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It's pretty clear that Warp Spiders can only move in their own assault phase. It is clear because the only Assault phase in which Warp Spiders could assault is their own Assault phase.

Yes , thats true , if the answer to this question had not changed it to ANY assault phase.
You see, people on this board want to act like this FAQ is the be all , end all of 40K knowlage. When really it is only slightly better than GW has done (GW could not even be bothered to do it).

But , hay , they have GWs stamp of approval , so let the games begin.

Sincity

The sentence in question:

"This move can be made in any Assault phase during which the Warp Spiders are not assaulting or fighting in an assault."

So yes, any Assault phase in which Warp Spiders could assault is their own Assault phase. Clearly "any" refers to the any Eldar Assault phase.

So if you choose not to do a Assault move by your logic, you can skip that pesky phase once the Tyranids/Orks reach your lines?

Whew! That's a relief!

Nurglitch wrote:The sentence in question:

"This move can be made in any Assault phase during which the Warp Spiders are not assaulting or fighting in an assault."

So yes, any Assault phase in which Warp Spiders could assault is their own Assault phase. Clearly "any" refers to the any Eldar Assault phase.

Wouldnt the spiders meet those requirements in their opponents phase so long as they didnt fight?

Oh Jesus Christ.

The intent here is obvious. Please do not be stupid.

Darkness wrote:

Nurglitch wrote:The sentence in question:

"This move can be made in any Assault phase during which the Warp Spiders are not assaulting or fighting in an assault."

So yes, any Assault phase in which Warp Spiders could assault is their own Assault phase. Clearly "any" refers to the any Eldar Assault phase.

Wouldnt the spiders meet those requirements in their opponents phase so long as they didnt fight?

Yes.
Conditions=

Warp Spiders are not locked
Warp Spiders are not assaulting
Current phase is the assault phase

=

Warp Spiders can move in any assault phase by that ruling.

Salvation122 wrote:Oh Jesus Christ.

The intent here is obvious. Please do not be stupid.

Intent is a funny thing. If intent was clear we wouldnt have needed a ruling on rubber Hawks. I agree the intent seems clear, but GW has a way of sticking it to us with RAW.

What does the Holy Answer God Yakface think?

Nurglitch is in his own little world again. If it is an Assault phase, and the Spiders have neither assaulted nor fought in an assault, then it is plain to any logician that it is indeed an "Assault phase during which the Warp Spiders are not assaulting or fighting in an assault." It won't be the first time GW has opened such a loophole even as it clears up something else and it certainly won't be the last.

Of course, I would expect this level of denial from someone (probably the only person on earth) who believes that GW rules are 100% coherent and never contradict themselves "so long as you read them correctly."

Tegeus-Cromis, I know the two of you go back and forth with more than a little warmth, but this is the wrong area for a rules debate, and more importantly, there are two completely gratuitous personal attacks in that post. This is a warning.

This entire misunderstanding is clearly a case of disassociating the answer from the question and, as a result, the clear and unambiguous context in which it was meant to be taken. The FAQ question is:

"Q. The warp jump generator description says Warp Spiders may make an extra move 'instead of assaulting.' Does this mean that they can make their extra move during the Assault phase only if they are in a position where they could assault, or can they do it anyway?"

The question is clearly asking whether or not Warp Spiders can use their jump generator when they would not ordinarily be allowed to assault in their assault phase. The response, when read with the context of the question in mind, does not leave any room for someone to believe that the warp generator move can be used in their opponents assault phase. The response says:

"A. This move can be made in any Assault phase during which the Warp Spiders are not assaulting or fighting in an assault."

The context, which is set in the question, cannot be divorced from the answer-It is implicit in the question that the extra move can only occur in the Warp Spider's Assault phase, and the question is simply seeking to clarify the circumstances. Furthermore, RAW makes this an even less palatable attempt at breaking the clear spirit of the rule-the rule clearly says, "instead of assaulting." The unambiguous implication being that you have to be able to assault (meaning it must be the Warp Spiders' turn) in order to use the warp jump generator.

