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I was just glancing over the Chaos codex and its special characters, and saw that Lucius the Eternal gets Aura of Acquiescence.

"If an enemy unit fights in close combat against a model with the Aura of Acquiescence and loses they do not take a Morale check and remain in Combat."

My first thought was 'great, Lucius will never get exposed to enemy fire by a rapidly retreating foe'.  But then I thought to check the No Retreat rules, which apply extra wounds to a unit that is "immune to Morale checks for losing a close combat, or to automatically pass them for some reason....[such as being] affected by some other special rule".

Maybe this was obvious to everyone, but I thought I'd point out that if using Lucius, it's a nice way to score some free wounds.

I suppose outnumbering is pretty unlikely to happen unless Lucius joins a very large unit (18 is a sacred number for Noise Marines) or weighs in to support a Dreadnought or pair of Dreadnoughts (count as 10).  Or 18 Daemonettes?

All pretty expensive for this little trick, but still.

This should probably be in YMDC, but aura of acquiesence doesn't make a unit immune to morale checks and doesn't make them automatically pass. The affected unit is still subject to morale checks, but doesn't make one at all.

I was originally typing that post to go in YMTC, actually. I moved it to tactics because I didn't see any way to dispute that it would work.

The generous wording of the No Retreat rule:
"It's not uncommon for units to be immune to Morale checks for losing a close combat, or to automatically pass them for some reason. They may be Fearless, subject to a vow, a walker, or be affected by some other special rule."
(italics mine).

I think Aura of Acquiescence would count as 'some other special rule' that makes the unit immune to morale checks for losing a close combat.

"If an enemy unit fights in close combat against a model with the Aura of Acquiescence and loses they do not take a Morale check and remain in Combat." = the unit is immune to Morale checks for losing close combat, due to them being subject to the special rule of Aura of Acquiescence.

Surely "do not take a Morale check in situation X" is functionally equivalent to "is immune to Morale checks for situation X"?


Anyways, has anyone used this successfully? Doesn't have to be Lucius, you could always take it on an Aspiring Champion in a large (12 or 18) infiltrating Noise Marine squad.