Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

40K is a game produced by Games Workshop. It includes a Main Rulebook, and a number of Codices for each individual army.

That.is.it.

There is another company, Forgeworld, that makes models with rules that are designed to be played with the GW game of 40K; but being a separate company, they have no 'authority' to decide what does, and does not, constitute what is allowed in 40K.

Granted, FW is owned by GW, (or both owned by the same parent company, not sure); but it is still a separate company.

If you agree to play a game of 40K with someone, that, by default, will only include the BRB and codices. If you want to include things produced and designed by a third party company, you may, but that is something different.

Smitty0305 wrote:Forgeworld makes overpowered cheesey units

Really?
35 points for a BS2 twin-linked heavy bolter that can't move, has limited fire arcs, is AV10 all round and is destroyed by any glancing or penetrating hit?
160 points (5 more than a vanquisher) for a russ armed only with a hull mounted S10 AP2 no blast weapon?
270points for a landraider armed with four twin-linked heavy bolters. (no special rule so it can only fire two at combat speed and one at cruising speed)



Automatically Appended Next Post:

Dashofpepper wrote:And besides, doesn't IA also have a "build your own unit" feature?

No

BuFFo wrote:
There is a difference for most hobbyists between playing a game with two codices and playing a game with two codices, but one person brings Titans and other FW models/rules without asking first. At the very least, you don't need my permission to play your Space Wolves, but you do if you are bringing a Reaver Titan. That is the difference in the eyes of most hobbyists.

But that's the fallacy. You DO need my permission to play your Space Wolves because in a pick-up game if I don't want to play against Space Wolves or I don't like the fact that your Space Wolf army has a bunch of Thunderwolf Cavalry (which I think are cheesy, for example), then I don't play you.

That is exactly, 100% the same as using any expansion rules. If one person doesn't want to use something and their opponent doesn't want to let them (and neither side is willing to back down) then the game is not played.

So yes, playing with Space Wolves requires your opponent's consent exactly the same way that playing with Imperial Armor does.


And BTW, a Titan doesn't have any rules for being used in a standard FOC game of 40K, so probably isn't the best example to use.

coredump wrote:40K is a game produced by Games Workshop. It includes a Main Rulebook, and a number of Codices for each individual army.

That.is.it.

There is another company, Forgeworld, that makes models with rules that are designed to be played with the GW game of 40K; but being a separate company, they have no 'authority' to decide what does, and does not, constitute what is allowed in 40K.

Granted, FW is owned by GW, (or both owned by the same parent company, not sure); but it is still a separate company.

If you agree to play a game of 40K with someone, that, by default, will only include the BRB and codices. If you want to include things produced and designed by a third party company, you may, but that is something different.

Imperial Armor is an expansion for 40K, just like Planetstrike, Cities of Death, etc. The books have the official 40K logo on them and say 'expansion' in exactly the same way as any other expansion.

While your opinion may be that because this expansion is produced by a subsidiary of Games Workshop it is somehow less worthy of being used than other expansions, there is absolutely no physical basis for this concept.

If I agree to play a game of 40K against someone, in absolutely no way have I agreed only to use the rulebook and codexes. I CAN agree to that, but I can also disagree to use some of the codexes if I want as well.

Nobody is ever forced to play with a certain set of rules unless they are playing under the umbrella of a tournament, league, campaign or other such organization that dictates what rules are allowed or not allowed.

Outside of that there is NO SUCH THING AS "OFFICIAL". There is the rulebook, the codexes and a bunch of expansions (with Imperial Armor being one of them). The two players playing against each other always must decide which exactly of these rules they wish to use and which they do not.

Yakface,

If someone asks to play a game of 40k, that would imply to you that every expansion is included?
As in, when someone says to you"Would you like to play 40k?", do you auto-include each IA, Apoc, CoD, PlanetStrike, et al. as acceptable rules?

In my experience the opposite is true. When one of my opponents (or myself) inquires about playing 40k with any expansion the question is "Would you like to play Planetstrike/Apocalypse/Cities of Death?"

