Saturday, January 15, 2011

Power From Pain: Rule Resolved?

The new Dark Eldar codex was released with much fan fair. It introduced a lot of new rules and reworking of how the army functioned as a cohesive fighting unit. The Power From Pain rule was the biggest change. The rule reads;

Whenever a Dark Eldar Unit with this rule destroys a non-vehicle enemy unit, it immediately gains a pain token.......Each pain token confers a special rule to the whole unit.”

The first token gives the unit Feel No Pain, the second Furious Charge and the third makes the unit Fearless.
This is all well and good. It has made the survivability of the units better and at the same time has made them more lethal. There is a question that popped up in my mind though. What if a character joins a or a unit that is mixed that has components in it that have Power From Pain gain a token. Does it mean the whole unit now benefits from it? For example Lelith Hesperax joins a Harlequin unit and kills an IC or the unit in question. She gains a pain token. Does this mean the Harlequins now have FNP. A better example is the Beast Master pack. If the unit kills another unit and the Beast master themselves, who have Power from pain, gain a pain token does it affect the beasties as well, which do not have the rule.
The beast master entry specifically states only the Beast Master have Power From Pain. The Description of the rule though, especially how the second line reads infers it affects the whole unit, not just the generators of the tokens.
There seems to be some ambiguity here. For guidance I checked out the Inet FAQ. It says that the whole unit does indeed gain the ability even if some portions do not have the Power From Pain rule. So this is how it will run at Adepticon. This seems to go against the way the rule was intended though. The trouble is arguments can be made for both sides. The unit gaining the rule despite not everybody having it and not gaining it because they don't have the rule.

We also have GW finally weighing in as well. The new FAQ from GW is up and it states power from pain only affects those models that have the rule. So will this change the Inet FAQ and will it change how its run at tournaments?

What is your opinion.? Lets discuss a bit even though its pretty much been clarified from GW's end.

Next time we talk about Beast Master and a Battle report Vs CSVinton of Dark Future Games.

Until then................



Blood Runs, Anger Rises, Death Wakes, War Calls!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


2 comments:

  1. The INAT FAQ is actually pretty good about changing their rulings when GW does an official ruling. For example, they originally ruled that the Doom of Malantai did, indeed, affect units in transports.

    I think it near certain that we will see a revision of INAT before Adepticon.

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  2. I figured as much. Sadly I had this all written and ready to go the day they updated the FAQ

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