Every relic from our codex is an Artifact of Cruelty?

My take on this: Prizes of the Dark City freely allows you to grant relics to Drukhari characters, as long as they are capable of being equipped with it.

The glossary at the back of our Codex states that an Artefact of Cruelty is a type of relic that can be given to Drukhari characters. Kabal, Wych Cult or Haemonculus Coven Relics are a subset of these which are only available to character models that are part of the respective Kabal, Wych Cult or Haemonculus Coven. Prizes will allow you to grant any relic that a Drukhari character is capable of having - this includes the Kabal, Cult or Coven relics.

A few supporting points here:

"Artefact of Cruelty" is not a keyword, and thus is informal. The book is clearly written so that we're meant to treat it as synonymous with "Relic" - indeed, the section where the subfaction-agnostic Artefacts are listed just has the title "Relics", and the language there freely slips between referring to them as Relics and Artefacts of Cruelty. We're not meant to see any real distinction between the two; for all intents and purposes "any relic a Drukhari character can equip" and "Artefacts of Cruelty" are equivalent.

The example used to discuss how relics can be allocated using Prizes involves subfaction relics. Without a clear restriction that this is only applicable in a Realspace Raid I don't see any way to read it except for allowing Prizes to grant subfaction relics in general.

Finally, as far as I'm aware most tournaments have followed this ruling- although I'll grant that it is rare to see sub-faction relics aside from Strife's being used competitively currently.

That interpretation doesn't make much sense to me since the rulebook, as far as I can tell in every single circumstance, say that you may take certain Relics (Lords of Commoragh, Obessession specific) instead of Artifact of Cruelty. This makes it pretty clear that they are not Artifacts of Cruelty or no such distinction would have to be made. The fact that the same wording is used in multiple sections makes it unlikely to just be GW being not being able to stick to a single wording.

The rules mention Artifacts of Cruelty being Relics which makes sense, that's what they are mechanically.

The fact that there is a separate section in the book titled Artifacts of Cruelty and the no other artifact is ever refered to as an Artifact of Cruelty (other than the Book of Rust ones) along with the fact that every entry about other relics say they may be taken INSTEAD of an Artifact of Cruelty so I have no idea how you arrive at the conclusion that "The book is clearly written so that we're meant to treat it as synonymous with "Relic" ".


I should just excuse myself from this topic at this point, it's just making me frustrated. Hopefully GW FAQs it one way or the other, hopefully your way as I'd like more customization but until then I'll just play the game how they wrote it.

Yziel wrote:

The fact that there is a separate section in the book titled Artifacts of Cruelty

There isn't, though - there's just a section of the book titled RELICS.

I will admit that my interpretation is probably stemming mostly from a desire for the rules to be as straightforward as possible and since making that post I'm leaning considerably more towards the idea that the intention is the ACO ruling, but I absolutely do not think it's clear from the rules as stated in the Codex and would very much appreciate GW providing a clear FAQ about what exactly we're allowed to take in what circumstances.

Burnage wrote:

Yziel wrote:

The fact that there is a separate section in the book titled Artifacts of Cruelty

There isn't, though - there's just a section of the book titled RELICS.

I will admit that my interpretation is probably stemming mostly from a desire for the rules to be as straightforward as possible and since making that post I'm leaning considerably more towards the idea that the intention is the ACO ruling, but I absolutely do not think it's clear from the rules as stated in the Codex and would very much appreciate GW providing a clear FAQ about what exactly we're allowed to take in what circumstances.

The intention was definitely NOT what the ACO ruling was. It may line up with what ACO intended their ruling to be, but their actual ruling was the most strict interpretation I've ever seen anyone propose. A ruling so strict that Prizes of the Dark City can only ever be used if your warlord is a Cult of Strife succubus since they are the only obsession with more than one Artifact of Cruelty.