I do not find "normal" discussions of 40k to include expansions, rather they tend to include normal 40k.

In fact, I have regularly seen people get upset that something not in the main rules or the (relevant) codex appear on the table in game that was "40k".


So, yes. I agree those are official rules, but they are not rules for 40k. They are rules for expansions to the game. Those rules say they are normal, but the normal rules do not.

ymmv

Che-Vito wrote:

yakface wrote:
Imperial Armor books for quite a while now have been clearly labeled as being an 'expansion' to the game of 40K, just like Cities of Death, Apocalypse, Spearhead, Battle Missions, etc.

Wrong.

http://www.forgeworld.co.uk/Downloads/Product/PDF/d/daemonlords.pdf
(experimental means nothing...as it says quite clearly: It can be used in Warhammer 40,000 armies of 2,000 points or more. It's legal, and it's lovely.)

Slightly OT but slightly not: why is this not listed on their downloads page? Are there any other loose PDF's that give additional units without being listed on that page?

Magic the Gathering is a good example of co-operation between players. The rules for magi concerning, types, formats, strictness of play and other elements are quite clear and sure every serious player would want to play under these conditions. But the more serious players in my experience will play against decks from other formats or occasionally allow players to try something again for testing… when they want to.
40k is always like that, but, I feel there is an issue or problem between 40k and the rules as a game. Players the vast majority times, will have something new thrown their way. Be it units, rules, codices be it an abuse of old rules in new ways or genuinely new tactic for them to combat. There is far less surety to a game. ... but if you were playing some one randomly at 2500. What would you do with your 'best' list?, When they dump the one apoc unit and some other stuff to make a force org... Ya' going to show them the stick and beat them, surely?

And if not.. ,you’d allow them to quickly fix the list up, right? Because if they have that unit they must surely have the army right

BuFFo wrote:

Dashofpepper wrote:And in the last two days, both in person and on Dakka I've had people tell me that the Achilles and the Caestus Assault Ram are legal to field in an army list. Is there something I'm missing?

You aren't missing anything actually.

In the main rule book, you are told what you need to play the game; the Rule book and your army Codex. Nowhere does it require you to play Forgeworld.

Forgeworld is optional, and your opponents cannot force you to play against FW models. They are permission only, despite what FW says in their book. Once GW prints, in their RULE BOOK, that FW rules/models are 'official', then they are.

The same was true for Armor/epicast in the 90's.

Lets put it this way, how many GTs allow FW rules in their REGULAR 40k games? Not many , if any. You only see FW rules in side tournaments and specialized games.

Considering that FW and GW are the same company...

and citing GT's as an example is meaningless. GW hasn't had GT's in years, all GT's (in the US anyway) have been privately organized and run events. This new Throne of Skulls malarky is basically the return of the official GT.

In any case, GW codecies are no more legal than FW books are. Hard to believe I know, but I can refuse to play you on the grounds that I don't like whatever codex you're playing :shock:

There is a difference for most hobbyists between playing a game with two codices and playing a game with two codices, but one person brings Titans and other FW models/rules without asking first. At the very least, you don't need my permission to play your Space Wolves, but you do if you are bringing a Reaver Titan. That is the difference in the eyes of most hobbyists.

No, I don't need your permission actually, but that doesn't mean that you don't have the right to refuse to play (there is actually a difference).

40K is a game produced by Games Workshop. It includes a Main Rulebook, and a number of Codices for each individual army.

That.is.it.

There is another company, Forgeworld, that makes models with rules that are designed to be played with the GW game of 40K; but being a separate company, they have no 'authority' to decide what does, and does not, constitute what is allowed in 40K.

Granted, FW is owned by GW, (or both owned by the same parent company, not sure); but it is still a separate company.

If you agree to play a game of 40K with someone, that, by default, will only include the BRB and codices. If you want to include things produced and designed by a third party company, you may, but that is something different.

You need to take another look at GW's corporate organization then. FW and GW ARE THE SAME COMPANY. All FW employees are GW employees (not all GW employees are FW employees).

