Answer from Pete Haines, used to be posted on the GW forums.

> 2 - Techmarine
> a) can take Rhino/Razorback without taking Servitors?
>
Yes

> b) can take Servo-harness and jump pack? Or S-h and bike?

No

 

Yes, but that FAQ was never official, and no longer even exists. It was created as a stopgap until the real FAQ could come out. When it did come out, they apparently decided there was nothing wrong with this combination.

There are no current rules that prohibit the combo.

Hell, if you want to model it and pay for the (dubious) advantage there's nothing saying you can't take a jump pack and a bike on the same model (though naturally you'd have to use only one movement mode at a time)

As to Amphi's comments about Armybuilder in the other thread
Army builder has many, many flaws. I have to buy a storm bolter for my Baal predators to get the points right because the damned thing won't let me select sponsons. It also won;t let me drop pod furioso dreadnoughts and...for some reason, all my vehicles have access to the Tau vehicle armory since I updated the tau armylist for the 4th ed codex.

Army builder is handy, but it;s not a substitute for official rules.

 

I realize, i just thought it was relevant.

 

I understand, I was just agreeing and elaborating. Though I am tempted to put Seeker Missiles on my next dreadnought ;-)

 

Sorry, i was a little waspish there.

LOL.

That didnt happen to me. What version do you have?

 

2.2c, but it didn't happen til after I updated the tau codex file with one some guy sent me off TO. No big deal, just another shal we say 'quirk'?

I usually do AB for quick 'sketches' to sort of hash out the list, then I go through and audit by hand.

 

So a techie can have a harness and jump pack? I may rethink my tactics

 

He sure can. Just make sure you model it

There is some debate as to whether or not a techmarine can wear Terminator Armor however. Some people argue that the servo arm and whatnot are not listed as 'T' gear, others argue that they;re not wargear and thus are excluded from the 'T' only wargear restrictions. Some claim that the built-in artificer armor for a full harness precludes at least that from being used with term armor, others counter that a regular space marine character comes with power armor but it doesn't preclude him from wearing TDA.

Personally I'm of the opinion that if you pay the points and make the model and it doesn;t directly contradict the rules then go for it.

 

By the rules as written I suppose you can do all of the above. But look at it this way. You KNOW what the studio's opinion on this question is, due to the Pete Haines bit I posted, yes? So if you know how the studio thinks it should be played, yet you decide to take advantage of a loophole in spite of knowing how the studio thinks it should be played, well, it would make me feel like I was cheating. You might not feel that way, but I would.

Oh yeah, and it is still available, go here. All you have to do is look for it.
http://www.ageofstrife.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=244

 

2.2c, but it didn't happen til after I updated the tau codex file with one some guy sent me off TO. No big deal, just another shal we say 'quirk'?

I usually do AB for quick 'sketches' to sort of hash out the list, then I go through and audit by hand.

That is why. You should check out the 3.x version of AB. I use it, am one of the bugtesters for it for the Chaos and Tau files and it is far far better than the 2.2 version. Bugs are still there on occasion but very few and far between now, especially when compared to 2.2.

Link to the site here: http://www.ab40k.org/index.php

 

Yeah, i have 3, works like a charm. Love it. Better than hand! (Im telling you!)

I really do not think it would make me feel like i was cheating. They didn't solidify the rules, so perhaps they had a change in mind (really.)

 

By the rules as written I suppose you can do all of the above. But look at it this way. You KNOW what the studio's opinion on this question is, due to the Pete Haines bit I posted, yes? So if you know how the studio thinks it should be played, yet you decide to take advantage of a loophole in spite of knowing how the studio thinks it should be played, well, it would make me feel like I was cheating. You might not feel that way, but I would.

Oh yeah, and it is still available, go here. All you have to do is look for it.
http://www.ageofstrife.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=244

No, I know PeteHaine's opinion of it, way back before they came out with the real FAQ.

If the studio as a whole thought it was somrthing that needed to be changed, don't you think it would have been in the actual FAQ? "The Studio" is more than just one guy, and they certainly know how to make us aware of their opinions on the rules...it's called an official FAQ. If it ain;t in the official FAQ, then the studio doesn't think it needs fixing.

Hell, for all we know, even he changed his mind on the issue. Have you heard anything from him recently about it? Even if he still thinks it needs to be fixed, it;s obvious the other designers don't.

And just because some scrub from the GW boards copy and pasted an unofficial, outdated FAQ that GW saw fit to delete, doesn't make it valid.

To quote the guy who posted it in your link "None of these are official unless they are "in print" "

It just means some people can't handle the fact that they;re wrong and insist on pissing on someone else's parade when they decide to make an interesting new model that conforms with the rules.

If you want to call it cheating, that's fine. But to me,. cheating is the guy who makes up rules to spite someone else who's playing by the rules.

