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I made a thread earlier about if two armies were balanced or not, and people told me Imperial Guard and Space Marines can't be in the same army together.

Is this true? Or does it not matter?

Because if I really can't have two fething human groups fight together, then I wasted a lot of money. Also if it's true, does anyone wanna buy a ton of Warhammer figures?

Yes you can ally them together. Whoever told you that is a git.

In the words of the great imaginary Dr. House, "everybody lies."

I remember the thread.


40k has an allies matrix that allows multiple armies to be combined under the Allies rule.


Astra Militarum are an army. With their own rule book.
Space Marines are an army, again with their own rule book.

You can build a space marines army, or an Astra militarum army. And ally in the other via the Ally rules generally requiring 1 hq and 2 troops from the allied army.

Theirs another way to combine them in which you play an "unbound" list. You lose some benefits for staying with the regular force organization but gain the ability to throw any unit you like together in an army, meaning that you could take marines, and Astra Militarum in any combination you like as long as they follow the units restrictions.

In an unbound list you could even take riskier allies such as Tyranids with you Astra Militarum but as the allies chart dictates they must adhere to a few extra rules to account for armies not always getting along.

Space Marines and Astra Militarum suffer no penalties.


Nobody lied to you, they are infact different armies. But can affectively be played as one because of how the list building rules work.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
What happened in the old thread where people telling you that they where not one army(because they are infact two) and other people telling you that they are one army now because of the newly added unbound rules.

If I recall correctly you had a technically legal Bound force (SM CAD consisting of a Captain (HQ), 2x 5-man Tactical squad (Troops), and 5 Terminators (Elites), Guard Allies consisting of a Command Squad (HQ) and a 10-man Veteran Squad), but it was a two-detachment army and stretched rather thin. I didn't mean to give the impression you weren't allowed to play them together at all, simply that you'd need two different army books and two different sets of necessary support pieces/whatnot and it'd probably be easier to pick one of the two and focus on them starting out.

I would suggest getting a copy of the rules, and giving them a quick read whether you buy them, pirate them, or borrow them. For the main game, the marines of whichever flavour you like, and the militarum so that you can build and play your armies the way you'd like and more confidently as well.

You'll really have a better experience that way.

 AnomanderRake wrote:
I didn't mean to give the impression you weren't allowed to play them together at all

It wasn't just you don't worry.