Oh dear good that is a horrible unit in all ways. Broken beyond belief, extremely silly (thunderfire on a land raider???) and it probably looks like a piece of garbage too

I don't mind forgeworld stuff, and I was at a tournament that allowed it recently, but you had to ask for permission for any IA stuff. It was cool, I got to use my Hades, others played IA lists etc, and no-one complained afterwards. Stuff like this piece of garbage, inferno shells heavy mortars and the casteus assault ram is what makes people stay clear of forge world stuff. Most IA stuff is either poor value for pts or decent, wish forgeworld was as good at rules as they are at modelling

Well I would suggest that FW hits or misses on average about the same as the rest of the GW design studio.

Plenty of stuff over the years that have appeared in standard run of the mill codexs that left your head scratching.

Events and players must determine what is allowable for play. Variety here is a good thing.

Course, what equally gets lost is players themselves have an obligation to exercise some judgment. Just because something is technically "legal" does not mean you have to play it or mean you have to field it in multiples.

If it's not in the codex I will not play against it in a non apoc setting ... I enjoy the game not the fluff and therefore like to keep it at a strict and simple level

Is there anything that says they can take IA stuff ... sure in the IA book

Is there anyything preventing them ... sure the fact that I and people like minded wont play against it and the fact for tournament play "where I play mostly" doesnt allow them 98% of the time

jdjamesdean@mail.com wrote:If it's not in the codex I will not play against it in a non apoc setting ... I enjoy the game not the fluff and therefore like to keep it at a strict and simple level

Is there anything that says they can take IA stuff ... sure in the IA book

Is there anyything preventing them ... sure the fact that I and people like minded wont play against it and the fact for tournament play "where I play mostly" doesnt allow them 98% of the time

You like the game not the fluff... so you refuse to play using a part of the game? Makes perfect sense.

And using 'tournaments do it this way' as an excuse is poor form. By that logic, we should only ever play team games using the Adepticon format, since thats the biggest tournament in the US and its become the standard that all other tournaments measure themselves against.

chaos0xomega wrote:You like the game not the fluff... so you refuse to play using an expansion of the game? Makes perfect sense.

Fixed.

I enjoy 40k not the expansion crapola ... no cities of death, no IA, Nothing added make sense now ...
I dont even like fantasy ...

It's like saying I like to play Resident Evil but Resident Evil 4 is crap so I wont take part in it ...

Excuse me ...
like I said I like competitive play ... like in tournaments so there's no need to play with all the IA junk ... or get bothered with all the fluff nonsense

If it's not in the codex I will not play against it in a non apoc setting ... I enjoy the game not the fluff and therefore like to keep it at a strict and simple level.

Which is certainly your right and no different than some folks refusing to play against certain “codex” army builds, less than 3 color standard armies, “proxy / counts as" forces or a host of other things some folks dislike about some games or formats. All perfectly acceptable.

For friendly pick up games, I always ask if it is ok to use a FW army list, or make it very clear that I am useing one before the game starts.

For non pick up games, ask the TO/owner/whomever ect ect.

kirsanth wrote:Yakface,

If someone asks to play a game of 40k, that would imply to you that every expansion is included?
As in, when someone says to you"Would you like to play 40k?", do you auto-include each IA, Apoc, CoD, PlanetStrike, et al. as acceptable rules?

In my experience the opposite is true. When one of my opponents (or myself) inquires about playing 40k with any expansion the question is "Would you like to play Planetstrike/Apocalypse/Cities of Death?"

I do not find "normal" discussions of 40k to include expansions, rather they tend to include normal 40k.

In fact, I have regularly seen people get upset that something not in the main rules or the (relevant) codex appear on the table in game that was "40k".


So, yes. I agree those are official rules, but they are not rules for 40k. They are rules for expansions to the game. Those rules say they are normal, but the normal rules do not.

ymmv

My point is always that there is no 'normal' 40K. There is just 40K, and part of 40K are its expansions.