I make a model that confirms with all standards and rules, and you say I can;t use it because some guy on some messagebopard says some guy who works for GW says I can't. Even if it;s true, that doesn;t make it the rules. tHere's no rule that says "You must do what pete haines says"

Who;'s the one cheating? The guy playing by the rules, or the guy inventing rules to screw over the other guy?

 

If the studio as a whole thought it was somrthing that needed to be changed, don't you think it would have been in the actual FAQ? "The Studio" is more than just one guy, and they certainly know how to make us aware of their opinions on the rules...it's called an official FAQ. If it ain;t in the official FAQ, then the studio doesn't think it needs fixing.

Hell, for all we know, even he changed his mind on the issue. Have you heard anything from him recently about it? Even if he still thinks it needs to be fixed, it;s obvious the other designers don't.

And just because some scrub from the GW boards copy and pasted an unofficial, outdated FAQ that GW saw fit to delete, doesn't make it valid.

It just means some people can't handle the fact that they;re wrong and insist on pissing on someone else's parade when they decide to make an interesting new model that conforms with the rules.

Ummm, you DO know that Pete no longer works at GW, right? Could that be why we haven't heard any more from him? As for why the others hadn't (haven't) said anything, maybe they collaberated with Pete and he was merely the one who responded to the forum. I do know that other members of the studio did respond to the FAQs there on occasion, so that does seem to be a logical assumption, ie that "his" answer was "their" answer. Maybe they don't think it needs to be addressed because they AGREE with him. Lack of an additional response is seldom construed as disagreement. As for the "official" FAQs, yeah, let's see, how long did it take just to get the partial FAQ on the main rulebook. Couple of years? Please forgive me if I don't hold my breath. And no, I'm not trying to "piss on someone else's parade", I'm trying to afford someone the opportunity to make an informed choice. It's called presenting both sides of an argument.

Nope, never said it was "official". But what it is, is a statement of the rules writers intent. To me, that makes it those who want to ignore that intent to be the, how did you put it, oh yes, unable to handle the fact that they're wrong............

Now I did state earlier that yes, by RAW, it's legal. Yet, GWs FAQs frequently modify RAW. Witness the Tyranid instakill/synapse debacle where they actually posted an FAQ and then within 24 hours, changed it. The first one agreed with RAW in the codex, the changed one did not. I'm sure if we look, we could find several dozen similar examples where FAQs, whether "official" or the unofficial 'intent' FAQs that we have available to us from the old GW forums disagree with RAW.
Bottom line, you want to do it and have your "interesting new model", go for it. But we do know the studio's stated intent and I for one am not going to waste time and effort on a model that will likely be deemed illegal in an FAQ or by GW tourney organizers. I've had enough of that happen with regular codex changes outlawing my converssions and even standard models. As for the Techmarine with whatever, I know that if questioned it would not have been allowed at the Baltimore Games Day tourney last year based on the GW forum FAQ. And I'm willing to bet that will be so again this year, especially if they have me run it again................. for the 4th time.

 

By the rules as written I suppose you can do all of the above.

Bottom line, you want to do it and have your "interesting new model", go for it. But we do know the studio's stated intent and I for one am not going to waste time and effort on a model that will likely be deemed illegal in an FAQ or by GW tourney organizers. I've had enough of that happen with regular codex changes outlawing my converssions and even standard models. As for the Techmarine with whatever, I know that if questioned it would not have been allowed at the Baltimore Games Day tourney last year based on the GW forum FAQ. And I'm willing to bet that will be so again this year, especially if they have me run it again................. for the 4th time.

Yeah and I would be the first to call GW to file a complaint because with RAW including errata published by GW says nothing about this not being valid. Plus you even say yourself that you suppose you can do it but you, being the big bad offical you are, are going to block it from a GD? Lesson one from the old days of magic, until its listed on an offical errata it does not count for shit.

 

So a guy who doesn't even WORK for the sudio anymore speaks for 'the studio's intent' when the same studio has already come out with an FAQ that makes no mention of it?

How the heck does that make sense?

How does pete trump the entire design team when he doesn't even work there anymore?

You can't speak for the designer's intent because you only know Pete's intent and he;s not a designer anymore. It seems pretty obvious to me, from the official studio FAQ, what the studio's intent is. If the studio intended for the combionation to be illegal, why wouldn;t they have put it into the bloody FAQ?

Hell, you just said they've been known to change an FAQ within 24 hours when they realize something needs to be changed. Obviously if they thought it was an issue, they'd have updated it.

Heck, maybe Pete left because the rest of the studio disagrees wiht his opinions. You don't know.

So you can speculate all you want about what the designers may or may not have intended when all you know is the old opinion of a guy who doesn't even work for the studio, or you can play by the rules like everyone else.

