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Friend of mine was asking about if he can change his <Clan> keyword when it shows up multiple times in a strategem to be different <Clans>

Can he do this?

Rakdarian wrote:
Friend of mine was asking about if he can change his <Clan> keyword when it shows up multiple times in a strategem to be different <Clans>

Can he do this?

Funnily enough, it seems that <CLAN> and others as a whole on stratagems don't seem to function.

Codex: Orks Page 82 wrote:Some datasheets specify what clan the unit is drawn from (e.g. Ghazghkull Thraka has the GOFF keyword, so is from the Goff Clan). If an Ork datasheet does not specify which clan it is drawn from, it will have the <CLAN> keyword. When you include such a unit in your army, you must nominate which clan that unit is from. You then simply replace the <CLAN> keyword in every instance on that unit’s datasheet with the name of your chosen clan.

Specifically you're only given permission to change <CLAN> on a units datasheet. No such permission exists on the Stratagems page.

However, I suppose you could take the literal string <CLAN> as your <CLAN> (since you're not prohibited from using non-letter characters in your custom <CLAN> choice), and then stratagems would work.

This is a legitimate thing GW need to fix/FAQ imho, first making it so you can even change <CLAN> to something, and secondly to make it so you have to change all instances of <CLAN> to the same thing.

Rakdarian wrote:
Friend of mine was asking about if he can change his <Clan> keyword when it shows up multiple times in a strategem to be different <Clans>

Can he do this?

No.

 JohnnyHell wrote:

Rakdarian wrote:
Friend of mine was asking about if he can change his <Clan> keyword when it shows up multiple times in a strategem to be different <Clans>

Can he do this?

No.

Why?

Because the intent is obvious.

Maybe post the text of what you’re referring to but it smells like someone fishing for advantage in unintended ways. Without the text it’s all speculation and I can’t be more specific.

 JohnnyHell wrote:
Because the intent is obvious.

Maybe post the text of what you’re referring to but it smells like someone fishing for advantage in unintended ways. Without the text it’s all speculation and I can’t be more specific.

MEDI-SQUIG

Orks Stratagem

From syringe squigs to vaccine squigs, Painboyz make use of all kinds of medical beasties.

Use this Stratagem at the end of your Movement phase. Select a <CLAN> CHARACTER from your army that is within 3" of a friendly <CLAN> PAINBOY. The selected model immediately regains D3 lost wounds.

Could a badmoons charachter be healed by a friendly deffskulls painboy?

Use this Stratagem after a <CLAN> INFANTRY unit from your army (excluding units comprised entirely of GRETCHIN models) has been hit by a ranged weapon. Until the end of the phase, you can roll a D6 each time an attack made with a ranged weapon wounds that unit if there is a friendly unit comprised entirely of <CLAN> GRETCHIN INFANTRY models within 6" of it, and the GRETCHIN unit is closer to the attacking model than the target unit. On a 2+ one model of your choice in that GRETCHIN unit is slain and the attack sequence ends.


Can an Evil suns infantry be protected by a Snakebites set of gretchins.

If not, Why? Also We can't read minds. Only the exact text can we glean intent.

Thread starts “friend of mine”... immediately starts shooting down replies.... hmmmm okay.

The intent is clearly that you replace with the same keyword throughout a Stratagem. If you’re (sorry your “friend” is) intent on arguing that it’s possible to replace with different ones I have nothing for you but common sense, because that’s what the written rules assume. No, we can’t read minds, but as I’ve often said to that regular, rather intractable guy, you absolutely can infer intent from things. I’m not engaging further as the thread smells like a trap, tbh.

<CLAN> indicates that only units from the same clan kultur can use that stratagem, e.g. only a GOFF painboy can heal a GOFF character. Otherwise it would say ORK, which would work for all clan kulturs.

 p5freak wrote:
<CLAN> indicates that only units from the same clan kultur can use that stratagem, e.g. only a GOFF painboy can heal a GOFF character. Otherwise it would say ORK, which would work for all clan kulturs.

