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The Plague Zombie rules says they are Chaos Cultists w Fearless, FNP, Slow and Purposeful, no options, and just a close combat weapon. However it does not say they lack a BS, that is, they don't have different stats listed with a BS of 0. Nor did the little FAQ mention anything about them not having a BS, but we know their autopistols are just clubs.

So what are people's opinions of them manning a Quad Gun? I would vote yes.

the rules are just that any ranged weapons they are armed with cannot be shot. There are not forbidden from manning Gun Emplacements or Emplaced Guns.

If the rules don't prohibit them explicity from shooting, then they can still fire the quad-gun. From my recollection (don't have my codex with me right now), I don't believe it says that they can't shoot, just that they use their autoguns if any as clubs (and this was just a justification for them carrying guns on the actual models).

Nope not in the conventional sense; though they may decide to use it in close combat...

Zombie:
"...- any guns are used strictly for the purposes of clubbing their victims to death!"

Quadgun:
"Gun Emplacement...

Emplaced Weapons:
One model in base contact with the gun emplacement can fire it instead of his own weapon, following the normal rules for shooting.

 Neorealist wrote:
Nope not in the conventional sense; though they may decide to use it in close combat...

Zombie:
"...- any guns are used strictly for the purposes of clubbing their victims to death!"

Quadgun:
"Gun Emplacement...

What you quoted for the Zombies is just fluff.

It's listed in Typhus' rules text and is in a block of rules text itself and therefore valid for this discussion. Regardless of how 'fluffy' it might otherwise be considered.

But its still not the actual rules themselves. The actual rule is that they can't shoot the guns they are armed with, nothing more.

The literal word of the rules text i quoted indicates they cannot fire 'any' guns, not just their own. The burden of proof is on you to indicate how that particular section of their rules is somehow disqualified from being used because it can be considered flavourful in addition to a literal rule.

Do they have a BS?, then they have permission to fire the Quad.

 Lobukia wrote:
Do they have a BS?, then they have permission to fire the Quad.

More precise would be "do they have a BS of 1 or higher". You can HAVE a BS of zero, but that doesn't give you permission to fire it.

Consequently, if a model has no ranged weapons then how does it fire the quad gun "instead of it's own weapon"?

 Kevin949 wrote:

 Lobukia wrote:
Do they have a BS?, then they have permission to fire the Quad.

More precise would be "do they have a BS of 1 or higher". You can HAVE a BS of zero, but that doesn't give you permission to fire it.

Consequently, if a model has no ranged weapons then how does it fire the quad gun "instead of it's own weapon"?

How do you run without a gun?
Models have permission to make shooting attacks, regardless of their armament. It is their BS that matters primarily.
Its still odd to see a bunch of zombies hitting a turret with autoguns until they finally hit the trigger and fire off an anticlimatic burst of lead.

 Neorealist wrote:
The literal word of the rules text i quoted indicates they cannot fire 'any' guns, not just their own. The burden of proof is on you to indicate how that particular section of their rules is somehow disqualified from being used because it can be considered flavourful in addition to a literal rule.

Grey Templar is correct. That it just a fluffy explanation of the rule and Phil giving us some imagery. It isn't part of the actual rule.

Neronoxx wrote:

 Kevin949 wrote:

 Lobukia wrote:
Do they have a BS?, then they have permission to fire the Quad.

More precise would be "do they have a BS of 1 or higher". You can HAVE a BS of zero, but that doesn't give you permission to fire it.

Consequently, if a model has no ranged weapons then how does it fire the quad gun "instead of it's own weapon"?

How do you run without a gun?
Models have permission to make shooting attacks, regardless of their armament. It is their BS that matters primarily.
Its still odd to see a bunch of zombies hitting a turret with autoguns until they finally hit the trigger and fire off an anticlimatic burst of lead.

Running just says "you can run instead of firing". Gun Emplacements says "may fire it instead of their own weapon." Do you see the difference here?