And yeah...let me rush to sign up for a tourny ran by a guy who can't tell the difference between a cheater and a guy who plays by the rules :roll:

Until you either develop psychic powers, or personally interview every member of the design team, don;t claim to know jack about intent.

 

well I loved the idea of a tech on a bike so I went ahead and converted one of mine here he is sorry about the pic quality my dig cam is crap. two things in this pick you can not see his flamer arm on the front fender and the model is made so it can pop a wheelie to display turbo boost. I got this effect by alowing the rear wheel to pivot and not glueing the front wheel.

 

Looks pretty sweet. I need to do a little hack work onthe left arm for mine before I can post pics of the conversion.

I was thinking of altering a Narthectum/Reductor arm out of a spare command squad sprue. It's got a very practical powertool sort of look to it

 

Have fun with the conversion. You've been presented with both sides of the debate. It's on you to debate this with many of your opponents and hope GW doesn't invalidate it should you decide to build it.

 

It's already built (just need to mod the left arm a little), I had the idea of mounting servo arms to a bike for ages, and my old honor guard techmarine body has been tentatively attached to a couple bikes, but as soon as the empire engineer on the mechanical steed was released I finally decided to finish it off.

I don't care if it gets used or not. Only now that the model's pretty much done have I even had the inspiration to build a list with it in there. I don;t even use techmarines on a regular basis, I just wanted to do the model.

There is no debate. It;s in the rules. If people want to make houserules to disallow it, that's their issue.
I was just sick of people derailing my thread

 

I had one built until The Haines FAQ invalidated it.

When GW published the current errata, they said any previous FAQa's that didn't make it into the errata had been scrapped. (though it may be scrapped in future)

For my Techmarine on bike, I just modelled a small tracked vehicle for him that housed the basic standing techmarine with harness.

its a nasty little unit in a game, turboboost 2+ inv save, gets a flamer and plasmapistol.
personally i used the techmarine, with bike, harness, combat shield and bolt pistol.
burny death vs horde, plasma death vs Meq followed by a decent charge ability. :mrgreen:

 

Are you just trying to be silly or what? When Pete posted this, he did work for the studio. Are you saying that just because someone leaves the studio, that anything they did while there is now invalid? Well, if so, you better go through and throw out a bunch of your current codexes, as they were written by individuals that no longer work for GW!

And no, I don't know why he left. Do you?

My point is, we have one and only one statement from the studio on how this is supposed to work (ie intent). In the absence of any conflicting statements from a source equally valid, what do you think we should do? Ignore it? Not me. So until they "trump" his statement, yes, it's valid. As for why they haven't put it in an FAQ, I don't know. Why haven't they put lots of things in FAQs? Why does it take 2 years to put out an FAQ on the main rulebook? Why? Why? Why? Yes, GWs current poor performance on this bothers me cause I remember the days when they did answer such questions fairly promptly.

As for the rest of your statements, hey, do it however you want, feel free to cast aspersions on my rules knowledge, whatever. I'm fairly thick skinned. But I will continue to use the old GW forum FAQs to determine how the rules are supposed to work in any tourney I run, until such time as they issue a new statement or FAQ on that particular matter. Heck, I'll even use emails from studio members if that's all I've got.

And my psychic powers say....... Ahhh, not worth the effort.

So a guy who doesn't even WORK for the sudio anymore speaks for 'the studio's intent' when the same studio has already come out with an FAQ that makes no mention of it?

How the heck does that make sense?

How does pete trump the entire design team when he doesn't even work there anymore?

You can't speak for the designer's intent because you only know Pete's intent and he;s not a designer anymore. It seems pretty obvious to me, from the official studio FAQ, what the studio's intent is. If the studio intended for the combionation to be illegal, why wouldn;t they have put it into the bloody FAQ?

Hell, you just said they've been known to change an FAQ within 24 hours when they realize something needs to be changed. Obviously if they thought it was an issue, they'd have updated it.

Heck, maybe Pete left because the rest of the studio disagrees wiht his opinions. You don't know.

So you can speculate all you want about what the designers may or may not have intended when all you know is the old opinion of a guy who doesn't even work for the studio, or you can play by the rules like everyone else.

And yeah...let me rush to sign up for a tourny ran by a guy who can't tell the difference between a cheater and a guy who plays by the rules :roll:

Until you either develop psychic powers, or personally interview every member of the design team, don;t claim to know jack about intent.

 

one and only one statement from the studio on how this is supposed to work

No, it's not the studio. It's one member of the studio, and a preformed idea. It was never official, and has nothing to do with the rules. It is one man saying how they think the game should be played. Since, despite the clear opportunity, that single man's thought had precisely no action taken upon it, there are two conclusions. Either this one man and the rest of the studio disagreed, with the obvious winner, or this one man changed his mind. Every time there's a rule discussed in the studio, there'll be at least one individual who disagrees one way or another, but they have the good sense to keep their mouths shut until the studio comes to the official conclusion.

