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https://www.warhammer-community.com/2019/09/02/space-marines-faq-now-livegw-homepage-post-2/

Though it took more than 10 Millennia for Roboute Guilliman to update his magnum opus, we offer it a mere two weeks or so after our books launch! As such, today, we’re happy to share a new set of FAQs and Erratas for the latest Adeptus Astartes publications, with updated rules for:

https://www.warhammer-community.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/warhammer_40000_White_Scars_en.pdf

https://www.warhammer-community.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/warhammer_40000_space_marines_en.pdf

https://www.warhammer-community.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/warhammer_40000_ultramarines_en.pdf

It blows me away that there was a question as to whether the previous codex's stratagems could be used, bit of a joke there.

Nobody ever said it was ‘poignant and frequently asked questions’

Really interested that dropping in an Assassin soups you out the pure Marine bonus rule.

General consensus in my little gaming circle is positive. An interesting way to reward pure lists, without actively ruining Soup synergies.

 Tyranid Horde wrote:
It blows me away that there was a question as to whether the previous codex's stratagems could be used, bit of a joke there.

I did genuinely see people asking that here so...

looks like they cleared up assasins the answer is they do indeed stop combat doctrines, but only until they're killed.

Some of the rulings seem a bit, arbitrary TBH, such as captain master abilities not working via com arrays. (which means if you go with a Phobos captain a chapter master upgrade proably isn't worth it)

ohh and they FINALLY addressed the ultramarines chapter tactic.

Page 175 – Ultramarines: Codex Discipline
Change the final sentence to read:
‘Units with this tactic that cannot Fly can shoot in
a turn in which they Fell Back, but if they do, when
resolving an attack made by a model in that unit in the
Shooting phase of that turn, subtract 1 from the hit roll.’

finally we can end that TFG rules lawyer debate

 Tyranid Horde wrote:
It blows me away that there was a question as to whether the previous codex's stratagems could be used, bit of a joke there.

Well wouldn't be first time in GW history where material from book A is usable after new version of book A is released...

tneva82 wrote:

 Tyranid Horde wrote:
It blows me away that there was a question as to whether the previous codex's stratagems could be used, bit of a joke there.

Well wouldn't be first time in GW history where material from book A is usable after new version of book A is released...

I don't think I've ever seen that for a codex though, once the codex is updated, that's it.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Really interested that dropping in an Assassin soups you out the pure Marine bonus rule.

I hate rules like that. There's a single assassin in your force, so your Space Marines forget how to be Marines.

BrianDavion wrote:

looks like they cleared up assasins the answer is they do indeed stop combat doctrines, but only until they're killed.

You misread that, as the FAQ actually states they are still part of the army even after being destroyed, meaning combat doctrines are stopped for the entire game after the assassin is added.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Really interested that dropping in an Assassin soups you out the pure Marine bonus rule.

I hate rules like that. There's a single assassin in your force, so your Space Marines forget how to be Marines.

problem is how do you decide when too much is too much, I mean the idea is to dischourage soup so.. by and large I think the rule is proably needed.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Really interested that dropping in an Assassin soups you out the pure Marine bonus rule.

I hate rules like that. There's a single assassin in your force, so your Space Marines forget how to be Marines.

Agreed. I get they are trying to add incentives for going with a pure army, but the assassins are exactly the type of units that should be addable to an army without losing pure army bonuses. Oh well, typical GW for you.

BrianDavion wrote:
Some of the rulings seem a bit, arbitrary TBH, such as captain master abilities not working via com arrays. (which means if you go with a Phobos captain a chapter master upgrade proably isn't worth it)

He is 'not worth it' when you take the comm specialist. If you take pocket apothecary instead, he still works perfectly fine.

Still dunno why some people complained about it so much. Yes, it's a bit weird in the fluff, but the ruling is perfectly logical and having a chapter master hidden out of LOS give out rerolls to everything on table might be a bit too good. Especially combined with new ruling on two autowounding hits (which kind of puzzled me, I guess they wanted to speed the game up a bit).

