Greeting, Warlords!


Here are the results of the chain-of-command study. Here I have included the cases, in which units cannot be HQ in principle. Naturally, there are weaker limitations based on order in the chain, but I am not dealing with that for the sake of conciseness. 


In most cases 'any unit' is clearly stated at the end of the chain. That eliminates robot-type problems. Sometimes there is ambiguity since the chain finishes at something different from 'any unit'. I assume 'any unit' is a term which would be used if appropriate; otherwise, we have robot situation.


The Imperial Supreme Commander det has 'commander>bodyguard'. The only question is whether the transport upgrades of the bodyguards count as bodyguards themselves. To me the answer is non-obvious.


The Ork Warband has 'warboss>nobz>orks'. In the ork army list, 'orks' refers to the standard ork tactical and its infantry upgrades. In my opinion, this means that gretchin and vehicles cannot be HQ.


The Ork Kult of Speed has 'warboss>battlewagons>buggies/bikez>nobz'. Thus gretchin cannot be HQ. I assume here the more lenient interpretation that 'battlewagons' means any wagon, rather than the unit with the same name. This is a GW screw-up, since they use the same name for both a unit type and a unit class. Otherwise, flakwagon and mekboy speedsta will be out of it too, which does not make sense to me since mekboyz command their gretchin in the original story.


The Ork Warlord has 'warlord>nobz>orks'. Thus gretchin, ogryn and all wagons are out.


The Eldar Harlequins are a nonconsequential mess, since you can take the same and more in the Eldar War Host without the Harlequin restictions, unless one wants to take a Great Harlequin or a Shadow Seer (yeah, right!). The chain ends at 'any Harlequin unit', which excludes wave serpents and perhaps harlequins upgraded to jet bikes.


The Eldar Commander finishes at 'any bodyguard unit'. Thus the problem here is the same as with Imperial Supreme Commander (see above).


The CSM Armoured Det has 'landraider>predator>chaos space marines'. Thus the question is whether the rhinos are CSMs or not. The Chaos Supreme Commander det has no command structure listed.


Tyranids have no problems.


I cannot check Squats, since they are not in the books I have. We know about the robots from an email of Sean's.


I have to confess that hadn't I known in advance, I would have expected problems with the dead Eldar, dreadnoughts and wraithguard, due to their weird command behaviour from the previous game, but apparently the dead are fine.  


Finally, two corrections about Eldar AT: Eldar can also take massed anti-grav lascannon (AT support platform), in fact as many as fifteen in a det, but there is a transportation problem; also, massed 60 cm AT in Scorpion Engines of Vaul. 

Eldar Farseer