Mind you, I'm also just playing devil's advocate, but I am personally on the side of zombies not being allowed to use it.

I would say it is reasonably understandable that they were intended when created to only be close combat units

I believe the quote about them having guns just to use as clubs was just trying to give permission to run the cultist with CCW and autopistol as a dual CCW zombie. Or even the autogun zombie.

I think the first question is what is the BS of Zombies. The answer must be BS3, as their rules state they are Cultists, and does not provide different stats from a Cultist, just the Fearless, FNP, SnP. So from that perspective they could fire a Quad Gun.

The next question is regarding the sentence "They are armed with a single close combat weapon-any guns are used strictly for the purposes of clubbing their victims to death!".....so the models themselves do not have a gun/shooting attack. But of course the Gun Emplacement rule states "One model in base contact with the gun emplacement can fire it instead of his own weapon, following the normal rules for shooting."

In the Gun Emplacement rule, does the word weapon mean any weapon or just a shooting weapon? Are we to assume they meant a shooting weapon? They did not specify. So then does this mean a Lord or Champion with 2 Melee weapons, or Possessed, or a Daemon Prince, would also not be able to man the Quad Gun? Some people are assuming because they are lowly zombies they are too stupid to fire a Quad Gun, but is a Daemon Prince too stupid for it? That's just racist. Even in Land of the Dead the lead zombie learned to fire a machine gun! Shooting rights should be protected for all models with a BS, which I think is not at issue here.

My verdict stands, zombies can man the Quad Gun.

 Kevin949 wrote:


Running just says "you can run instead of firing". Gun Emplacements says "may fire it instead of their own weapon." Do you see the difference here?

Mind you, I'm also just playing devil's advocate, but I am personally on the side of zombies not being allowed to use it.

A TH/SS armed Terminator can fire the Gun Emplacement, even though it has no ranged weapons of its own right?

phantommaster wrote:Grey Templar is correct. That it just a fluffy explanation of the rule and Phil giving us some imagery. It isn't part of the actual rule.

People keep saying this. My response is: "Where in any published 40k rule books are you getting the precident for this inference from?" What makes "...any guns are used strictly for the purposes of clubbing their victims to death..." any more or less valid rules-text than "...Plague Zombies are Chaos Cultists that have the Fearless, Feel No Pain and Slow and Purposeful special rules..." or any other passage from their particular block of rules for that matter?

It's from the same freaking paragraph. That is akin to choosing to say "well, it's just fluff-text that your zombies are fearless, et all, i'm going to ignore that in favour of them not having any stats whatsoever." and having any expectations of people not ignoring me? My hypothetical statement has the exact same rules-adherance as the unsubstantiated opinions i'm currently reading in this thread that share the theme of the above quote so far as i can tell, so i'm very interested in someone indicating 'why' they think it's just fluff. (if possible, in some sort of rules-validated way)

 Neorealist wrote:

phantommaster wrote:Grey Templar is correct. That it just a fluffy explanation of the rule and Phil giving us some imagery. It isn't part of the actual rule.

People keep saying this. My response is: "Where in any published 40k rule books are you getting the precident for this inference from?" What makes "...any guns are used strictly for the purposes of clubbing their victims to death..." any more or less valid rules-text than "...Plague Zombies are Chaos Cultists that have the Fearless, Feel No Pain and Slow and Purposeful special rules..." or any other passage from their particular block of rules for that matter?

It's from the same freaking paragraph. That is akin to choosing to say "well, it's just fluff-text that your zombies are fearless, et all, i'm going to ignore that in favour of them not having any stats whatsoever." and having any expectations of people not ignoring me? My hypothetical statement has the exact same rules-adherance as the unsubstantiated opinions i'm currently reading in this thread that share the theme of the above quote so far as i can tell, so i'm very interested in someone indicating 'why' they think it's just fluff. (if possible, in some sort of rules-validated way)

I agree that " guns" refers to something effecting rules. But you have to know that "guns" is also referring to those things in their hands, not a Quad gun sitting out on the battlefield. Context matters. Rules on personal equipment do not equate rules for interacting with battlefield terrain.