On a side note, another FUD bastion, the "Index not being updated ever, thus SQUAT INCOMING" just fell. I wonder what they will screech about now?

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
I hate rules like that. There's a single assassin in your force, so your Space Marines forget how to be Marines.

You could make that argument on everything. 30 guardsmen and guy in funny hat makes SM forget to how to be marines? Better allow loyal CP battery to be taken with new rules! People were complaining about there being no downside to allies for years now and once GW fixed it, I see complains from the other side will now rise instead...

 ikeulhu wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Really interested that dropping in an Assassin soups you out the pure Marine bonus rule.

I hate rules like that. There's a single assassin in your force, so your Space Marines forget how to be Marines.

Agreed. I get they are trying to add incentives for going with a pure army, but the assassins are exactly the type of units that should be addable to an army without losing pure army bonuses. Oh well, typical GW for you.

I can think of only two stories in the entire background fluff where the Officio Asassinorum has worked with Adeptus Astartes. I think it's pretty clear GW's intent is to now put disadvantages in for soup armies. This GW starting to put the background of the game before sales.

You can still take them, but you lose the bonus. It's a bit much to expect to get that bonus that's purposely written for non soup Marines whilst taking soup.

Same with this Loyal 32. It's just command point farming and one f the reasons tournament gaming gets a bad name , alongside that horrendous Vegas tournament lack of sportsmanship. Pretty certain that was GW's turning point given how they'd previously publicised it.

 TwilightSparkles wrote:
I think it's pretty clear GW's intent is to now put disadvantages in for soup armies. This GW starting to put the background of the game before sales.

And an single assassin does not a soup army make.

I get they want to discourage soup armies, but penalising an army for bringing an assassin seems to go against the spirit of the rule, if not against the wording of rule.

GW designs via pendulum swings. They are never able to find the middle ground.

So a single assassin isn't soup, but is a single Inquisitor? A single Knight? A single Titan?

Where would you draw the arbitrary line for 'soup'?

 xttz wrote:
So a single assassin isn't soup, but is a single Inquisitor? A single Knight? A single Titan?

Where would you draw the arbitrary line for 'soup'?

100% this. The minuite you make a small exception then it opens up room for people to argue that the next step along is ok and so on untill guess what we are right back where we were.

You either exclusde all soups regardless of how bland or your making it mandatory.

Here's the issue, the updated Assassin rules were designed to allow them to slot into any army. That was GW's stated intent with the update.

To then turn around not so long later and take a "welp, you cant run anything except a single faction or else you lose your shinies" approach is a diametrically opposed design philosophy. It's also confusing in the context of orphaned mini-armies like Assassins, SoS, etc. where they quite literally can't be fielded as pure armies.

Sterling191 wrote:
Here's the issue, the updated Assassin rules were designed to allow them to slot into any army. That was GW's stated intent with the update.

To then turn around not so long later and take a "welp, you cant run anything except a single faction or else you lose your shinies" approach is a diametrically opposed design philosophy. It's also confusing in the context of orphaned mini-armies like Assassins, SoS, etc. where they quite literally can't be fielded as pure armies.

You're not prevented from getting Chapter traits or anything of that nature.
What you don't get is a "top level" benefit. And frankly, good on them for that.

Additionally, those "mini-armies" never should have been considered "armies" by anyone.

 Kanluwen wrote:


Additionally, those "mini-armies" never should have been considered "armies" by anyone.

And yet, they exist, and must be considered in any rules discussion. Wishing them away isnt an option.

Sterling191 wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:


Additionally, those "mini-armies" never should have been considered "armies" by anyone.

And yet, they exist, and must be considered in any rules discussion. Wishing them away isnt an option.

Read. The. Quoted. Text. Nobody's saying they should be wished away or nonsense like that.

Nobody ever should have seriously expected any faction that literally was just a few choices(Assassins, Inquisition, etc) to be treated as a full army.
You weren't Skitarii, who were a full army with a rule that one of your unit leaders could be your Warlord...and even then, Skitarii got screwed over by getting jammed into the Cult Mechanicus and lost all their identity and flavor in the process.

