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For the Knight 'dex a conundrum

The rules for Knightly Ranks say:
"Players that want to include Knights Apparent or Seneschals in their games must roll a dice for each of their Knights Errant or Knights Paladin (other then the warlord) at the same time as warlord traits and refer the knightly rank table below to see what the rank that knight has"

Ok neat, that whole thing is optional? How unusual.

But in the next section on Knight Warlords, it says in a Primary Detachment, the Warlord is a Seneschal.


How does that work then? If my army is Knights, do I get the Warlord Seneschal with the option to not roll for the rest ,
Or is it that since he exists, I must roll and Knightly Ranks are only optional when the Knights are allies?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Dammit, I was sure I was in YMDC


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Now I am in YMDC!

You have a Seneschal, with no reuqirement to roll on the table with anyone else

I disagree Nosferatu1001, if the rule quote here is accurate.

As soon as those models have been included then the rest of the rule triggers and has be followed to the letter. That rule states that models with the Knights Errant or Knights Paladin titles must on the table being discussed, and that table has ranks and things I do not know anything about. The Warlord themselves are exempt from rolling on this table and only because the rule states that it effects other models with these ranks. Therefore it is only optional if the player has the choice not to include Knights Apparent or Seneschals in their army.

As the Primary Detachment in question has a rule stating that the warlord is a Seneschals, they clearly have to be included in the army/game and that triggers the 'optional' rule.

Added:
I see now this is being brought up in another thread, and that your argument is based on the fact you have to 'willingly choose' to have a Seneschal but that creates all sorts of unusual situations.

The biggest problem I have with this interpretation is it effectively renders this requirements as completely irrelevant. It makes it way to easy for players, even ones including these models in their armies, to argue that they are not bound by a restriction designed to cover what happens if those models are in the game. It also raises the reverse possibility, which is a curious line of thought in and of itself. If the model's physical presence in the game is not evidence of choice, then the choice can be made even if the model is not present. After all, the requirement is if a player decides to include it in the game and I can simply declare that the unit in question is being included in the game no matter what army I am fielding. That leads to the secondary debate of which players are bound by these rules once the inclusion into the game has been confirmed.

Why not just simply state 'if a player chooses to include this table in their game' if that was the intention all along?

Besides:
Is the player forced to take an Imperial Knight as the primary detachment?

That is another angle that you have to consider because the restrictions use of 'included in their games' is very unusual, given that it is Unit with full entry and all that. By the very fact it exists in the rule book it has already been included into the game and by playing with the Imperial Knights as part of the game then this unit has been willingly been 'chosen' as part of the game. It is only a rule stating if they are part of the primary detachment that one must be included, so the player still has the option at this point not to include this model in the game. They just have to not choose to take the Imperial Knights as a Primary Detachment, as soon as they make that choice they have willing decided to include this model in future games and that triggers the rule.

Have you chosen to include knightly ranks? No. Table does not trigger.

Yes - By choosing to field an Imperial Knight Army as the Primary Detachment, and therefore willingly including the model in question into the game.

No, your choice was taking a primary detachment. You did not choose that the models are scoring either. You did not choose to use the ranks, that decision was made for you.

By choosing to take Imperial Knights as the Primary Detachment the player has made a decision, a decision they know means including this model in their game.

There is nothing in the Rule that states this choice has to occur at the point of choosing which Units to add to the Army List. This choice can be made at any time, including the moment the player decides to select the Imperal Knights as a Primary Detatchment. This choice is made, freely and willingly, with the knowledge that will mean including a Seneschal in their game so the triggers in question has been met. The player has decided on a course of action that will involve including the Seneschal model in any future games, and they have the ability to make the opposite choice at this point in time, so they are not forced to include this model.

The Knightly Ranks & Knight Warlord rules can only be used when the primary detachment is made up of Imperial Knights. If you have a special Household Detachment attached to a non Imperial Knight Detachment you do not have permission to use the Knightly Ranks or Knight Warlord rules. Since there is no option in the codex to use the Knightly Ranks rule with out having a Knight Warlord then all best evidence would suggest that the intent of the author was for you to choose if you wanted to include any Knights Apparent or Seneschals beyond the warlord.

This is further supported in the example of a unit embarked in a flyer not counting against your units in reserve limit. While you chose to start them in a flyer, the game forces you to start them in reserves. In this case the game is forcing you to include a Seneschal in a primary detachment made up of Imperial Knights. It was not your choice.

I disagree DJGietzen,
They do not count towards reserves because we have been told by the writers they do not count for reserves.

