus to "charge" it's weapon?

No, the Culexus' Weapon fires in the psychic phase instead of the shooting phase. So there is no other way to get them in his range except through the use of a psychic power, unless they were already there from the previous movement phase, which would stop them from generating warp charge.

chaosmarauder wrote:You could look at it as though in order to cast you must pass both conditions.

First, that's impossible, and Second, there is no support for this position in the rules. Here is what makes it impossible:

Rule #1 says that a unit harnesses on a dice roll of 3 or higher.
Rule #2 says that a unit harnesses on a dice roll of 6 or higher.

You roll a 5. If you count it as successfully harnessing, you are not following rule #2. If you count it as not successful, then you have not followed rule #1. Both of these are advanced rules from a codex(and thereby completely equal in their level of "advanceness") , so I think I agree that sequencing would indeed come into play.

@BetrayTheWorld

I do not think sequencing would come into play. I believe the intent of the rules here are perfectly clear.

The intent of the formation rule is to modify the original 4+ roll to a 3+ (effectively adding 1 to the roll - a nice little bonus)

The intent of the culexus rule is a 6+ for anything in its range.

What if it was your opponents culexus and not yours? Are you serisouly going to look him in the face and tell him your 3+ trumps his '6+'?

You started with a 3+, the culexus got within range its now a 6+ - its simple, its clean, its how most people will expect it to be played.

But if you insist on playing it like the way you want to - I would strongly suggest talking it over with an opponent first, but I'm telling you you are going to come off a tad bit of a rules lawyer when you start going into the sequencing rule to prove this to them.

I'm telling you that RAW is what matters to me in this discussion because I'm a tournament player and I'm trying to determine how major tournament circuits would generally rule this. I don't post "friendly rules discussions to be had with your opponent at your beer & pretzels game" in YMDC. I generally view this as a very crunchy, tournament-focused subgroup. I appologize if I wasn't clear about that in my initial post.

@betraytheword you need to look up the word will, it has more than one meaning, not all of which end in binary results. Unlike always. Will does not automatically produce an absolute ending, there is ambiguity in the word as it has several meanings, and we are not told which sense of the word was intended. This is why, when they want to create a certain ending, like in the example of kharn, they modify the verb with the adverb always to make it crystal clear. That has not been done in the case of the seers.

I could discuss linguistics all day. I do discuss linguistics all day.

If tournament discussions are what you are interested in, it might interest you to know that I reff'd at a couple of events at whw, and the logic I follow is the logic that you would get at a gw event. I don't and am not trying to speak on behalf of the rules writers, and I can see why some TO organisers would go down the sequencing route though.

 BetrayTheWorld wrote:
I'm telling you that RAW is what matters to me in this discussion because I'm a tournament player and I'm trying to determine how major tournament circuits would generally rule this. I don't post "friendly rules discussions to be had with your opponent at your beer & pretzels game" in YMDC. I generally view this as a very crunchy, tournament-focused subgroup. I appologize if I wasn't clear about that in my initial post.

These days, the tournament scene makes their own rules and the basic RAW be damned where ever they choose, so relying on RAW to help you with your tournament scene is somewhat pointless. Any questions for a tournament rulings are best addressed to them in their forum (where available, such as the ITC's forum on Frontline Gaming's site).

Forums like Warseer or Dakka have too general a populace to review for tournament rulings, so best to address only as RAW, at least initially, to establish a base for either smaller TOs, local groups, or roaming players to start a conversation with.

For Tournaments, you must always ask the specific TO.

GW has, quite literally, said they gave up on tournaments as a whole, and their complete lack of proofreading means there's no way to set a precedent for anything. If a TO decides to rule contrary to what the consensus is, there's nothing you can do about it.

For me, the only way to keep it fair is to, *grumble*, resort to a dice roll each turn this issue comes up.

Most US tournaments use RAW in the absence of a house rule, though ITC typically tries to house rule everything that sounds wonky, one way or the other. I will likely just email TOs to see what the rulings will be at any given tournament.

I primarily started this thread to ensure there wasn't a completely obvious, cut and dry line from a book somewhere that made it a non-debate. Since that doesn't appear to be the case, I'll just plan on asking specific TOs. Thanks for all the input everyone!

a question, which warp charge does the Culexus eat? If it is the autogenerated stuff, does that mean that you cannot Deny the witch as you get no generated dice either?

