AoS Summoned Units Clarification

[jevan]

The Mutalth Vortex Beast and the Skaven Vermin Lord were recently used on me in a game. Each of those horrific foes has the ability to transform a number of my own units on the table into units that he can use. Chaos Spawn. And in the case of the vermin Lord, any unit with the vermin descriptor including another vermin Lord! The owner of the aforementioned beasts said that the language did not imply that they were summoned from a pool of army points held back and that he had checked forums and this was the general consensus
Yet when I discovered that our own EotG has a chance to call forth units to the board without using the word "summon" in its descriptor, I find that people in forums say that I have to have a points pool reserved. That's ludicrous ! If you don't roll just right and/or have your Slann manipulate the role then the possibility of even activating that ability is very slim. And the descriptor does not say "summon"! It says "a Seraphon unit is called forth"
Can someone please point me to the official rules that clarify what uses army points, and what does not use Army points when bringing units, transforming units, or whatever. Thank you in advance!

 

[Freddy25]

he had checked forums and this was the general consensus

Well, next time you can say to him there's a general consensus he has cheated like crazy

I may be wrong, of course, but to my memory:
every unit which is not part of the army list that is brought to the table by the effect of a spell or an ability must be paid with points. If a players has not enough points in his reserve pull to sustain the cost, that unit simply cannot be set up.
Stop.
There might be some exceptions but they were related to some Death standards, I believe.
... I honestly don't remember exactly where this rule is written, sorry, but I believe the only ones who hadn't read it are the ones who didn't want to read it.

(I don't wanna jump immediately to conclusions, but come on, how can a person sincerely think he can set up a free Verminlord and you have to pay for a unit of Skink Handlers? I hope it was an occasional mistake, but let's just say I'm a "bit" skeptical...)


... If I remember correctly, the ONLY time I saw a model which could be setup without paying its cost was a Sporemine launched by some sort of Tyranid beast-cannon in a Warhammer 40K battle, and this simply because it was all clearly written on the models' datasheet/warscrolls.

Happy to be proved wrong, by the way.

 

[Phoedinn]

General's handbook V1 - Page 108
"Each time a unit is added to an army during a battle, you must first subtract the number of points the unit would cost from your pool of reinforcement points."

The rules imply that any kind of adding, be is summoning or "bringing forth" should cost points. The only way it allows for this to be free is if you are reinforcing an existing unit.

In other words...yeah he cheated

 

[jevan]

General's handbook V1 - Page 108
"Each time a unit is added to an army during a battle, you must first subtract the number of points the unit would cost from your pool of reinforcement points."

The rules imply that any kind of adding, be is summoning or "bringing forth" should cost points. The only way it allows for this to be free is if you are reinforcing an existing unit.

In other words...yeah he cheated

But what about transforming units on the board from one model to another? I can see how there might be an argument for that not summoning anything. I will do research after work and post any links for further debate.

 

[Phoedinn]

But what about transforming units on the board from one model to another? I can see how there might be an argument for that not summoning anything. I will do research after work and post any links for further debate.

I would say it still applies. The wording is "added to an army" those units are transformed and "added" to your opponents army. The rules never mention the word summoning, meaning they should refer to any kind of renforcments.

 

[Aginor]

Agree. The rules are clear here.
If something adds a unit to your army you have to pay points for it. It doesn't matter whether it was by summoning, transformation, or something else.

He was wrong.

 

[Freddy25]

The rules never mention the word summoning, meaning they should refer to any kind of reinforcements.

Yeah, this is what I remember too.
There may also be an example to clarify this in the Errata file, but what Phoedinn said a couple of posts ago is the standard for the 90% of the playable models in Age of Sigmar.

 

[Killer Angel]

Sweet Sigmar, you have to pay full points even with the Death artefact "ring of immortality"!
So yeah, no way he can have those units for free.

 

[m0gstar]

Definitely costs points

 

[Aginor]

Sweet Sigmar, you have to pay full points even with the Death artefact "ring of immortality"!

And that's one of the biggest piles of BS there is in the rules IMO. Why would anyone take it? Every other artefact effect in the game is free (except one that summons something IIRC, which is as useless)

 

[Killer Angel]

And that's one of the biggest piles of BS there is in the rules IMO. Why would anyone take it? Every other artefact effect in the game is free (except one that summons something IIRC, which is as useless)

Yeah, they made the (probably) most used death artefact, into costly garbage.
And it was a move with no sense: why should I fully pay a model with d3 wounds?!?

The only use could be for a cheap general (banshee or similar ) if you want to keep the command trait and force the enemy to spend another turn to kill 80 pts...

 

[m0gstar]

These are all just side effects to being written before ghb that changed summoning. Hopefully they will all be fixed in the coming few weeks with ghb2