Unless playing in a tournament/campaign/league where the rules allowed are set ahead of time, anybody 'expecting' to ever play a certain way without discussing with their opponent is leaving themselves open to be disappointed. And that applies both ways. If you come to a game 'expecting' to be able to play an expansion game without discussing it with your opponent ahead of time, then you may find your opponent doesn't want to play an expansion game. And if you come to a game 'expecting' to play a game without any expansion (like Imperial Armor) then you may wind up finding out your opponent was 'expecting' to play that way.

So the only point is, you need to decide what rules you want to use when you're playing a friendly/pick-up game because it takes TWO PEOPLE TO PLAY. If one person doesn't like the game that's going to be played (for whatever reason), they're not going to play.


The original question in this thread was: Are Imperial Armor rules 'official'? And the answer is: yes they are 'official' in that they are an official expansion for 40K, but as with any rules in the game, you MUST have your opponent's consent to use them because if people don't want to play with certain rules then they're NOT GOING TO PLAY YOU.

The whole concept of official is being taken too far. Some individuals seem to want to use its status of official or not to strong arm a potential opponent into playing the way they want to. If someone doesn't want to let you use something in a game, its probably best if you just find another opponent anyways. Trying to force your way of playing on someone else is not going to make for a fun experience for both players.

I hate to beat a dead horse, but how often does any of the above really happen? It feels like we have concocted worst case scenarios (e.g., a guy bringing 3 FW Achilles Land Raiders and insisting that you must play a game with them or 'else'). I just don't see these scenarios playing out, unless the social skills of the people at my locations are markedly better than other areas.

I guess it boils down to, at least some, FW players state they don't have to ask permission because it is printed somewhere in IA that they are not required to ask permission (I don't know which IA states that, or if all of them do).

Some 'regular' 40k players want FW players to always ask permission.

I agree with others, who have probably said it better, that whether you need permission or don't, it doesn't really matter. A large percentage of games played are outside any tournament, and in the absence of those restrictions, who you play and with what is an individual decision. If a friend, or nice-enough seeming guy, wanted to play a game using a very competitive list or possibly unbalanced FW unit, I may play against it occasionally with my friendly list. Alternatively, I may ask to modify my general list to account for those difficult units (i.e., against the 3 FW achilles list I may ask to switch out some of my melta). Alternatively, I may so no, I'm looking for a game where I do more than remove my models by the fistful for an hour.

Ultimately, I guess I can partially sympathize with the FW players, as probably a large percentage want to be able to bring a list down to the store and not have people raise their eyebrows when they mention it is based on FW rules. I don't know many of the FW rules, but from what others have said, most of them are balanced with a few exceptions. With all that said, I just don't think there is a way around common courtesy dictating that you describe your list before a game, and while it is possible a few people may decline to game with you because of perceived, or real, over-powered rulesets, I just don't see another way to go about it.

yakface wrote:My point is always that there is no 'normal' 40K. There is just 40K, and part of 40K are its expansions.

The rest, I basically agree with.

According to GW naming conventions (webiste and the relevant books), 40k with Apocalypse = a game of Apocalypse; 40k with Cities of Death, a City fight; 40k with PlanetStrike, a game of PlanetStrike.

IA makes things odd in that regard but is an expansion and not a codex, regardless.

Does that make things less official? No, as I said originally--but it requires more discussion than what is normally allowed in 40k games by the rulebook.

As a avid FW player who uses their updated rules to field a IG AC, in a pickup game I always inform my enemy that I am useing a FW army list before we do anything.

I talked it over with the FLGS owner, and sat down with him one day and went over the actual army list. Once he got over the fact that I physically had that many LRBT's he agreed to let me use it in all shop run events.

Have never once ran into a problem.

