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Hi there. Quick question. Can a field commander choose any Warlord Trait or must they choose the Warlord Trait specific to their Specialist Detachment?

They must take the specialist detachment warlord trait.

 kastelen wrote:
They must take the specialist detachment warlord trait.

This. Since the model is not your Warlord, they're only permitted the Warlord Trait presented by the 'Field Commander' stratagem.

This interests me a bit. If I use 'Field Commander' on my Emperor's Champion in the Sword Brethren detachment, he has to take the Master Swordsman trait instead of the garbage one he'd normally have to take from the codex right?

If you have a set trait on a model should it take one then it can’t have the Vigilus one. It doesn’t give permission to ignore other restrictions.

 JohnnyHell wrote:
If you have a set trait on a model should it take one then it can’t have the Vigilus one. It doesn’t give permission to ignore other restrictions.

That was my first reaction, but I think it's more complicated than that. The stratagem gives them permission - it explicitly says they can take it. The whole purpose of the strat is to override restrictions.

 Stux wrote:

 JohnnyHell wrote:
If you have a set trait on a model should it take one then it can’t have the Vigilus one. It doesn’t give permission to ignore other restrictions.

That was my first reaction, but I think it's more complicated than that. The stratagem gives them permission - it explicitly says they can take it. The whole purpose of the strat is to override restrictions.

It says they "can" take it. If they are forced into taking a different trait by another rule you can't ignore that rule.

From the 'Field Commander' stratagem page 169 of Vigilus Defiant (emphasis added):

Choose one CHARACTER from your army that has gained a keyword from a Specialist Detachment Stratagem that is not your Warlord and is not a named character.

So since the Emperor's Champion is a 'named character' (i.e. his rules say "Only one of this model may be included in your army.") he can't make use of the 'Field Commander' stratagem to begin with.

 Ghaz wrote:
From the 'Field Commander' stratagem page 169 of Vigilus Defiant (emphasis added):

Choose one CHARACTER from your army that has gained a keyword from a Specialist Detachment Stratagem that is not your Warlord and is not a named character.

So since the Emperor's Champion is a 'named character' (i.e. his rules say "Only one of this model may be included in your army.") he can't make use of the 'Field Commander' stratagem to begin with.

Is that definitely a rule? That if you can only have one in your army then it's a named character?

I agree that it SHOULD cover the Emperor's Champion, I'm just not sure the rules actually do!

 Stux wrote:

 Ghaz wrote:
From the 'Field Commander' stratagem page 169 of Vigilus Defiant (emphasis added):

Choose one CHARACTER from your army that has gained a keyword from a Specialist Detachment Stratagem that is not your Warlord and is not a named character.

So since the Emperor's Champion is a 'named character' (i.e. his rules say "Only one of this model may be included in your army.") he can't make use of the 'Field Commander' stratagem to begin with.

Is that definitely a rule? That if you can only have one in your army then it's a named character?

I agree that it SHOULD cover the Emperor's Champion, I'm just not sure the rules actually do!

We already had this discssion before. It's a "Named Character" if the points list at the back of the codex has the unit in the "Named Character" box, which the Emperor's Champion is in. It's got nothing to do with whether the unit is "one only" or not.

Ofc GW immediately breaks this with the Eldar codex, so no surprises there.

Of course I believe only named characters have the "Only one of this model may be included in your army" rule, so it's a good indication that the model is a named character and supported by the Points Value lists in the back of the codex.

 Ghaz wrote:
Of course I believe only named characters have the "Only one of this model may be included in your army" rule, so it's a good indication that the model is a named character and supported by the Points Value lists in the back of the codex.

What you "believe" and what the rules say are two very different things. GW never defines what a "named character" is, the only thing we have to go on is that some units are in a box called "Named Characters" in some of the codexes and not in others. After all, a Captain unit has a name, and is thus can be argued that he is a Named Character too.

It's your standard GW incompetence on the level of not defining that the first number in a multi-number range is meant to be a minimum range.

 BaconCatBug wrote:

 Ghaz wrote:
Of course I believe only named characters have the "Only one of this model may be included in your army" rule, so it's a good indication that the model is a named character and supported by the Points Value lists in the back of the codex.

What you "believe" and what the rules say are two very different things. GW never defines what a "named character" is, the only thing we have to go on is that some units are in a box called "Named Characters" in some of the codexes and not in others. After all, a Captain unit has a name, and is thus can be argued that he is a Named Character too.

Again if you see "Only one of this model may be included in your army" in a datasheet you'll probably find the model's points in the 'Named Character' list in the back of the codex. Can you name a model with the rule which definitively is not a Named Character?

 Ghaz wrote:
Again if you see "Only one of this model may be included in your army" in a datasheet you'll probably find the model's points in the 'Named Character' list in the back of the codex. Can you name a model with the rule which definitively is not a Named Character?

That is a logical fallacy. Even if it's the case that all Named Characters happen to have the "Only one of this model may be included in your army" rule, the reverse is not necessarily true.

As a counter example, there is no Named Character box in the Craftworlds codex.

Also, the Avatar of Khane I think is a counterexample, since they had to errata the Craftworlds codex to say "Named characters and the Avatar of Khane" have a relic already.

Well, he did say you'll "Probably" find them in the Named Character section. That's not the same as saying every case works out that way, so it doesn't really rise to being a logical fallacy, just that there's a reasonably high probability that (unless Craftworlds) it would work that way.

Good counter examples with the Craftworlds, though.

 Ghaz wrote:
Of course I believe only named characters have the "Only one of this model may be included in your army" rule, so it's a good indication that the model is a named character and supported by the Points Value lists in the back of the codex.

Correlation isn't causation.

BCB has the correct answer though, which means that the Emperor's Champion can't be the target of the strat, all sorted.

Again if you see a rule that is almost exclusive to named characters you should check to see if the unit with the rule is or isn't a named character.

 Ghaz wrote:
Again if you see a rule that is almost exclusive to named characters you should check to see if the unit with the rule is or isn't a named character.

Right, and not by assuming it based on the number you can take.