Inner Circle Keyword.

[exeteroborach]

Hey all,

So I know that you can upgrade certain units from the Space Marine codex to gain the Deathwing keyword but a friend said that all captains taken in a Dark Angels army should also gain the Inner Circle keyword. Is this true? I couldn't find it anywhere in either codex. I thought only certain captains were allowed into the Inner Circle fluff wise so makes sense why a vanilla captain wouldn't have it.

Thanks.

[arsonfire]

'Inner Circle' is used as both a keyword and as an ability.
As you've noted, you can pay points to give a Captain the DEATHWING keyword.

On page 42 of the codex, it says that DEATHWING and INNER CIRCLE units in a DARK ANGELS detachment gain the Inner Circle ability.
So you can certainly give a vanilla captain the Inner Circle ability. But I don't think they get the INNER CIRCLE keyword.
However the ability is the important thing to have. As far as I can see, pretty much everything which affects INNER CIRCLE units also affects DEATHWING (outside of some stuff in crusade mode), so they don't really miss out on anything by only being DEATHWING.

[exeteroborach]

Ah yes. I had overlooked that paragraph on page 42. Thanks for pointing that out. However, where confusion lies was when I was trying to achieve the Dark Angels objective Purge the Enemy on page 50. Second bullet point says an attack made by a Deathwing or Inner Circle model. My opponent said my captain should still qualify for being Inner Circle but I did not pay the points for the Deathwing upgrade so he shouldn't at that point?

[arsonfire]

The Martial Interdiction secondary?
Yeah, if you didn't pay the points for the deathwing upgrade, then your captain wouldn't qualify for giving you the extra 3 victory points for that secondary.

You'll have to ask your friend to show you where he thinks it says captains get the INNER CIRCLE keyword.
As far as I can see the only way to add INNER CIRCLE to a regular captain is via a couple of requisitions in Crusade mode.