So where is it clarified that the Seneschal selected as the warlord for the Primary Detachment does not count as a Seneschal included in the game?

Jinx - that line of thought leads to a DE unit gaining a power throu pain token for blowing up a vehicle that causes the unit inside to take a panic check, that means they fall off the board.

You made one choice, and one choice only. To play a primary detachment. Nothing more. Your suggestion is that the knightly ranks are entirely non optional, meaning you have broken the rules.

Nosferatu1001,
I see not how the rule is being broken, the player still has the choice not to undertake any action which leads to including the Seneschal in their game.

The rule that it is a choice. You cannot use these rules in a non primary detachment, so you cannot choose there. You are claiming that you have yo use these rules if it is a primary detachment

So when, there, is my choice?

Do you agree that the DE unit gets the token? It's as tortuous a claim as the claim that choosing to play an army also is you making a choice to use the table you cannot use any other way.....

What stops the Imperial Knight army containing a Seneschal from being selected as an allied or 'specialized' detachments?

The quoted Rule here is all I am going on, I mentioned I do not have access to the Rule itself, and nothing put forth has suggested that it isn't possible to take the Seneschal in an Allied or 'Special' Detachment. In those situations it would be more then possible to have an Army which does not include the Seneschal, therefore stating it is not currently 'included in the game.' If there is some other restriction in play that I am not privy to, then I would need that information in order to formulate a more accurate conclusion. Should you be able to show that only the Primary Detachment has the option of meeting these requirements then it does add some wight to what you are saying.

As for the DE, that needs to be looked over when I have access to the codex in question to see the exact wording of the Rules and how they are interacting because I do not often encounter them to know the finer detail of their rules off the top of my head....

JinxDragon wrote:
What stops the Imperial Knight army containing a Seneschal from being selected as an allied or 'specialized' detachments?

The fact that they're only an option for Knights used in a Primary Detachment?

That was mentioned in other Knight discussions. The table is only used for Knight armies, not for allied detachments. And since in a Knight army you have to have a Warlord, your interpretation would mean that players would never have a choice at all... If you are using a knight army, you would have to roll.

The quoted rule above does not mention anything about applying only to Primary Detachments.
So what stops the rule from being applied to allied detachments?
Is there a Rule stating that the Knights Apparent or Seneschals models are legal choices only for primary detachments?
Do these two models belong to units which do not have a place on the force organization chart that Allies use?

I really need to take a closer look at these Imperial Knights at some point, they clearly have a lot of questionable Rule interactions to puzzle over and for some reason I find that entertaining. I also shouldn't be surprised at the writers creating an 'optional but mandatory' Rule at this point, it wouldn't be the first time a Rule has been found to be self-defeating. Maybe I am just giving them too much credit that they wouldn't pen such a situation into a single codex, one much smaller then default so would have even less Rule interactions to keep track of.

Still, what does restrict the Knights Apparent or Seneschals to the Primary Detachment?

the rules are poorly written, as taking a warlord you take a Seneschal which is a rank.

However as you can only take ranked knights if your using knights as a primary, and you are required to take a warlord, there would be no point in saying the ranks are optional if taking a warlord means you have to use ranks, as they would be non optional.

RAI- I believe the ranks table is optional and the warlord has no bearing on it, otherwise there is no point for the writers to spell out that the table is optional which does not make any bit if sense.

Don't you love how Games Workshop managed to make confusing, unclear rules in a book with only 3 pages of rules?

It's pretty incredible. They've outdone themselves.

Srsface,
This is the same group that wrote the section titled 'allied detachments' that gives me such joy. A section which explains that our Armies consist of allies and primaries, the closest thing we have to a written definition for terminology used throughout many different Rules. A section that then conclude that 'some combinations of armies and allies are more effective then others' without a care for what it had previously stated. This is all on the same page, it is generous to state it is three paragraphs long, and maybe two sentences separating the definition and the misuse of that definition.

So I shouldn't be surprised the writers created a Rule designed to be Optional then pen an additional Rule that requires it to be Mandatory.

JinxDragon wrote:
The quoted rule above does not mention anything about applying only to Primary Detachments.
So what stops the rule from being applied to allied detachments?

The Imperial Knight Codex stops the rule from being applied to allied detachments when it said "The following rules can be used to field armies where the primary detachment is made up of Imperial Knights."(emphasis mine). The rule that lets you take 3-6 knights in a primary detachment and have them all be scoring, the rule giving permission to include Knights Apparent or Seneschals, and the rule that requires one knight be a Seneshal and the Warlord are the 'following rules' in question.

Thank you for the clarification.