If you made a list with casteus assault rams and achilles land raiders however, you probably would. The problem with forgeworld is the few extremely poorly balanced units that practically forces people to have knee-jerk reactions

"NEVER be fielded in an actual game in my opinion. It is AV14, and is immune to melta, lance"

Reminds me of a certain giant floating pyramid.

except for -1 on damage results, which is what pushes it over the egde

True, but it's also 65 more points. Monstrous Creatures (or someone like Ghaz) would wreck the Achilles. It only has so many weapons before it becomes useless, and eventually, wrecked.

You can also not just ignore it and go for phase out

MC's won't catch this thing, S10 AP1 is almost the only thing that can kill it, not that many armies have this available

you don't think a Bloodthirster or Flyrant could catch it?

It's over the top but costs a ton ... and only holds 6 models ... alot of hype for something that appears to be terrible to me

Remember when Hydras were 200 points and had a min range of a foot? Good times

Anyways well its all up to tournies concerning IA I think. And friendly wise usually its also based on a previous agreement unless you have random battles

muwhe wrote:Well I would suggest that FW hits or misses on average about the same as the rest of the GW design studio.

Plenty of stuff over the years that have appeared in standard run of the mill codexs that left your head scratching.

Events and players must determine what is allowable for play. Variety here is a good thing.

Course, what equally gets lost is players themselves have an obligation to exercise some judgment. Just because something is technically "legal" does not mean you have to play it or mean you have to field it in multiples.

That's very well said Hank. I wish more players would take this to heart. : )

gainesdp wrote:I hate to beat a dead horse, but how often does any of the above really happen? It feels like we have concocted worst case scenarios (e.g., a guy bringing 3 FW Achilles Land Raiders and insisting that you must play a game with them or 'else'). I just don't see these scenarios playing out, unless the social skills of the people at my locations are markedly better than other areas.

This situation actually game up with me. Some guy who plays at GW here said he pre-ordered 3 achilles and didn't need permission to use them in games because they were "official" games workshop

kirsanth wrote:

yakface wrote:My point is always that there is no 'normal' 40K. There is just 40K, and part of 40K are its expansions.

The rest, I basically agree with.

According to GW naming conventions (webiste and the relevant books), 40k with Apocalypse = a game of Apocalypse; 40k with Cities of Death, a City fight; 40k with PlanetStrike, a game of PlanetStrike.

IA makes things odd in that regard but is an expansion and not a codex, regardless.

Does that make things less official? No, as I said originally--but it requires more discussion than what is normally allowed in 40k games by the rulebook.

Agreed. when someone in my FLGS asks me if i want to play a game of 40k, i assume (and so has everyone i've ever actually asked about it) that they mean 40k rulebook + codex. if they think that they'll just spring planetstrike on me, they're wrong. while, yes, you can refuse to play someone simply because their army isn't based with m&m's as 40k is a social contract between two players, they're not the same thing as using FW stuff. You can reasonably expect someone to play you if you're using official models with the only types of books mentioned in the basic rules (codex and 5th edition rulebook); having someone balk at not being informed ahead of time that you're using books that were only available new in the whole US at 3 locations until recently or a setting where the force org changes and so do the basic rules is not the exception but more the rule. Doubly so if the rules are specifically labelled "experimental". GW has had 3 separate editions come out since FW started publishing their books to say in the core rulebook that their subsidiary's products are 100% legal in normal 40k games and usable without opponent's permission. They have chosen not to... three separate times over 10 years. Forgeworld has had 9 chances to label each of their books as a codex to skirt the wording; they haven't. Saying that a line in a book a significant portion of players doesn't accept as legal except by permission doesn't prove anything. Do i allow people to use them against me? 95% of the time, yes without even asking what unit as long as its not a superheavy or flyer in standard 40k. Would i allow it if they tried to spring it on me without asking? No, as i believe the rules say you must ask and its rude to just assume so. Regardless of what people think the RAW theory is regarding this, it's permission only in practice for alot of players.

@Dash... to answer your question, you do NOT have to agree to play against them and almost no one (maybe che-vito) will think less of you when saying no against clearly labelled experimental rules. as a 40k leaderboard topper, they may snicker if you say no vs actual IA rules though. such is the price to pay for toy soldier fame.