Clarification regarding the "ban" on Porphyrions at Warhammer World's Adeptus Titanicus tournament

Spikey Bits, in their usual provocative fashion, posted this news regarding Warhammer World's Adeptus Titancus tournament today, claiming that Games Workshop banned Acastus Knights Porphyrion at the Legio Walks event. As you would expect, this sparked a lot of outrage and furious comments from people on Facebook when they saw this article pop up on their newsfeed.

I'm here to clarify, because I'm heavily invested in Adeptus Titanicus (you can see the triple Adeptus Titanicus battle reports I just posted a few minutes ago) and was keeping an eye on this event (even sent an email to ask about Adeptus Titanicus rules), that this is not true. Wesley Floyd basically wrote a clickbait title and posted in hyperbole...probably to generate readership, or for some unknown sinister, nefarious reason, or maybe he has a grudge against Games Workshop. I do not know, and I do not care. But this is irresponsible reporting, and the spreading of blatantly false information.

Are Acastus Knights Porphyrion restricted? Yes. Heavily restricted, if you're really pedantic about it. But are they banned? NO. It's nowhere as drastic as Floyd makes it out to be. Not unless I'm misunderstanding the word "ban" or that restrictions have somehow become a syonym for "bans".

To clarify, the tournament packet at The Legio Walks event does not distinguish between Acastus Knights Porphyrion and Acastus Knights Asterius. They are all just termed as Acastus Knights. I should know, I downloaded the tournament packet and literally read them on Friday, just two nights ago.

The rules clearly allow you to bring a single banner of Acastus Knights, Porphyrion or Asterius, for a single Knight Lance, so long as you nominate the Lord Scion in that banner to be your High Seneschal. Note, since you can only have one High Seneschal (they are different from High Lord Scions) per Household Force, this effectively means you are only allowed one Acastus Knight banner in one Lance, no matter how many Lances you bring.

HOWEVER, you can still bring a second Acastus Banner for your Household Force if you take them as Freeblades. Keep in mind, though, the ruling indicates that you can only take a maximum of one Acastus Banner as a Freeblades. So effectively, you can bring two Acastus Banners, but obviously the Freeblade Acastus banner will not benefit from the Lance Orders (and the +3 bonus to command checks) because they are not part of the same lance.

To reiterate, the tournament packet says nothing about Porphyrions being banned, and does not distinguish between Asterius and Porphyrions. It just classifies them as Acastus Knights. No more, no less. If you don't believe me, you can read the full tournament packet here.

I'm putting this out here before everyone does the same old kneejerk reaction and complains about Games Workshop banning models and whatever when they did no such thing, and encourage people to actually read the post or find out the truth for themselves. No doubt Floyd's clickbait title and hyperbolic statements have generated a significant amount of outrage, so he should shoulder part of the blame for this reaction. But this is why writing articles responsibly is so important. Not that Floyd or Spikey Bits will care about my comment. Best of all, when I tried to write in the comments section of that article, clarifying that the Acastus Knight Porphyrion has not been banned, my comments were flagged and removed by the moderators. That seems...suspicious.

People should be more responsible about reporting stuff, because their words have very big impact on how the playerbase will respond or affect participation in this event. There will be consequences - already I see the outrage on Facebook where commenters criticized Games Workshop without even realizing that Floyd was being hyperbolic and wildly inaccurate. Games Workshop is essentially taking flak for unjustified reasons, because the commenters didn't find out the truth and just took Floyd's words at face value (I suspect some of them didn't even bother reading his article and just jumped onto the bandwagon of rage and hatred when they saw his clickbait title). I mean, just the other day, some idiot posted on social media the false accusation of a couple of poor South Asian guys kidnapping somebody, it went viral on Whatsapp, and a mob hungry for "justice" went and murdered both of those men in cold blood before they found out that the accusations were fabricated. Innocent people died because of false reporting. This isn't as drastic, I know, but still...if Floyd can write a hyperbolic post on this, that says a lot about his attitude toward truth. One day he might just write an inflammatory post that gets him into trouble with lawsuits and slander. Or not. Whatever happens to him is none of my business, but I'm more annoyed about him posting false information regarding an event I'm looking forward to.

Regardless, if you're going to report on something, do so responsibly. This is just a hobby blog and it's not a big site like Spikey Bits or Bell of Lost Souls, but I write this post in hopes that people know the truth and don't just start posting outraged reactions and railing at Games Workshop for something they did not do.