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.

I'm curious about something based potentially on a misunderstanding of what I thought were the correct rules regarding battleforged armies.

If I am playing Chaos and I choose a Super Heavy Detachment, since it is faction "Chaos", does that mean per page 240, that Mortarion, Magnus, Scabs and a Malefic lord is a valid choice?

I've been playing where the "sub-faction" if you want to call it that, "Death Guard" is what had to match, not "Chaos". Am I wrong in how I have been reading that?

Is battlescribe wrong in how it breaks up the subs? Can you guys let me know where I am missing that key piece of information, if I am?

For Matched Play your whole army has to match one of the faction keywords.

Here it is <Chaos>.

Mortarion (Lord of War from Death Guard Codex)

Magnus the Red (Lord of War from Index: Chaos)

Scarab Occult Terminators (Elites from Index: Chaos)

Malefic Lord (HQ from Imperial Armour: Forces of Astra Militarum)

The Super Heavy Detachment needs 3 - 5 Lords of War.

So the Malefic Lord and the unit of the Scarab Occult Terminators are no valid choice for the battleforged army.

But as long as every unit has the keyword chaos and can be put into a detachment (Which is easy, as you can take auxiliary detachments up to your max CP) then you are still battleforged.

Battlescribe organises things into codex factions (with The FW index split off for convenience) but still allows you to build your army using the chaos faction, by allowing you to add multiple codices to one detachment, using a parent and child format.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
(The reason why its better to build detachment using codex factions is that a lot of codex powers require detachments to have the codex faction keyword for every unit in the detachment, but this isn't compulsory for Matched play)

Ah interesting... So you would next the units under the faction detachment in BS. I see

To be honest if youre building a new army youre better off with using the books as a reference and battlescribe as just a calculator. Battlescribe gets so many things wrong its not really reliable.

Also i think the poster above got it wrong, im pretty sure the malefic lord has the chaos faction keyword so could included.

I strongly second the part about relying on the books more than Battlescribe, in this or any other context. Battlescribe is by no means perfect.

Honestly battlescribe is pretty good right now. Most of the errors that come up appear to be user error. But of course read your codex first, use battlescribe second.

If you find an error with battlescribe report a bug, help making it better, because its awesome.

Well I will report it because it's a pretty glaring bug that you can't add units to a "chaos" or "Imperium" faction, only to a codex/index detachment.

valdier wrote:
I've been playing where the "sub-faction" if you want to call it that, "Death Guard" is what had to match, not "Chaos". Am I wrong in how I have been reading that?

You are correct in that you are wrong in how you have been reading it.

To be "Battle Forged" simply means your army is built using one or more Detachments. It has nothing to do with any Faction Keyword, unless the Detachment you chose dictates that all units must be from the same Faction. At the moment all available Detachments have the Faction restriction, but in the future there may be some that don't have it.

To be part of the same Faction, they just have to share one or more Faction Keywords. So if your detachment includes Space Marines, Imperial Guard, and Fallen, they are all the same Faction by virtue of the "Imperium" Keyword they all share.

That said, you usually get some added bonus if you tighten your Detachments to be a more specific Keyword. For example, Imperial Guard have a <Regiment> Keyword and if their whole Detachment shares it they get extra bonuses. Likewise for Space Marines and their <Chapter> Keyword or Chaos Space Marines and their <Legion> Keyword.

For Death Guard, if your Detachment isn't a Death Guard Detachment (as in everyone shares the "Death Guard" keyword) you lose the INEXORABLE ADVANCE and PLAGUE HOST abilities. So you have to think about the trade off.