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I have a friend who wants to add a detachment of War Dogs to his 1k Son detachment. Can this be done and if so, how?

You add a SHAD to your army and put a unit of War Dogs in it. You then pay the Command Cost for both detachments and add any applicable Command Cost.

So assuming he has a Battalion of Thousand Sons, including the Warlord, and a SHAD with a unit of Wardogs, he will end up down 3 CP (-3 for Battalion, +3 for Warlord in Battalion, -3 for SHAD).

Note that if the unit of Wardogs is a Dreadblade unit, then it gains Agents of Chaos keyword and will not prevent the Thousand Sons units from benefiting from Cabbalistic Rituals per the Fallen Hero detachment ability (Chaos Knights gain detachment abilities despite being in a SHAD).

My friend is playing in an event and was told that adding the SHAD to his Battalion wasn't legal because they didn't share a keyword other than Chaos and Tzeentch. He was told this by some very experienced players. Can you point me to the rule(s) that allow attaching SHADs to Battalions and still allow them to be warforged?

Core rulebook page 244-245. These very experienced players are wrong. While every unit within a specific detachment must share a keyword other than Chaos, Chaos can be the common keyword for all units within the army as a whole.

Leo_the_Rat wrote:
My friend is playing in an event and was told that adding the SHAD to his Battalion wasn't legal because they didn't share a keyword other than Chaos and Tzeentch. He was told this by some very experienced players. Can you point me to the rule(s) that allow attaching SHADs to Battalions and still allow them to be warforged?

He might've been asking the wrong question. You aren't adding a Chaos Knight SHD to a Thousand Sons detachment; you're saving both a Thousand Sons detachment and a Chaos Knights detachment to your army.

Once upon a time, GW used "detachment" and "army" interchangeably. These days, an army is made of one or more separate detachments.

These experienced players probably think that your friend is trying to add a Chaos Knight to a Thousand Sons detachment, which is not possible because of the CHAOS keyword thing. However, that restriction does not stop a Thousand Sons detachment and a Chaos Knights detachment both belonging to the same army.

Thanks for the help. The TO sided with the more experienced people and my friend had to submit a new army list. So even if the TO is wrong the TO is right.

Leo_the_Rat wrote:
Thanks for the help. The TO sided with the more experienced people and my friend had to submit a new army list. So even if the TO is wrong the TO is right.

Maybe the let the TO know he's wrong because he might just be mistaken...

Yeah all of that is very confusing if you do not pay close attentions to the details. I would think that the TO is mostly interesting in doing TO and not to read rules as the first one is quite rewarding and the last one is francly for people who like to discuss online.

Anyway. Historically this was an 8th edition problem. 9th edition has made things better as all 9th edition armies give up a benefit from doing this. (SW loose super doctrine. GSC loose crossfire, to mention a few.) Agents of the Imperium keyword and the chaos one (agents of chaos) are specially design to mitigate this to some form.

The TO is free to rule how they want. But kost likely this is from listening to experienced players who happen to be wrong in this case. Note that explaining this in the right way can be a delecet process as you can come across as a lunatic.