Do you have a rules citation for that? I cannot find any rule that gives you permission to change <CLAN> on stratagems to some other keyword, nor any rule saying that said replacements need to be the same in all instances like it does for Datasheets.

 BaconCatBug wrote:

 p5freak wrote:
<CLAN> indicates that only units from the same clan kultur can use that stratagem, e.g. only a GOFF painboy can heal a GOFF character. Otherwise it would say ORK, which would work for all clan kulturs.

Do you have a rules citation for that? I cannot find any rule that gives you permission to change <CLAN> on stratagems to some other keyword, nor any rule saying that said replacements need to be the same in all instances like it does for Datasheets.

You know as well as i do that there is no such rule. Just like it doesnt say that a six sided dice has to be numbered 1-6. Common sense, understanding what GW means, is required to make this game work. If a rule mentions <CLAN> it refers to a specific clan kultur.

 p5freak wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:

 p5freak wrote:
<CLAN> indicates that only units from the same clan kultur can use that stratagem, e.g. only a GOFF painboy can heal a GOFF character. Otherwise it would say ORK, which would work for all clan kulturs.

Do you have a rules citation for that? I cannot find any rule that gives you permission to change <CLAN> on stratagems to some other keyword, nor any rule saying that said replacements need to be the same in all instances like it does for Datasheets.

You know as well as i do that there is no such rule. Just like it doesnt say that a six sided dice has to be numbered 1-6. Common sense, understanding what GW means, is required to make this game work. If a rule mentions <CLAN> it refers to a specific clan kultur.

There is a difference between assuming a six sided dice is numbered 1-6 and assuming that you have permission to do something you don't have permission to do so. GW give you permission to replace <CLAN> on datasheets, but not on stratagems. Whether this is "intended" or not is irrelevant, the rules say you can do so for one and do not say you can do for the other.

Even if we assume that we can replace <CLAN> with some other keyword, where does it say they must be the same keyword?

 BaconCatBug wrote:


Even if we assume that we can replace <CLAN> with some other keyword, where does it say they must be the same keyword?

Because its not ORK. If the strat would say ORK, it would work across all clan kulturs. Just like some chaos psychic powers/stratagems say HERETIC ASTARTES, instead of LEGION.

 p5freak wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:


Even if we assume that we can replace <CLAN> with some other keyword, where does it say they must be the same keyword?

Because its not ORK. If the strat would say ORK, it would work across all clan kulturs. Just like some chaos psychic powers/stratagems say HERETIC ASTARTES, instead of LEGION.

That doesn't answer my question.

 BaconCatBug wrote:
That doesn't answer my question.

Nowhere does it say that. But the fact that they used CLAN instead of ORK implies that they must be from the same clan kultur. Common sense, and understanding what GW means, is required to make the game work.

 p5freak wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:
That doesn't answer my question.

Nowhere does it say that. But the fact that they used CLAN instead of ORK implies that they must be from the same clan kultur. Common sense, and understanding what GW means, is required to make the game work.

It is a typographic convention which means "when you add this to your game substitute all values of placeholder Y with concrete value X" where Y is in angle brackets and X is some actual sub-faction name. They spell this out for adding data sheets to your army and I think pretty much everyone intuitively "gets it" that you treat stratagems in the same way so in practice there are hardly ever any problems. But there is always that one person who says that the convention was not explicitly also applied to a certain case out so why should they obey it - why not invent something different which obeys no general conventions of the game but which will give them an advantage right here right now?

It would be amusing if someone sent this into the GW FAQ address because with the latest big FAQ they are beginning to communicate just how much face-palm stupidity they are getting in repeated questions trying to twist stuff. Their tone was quite amusing on all the attempted wobbly model abuse, it would surely be an exercise is dry humour in response to this one.

 BaconCatBug wrote:

 p5freak wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:


Even if we assume that we can replace <CLAN> with some other keyword, where does it say they must be the same keyword?