My 2 perspectives

RAW, looks like they can. Not worth arguing over imo.
RAI appears they shouldn't be able to.

Lobukia wrote: I agree that " guns" refers to something effecting rules. But you have to know that "guns" is also referring to those things in their hands, not a Quad gun sitting out on the battlefield. Context matters. Rules on personal equipment do not equate rules for interacting with battlefield terrain.

I don't really see where you are finding this either. Not a single one of the rules from their rules-text (so far as i can tell) only refers to a weapon they are holding as opposed to "...any guns..." like it explicitly states.

I get it, really: Zombies using their neglected stubbers and autoguns as makeshift clubs to thump some poor sod to death is quite 'fluffy'. Regretably for this POV however, we actually should follow the rules written in their writeup when determining how they can be used in the game as to do otherwise is to ignore at least one of their rules.

As written: they cannot use any guns as anything other than a CCW, and a quad-gun is most definately a gun. This needs to be disproven using actual rules, not arbitrarily dismissed as pointless flavour text with no more veracy than someone's personal opinion on the topic.

jdjamesdean@mail.com wrote:
My 2 perspectives

RAW, looks like they can. Not worth arguing over imo.
RAI appears they shouldn't be able to.

This is exactly the simple answer we need.

 Neorealist wrote:

phantommaster wrote:Grey Templar is correct. That it just a fluffy explanation of the rule and Phil giving us some imagery. It isn't part of the actual rule.

People keep saying this. My response is: "Where in any published 40k rule books are you getting the precident for this inference from?" What makes "...any guns are used strictly for the purposes of clubbing their victims to death..." any more or less valid rules-text than "...Plague Zombies are Chaos Cultists that have the Fearless, Feel No Pain and Slow and Purposeful special rules..." or any other passage from their particular block of rules for that matter?

Quote the whole passage for "...any guns are used strictly for the purposes of clubbing their victims to death..." and you will see the context of any guns refers to the guns equipped on the models in question.

Uh huh. this part you mean? "...They are armed with a single close combat weapon..." Which does not appear to reference guns at all?

Or perhaps it's the part of their rules text that indicates they are cultists, but cannot select any options? or is the 'Feel No Pain' part of it? Throw me a bone here and actually quote the mysterious but critical part of the rules-text that makes your arguments actually make sense in the context of the words printed on the page as opposed to whatever opinion you happen to have formed instead?

So what are they armed with again?

What possible difference does that make?

Because the "Rule", if you can call it that, is referencing the guns that the zombies are armed with.

Not any external weapons they may come into contact with.

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. You cannot 'reference' something by inference, it's more or less the exact opposite.

In this case, the RAW for the zombies' rules-text does not actually list nor explicitly discuss the cultists' default weapons like you appear to believe. Instead, you see a very simple and clear "...all guns..." as the sole explicit indication of what weapons it is actually 'referencing'.

So at the risk of sounding redundant: please respond with some sort of actual rule which supports your contention, not yet another example of something you have yet to prove conclusively.

 Neorealist wrote:

phantommaster wrote:Grey Templar is correct. That it just a fluffy explanation of the rule and Phil giving us some imagery. It isn't part of the actual rule.

People keep saying this. My response is: "Where in any published 40k rule books are you getting the precident for this inference from?" What makes "...any guns are used strictly for the purposes of clubbing their victims to death..." any more or less valid rules-text than "...Plague Zombies are Chaos Cultists that have the Fearless, Feel No Pain and Slow and Purposeful special rules..." or any other passage from their particular block of rules for that matter?

Because one of those references actual rules, and one does not.

I think they can fire it just fine, if we argue that because they have no weapons of their own to fire and thus cannot fire the gun then a terminator with a thunder hammer and storm shield cannot fire the gun...but unless there are some rules I haven't seen, they can indeed still man the gun even though they themselves do not have any ranged weapons.