 BetrayTheWorld wrote:
Most US tournaments use RAW in the absence of a house rule, though ITC typically tries to house rule everything that sounds wonky, one way or the other. I will likely just email TOs to see what the rulings will be at any given tournament.

More and more major tournaments in the States are using ITC FAQ, and even modifying those. My own LGS manager is enamored by it, so he runs the bigger tournaments under their ruleset.

I would hate it even if I had time to go. I am not a fan of some of their judgements, including ones that can only benefit me (like the Invisibility nerf).

We are also assuming in this thread that the culexus and the Seer Council are on different teams, which changes this from a quirky but unlikely eventuality to something that could be awesomely potent.

Trazer985 wrote:
We are also assuming in this thread that the culexus and the Seer Council are on different teams, which changes this from a quirky but unlikely eventuality to something that could be awesomely potent.

This was my entire point of this thread. It makes the difference in this particular case:

My seer council has gate of infinity. My void dreamer has warp tunnel. The void dreamer is attached to the seer council, and the entire unit is outside of the AoE of the culexus at the beginning of the psychic phase(which is when they generate warp charge, so full warp charge). The void dreamer manifests warp tunnel, taking them into range of the culexus, who then fires his psychically charged weapon at a nearby unit for 12-15 S5 AP1 shots at BS8 with precision shots at -2 to look out sir rolls. Then, the seer council can cast gate of infinity, teleporting out of range of the culexus to buff itself and finish its psychic phase unmolested.

There is no debate on whether this can happen. The only debate is on whether they end up manifesting gate of infinity to get out on 6s or 3s.

On 6s, as their 3+ ability lacks any "always" equivalent wording, making it less specific.

I always say Dataslate/FaQ trumps Codex, and Codex trumps Rulebook

 BetrayTheWorld wrote:

Trazer985 wrote:
We are also assuming in this thread that the culexus and the Seer Council are on different teams, which changes this from a quirky but unlikely eventuality to something that could be awesomely potent.

This was my entire point of this thread. It makes the difference in this particular case:

My seer council has gate of infinity. My void dreamer has warp tunnel. The void dreamer is attached to the seer council, and the entire unit is outside of the AoE of the culexus at the beginning of the psychic phase(which is when they generate warp charge, so full warp charge). The void dreamer manifests warp tunnel, taking them into range of the culexus, who then fires his psychically charged weapon at a nearby unit for 12-15 S5 AP1 shots at BS8 with precision shots at -2 to look out sir rolls. Then, the seer council can cast gate of infinity, teleporting out of range of the culexus to buff itself and finish its psychic phase unmolested.

There is no debate on whether this can happen. The only debate is on whether they end up manifesting gate of infinity to get out on 6s or 3s.

Only posting this as I heard a story about a guy at a GT who used the culexus against a club mate of mine, and claimed that it had the precision shots rule. He doesn't. Only the vindicare gets that.

commander dante wrote:
I always say Dataslate/FaQ trumps Codex, and Codex trumps Rulebook

FAQ, yes. Dataslate, no. Dataslates are no different than a codex. In fact, for all intents and purposes, dataslates ARE codices and fulfill the same function.

nosferatu1001 wrote:
On 6s, as their 3+ ability lacks any "always" equivalent wording, making it less specific.

There is no such thing as "more specific" or "less specific" as a determining factor in 40k rules.

Trazer985 wrote:

Only posting this as I heard a story about a guy at a GT who used the culexus against a club mate of mine, and claimed that it had the precision shots rule. He doesn't. Only the vindicare gets that.

You're right. I thought I recalled reading that all of the assassins had precision shots, but upon a cursory examination, I did not spot it except on the Vindicare, and the Callidus has precision strikes. It's possible that the last iteration of the assassins gave it to them all in their universal special rules, hence the confusion.

 Charistoph wrote:

commander dante wrote:
I always say Dataslate/FaQ trumps Codex, and Codex trumps Rulebook

FAQ, yes. Dataslate, no. Dataslates are no different than a codex. In fact, for all intents and purposes, dataslates ARE codices and fulfill the same function.

100% agree with Charistoph here. A dataslate is a mini-codex.