And yet you think there shouldn't be some kind of penalty by playing the "plug the holes" game with Assassins?

Sterling191 wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:


Additionally, those "mini-armies" never should have been considered "armies" by anyone.

And yet, they exist, and must be considered in any rules discussion. Wishing them away isnt an option.

I say this a someone with a SoS detachment and Krole, the problem is GW has been even more inconsistent with it's approach than usual. As they transition a bunch of lines between FW and Main studio.

I'm hopeful that my knight's might actually be viable with having half an army of Astra BoGoF in my army.

But yes It's sad that SoS etc don't actually bring enough to the table to compete with the doctrines you loose, but in all honesty they need a lot of GW love to make their rules way better anyway, aslong as a viable way to make detachments for them.

 Kanluwen wrote:

Read. The. Quoted. Text. Nobody's saying they should be wished away or nonsense like that.

That's literally what you're saying right here:

 Kanluwen wrote:


Additionally, those "mini-armies" never should have been considered "armies" by anyone.

It also sucks for those of us who bought assassins when the white dwarf codex dropped, to see them get less and less usable as time goes on. First by increasing the cp cost to bring them, and now by having them turn off doctrines.

It's not like the assassins are that OP, I don't think anyone is winning GTs with them, and even in friendly games, they don't turn the whole game around when they show up.

Sterling191 wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:

Read. The. Quoted. Text. Nobody's saying they should be wished away or nonsense like that.

That's literally what you're saying right here:

 Kanluwen wrote:


Additionally, those "mini-armies" never should have been considered "armies" by anyone.

Sterling191 wrote:
Here's the issue, the updated Assassin rules were designed to allow them to slot into any army. That was GW's stated intent with the update.

To then turn around not so long later and take a "welp, you cant run anything except a single faction or else you lose your shinies" approach is a diametrically opposed design philosophy. It's also confusing in the context of orphaned mini-armies like Assassins, SoS, etc. where they quite literally can't be fielded as pure armies.

Yeah. But they are trade off. Slot in the assassin, you add some very unique abilities and features, but lose doctrines. Abstain from the Assassin, and you get doctrine in return.

That's meaningful choice and pretty much the core foundation of any balance. Allowing people to have the cake and eat it too, bringing allies like Assassins and get benefits meant to incentivize mono-faction pretty much makes choices in the list-building phase meaningless and diminishes the game as a whole, especially from a competitive view.

That is the root of the problem with most allies-options to date: e.g. bringing allies has no discernable downside and sticking to the more limited options of a single codex (pre-Marines) has no advantages, making a pick-and-choose-the-most-efficient-units-from-all-available-books the go-to no-brainer choice. Make choices in list-building meaningful again, and list-building will actually again be an aspect of player skill, rather than just an aspect of wallet-depth for people chasing the latest GW rules-mistake instead of trying to become better at the game.

100% in the camp of taking soup away. I want to run my Daemons pure. And I’m happy for my opponents to go pure as well. Soup, without a penalty, is ridiculous. Granted, they started penalizing it in a weird spot (the only entry that says on its data sheet that it shouldn’t be penalized, in so many words), but I’ll be happy when it extends everywhere.

TL;DR-works for me.

 xttz wrote:
So a single assassin isn't soup, but is a single Inquisitor? A single Knight? A single Titan?

Where would you draw the arbitrary line for 'soup'?

With assassins. I just said as much.

The line will always be arbitrary, but the point is, as stated above, that GW wrote the rules for assassins to allow them to be slotted into other armies. Assassins are not an army, like Knights or Guard or any of the other things you can take in a soup. Then they go and make changes like this run counter to it, and make Marine armies lose rules because of a single unit that was designed to mesh with other armies. It's incongruous, and, again, represents the pendulum style rules writing that GW has been suffering for for longer than I can remember.

As I have already stated, I get the desire to penalise soup armies, but the reason we want to see that done is that people are tired of Marine armies with Knights, or Knight armies with the Loyal 32, or bringing minimum sized AdMech detachments. These are all issues that should be addressed (and could be addressed far more elegantly if GW just made the FOC mean something), but, as usual, GW has decided to make a sweeping change that impacts things in a way I don't believe they factored in when making the decision, namely, the assassins.