This raises questions which have bugged me for some time. In my almost 20 years of 40k, I've seen this cycle time and time again. One thing is certain: It is impossible to write a completely balanced rule set with all of the "moving parts" currently in the game. GW strives to give players choices as far as unit composition goes, but with that comes the inherent problem of balance. This is infinitely worsened by players who attempt to pick rules apart in an attempt to do things that were clearly not intended by the developers. This warp jump generator issue being a timely example-the intent is clear, the RAW makes the interpretation impossible, and it takes removing the context from a related FAQ question to get a result that's not only outside of the spirit of the rule, but the letter as well. In this type of setting, is it any wonder why GW has a tough time writing a rule set that everyone is happy with? If the rule set is too restrictive, people gripe that the armies are bland and uninspired, but the balance increases. If the rule set is too open, people jump in with obviously abusive combinations and resort to a variation on the Nuremberg Defense (It's in the codex).

That said, I am particularly impressed with the effort Yakface and others put into these FAQs, and I am very happy that GW is incorporating player feedback into the game.

Brice

Actually that doesn't work. I can read that as saying ANY assault phase. It would have been better if they had asked the Q A) or B) and then replied with the letter.

Clear and concise. Thats what they need to be.

How can you read the question as "ANY assault phase"? How can a Warp Spider move "instead of assaulting" during the opponents turn?

The RAW nuts are parsing.

Ozymandias, King of Kings

Because it says that. "any Assault " and then limits it where the spiders are not already assaulting or in CC.

These things have to be clear as you have people with English as s econd language reading them, and different areas will have different good faith views on how to parse the swamp that is the English language.

O.K. I’ll bite. How does any reasonable reading and construction/deconstruction of this question allow for someone to read it as saying “ANY assault phase”?

"Q. The warp jump generator description says Warp Spiders may make an extra move 'instead of assaulting.' Does this mean that they can make their extra move during the Assault phase only if they are in a position where they could assault, or can they do it anyway?"

The question clearly cites the rule, stating “instead of assaulting”, so how does that allow for someone to assume that the warp jump move can be made in the Warp Spiders’ opponent’s Assault phase? It doesn’t. The context of both the question and the response is made clear by the inclusion of the citation to the rule-“instead of assaulting.” Any other attempted construction is grasping of the worst sort. As a lawyer by trade, I deal with issues of statutory construction all the time. As I hinted in my above post, it is practically impossible to draft a rule that cannot be questioned. That said, there are certain cannons of statutory construction that must be applied, not the least of which is: Noscitur a sociis (A word is known by the company it keeps). In the case of the warp jump generators, this means that you cannot divorce the context of “Assault phase” provided in the question from the answer. Said differently, since the question is discussing conditions for using the warp jump generator in the Warp Spiders’ Assault phase, the answer to the question has to be taken in the same context. Furthermore, jumping in your opponent’s Assault phase completely ignores RAW.

This doesn’t even address the issues raised by a failure to consider the rule, and its implications, in the spirit it was written. As overpowered as the “jumping in your opponent’s assault phase” interpretation would be, doesn’t it give you pause to consider, at the very least, that it’s not what was intended by the developer.

Now, after all of this, can anyone say that the games developers don’t have a tough job, particularly when it comes to managing players who look for ways to massage rules to their liking?

Brice

They're quite concise. The "any Assault phase" is qualified as being any one in which the Warp Spiders are not assaulting or fighting in an assault. The only Assault phase in which Warp Spiders can either assault or fight in an assault is the Eldar Assault Phase.

Nurglitch your chart procedes from the assumption that they cannot move in the opposing player's turn.


How did I get sucked into arguing about this? I could give a and actually agree with you. I'm not sure how I got caught into playing the devil's advocate. Someone else can argue this. i'll go back to arguing how anal people with laser pointers are.

Any argument that warp jump generators can be used in the Warp Spiders’ opponent’s Assault phase completely ignores the question posed in the FAQ and only relies on the answer to create the ambiguity necessary to argue that warp jump generators can be used in any assault phase. None of the ambiguity exists when the answer is read in the context of the question. So far everyone who has argued the contrary has pointed only to the language “any assault phase” without any regard to the context of the question posed in the FAQ. The interpretation that warp jump generators can be used in the Warp Spiders’ opponent’s Assault only exists out of context, and no one has so far been able to address a construction that would allow this and not fly in the face of the question in the FAQ and the RAW. Ultimately, this is the problem with “rules lawyers” and “power gamers”-simply reasserting out of context statements for the truth does not make them so. Any individual Codex or rule cannot be considered in a vacuum. It was obviously not the developers intent to create a completely unassaultable unit.