Because its not ORK. If the strat would say ORK, it would work across all clan kulturs. Just like some chaos psychic powers/stratagems say HERETIC ASTARTES, instead of LEGION.

That doesn't answer my question.

Because it doesn't say <CLAN 1> and <CLAN 2> for the character and painboy, or <CLAN> and <ANOTHER CLAN> or any variant on that. It doesn't say you get to choose separate clans for this.

 doctortom wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:

 p5freak wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:


Even if we assume that we can replace <CLAN> with some other keyword, where does it say they must be the same keyword?

Because its not ORK. If the strat would say ORK, it would work across all clan kulturs. Just like some chaos psychic powers/stratagems say HERETIC ASTARTES, instead of LEGION.

That doesn't answer my question.

Because it doesn't say <CLAN 1> and <CLAN 2> for the character and painboy, or <CLAN> and <ANOTHER CLAN> or any variant on that. It doesn't say you get to choose separate clans for this.

It also does not say that they have to be the same clan. It, in fact, has no rule saying you can change <CLAN> to anything.

 BaconCatBug wrote:
It also does not say that they have to be the same clan. It, in fact, has no rule saying you can change <CLAN> to anything.

But they wrote the strat assuming you can use it. They did not write a Strat that can never be used because you can not change out <CLAN>.

So we have to piece together what they meant. This is an example of RAW does not = RAI, since they obviously meant for the strat to do something, so we take the Keyword and replace all instances of that Keyword with a single <CLAN>.

 DeathReaper wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:
It also does not say that they have to be the same clan. It, in fact, has no rule saying you can change <CLAN> to anything.

But they wrote the strat assuming you can use it. They did not write a Strat that can never be used because you can not change out <CLAN>.

So we have to piece together what they meant. This is an example of RAW does not = RAI, since they obviously meant for the strat to do something, so we take the Keyword and replace all instances of that Keyword with a single <CLAN>.

It doesn't matter what they "meant", what matters is what the rule does. Let's pretend for a moment we can change out <CLAN> on the stratagem, where does it say we have to replace each instance of <CLAN> with the same keyword?

 BaconCatBug wrote:

 DeathReaper wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:
It also does not say that they have to be the same clan. It, in fact, has no rule saying you can change <CLAN> to anything.

But they wrote the strat assuming you can use it. They did not write a Strat that can never be used because you can not change out <CLAN>.

So we have to piece together what they meant. This is an example of RAW does not = RAI, since they obviously meant for the strat to do something, so we take the Keyword and replace all instances of that Keyword with a single <CLAN>.

It doesn't matter what they "meant", what matters is what the rule does. Let's pretend for a moment we can change out <CLAN> on the stratagem, where does it say we have to replace each instance of <CLAN> with the same keyword?

It doesn't. That's the answer you want, right?

So, again, WE have to interpret it. Which requires a consensus between us (Person A) and them (a hypothetical Person B against whom we are playing this game). If said consensus cannot be reached (even if only by die roll), we have the option to not play.

Which is the option I would always choose if presented with you as an opponent. I doubt I am alone in this.

So clever, wee abomination.

I do not have access to the Ork Codex, but the Astra Militarum codex *reasonably* clearly describes the process of replacing the <Regiment> keyword with specific keywords, such as Cadian, Catachan, Valhalan, Talarn, etc.

The idea I gathered from this, and that seemingly most people gather, is that you pick a Regiment keyword for your units, and then get the benefits from those Keywords, with the idea that you NOT change that up mid-game to take advantage of whatever flavour would suit your immediate needs. For example, I'm in combat so I change my Keyword to Catachan so I can get more strength, but then in the shooting phase I change to Cadian so I can reroll 1's to hit... That's certainly not the spirit of the game, at the very least.

Similarly, special characters like Harker can only benefit "Catachan" keyworded units. Which, presumably, do not change during the course of the game.

Which is why it is believed that Keywords are supposed to be fixed at the time of unit "purchase" in the list building stage. In the case of the Painboy, I would believe that the Painboy's Kultur would prevent him from healing the wounds from a model with a different Kultur keyword.

