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Does that mean I need permission to use one? Are the rules legal in every situation, or will I join a tournament, only to find out my list is illegal?

Tournaments can do whatever they want, up to and including making red paint jobs an automatic loss.

If you want to know, check with the tourney organizers.

Generally speaking you need opponents permission just to play a game.

In tournaments it is best to find out what they are allowing before making a list.

Well if there is a CHANCE that I wouldn't be allowed to use it, I wouldn't buy it. That dosent sound like a good investment to me. Fun is fun, but having something sit on your shelf collecting dust because someone "dosent like that forge world stuff" Isnt a mistake I want to make again.

"whats that, you want to use a mega dredd in our friendly store campaign? Sorry, we don't allow cheese like that! Now go play dan on table 3, hes got 2 helldrakes and 4 crossiants waiting for you."

Most tournaments in my area (and from what I've seen in many areas) allow 40k Forge World units to be used, but not Forge World lists. Generally speaking, the last couple of books are far more balanced than they used to be and most people in my experience who have paid attention to FW agree that they're usable and fair in most games. Several units IMHO are underpowered, such as the Eldar Shadow Specters. The thing is, they haven't updated any of the new SM units for the new codex, although they have said that they will update the chapter specific characters.

You could still use it as just an ordinary dreadnaught. Maybe venerable?

It's a bit taller if I recall correctly, but not so much as to cause major problems I wouldn't expect.

Orock wrote:
Well if there is a CHANCE that I wouldn't be allowed to use it, I wouldn't buy it. That dosent sound like a good investment to me.

The thing is, if you're playing pick-up games, you can have that exact same problem with regular armies. What's that, you play Marines? No thanks... sick of playing against power armour...


As Chrysis said, you can always just use it as a regular dreadnought if people don't want to use the contemptor rules. You wouldn't be the first to do so.


So far as tournaments go, more and more these days are allowing Forgeworld, either in entirety or by TO approval. There will certainly be some events where you can't use it, but again, just fielding it as a regular dread in those events gets around that issue.

To give a more useful answer for the OP's question: the Contemptor is still a legal option RAW. However, at the moment there is kind of a gray area since C:SM has been updated but the Contemptor's rules haven't been updated to match it. It's still a legal choice for your army, but if there are any rule conflicts caused by the balance change you should not try to claim any advantage from them.

Im confused why they dident add them right into the codex. Is it because they don't do that for forgeworld only models? A contemptor mortis frankly would be the best anti air we could field.

Orock wrote:
Im confused why they dident add them right into the codex. Is it because they don't do that for forgeworld only models? A contemptor mortis frankly would be the best anti air we could field.

its because GW didn't want to add the contemptor to the codex. i don't see why its confusing

Some time ago, afaik after the Baneblade/Stompa releases, GW declared that they would never put forgeworld kits in to codices again. The contemptor is no exception to this.

Orock wrote:
Im confused why they dident add them right into the codex. Is it because they don't do that for forgeworld only models? A contemptor mortis frankly would be the best anti air we could field.

It's because Games Workshop doesn't make money on ForgeWorld models. Their business model isn't exactly friendly to competition.

Think of ForgeWorld as well maintained house rules. I would be surprised if people at any level of play would deny you the ability to use a contemptor model with C:SM rules. Most will let you play with FW rules. Pick the model you like and be ready to conform to Tourney rulesets.

Dessorag wrote:

Orock wrote:
Im confused why they dident add them right into the codex. Is it because they don't do that for forgeworld only models? A contemptor mortis frankly would be the best anti air we could field.

It's because Games Workshop doesn't make money on ForgeWorld models.

Derp? How do you figure that? If a Contemptor dread costs $100 from Forgeworld to fully kit out, that's $100 going straight from your account into GW's.

It's to do with the corporate structure.
Forgeworld is a separate business, while still part of the overall entity.
FW stuff isn't going in the codecies because money ends up showing on the wrong balance sheet

 marv335 wrote:
It's to do with the corporate structure.
Forgeworld is a separate business, while still part of the overall entity.
FW stuff isn't going in the codecies because money ends up showing on the wrong balance sheet

Forge World isn't a separate business.
It's one balance sheet. FW is a DBA of GW.

Orock wrote:
Im confused why they dident add them right into the codex. Is it because they don't do that for forgeworld only models? A contemptor mortis frankly would be the best anti air we could field.

They didn't put it into the codex because they want you to buy the Contemptor AND the new AA Rhino. If they just put the Contemptor into the codex they wouldn't be getting many extra sales, if they invent an entirely new AA unit they can sell lots of them while still keeping most/all of the Contemptor sales.

rigeld2 wrote:

 marv335 wrote:
It's to do with the corporate structure.
Forgeworld is a separate business, while still part of the overall entity.
FW stuff isn't going in the codecies because money ends up showing on the wrong balance sheet

Forge World isn't a separate business.
It's one balance sheet. FW is a DBA of GW.

Even if they are part of a company, they have to justify their existence to the rest of a company. FW sinks all their budget into developing books with low print runs (compared to the BRB or codices) and highly detailed models with low sales numbers, which will make their money back over half a decade or more. If GW just keeps cherry-picking the most popular developments from FW and puts them into codices, FW is never going to make any money at all, because neither is someone going to buy the corresponding Imperial Armour or Apocalypse book, nor is anyone shelling out for expensive and hard-to-build resin models if they can have a plastic kit instead. So, while GW still has to pay development costs to make a plastic kit, they kill FW's sales at the same time, that's a lose-lose scenario.
Instead, they are now just developing entirely new models for vanilla 40k, and the part of GW called forgeworld is no longer doomed to make losses by their parent company.

I've always thought the FW/GW thing is a balance issue. As much as people whinge about it, GW put a hell of a lot of effort into balancing the game system and the codex. FW lets them put out new fun stuff that they don't necessarily have to playtest to death or deal with epic whinging from the community just because some of it is weirdly balanced. And a hell of a lot of FW is pretty much purely Apoc stuff anyway, so they give an "official" outlet through there.

I mean, people can play whatever rules and models they want. If the TO lets me put my cat on the board and say anything he knocks over counts as dead unless it's my model in which case it counts as awesome, sure. If my opponent lets me do the same, sure. No such thing as illegal, just allowed.

When you have a close look at it, FW doesn't make a lot of overpowered models, and all those massively overpowered units you have undoubtedly read about in every single one of these threads (Assault Ram, Lucius Drop Pod, Achilles Landraider) have gotten a massive nerf and/or price increase in order to balance them - most of them a lot faster than GW would even have bothered to release a FAQ. Right now, I can't really think of a FW unit that's overpowered.

majendie wrote:
I've always thought the FW/GW thing is a balance issue. As much as people whinge about it, GW put a hell of a lot of effort into balancing the game system and the codex. FW lets them put out new fun stuff that they don't necessarily have to playtest to death or deal with epic whinging from the community just because some of it is weirdly balanced. And a hell of a lot of FW is pretty much purely Apoc stuff anyway, so they give an "official" outlet through there.

I mean, people can play whatever rules and models they want. If the TO lets me put my cat on the board and say anything he knocks over counts as dead unless it's my model in which case it counts as awesome, sure. If my opponent lets me do the same, sure. No such thing as illegal, just allowed.

I use my cat as a Colossal Squiggoth.

majendie wrote:
As much as people whinge about it, GW put a hell of a lot of effort into balancing the game system and the codex.

Just no. GW's balancing and playtesting are a joke. If there's any evidence they even attempt to do either (and no, "let's play a cool scenario" is not playtesting) I haven't seen it.