Our wonderful and friendly discord has a channel designed to take your questions! Sometimes GW’s FAQs are slow to be updated, and rules are either unclear or simply not phrased well for non-English speakers. To that end, we have an excellent team of lawyers on hand to interpret the rules and answer questions you might have.
Below are the questions that were asked over the last 7 days from our discord server and the answers provided by our legal department*:
Q: Can Ponitfex Zenestra use her Word of the God-King ability to banish a manifestations the turn it is summoned?
A: Yes.
Q: Is Gift of Apoplexy triggered when a unit uses passive abilities?
A: This is another case of GW’s language being a bit inconsistent. In order to determine what would trigger Gift of Apoplexy’s mortal damage you need to understand two things:
Is an ability being used?
Who is using the ability?
To answer the first question, we need to understand what is meant when the prayer says an ability is used. For the purposes of this prayer, an ability is used when it goes through the Declare-Reaction-Effect steps. Passive abilities don’t do that, so will not trigger Gift of Apoplexy.
The second question is answered by reviewing the ability that is being used. Let’s take the “There is No Escape” ability provided by the Death Stalkers Nighthaunt battle formation. The ability allows the player to choose a friendly Nighthaunt unit to be the target. In cases such as this, the player is using the ability targeting a model, not a model using the ability targeting itself. In this case, Gift of Apoplexy would not be triggered.
For more detail on using abilities, read section 5.2 of the Age of Sigmar Core Rules.
Q: If a Varghulf Courtier kills an entire unit, can it use Victory Feast at the end of the turn?
A: It can use the ability, but it won’t benefit from all of the effects. The healing will always trigger, since it has no conditions other than killing an enemy model. The second half can only trigger if the Varghulf is still in combat, however. The Retreat ability requires that the unit using the ability is in combat. If the Varghulf did a good enough job of killing enemy models then it will have nothing to retreat from and will not be able to move.
*Please note that the “legal department” is a joke. None of these people are lawyers, cannot provide real legal advice, and are not representing themselves as lawyers. This shouldn’t have to be said, but US law is dumb so there’s the disclaimer. Don’t come after us.