 BaconCatBug wrote:

 DeathReaper wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:
It also does not say that they have to be the same clan. It, in fact, has no rule saying you can change <CLAN> to anything.

But they wrote the strat assuming you can use it. They did not write a Strat that can never be used because you can not change out <CLAN>.

So we have to piece together what they meant. This is an example of RAW does not = RAI, since they obviously meant for the strat to do something, so we take the Keyword and replace all instances of that Keyword with a single <CLAN>.

It doesn't matter what they "meant", what matters is what the rule does. Let's pretend for a moment we can change out <CLAN> on the stratagem, where does it say we have to replace each instance of <CLAN> with the same keyword?

Where does it say you can replace each instance of <CLAN> with a different keyword?

You do have precedent with other codices of when their equivalent of <CLAN> is changed out that it is all changed out with the same keyword in that rule. Feel free to provide a counter example.

 BaconCatBug wrote:

 DeathReaper wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:
It also does not say that they have to be the same clan. It, in fact, has no rule saying you can change <CLAN> to anything.

But they wrote the strat assuming you can use it. They did not write a Strat that can never be used because you can not change out <CLAN>.

So we have to piece together what they meant. This is an example of RAW does not = RAI, since they obviously meant for the strat to do something, so we take the Keyword and replace all instances of that Keyword with a single <CLAN>.

It doesn't matter what they "meant"

On the contrary, it actually matters what they meant.

Because game designers do not write rules that do not do anything. Every rule they write does something, and if it appears like it does nothing we have to try to figure out what it actually does. Most of the time this is exceedingly simple to do.

They mean for this rule to do something, so we have to figure out what they meant it to do through looking at how similar interactions work. In this case, it is just like a datasheet where you need to replace <CLAN> on the Strat with whatever you replaced <CLAN> with on the datasheets in that detachment.

 doctortom wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:

 DeathReaper wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:
It also does not say that they have to be the same clan. It, in fact, has no rule saying you can change <CLAN> to anything.

But they wrote the strat assuming you can use it. They did not write a Strat that can never be used because you can not change out <CLAN>.

So we have to piece together what they meant. This is an example of RAW does not = RAI, since they obviously meant for the strat to do something, so we take the Keyword and replace all instances of that Keyword with a single <CLAN>.

It doesn't matter what they "meant", what matters is what the rule does. Let's pretend for a moment we can change out <CLAN> on the stratagem, where does it say we have to replace each instance of <CLAN> with the same keyword?

Where does it say you can replace each instance of <CLAN> with a different keyword?

You do have precedent with other codices of when their equivalent of <CLAN> is changed out that it is all changed out with the same keyword in that rule. Feel free to provide a counter example.

It doesn't. Stratagems don't give you permission to change <CLAN> on them, you only have permission to do so on Datasheets.

 BaconCatBug wrote:

 doctortom wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:

 DeathReaper wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:
It also does not say that they have to be the same clan. It, in fact, has no rule saying you can change <CLAN> to anything.

But they wrote the strat assuming you can use it. They did not write a Strat that can never be used because you can not change out <CLAN>.

So we have to piece together what they meant. This is an example of RAW does not = RAI, since they obviously meant for the strat to do something, so we take the Keyword and replace all instances of that Keyword with a single <CLAN>.

It doesn't matter what they "meant", what matters is what the rule does. Let's pretend for a moment we can change out <CLAN> on the stratagem, where does it say we have to replace each instance of <CLAN> with the same keyword?

Where does it say you can replace each instance of <CLAN> with a different keyword?

You do have precedent with other codices of when their equivalent of <CLAN> is changed out that it is all changed out with the same keyword in that rule. Feel free to provide a counter example.

It doesn't. Stratagems don't give you permission to change <CLAN> on them, you only have permission to do so on Datasheets.

Therefore, Stratagems with <CLAN> on them must have literally no use, right? It's impossible to extract from the information you have been given a solution that seems to follow the probable intent of the authors?

