Carnival of Pain Rules Quandary

Okay first off I am not a rules lawyer.

I generally am a RAI guy through and through, but in flipping through the Covens supplement a few minutes ago, I came across something that had me legitimately perplexed as to what GW intended so I thought I would throw it out and have my learned Archon colleagues weigh in.

The Carnival of Pain. A formation of formations so massive and costly (pts/$$$) that it will probably never be fielded. At issue is its first special rule:

Lord of Pain (bold emphasis mine)

"As long as Urien Rakarth (or the Haemonculus from the Grotesquerie Formation) is alive, his Father / Master of Pain special rule affects all non-vehicle units in this Formation

Now how would you interpret that? Initially I just thought it meant that the range of the buff was made essentially infinite as opposed to in unit only or 12" bubble.

But then why specifically call out "non-vehicle units"? The only non-vehicle units available to the Covens supplement that do not have Power from Pain natively are the Cronos and Talos. Does this mean then this rule essentially gives them Power from Pain while in a Carnival of Pain? If this was not the intention surely they could have simply left that part out or referenced "all models with Power from Pain"  the formation.

If the gives them Power from Pain interpretation holds then that is a pretty interesting buff for slapping the money down for this thing. You basically have 7 Monstrous Creatures in this detachment via CTC, Dark Artisan, and the Scarlet Epicureans. Most of the PfP table isn't earth shattering for them but IWD is a VERY nice buff for keeping these guys shambling forth.

So what say you? Is it a grey area? Am I stretching? Have I become "that guy" accidentally? Or once again does GW need better rules writing / proofreading?

UM

Master/Father of Pain just raises the turn of Pfp.
It doesn't confer PfP to anything.
So without having PfP, Master/Father of Pain doesn't affect the Engines.

True. However there is precedent in many areas where a rule invalidates other rules in the game.

For example, there is a strategic warlord trait that causes several enemy units to take a pinning test, even though the Pinning USR requires the unit to be "receive an unsaved wound" to take a pinning test.

I am suggesting that in this case GW specific call out of "non vehicle units" - "might" be an attempt to extend the PFP benefits to Coven monstrous creatures as a specific special benefit, otherwise their would have been no need for that specific language.

I wish it were true, but then they failed to add some text to actually let the Engines get PfP.
Master/Father isn't enough.
Nor is the "all non-vehicles" thing.
IMHO.

I respect your opinion, and it is the way I would have normally interpreted the rule, but I keep coming back to the odd and specific phrasing they used.

If they wanted the normal interpretation they could have said

"affects all models with the Power from Pain rule in this formation"

That pretty much covers it and is very specific to maintain the usual rules logic and avoid "shenanigans".

However their choice of phrasing seems to define a case where:

a) they wanted to include MC's
b) wanted to specifically avoid the screwy assignment of PFP to vehicles - the only other formation unit

Not pushing too hard on it as no ability outside of an FAQ clarification will settle it but was just wondering if GW threw us a bone and we somehow all collectively missed it.

Just poor word choices on GW's part. I agree with Marrath that there simply isn't enough there to justify an argument that it grants them power from pain. Yes, Urien's special rule effects Talos by raising their "turn" for PfP by one. However, since they don't have PfP, it mechanically does nothing for them.

The way I read it, is that GW intended the rule to extend the range of the M/FoP rule from either unit only or 12" bubble, to infinite range, but only for the formation.

It doesn't then in any way affect the M/FoP rule. Which only increases the turn for PfP.

So, sadly no, until we can confer PfP to units without it, which vets here would probably tell you was an inefficient use of points, it's a non-starter sadly.

But, only in my opinion

It's typical shoddy rules writing from GW sadly but I don't see any basis to actually grant PfP to a unit that doesn't already have it.

Why did they take Power from PAIN away from parasite and PAIN engines in the first place?
When it comes to ruleswriting for us, especially after the faq, only bad words come to my mind, turd for example is one of the nicer ones...