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I have a question about the placement of the Warlock Council in the Force Organization chart. The Codex says that "Each Primary Detachment in your army may include up to one Council of 1-10 Warlocks. This unit does not use up a Force Organization slot." However, this restriction does not state that the Primary Detachment must be taken from Codex: Eldar, as several other rules in the Codex explicitly specify (ex: Khaine Awakened pp.26, Ambush of Blades, An Eye on Distant Events, & Seer of the Shifting Vector pp.25, etc.). I realize in advance that I may be splitting hairs with this, but it still made me wonder: can you take a Warlock Council if you bring Codex: Eldar as an Allied Detachment? This would not require placing a Codex: Eldar unit in a detachment from a different force, as the unit specifically does not use any Force Organization slots, and I assume it would be treated in all cases as being a Codex: Eldar unit.

Is there a caveat or clarification on Allied Detachments that I'm missing somewhere? Or are Warlock Councils completely unavailable to any force in which the Eldar appear as allies?

As it stands, no you can't take them in an Allied Detachment.

 grendel083 wrote:
As it stands, no you can't take them in an Allied Detachment.

Would you mind elaborating on why? Again, I'm not meaning to split hairs here, but I feel like I'm just honestly missing whatever is preventing this.

As far as taking them as Allies is concerned - already discussed here... but the basic idea is, the ruling doesn't tell you anything about how to take them in an Allied detachment. Because it's not Primary, you can't take 1-10 as a single choice - some say you can't take them as Allies at all, some say you can take one but only one because it's still in the list as a HQ choice. A similar problem came up with Daemon Heralds and has yet to be FAQed.

However, this restriction does not state that the Primary Detachment must be taken from Codex: Eldar

This in particular, though - Codex Eldar doesn't state it because it doesn't need to. All other Codexes have text at the very start of the army list allowing you to choose units to fit the FOC from that Codex only. This is the case with 5th ed Codexes as well.

It's pretty simple, really. The language on Warlocks isn't "for each Primary Detachment, you can take one unit of Warlocks", but rather "Each Primary Detachment in your army may include up to one Council of 1-10 Warlocks".

Your Primary Detachment isn't Eldar, and can't include Eldar units.

 Doomaflatchi wrote:

 grendel083 wrote:
As it stands, no you can't take them in an Allied Detachment.

Would you mind elaborating on why? Again, I'm not meaning to split hairs here, but I feel like I'm just honestly missing whatever is preventing this.

The Primary detachment can't contain Eldar unitsif it's not from Codex: Eldar.
Currently only a Primary Eldar detachment can include Warlocks.

 Doomaflatchi wrote:
I have a question about the placement of the Warlock Council in the Force Organization chart. The Codex says that "Each Primary Detachment in your army may include up to one Council of 1-10 Warlocks. This unit does not use up a Force Organization slot." However, this restriction does not state that the Primary Detachment must be taken from Codex: Eldar, as several other rules in the Codex explicitly specify (ex: Khaine Awakened pp.26, Ambush of Blades, An Eye on Distant Events, & Seer of the Shifting Vector pp.25, etc.). I realize in advance that I may be splitting hairs with this, but it still made me wonder: can you take a Warlock Council if you bring Codex: Eldar as an Allied Detachment? This would not require placing a Codex: Eldar unit in a detachment from a different force, as the unit specifically does not use any Force Organization slots, and I assume it would be treated in all cases as being a Codex: Eldar unit.

Is there a caveat or clarification on Allied Detachments that I'm missing somewhere? Or are Warlock Councils completely unavailable to any force in which the Eldar appear as allies?

The primary detachment can not select things from some other army's codex. If eldar are your allied army, then they are not your primary detachment, they are your allied detachment.

Actually it is an interesting situation.

You would be denied taking them by the limitations spelled out on page 109. I don't post rules but, in short, you must take all units from a single codex for each detachment. This rule would prevent you from claiming warlocks as part of your primary detachment unless your whole primary detachment is made up of Eldar, and is what everyone is basing the clearly logical argument off of. After all it is pretty straight forward and in a better written rule book would clearly be a non-issue. However, this is warhammer and I am about to make it more murky.

My question is simple:
Do you give an exception rule higher priority over the standard rule?

JinxDragon wrote:
Actually it is an interesting situation.

You would be denied taking them by the limitations spelled out on page 109. I don't post rules but, in short, you must take all units from a single codex for each detachment. This rule would prevent you from claiming warlocks as part of your primary detachment unless your whole primary detachment is made up of Eldar, and is what everyone is basing the clearly logical argument off of. After all it is pretty straight forward and in a better written rule book would clearly be a non-issue. However, this is war hammer and I am about to make it more murky.