Brice

BBeale wrote: Ultimately, this is the problem with “rules lawyers” and “power gamers”-simply reasserting out of context statements for the truth does not make them so. Any individual Codex or rule cannot be considered in a vacuum. It was obviously not the developers intent to create a completely unassaultable unit.

Brice

One can argue the merits of your case with ease. Your gross assertion concerning "rules lawyers" and "power gamers" is both reaching and unnecessary.

jfrazell: Yes, my chart does indeed follow from the assumption that the ordinary Warhammer 40k turn sequence is in place. It's that 'context' thing Brice is talking about.

I think its time to continue this YMTC.

jfrazell wrote:

BBeale wrote: Ultimately, this is the problem with “rules lawyers” and “power gamers”-simply reasserting out of context statements for the truth does not make them so. Any individual Codex or rule cannot be considered in a vacuum. It was obviously not the developers intent to create a completely unassaultable unit.

Brice

One can argue the merits of your case with ease. Your gross assertion concerning "rules lawyers" and "power gamers" is both reaching and unnecessary.

And the truth. The comment is only unnecessary because everyone already knows it's truth. And redundant. And the truth.

I have to say I'm baffled by the Beasts of Chaos ruling on ranking up less than four wide. I really expected them to change it to 5 wide, to make it make sense in the new edition.
The orc and goblin ones make sense for the most part.

I think the way to look at it is that the answer is just that: the answer to a question. It is not a rule in and of itself. The question wasn't "when can my spiders jump", it was "do my spiders have to be able to assault in order to jump."

Intent and all that aside, let's at least be fair: the answer does ready any assault phase. Since the rule in question breaks another major rule in the first place (being able to move in assault phase aside from assaulting), it's not exactly a massive leap for it to get a bonus move in the opponenets assault phase.

BBeale: one thing to remember is that GW likes to answer questions with sweeping answers (holdings, if you will). Despite GW printing the question as "can I do X with Y at time Z?", GW chooses to answer "when can I do X with Y," and the answer will simply read "Y can do X at these times."

Is it pretty clear what GW meant? Of course it is. But let's not try to argue our way out of the fact that GW wrote a sloppy rule (and the oddsmakers take a beating!)

Intent aside, i think the best reason to not play it as any assault phase is that it asks a huge question: who moves first?

kinda sad... there still no updated C:Orkz errata\faq

That's not sad but expected. The Ork dex is the most recent, after all. One would expect the FAQ to be a little longer coming.

Like tomorrow, perhaps.

Polonius wrote:I think the way to look at it is that the answer is just that: the answer to a question. It is not a rule in and of itself. The question wasn't "when can my spiders jump", it was "do my spiders have to be able to assault in order to jump."

Intent and all that aside, let's at least be fair: the answer does ready any assault phase. Since the rule in question breaks another major rule in the first place (being able to move in assault phase aside from assaulting), it's not exactly a massive leap for it to get a bonus move in the opponenets assault phase.

BBeale: one thing to remember is that GW likes to answer questions with sweeping answers (holdings, if you will). Despite GW printing the question as "can I do X with Y at time Z?", GW chooses to answer "when can I do X with Y," and the answer will simply read "Y can do X at these times."

Is it pretty clear what GW meant? Of course it is. But let's not try to argue our way out of the fact that GW wrote a sloppy rule (and the oddsmakers take a beating!)

Intent aside, i think the best reason to not play it as any assault phase is that it asks a huge question: who moves first?

This is probably the most concise and best answer yet on this subject.
You've echoed my thoughts perfectly.

What seems obvious (to me) is that GW INTENDED to answer in relation to the question. What the succeeded in diong, however, through shoddy wording and editing, was create a loop-hole that can be argued by those with the desire.

This sentence -
"This move can be made in any Assault phase during which the Warp Spiders are not assaulting or fighting in an assault."
would be clearer if they added one & changed two -
"This move can be made in any of their Assault phases during which the Warp Spiders are not assaulting or fighting in an assault."
or -
"This move can be made in either player's Assault phase during which the Warp Spiders are not assaulting or fighting in an assault."



A good editor would have caught that.

Eric

Salvation122 wrote:Oh Jesus Christ.

The intent here is obvious. Please do not be stupid.

ROFL!