I would say all normal people (if asked directly) would happily house rule it so the seer council harness on a 5+ if near an assassin. Because "-2+1 " is implied strongly and because it obeys the golden rule. Which we all know out ranks basic and advanced.

 BetrayTheWorld wrote:

 Tactical_Spam wrote:

 BetrayTheWorld wrote:

 Tactical_Spam wrote:

 BetrayTheWorld wrote:

 Tactical_Spam wrote:
The Culexes rule tops the seer council rule considering it says "only harness."

Hmm, I'm sorry, but that seems pretty flimsy to me. One says always on 3+, the other says only 6+. Only doesn't really indicate that it overrides a similar ability.

You bet its a flimsy argument; however, it can be argued that adding the word "only" makes the Culexes rule more advanced.

Not really. There is nothing about the word "only" that could be viewed as more advanced. That's like saying "Dog food" is more advanced than "Food" because of the addition of the word "dog". It's not. It could even be argued that dog food is far LESS advanced than regular food. But regardless, there are no "Levels" of advanced rules in this game. There are only "basic" rules, and "advanced" rules. Nothing in between. No Advanced version 2.0, 3.0 etc. So, when two advanced rules are in conflict, you generally resolve based on where the rule is from: Codex>BRB. If they're both from a codex, then you have to house rule it or otherwise come up with your own method of figuring out how you will rule it(like rolling off, or allowing the player who's turn it is to decide). I generally think allowing the player who's turn it is to decide is most fair, since the rule will function in each player's favor 50% of the time. Yours during your turn, mine during my turn.

Technically, dog food is more advanced than food because it is specifically for dogs.

Being specifically for a decidedly less advanced species doesn't make it more advanced. But I digress, it doesn't matter because in 40k, there is no such thing as "more advanced", only advanced, of which they both apply.

Dogs are just as advanced as humans and have been evolving longer. They are just more advanced at running and smelling stuff.

 BetrayTheWorld wrote:

nosferatu1001 wrote:
On 6s, as their 3+ ability lacks any "always" equivalent wording, making it less specific.

There is no such thing as "more specific" or "less specific" as a determining factor in 40k rules.

Except that there is...

Fragile wrote:

 BetrayTheWorld wrote:

nosferatu1001 wrote:
On 6s, as their 3+ ability lacks any "always" equivalent wording, making it less specific.

There is no such thing as "more specific" or "less specific" as a determining factor in 40k rules.

Except that there is...

There is a quote that is needed unless you are just assuming general gaming principles, at which point, you would need to reference that.

 Charistoph wrote:

Fragile wrote:

 BetrayTheWorld wrote:

nosferatu1001 wrote:
On 6s, as their 3+ ability lacks any "always" equivalent wording, making it less specific.

There is no such thing as "more specific" or "less specific" as a determining factor in 40k rules.

Except that there is...

There is a quote that is needed unless you are just assuming general gaming principles, at which point, you would need to reference that.

This. There is nothing in 40k that says that "more specific" or "less specific" is a determining factor in what rule takes precedence. There is ONE rule in the current 40k rulebook regarding rule precedence, and it is this: When a basic rule and an advanced rule conflict, the advanced rule takes precedence; when a rule in a codex is in conflict with a rule in the rulebook, the rule in the codex takes precedence.

That's it. That's all. So if there are 2 advanced rules, both from a codex, they are complete equals insofar as the rules go. So we must look to the OTHER rules to determine how they should interact. Such as the case of the sequencing rule.

 BetrayTheWorld wrote:
So if there are 2 advanced rules, both from a codex, they are complete equals insofar as the rules go. So we must look to the OTHER rules to determine how they should interact. Such as the case of the sequencing rule.

And sometimes the Sequencing rule doesn't help us, such as this case because "resolution" defining is never really defined in their rules. However, it is a good viewpoint to review if you want to be "quick and dirty" without a roll to resolve it.

Sequencing doesn't help

More specific certainly exists, same as permissive rule set exists.

Timing rules don't apply here.

Both rules can be applied at the same time without any conflict by simply following both rules.

This meas you need a 6. A 3-5 only satisfies one rule.

nosferatu1001 wrote:
Sequencing doesn't help

More specific certainly exists, same as permissive rule set exists.

"More specific" as a general game concept still would not help, as they are equally specific.

Always on a 6 is more specific than on a 3. There's an absolute missing from one.