 BaconCatBug wrote:

 DeathReaper wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:
It also does not say that they have to be the same clan. It, in fact, has no rule saying you can change <CLAN> to anything.

But they wrote the strat assuming you can use it. They did not write a Strat that can never be used because you can not change out <CLAN>.

So we have to piece together what they meant. This is an example of RAW does not = RAI, since they obviously meant for the strat to do something, so we take the Keyword and replace all instances of that Keyword with a single <CLAN>.

It doesn't matter what they "meant", what matters is what the rule does. Let's pretend for a moment we can change out <CLAN> on the stratagem, where does it say we have to replace each instance of <CLAN> with the same keyword?

This is a rhetorical trap, not a defect the in the rules.

The fact GW did not fully articulate how to replace a <CLAN> tag in a Stratagem does not mean there are no rules. It simply means we need another way to explain how this tag is replaced and suggesting otherwise is dishonest and deceitful.

On the one hand, we have examples from other Codexes. The Astra Militarum Codex explains how keywords are replaced in Stratagems. Unless there is a rule that states the way Ork Stratagems are formulated operates differently from all other Codexes, there is no reason to assume they should.

On the other hand, there's the rules about keywords themselves. If a keyword in a Stratagem could not be replaced, it could never be applied to any unit ever. That's not the purpose of keywords.

The way some rules work can be inferred without needing them explained in penetrating, painstaking detail. Replacing keywords in Stratagems is one of them, the vast majority of players already understand how this is done. There may be legitimate criticisms of the way Ork Stratagems are worded, but claiming they are fundamentally different from those of all other armies requires some evidence. There is none.

To answer the OPs question: no. A player cannot substitute multiple Clans in place of keywords in a Stratagem. That's not how it works anywhere else in the game, that's not how it works here.

 BaconCatBug wrote:

 DeathReaper wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:
It also does not say that they have to be the same clan. It, in fact, has no rule saying you can change <CLAN> to anything.

But they wrote the strat assuming you can use it. They did not write a Strat that can never be used because you can not change out <CLAN>.

So we have to piece together what they meant. This is an example of RAW does not = RAI, since they obviously meant for the strat to do something, so we take the Keyword and replace all instances of that Keyword with a single <CLAN>.

It doesn't matter what they "meant", what matters is what the rule does. Let's pretend for a moment we can change out <CLAN> on the stratagem, where does it say we have to replace each instance of <CLAN> with the same keyword?

There are three possible interpretations for this rule:
1) You cannot replace <CLAN>, multiple stratagems have no reason to exist
2) You can replace every instance of <CLAN> with whatever you want. There is no reason for the <CLAN> keyword to ever appear on any stratagem.
3) You can replace all instances of <CLAN> with one clan of your choice.

3) Is supported by the fluff and rules that heavy support that clans don't mix, <CLAN> only appearing on stratagems which involve more than one unit, while stratagems involving only one unit never have it, non-stratagem rules actually working like this and there being a FAQ about handling kulture and kultureless, but not mixed clans. The other two have no support whatsoever besides overly strict parsing of rules - and you have collected sufficient proof in your signature that GW rulles cannot be parsed like that.

Circumstantial evidence on this is very clear, there is only one valid interpretation of these rules, claiming otherwise is dishonest.

 BaconCatBug wrote:
Well if you're going to argue Fluff is Rules then my Space Marines have 60 wounds each.

And yet, despite your continued straw man, no one is arguing that fluff = rules. He was arguing that, when ambiguity forces an interpretation of rules to be agreed upon by multiple players, fluff can potentially be one helpful item to assist in acquiring said consensus.

But, you already knew that. You just want to continue your one-man crusade about how there's no difference between interpreting a vague rule and making up your own rules.

Seems like another oversight on GW and it's failure to deliver on the Orktober.

Seems like another rule no one except the guy who doesn’t actually play has any problem interpreting. How irritatingly common.