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What is "army" defined as?
I ask for the sake of Chapter Relics. Can I take Salamanders and Iron hands (allied, of course) and have two The Burning Blades? One in each chapter.

No. relics opperate similar to chaos artifacts. Your army is defined as the whole of your forces.. so no mpre than one of each artifact per army as a whole.

Most people say army is the whole of the forces you are fielding.

Your Army is your entire combined forces of Primary Detachment, Allied Detachment, and Fortification.

The Farsight supplement has it really screwed up, since in any place it should say "Primary Detachment", it says "Army". So your Tau Empire Allied Detachment can take Crisis Suits as troops as well.

Also it dose also say you "Cannot not" have Aun'Va and Shadowsun in the army so... RAW is you have to take them.

 Nilok wrote:
Your Army is your entire combined forces of Primary Detachment, Allied Detachment, and Fortification.

The Farsight supplement has it really screwed up, since in any place it should say "Primary Detachment", it says "Army". So your Tau Empire Allied Detachment can take Crisis Suits as troops as well.

Also it dose also say you "Cannot not" have Aun'Va and Shadowsun in the army so... RAW is you have to take them.

It even mentions that possibility, in order to reflect earlier battles before Farsight went rogue.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
There are a few people in the YMDC section who will vehemently insist that the word army refers to all your choices from a given codex, and so that any buff which affects your 'army' can only affect units from that codex.

by RAW 'army' is never defined. I suspect if we out up a poll that 90%+ would agree that RAI army is all detachments and fortifications. The RAI argument stems from the distinct use of 'detachment' or other wording intended to limit effects of a rule to units from one particular book in place of the use of 'army' in codices published after the 6th edition BRB. The space marine book is one of the best example of this, sadly the farsight add on is one of the worst (but as pointed out earlier it is also written poorly)

If the source of the rule is a post 6th edition book 'army' likely refers to all your models. If the source is older, it may only refer to that particular codex. A good talk with a TO or gaming group should straighten out any confusion before games though.

I wouldn't say it is undefined but Game's Workshop ignores the the closest thing to a definition that it put forth. I am at work so getting the exact page would be a little difficult, but it is the section detailing allied detachment somewhere around page 110. It goes on to state that your army contains a number of primary and allied detachments, pretty straight forward, but within the same section it goes on to state 'different combinations of armies and allies....'

The closest definition of army we have is inferred from surrounding text. Quoting various usages of the word Army because it helps.

page 3: "The models that make up your Warhammer 40,000 army must be organised into 'units'.

Inference: your Army is made up of the units in your list.

page 8: "The controlling player is always the player who 'owns' the model in question - the one who has included it in his army."

Inference: your Army is made up of the models in your list. Note that there is no delineation between detachments. If you have included the model in your army then you 'own' it. Otherwise it would be a free for all and either the model couldn't move or the opponent would have equal rights to control it.

page 12: "Once you have completed steps 1 to 5 for each unit in your army that you wish to make a shooting attack, carry on to the Assault phase."

Inference: We know that you can't have units in the assault phase while others are in the movement phase. Therefore all units in your list are part of your Army.

Page 20: "Choose a unit in your army that is declaring a charge..."

Inference: The only units that can charge are those in your army. Which means, you have to count everything in your list as your army in order for them to be able to assault.

Page 37, under Hatred: "This can refer to a whole army, or a specific unit from that army". Example "Hatred (Orks) would mean any model from Codex: Orks..."

Inference: Hatred, without specification, applies to your opponents entire list. Hatred (Orks) applies only to those units in your opponents army from the orks codex. Hatred (Big Meks) only applies to Big Mek units.


**skipping quite a few pages..**
Page 108: The Army List. This entire section covers rules that apply to an entire Army. Including having a single warlord, and FOC restrictions. In then goes on to talk about specific Detachments within the Army.


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I could go on. There are certainly references to "army roster" meaning your list and other examples where Army is obviously referring to everything on a your list.

So GW has implied that Army = Every unit in your list that you put on the table.

Within allies we get this:
"Units in your army treat Allies of Convenience as enemy units that cannot be charged, shot, targeted with psychic powers ....."

The only way to read this is that BOTH detachments are considered "units in your army". If only the primary detachment was the "army" then you could very well have a situation where the secondary detachment could use psychic powers on units in the primary but not the other way around. Essentially the logic has to go both ways for it to work.

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That said, codexes built for 5th edition were prior to the introduction of allies. HIWPI: If the term "army" is used within the rules of a 5th ed codex (or prior work) then I would apply it only to the units found within that codex. If the term "army" is used in a rule in the BRB or 6th Ed codex, then I would apply it to everything in the list.

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In the specific case of Chapter Relics: If the wording states "Your army can only have one of these." or similar then we look at the edition of the book - in this case 6th Ed SM. Because it's 6th Ed we apply the global 6th Ed definition of army and therefore you can give one to the salamanders but not to the Iron Hands.