Can a bloodied Gorzod still play space marine cards?

By Dan Forever, in Warhammer 40,000: Conquest - Rules Questions

Posted at
The text on Gorzod's Hale side allows you to include space marine vehicle cards (which you couldn't normally do so)
gorzod.png
His Bloodied side, however, has no such text and in the official tournament rules, there is the following passage:

Illegal Deck Procedure
If an illegal card is discovered in a player’s deck during a
tournament, that player immediately forfeits the game in which
the card was discovered. The opponent in the round in which the
illegal deck is discovered is credited with a full win. The player
may drop from the tournament, or continue to play. If continuing,
the player must turn each offending card around in its sleeve
(this cannot be done while playing with transparent sleeves)
and play with what are considered blank cards for the rest of the
tournament. Results from previous rounds are not modified.
Blank cards from a player’s draw deck cannot be deployed, put
into play, or used to pay costs. Card abilities that move them
from a player’s hand or deck to other out of play areas may still
interact with the blank cards.
Examples of illegal decks include (but are not limited to): A loyal
card in the wrong faction; a signature card that does not match
the warlord; a card that breaks the alignment wheel possibilities;
too many copies of a card.

Does this mean that once bloodied, all space marine cards in a gorzod deck are now treated as blank, since they are illegal?

Posted at

No. A deck cannot become illegal through legal game play. If it was built legally, nothing that happens in-game makes it illegal.

Consider, for example, the card Ssylth Mercenary, which has the text, "Action: Pay 2[Resource] to take control of this unit if it is at a planet. Any player may use this ability." Since this is a Dark Eldar unit, if decks were made illegal by in-game effects or consequences, only Chaos, Eldar and Dark Eldar players could trigger it - assuming the Chaos player hadn't allied to Orks and the Eldar player hadn't allied to Tau.

With that much more obvious example, it should be clear that anything that happens to change a deck DURING game play cannot "retroactively" turn it into an illegal deck.

Posted at

This is covered in the leaflet that comes with Deadly Salvage, by the way (I don't remember such a leaflet with Boundless Hate, but your question would be the same with Starblaze and Astra Militarum cards). I don't remember the exact wording, but the gist is that special deckbuilding rules are in effect throughout the game, even if the Warlord becomes bloodied (essentially, what Ktom said).

@Ktom: Taking control of a Sslyth Mercenary doesn't make it become part of your deck (the owner of a card never changes). And the alliance rule is only about deckbuilding, not what cards you are allowed to take control of (just like the loyalty mechanic used in Conquest and both editions of AGoT).

Posted at

@Ktom: Taking control of a Sslyth Mercenary doesn't make it become part of your deck (the owner of a card never changes). And the alliance rule is only about deckbuilding, not what cards you are allowed to take control of (just like the loyalty mechanic used in Conquest and both editions of AGoT).

That's the point, Khudzlin. The makeup of your deck doesn't change relative to the deckbuilding rules that applied when you built it. Bloodying Gorzog or Starblaze does not change the makeup of your deck relative to the deckbuilding rules that applied when you built it, either.

Ultimately, that's the thing to recognize. The text on Gorzog and Starblaze are not "continuous effects" that must be active in order for your deck to be legal. They are deckbuilding rules that, once the deck is build and the game starts, have already been properly obeyed. The "Illegal Deck Procedure" really only applies to whether or not you followed the applicable deckbuilding rules before the game started - not to manipulations that take place once the first round has begun.

Posted at

Here is the exact wording on the leaflet that comes with Deadly Salvage:

The Planetfall cycle introduces some warlords that feature additional deck customization rules that modify those listed in the Learn to Play document. These rules are active and must be observed whenever a player is constructing or using a deck using that warlord.