My question is simple:
Do you give an exception rule higher priority over the base rule?

Hehe

I see that CryHavok has caught the line of my thought but for those whom are wondering what I am babbling about:

Page 109 outlines how one goes about making an army using the Force Organization Chart using standard rules. That would allow the argument that everything on page 109 is no longer valid if we have an exception rule that says to do things differently. As the standard flow of rules goes: as long as the limitations around the exception are met, the exception can be evoked regardless of what the standard rule states, it is a valid argument.

The Warlock rule in debate is not one I am familiar with so I will need to find the exact wording to understand it completely, something that will take a while as I am not rushing out to get this codex. If it is written in the way put forth here, then it can be argued that all you require to meet the exception is a Primary Detachment! It would make it legal for me to take a warlock unit without even bothering with an Allied Detachment, regardless of what my primary was.

This is clearly not correct so either I don't have the whole rule, or they dun goofed up again when it comes to writing the things.

From what I have seen when it comes to the wording of other such 'force slot-less' units, there is never a mention about primary detachments or the likes. I feel this is the correct method to write these rules, ensuring they all relate to just the one army in question. Allies and the like are irrelevant, they are governed by already per-existing rules. To include additional rules outside of the standard format leads to a higher probability of rule clashing.

The only conclusion I can come to, based on logic outside of RAW, is that it was an additional limitation to ensure your Elder army is Primary in these situations. This is because it is an additional limitation not found in other similar sounding rules. It is also a limitation in which can not be 'failed,' which would make it's inclusion redundant to begin with. It's very existence leads me to the conclusion, non-RAW based, that an Allied Detachment is not meant to gain access to these units, at least not without filling slots with them.

JinxDragon wrote:
Page 109 outlines how one goes about making an army using the Force Organization Chart using standard rules. That would allow the argument that everything on page 109 is no longer valid if we have an exception rule that says to do things differently. As the standard flow of rules goes: as long as the limitations around the exception are met, the exception can be evoked regardless of what the standard rule states, it is a valid argument.

This isn't quite how it works, though you're not far off. It's outlined in the rulebook itself (the page number for which I don't have handy, sadly) - the Codex overrides the rulebook where there is a conflict. Otherwise, you may follow Codex rules only in so far as they fit within the standard rules - if you aren't given explicit permission to override a basic/advanced rulebook rule, even if given in a Codex, you can't do it.

For example - it is possible for Eldar psykers to cast both Guide and Prescience on a unit that already has twin-linked weaponry. None of this allows that unit to reroll a reroll.

In this case, we're told that you can take Warlocks as part of your Primary Detachment. It doesn't go on to tell us that we can do so regardless of what Codex we're using for the Primary Detachment.

This is why I need the exact ruling, I am sure there has to be additional information I am missing.

I wouldn't be surprised if this including additional limitations or some other terminology that makes it very clear Primary Detachment meant 'your Elder force needs to be the Primary Detachment.' After all such terminology exists in other rule books for these exact situations in order to ensure no confusion. Whenever something has been written in a way it could be interpreted as 'across codex rules' they ensured to include a few words that boil down to 'from this codex only.' Given that it is a standard limitation added to a lot of rules, but maybe missing from this one, arguments can be made that permission has been granted even if your Primary Detachment is not Eldar.

If the rule literally states "Each Primary Detachment in your army may include up to one Council of 1-10 Warlocks" then we have the possibility of it creating an issue. Going by a pure Rule as Written interpretation, you have permission to have a council of warlocks simply having a Primary Detachment! It leaves a gray area as to how much of page 109 is being over-written. It could mean simply the taking up of a slot, which I feel is most likely, or it could be giving permission to take warlocks outside of all standard force organization rules.

That is the fun part about the whole 'standard/exception' or 'permission/non-permission' lines of argument, because at certain times it is hard to see where the permissions start and end unless they are written in no-uncertain terms.

Take note that I included the logical extension of this argument as to why it can't be correct. If all you really require is a Primary Detachment to evoke this rule then any army can evoke this rule. This is clearly broken as all heck, so it can not be the 'correct' interpretation by any stretch. Yet still leaves to a nice little thought exercise on what interpretations can be put forth through different applications of the very same rules.

Please try doing a search for at least a few days back before posting a new topic.

Here is the existing thread for this topic:

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/531213.page