The only way this is different from normal is that the dissenting studio member decided that his opinion was more important than everyone else's and as such needed to be heard immediately.

 

The fact that the current FAQ renders any previous FAQs are invalid speaks volumes to the fact that whatever pete thought is no longer the current design team's intent.

I'm not saying that any *official* writings by people no longer with the company are invalid. But I am saying that the unofficial opinion of a guy who no longer works for the company, and has been *directly overridden* by the current design team is definitely NOT something you can take as a credible statement of intent from the guys currently writing the rules. If what pete said was the intent of the rest of the design team, then his 'clarifications' would have been worked into the current FAQ. They were not. Therefore it would be foolish to assume that they are still the designers intent.

Intent changes. That's where new editions (and, in fact, FAQs) come from.
You could argue that the codex as written reflects the designer's intent and that somehow the FAQ does not convey the designer's true intent, (and therefore feel morally justified in ingoring FAQ changes) but that stance would be falacious and wrong.

How is that any different than saying that pete's outdated rules changes reflect the true design intent and therefore pulling rules out of them instead of using the current sources? Hell, how is it any different than simply deciding that 2nd edition was the designers true intent and using rules from there?

The point is, the current FAQs and books override any previous FAQs and books. It doesn't matter what pete's intention *was* before the new FAQ came out, what matters is that the rest of the design teams intent *is.* And that intent is directly expressed in the current FAQ.

If you want to invent rules for the tourneys people let you run, that;s fine. But pulling rules out of Pete's FAQ is exactly as valid as pulling rules out of 2nd edition. And I know a lot of people are frustrated by the completely arbitrary nature of tourney rules, and now I see why.

If you want to pull outdated rules just because you like them, fine. But you won;t see me signing up for it. I don;t know about everyone else, but I like playing by the rules.

Edit: My god, man...look what you've done, you made me agree with Uber ;-)

 

I had one built until The Haines FAQ invalidated it.

When GW published the current errata, they said any previous FAQa's that didn't make it into the errata had been scrapped. (though it may be scrapped in future)

For my Techmarine on bike, I just modelled a small tracked vehicle for him that housed the basic standing techmarine with harness.

its a nasty little unit in a game, turboboost 2+ inv save, gets a flamer and plasmapistol.
personally i used the techmarine, with bike, harness, combat shield and bolt pistol.
burny death vs horde, plasma death vs Meq followed by a decent charge ability. :mrgreen:

I'm planning to pair mine up with an attack bike squadron, sort of a high speed alternative to the techie + gun servo firing squad. I figure a pair of MMs and a heavy bolter, they should be able to take all comers. Tee bike speed gives them the ability to close in and bust enemy tanks, as well as boost over to downed friendly tanks. Plus the unit is more robust and survivable (better touchness, saves and wounds) than a normal servator squad as well as being more mobile.

 

one and only one statement from the studio on how this is supposed to work

No, it's not the studio. It's one member of the studio, and a preformed idea. It was never official, and has nothing to do with the rules. It is one man saying how they think the game should be played. Since, despite the clear opportunity, that single man's thought had precisely no action taken upon it, there are two conclusions. Either this one man and the rest of the studio disagreed, with the obvious winner, or this one man changed his mind. Every time there's a rule discussed in the studio, there'll be at least one individual who disagrees one way or another, but they have the good sense to keep their mouths shut until the studio comes to the official conclusion.

The only way this is different from normal is that the dissenting studio member decided that his opinion was more important than everyone else's and as such needed to be heard immediately.

Yes, it was the studio, It was members of the studio posting to the GW forum in their capacity as members of the studio. Actually, the GW Forum FAQs had input from multiple members of the studio. Pete, Andy, etc. Check them if you don't take my word for it, you'll see that they say answers from so and so.

I do agree with one thing you said. It was never official. Read all my statements. I have never said it was "official" What I HAVE said is that it is a guide as to the studio's intent for that particular issue.

And you left out a third "conclusion" as to why no further action has been taken. Couldn't be that the correct answer has already been given and no further action is necessary, now, could it?

You and others want to imply that he was wrong and that the rest of the studio disagreed. I don't see it. In fact, altho I don't know about this particular question, I do know that there were times when the response was "Let me chat with the others and we'll get back to you". So I see one of the few members of the studio that made himself available to the gaming community being maligned (your last paragraph) because he took the time to answer questions that we asked. Instead of putting down him and the others that do this, even unofficially, we should be thanking them. What's sad is that you consider it to be "different from normal" that members of the studio responded to rules queries. Pages of them, in fact. I am, of course, assuming that you have actually read the items in question??

 

Edit: My god, man...look what you've done, you made me agree with Uber ;-)

Heheheheh sorry about that..............