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I think we can all agree, regardless of ambiguity or the correct way to parse the sentence, that GW choose a horrible way to structure the sentence. Nobody who wants the sentence to be clearly understood would write it that way.

 p5freak wrote:
Its clearly ambigious, accusing others of poor understanding (even native english speakers), and/or arguing in bad faith is not helpful.

No, it is, strictly, NOT ambiguous.

I was pointing out that you cannot - as in you, p5 - cut part of a sentence out which is as a whole plural but in this single element is singular and claim this means the singular element is also plural. It is either a poor understanding of how to parse sentences or it is arguing in bad faith.

The sentence is NOT, strictly according to the rules of English, ambiguous. It is NOT well written from an ease of understanding side, clearly, but that is not the same. Technically the sentence is fine. Linguistically it is fine. From comprehension it is terrible.

nosferatu1001 wrote:
The sentence is NOT, strictly according to the rules of English, ambiguous.

And exactly which "rules of English" applies here? A sentence is ambiguous when it can be read to have more than one meaning. There are ways to restructure a sentence to remove/detract its ambiguity, but there aren't rules you follow to ensure your sentence is not ambiguous (which is precisely why linguistic ambiguity is a topic worthy of discussion in the academia).

There is no syntactic nor semantic "rule" on how to make a sentence not ambiguous (i.e "if you do this, then the sentence becomes not ambiguous"). It's not some sort of manual you follow as you seem to imply. You can learn to avoid linguistic ambiguity and that's the limit.

Language is an art which GW seems to fail at every corner, and that's that.

I think this covers it nicely:

https://www.grammarbook.com/blog/possessives/plural-possessive-noun/

So, if understand those grammar rules correctly, our rule refers to more than one skyclaw pack leader, which can only mean both skyclaw pack leaders (meaning the wolf guard skyclaw pack leader is also an skyclaw pack leader) can replace their bolt pistols with 1 plasma pistol. The total would be 4.

No.

Last point first, GW has clearly stated that part of a name cannot be used when talking about a model. A Wolf Guard Skyclaw Pack Leader can never be considered to be a Skyclaw Pack Leader.

Secondly, Skyclaw and Skyclaw Pack Leaders’ means whatever being described covers multiple instances over the listed nouns. So multiple Skyclaw and Skyclaw Pack Leader. The item being described is Bolt Pistols.

Up to two Skyclaw and Skyclaw Pack Leaders’ bolt pistols can be replaced with one of the following: 1 plasma pistol; 1 weapon from the Special Weapons list.

So the proper reading of the sentence is that two Bolt Pistols may be exchanged for Plasma Pistols or Special Weapons of those possessed by Skyclaw and Skyclaw Pack Leader models.

 alextroy wrote:

Last point first, GW has clearly stated that part of a name cannot be used when talking about a model.

Where did they say that ?

Rules Terms wrote:Model’s type: A model’s type refers to the name of the characteristic profile used by that model.

Therefore Skyclaw Pack Leader and Wolf Guard Skyclaw Pack Leader are distinctly different Model types and cannot be interchanged for each other.

 alextroy wrote:
No.

Last point first, GW has clearly stated that part of a name cannot be used when talking about a model. A Wolf Guard Skyclaw Pack Leader can never be considered to be a Skyclaw Pack Leader.

Secondly, Skyclaw and Skyclaw Pack Leaders’ means whatever being described covers multiple instances over the listed nouns. So multiple Skyclaw and Skyclaw Pack Leader. The item being described is Bolt Pistols.

Up to two Skyclaw and Skyclaw Pack Leaders’ bolt pistols can be replaced with one of the following: 1 plasma pistol; 1 weapon from the Special Weapons list.

So the proper reading of the sentence is that two Bolt Pistols may be exchanged for Plasma Pistols or Special Weapons of those possessed by Skyclaw and Skyclaw Pack Leader models.

In order for this explanation to hold true, the sentence should read, considering the contextual limitations we are aware of in terms of how the game works:
"Up to two Skyclaws and Skyclaw Pack Leader s ’s bolt pistols can be replaced..." (max of two exchanges per unit, regardless of model name) or
"Up to two Skyclaw and Skyclaw Pack Leader s ’s bolt pistols can be replaced..." (limit of 1 exchange for skyclaw)

English rules dictate that nouns are pluralized individually. Pluralizing the final noun in sentence with multiple nouns doesn't make the nouns that precede it into plural.

As it's written, it can be read to mean "either you can have one skyclaw's bolt pistol and one skyclaw pack leader's bolt pistol exchanged, or you can have two skyclaw pack leaders' bolt pistols exchanged, but not two skyclaws' bolt pistols exchanged." - which is demonstratably false as a unit of skyclaw cannot contain more than one skyclaw pack leader.

It's just a really bad sentence.

They're making the proper name a set. That's it. Up to two of this set
There is no plural going on, it's possessive.

nosferatu1001 wrote:
They're making the proper name a set. That's it. Up to two of this set
There is no plural going on, it's possessive.

I know what you're saying, but the sentence still doesn't make sense as written.

[Skyclaw and Skyclaw Pack Leaders]+[possessive] can never make sense contextually - a unit of Skyclaw can never have plural Skyclaw Pack Leaders.
[Skyclaw and Skyclaw Pack Leader]+[plural]+[possessive] doesn't make sense grammatically, and semantically confusing (it's like saying families' instead of family's when referring to possession of a single family; it fails the number agreement)

The intent is likely 2 exchanges per unit following precedents for Skyclaw's historically, but the consolidated sentence makes it unclear as to mean what they may have intended.

[Skyclaw and Skyclaw Pack Leader's] would've yielded what was intended (1 skyclaw can exchange & 1 skyclaw pack leader can exchange), and we can accept it as that GW made a simple typo. But the fact stands that the typo makes the sentence incredibly unclear.