I see this coming up a lot, and for a while I was confused myself. If your AOR doesn’t specify one way or another, can you take their Faction Terrain?
Short answer: Yes, unless they go out of their way to specify that you can’t.
Long answer: Yes, with various rules references, snips and screenshots to act as a click magnet definitive answer to this common question.
A Very Brief History Lesson
When AORs first dropped in 3rd Edition, access to Faction Terrain came through your army’s battle traits. Given that AORs ripped up all your army rules and added new stuff back in (starting from a completely clean slate), if they didn’t add back Faction Terrain, you didn’t get it. And almost none of them did.
One rare exception that I can think of was the original Trugg’s Troggherd, which did specifically give you the Loonshrine. So this era really cemented the idea that Faction Terrain is Not A Thing for AORs.
Moving on to 4th Ed
In the current edition, we see that Rule 3.7 confers access to your faction terrain:
So being part of a faction is what gives you access to terrain, and the question then becomes…
Is an AOR part of its parent faction, or a faction in its own right?
Crucially, it’s the former.
Core Rule 2.0 covers what a Faction actually is, with Rule 2.2 looking at AORs in particular:
So Armies of Renown are part of their parent faction. This is cemented by the wording within the AORs themselves:
And all of that being the case, the logic is pretty straightforward:
AORs are part of their factions, and factions have access to faction terrain. Therefore AORs have access to faction terrain.
A Right Bugger’s Muddle
What muddies the water, and why this question keeps coming up, is that AORs have inconsistent wording. None of that changes the fact that you can take faction terrain by default, but it does make it tricky to follow the breadcrumbs.
Some AORs specifically say that you cannot take faction terrain. That’s fine, there’s your answer: those ones can’t take it. Others say nothing at all, and in that case (as we’ve seen above) you can take it – the default position is that they’re in.
What makes it messy to follow is that other AORs say that you can take their faction terrain. This doesn’t actually contradict anything that’s in the rules, but it’s poor form by the game designers nonetheless: it confuses people because it implies that if it didn’t say that, then you wouldn’t be able to. In fact it’s just a redundant statement.
I was going to trawl through the various AORs to pull out examples of each but Keith in the Gloomspite Whatsapp helpfully pointed out that we need look no further than the Gits AORs for the full spectrum of bewilderment:
- King’s Gitz says you can take 0-1 Bad Moon Loonshrines.
- Trugg’s Troggherd says you cannot take faction terrain.
- Droggz’s Gitmob doesn’t say anything at all.
As we saw from walking through the core rules: AORs are part of their faction, and factions can take their faction terrain. Troggherd specifies that you can’t, so that’s fine, they can’t take it. But if it doesn’t say anything at all, you’re good, and that’s the case with Droggz’s Gitmob.
Why did they bother saying you can take a Loonshrine in King’s Gitz then?
Fucked if I know. Cos they’re sloppy? Ask those malakas, not me.
The core rules already tell you that KG can take it, and then in that AOR’s rules they’ve told you that again. It’s purely redundant, and in no way means that any other AOR can’t just take one, simply because they didn’t repeat themselves that time. This is why it’s poor form in game design to cherry pick specific cases and repeat what’s already in the rules: it’s redundant, and it muddies the waters in all other cases where you don’t re-emphasise that. It just adds confusion rather than clarity.
“But the App doesn’t let me”
That’s fine, the app is wrong. Let GW know. The app is a bloody good resource and rarely makes mistakes these days – but rarely is not never.
If you are building a list for an AOR that doesn’t specify that you can’t take their faction terrain – but the app won’t let you take it – add the terrain into your list manually before submission, and report the issue to GW.
In Summary
There’s no single rule or FAQ that says “AORs can take Faction Terrain” so you have to go around the houses a little bit – but the answer is there.
You can take them by default. Some AORs (like Trugg’s) specifically say that you can’t, in which case there’s your answer, but if it doesn’t say anything then you’re golden.
If you want a bit of further reading, we’ve included a little hack you can pull off with Faction Terriain in a prominent AOR as a Patreon article over here.
Either way, I see this discussion coming up all the time, so hopefully that’s been helpful. Have a good weekend, nerds.
Cover Image: Loonshrine by Craig Boyle
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