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Thommy H wrote:
Yes. Only the keywords cited in the Battle Brothers rule are restricted.

The purpose of the rule is to stop you just cherry-picking the best units from different codexes. It's mostly an issue for IMPERIUM armies. The way stratagems and stuff works was intended to make it more advantageous to pick 'pure' detachments, but 'soup' was just too efficient even without them, so this rule was brought in.

If you're confused, you can't go wrong by simply sticking to units that are all in the same codex.

I think the main thing it was trying to stop at the time was the Supreme Command with Guilliman and 3 Assassins.

Of course that was before a lot of the Codexes, so I don't think people would even want to do it today. It would be very rare that mixing Imperium or Chaos etc in the same detachment would actually be beneficial when you lose a bunch of faction special rules.

But oh well! It is what it is.

 Nithaniel wrote:
I still find the battle brother rules to be confusing as well. So from what you are all saying is it still possible to have a detachment with different sub-factions in it that share a keyword?

For example a battalion detachment with Plaguemarines, beserkers and rubric marines as they all share the Heretic Astartes keyword

When you pick a unit, it must belong to a Detachment.

Every unit in a Detachment must share at least one Faction Keyword. Under the Battle Brothers rule, there are several Faction Keywords you can't use (e.g. IMPERIUM, CHAOS, etc).

Furthermore, every unit in the army (except those with the UNALIGNED keyword) must share at least one Faction Keyword. This does not need to be the same Faction Keyword that you used for each of the Detachments.

I'm still struggling a bit here, I'm afraid!

so I get that all units in a detachment have to be the same faction (barring the broad factions) as stated in the Battle Brothers section of FAQ 2.

Can someone direct me to where it states that all detachments must share a faction keyword? I'm sure it's right under my nose but I just can't find the sentence!

Regarding the wording: "All of the units in each Detachment in your Battle-forged army must have at least one Faction keyword in common."

Does this mean that every unit must share the same keyword? I'm pretty sure it does but I'm wondering if it's open to interpretation; an astra militarum force, featuring a techpriest, so containing the "<Forge World> unit, could it then include other <Forge World> units?

 some bloke wrote:
I'm still struggling a bit here, I'm afraid!

so I get that all units in a detachment have to be the same faction (barring the broad factions) as stated in the Battle Brothers section of FAQ 2.

Can someone direct me to where it states that all detachments must share a faction keyword? I'm sure it's right under my nose but I just can't find the sentence!

Regarding the wording: "All of the units in each Detachment in your Battle-forged army must have at least one Faction keyword in common."

Does this mean that every unit must share the same keyword? I'm pretty sure it does but I'm wondering if it's open to interpretation; an astra militarum force, featuring a techpriest, so containing the "<Forge World> unit, could it then include other <Forge World> units?

The "Army Faction" rule in the BRB is what you are looking for.

An army with a Detachment of <CHAPTER> (From Codex: Adeptus Astartes Space Marines) and a detachment of <REGIMENT> (From Codex: Astra Copywritum) is a legal army because all units have IMPERUM, within the <CHAPTER> detachment all units have <CHAPTER>, and within the <REGIMENT> detachment all units have <REGIMENT>.

An army with a detachment of <CHAPTER> and <REGIMENT> units mixed together and a detachment of <CHAPTER> is is not legal because the only faction keyword the units in the mixed detachment share is IMPERIUM, which is prohibited to do so within a detachment.

Likewise, an army with a detachment of <CHAPTER> and a detachment of <SEPT> (From Codex: T'au Empire) is not legal because the is no faction keyword that all units share.

The above is assuming you're playing Warhammer 40,000 8th edition "Matched Play", just making sure before someone pedantically points that out.

I think you're looking for the Battle Brothers rule. It is not printed in the BRB which is probably why you're struggling to find it! It's in the Big FAQ which you can find on the GW FAQ website.