So yes, I think that assassins should be specifically exempt from this rule (or just taking a single assassin, that is). I think that should be one of the benefits of assassins. I don't consider the inclusion of an assassin to mean that something is a 'soup' list.

 xttz wrote:
So a single assassin isn't soup, but is a single Inquisitor? A single Knight? A single Titan?

Where would you draw the arbitrary line for 'soup'?

You're making this harder than it needs to be. The Inquisition and its forces don't force you to lose bonuses.

See how easy that is?

The things that are meant to reasonably work only as allies (The Inquisitors, Assassins, Rogue Traders, Ynnari, etc) absolutely should not make you lose your pure army bonus. Assuming that in the future all factions have such boni, and an exception is made for mini factions that cannot reasonably fielded as pure, those factions just become unusable.

And no, it is not a 'trade off'. No one in their right mind would trade the SM doctrines and associated supplement scion bonus to one Assassin, let alone an Inquisitor. For such a trade off to be an actual choice such allied units would need to be crazy powerful powerful, which doesn't work, as then you would be encouraged to bring tons of them, or bless a full army with some sort of bonus. The latter might make sense for Inquisitors or Ynnari, but not for others.

Sunny Side Up wrote:

Sterling191 wrote:
Here's the issue, the updated Assassin rules were designed to allow them to slot into any army. That was GW's stated intent with the update.

To then turn around not so long later and take a "welp, you cant run anything except a single faction or else you lose your shinies" approach is a diametrically opposed design philosophy. It's also confusing in the context of orphaned mini-armies like Assassins, SoS, etc. where they quite literally can't be fielded as pure armies.

Yeah. But they are trade off. Slot in the assassin, you add some very unique abilities and features, but lose doctrines. Abstain from the Assassin, and you get doctrine in return.

That's meaningful choice and pretty much the core foundation of any balance. Allowing people to have the cake and eat it too, bringing allies like Assassins and get benefits meant to incentivize mono-faction pretty much makes choices in the list-building phase meaningless and diminishes the game as a whole, especially from a competitive view.

That is the root of the problem with most allies-options to date: e.g. bringing allies has no discernable downside and sticking to the more limited options of a single codex (pre-Marines) has no advantages, making a pick-and-choose-the-most-efficient-units-from-all-available-books the go-to no-brainer choice. Make choices in list-building meaningful again, and list-building will actually again be an aspect of player skill, rather than just an aspect of wallet-depth for people chasing the latest GW rules-mistake instead of trying to become better at the game.

To be a meaningful choice the Assassins would have to be of equal worth to the other option, in this case it’s not so there is no choice and Assassins get booted back to the dusty shelf they have spent most of there existence on.

As for getting rid of soup arbitrarily after spending years promoting it yeah I can see that working well, I wonder what GWs next design body swerve will be. I guess that’s just the risk you take when you balance your game by throwing darts at a wall of post it notes blindfolded or let JJ do it same difference I guess.

Ohhh nvm your one of those people that think list building is a skill, and that removing allies “Makes choices in list building meaningful again” oh bless. I have to ask how exactly?
Wallet depth rofl have you seen GWs prices any army is an aspect of wallet depth soup or not. Like it or not Soup was not a rules mistake but working as intended that they have now changed there minds does not change that, besides it’s not like GW are suddenly going to discover how to balance a game so as normal people don’t need to chase mistakes there going to drop into there laps as they have always done(for example see the new SM faq that reverts a ruling on drop pods to a previous version that was changed because it was broken).

Yeah, the add-on forces like Assassins and Inquisition really should have an exception from causing the loss of "pure" army bonuses. Otherwise they kind of defeat the whole purpose of having add-on type forces in the first place. It would not be so bad if all it cost was the basic Doctrines, but losing access to something like "Scions of Guilliman" definitely makes it a very non-optimal choice to include something that causes lost of access to such a game-changing ability.