Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

This post is to discuss the theory of adding allies to the game. The current description that is that allies would be the following
You must take a minimum of units of 2 troops and 1 HQ before any other slots are unlocked. Once you have taken the mandatory choices, you can take one FA, HS, and Elite slot.
These are the following effects I see on the game

All armies becomes more powerful
Combos like GK/IG can grant GK armies access to vendettas. In fact I would not be surprised if you see a vendetta in every army list that can take them! This means across the board, all armies will become more powerful from their current place in the meta. If all armies gain equally in power, then there is no relative shift in balance. If current weaker armies get proportionally greater power, then the game will be more balanced.
Its also possible that specific combos will be to powerful and banned -- much like Mind Twist in MTG.


Combats Codex Creep
What it also means is that older, weaker armies can become more powerful by allying with the newer codex's. Lets say a new Eldar codex comes out and it has some units that are insanely effective. A dark eldar or IG player can take advantage of that new model and play with it by allying with the Eldar and playing with the new model.


GW sells more models
If every army has access to allies (save 'Nids), then players who play specific armies will then think of what allies would work for their army. It expands the model range they would buy from to include these new allies.


More diversified builds
Much like multi-classing in 3.5, allies mean a player can generate a new army type to use. Instead of the 14 army lists that are in the game today, there are over a hundred new combinations that might show up at games. You might have a demon/traitor guard in one game, and a C:SM/Tau player in the next.
The other thing is allies allow you to diversify what kind of build you want to play. Imagine a Tau army with some TH/SS termies in a LR to help counter-assault. It means that you can't just see a Tau player and assume you can roll them over in assault.


Expanding to a new army becomes easier
Lets say you play IG, and you want to start an Ork army and they are allowed to be allies. You can buy a warboss, a battlewagon, and some boys and add it to your IG army. You can play with it a few games, and see how you like the feel of it. This lets you test out certain units, and lets you start playing with your new painted models faster.


Cooler themes
Armies can now have more of a theme to them. Having a demon/CSM army is more feasable. Making a genestealer kult army can now be done by using 'counts as' with IG and DE rules -- giving them more of a feel of what the armies would actually be like.

What else would allies do the game?

I'm looking forwards to fun, themed games.

I don't play in Tournaments, so I really don't care what happens there.

Screw over Tyranids, as they are unlikely to benefit from all of this?
Screw over factions with less allies than the imperials?

Further skew the game towards an imperial circlejerk?

Make list building and tournament play even more expensive?

Completely detonate the metagame?

Da Boss wrote:Screw over Tyranids, as they are unlikely to benefit from all of this?
Screw over factions with less allies than the imperials?

Further skew the game towards an imperial circlejerk?

Make list building and tournament play even more expensive?

Completely detonate the metagame?

I'm betting nids can take two FoC's to make up for it. Six elite slots anyone?

Anyways, it means we can finally take fluffy lists!

Gue'vra with Tau leaders

Chaos Daemons with Chaos Forces, whether cultists (IG) or CSM!

The only problem is, the system, no matter how well done, WILL be abused to death. I play at a highly competitve store, and I can tell you right now, if it becomes true, I will not play people using it there. Because I know they can come up with combos that would make my brain hurt, to the point where I would never be able to win with a single codex army (aka no allies) I'm already shuddering at the thought of a GK army with some longfangs and a vendetta tagging along for the ride, and that's just a minor example. The guys at my store could come up with way better than that

That said, for fun games, I love the idea. I can't wait to make an IG/ ork hybrid army. Now I can bring an ork army with Leman Russes, Demolishers, or to be REALLY orky, some punishers! Not to mention mixing ork shoota boys and lootas in with IG platoons and heavy weapon teams for support.

So yeah. Done right, it could be amazing. But sadly, what's far more likely to happen if it makes it in, it'll be abused like crazy, there will be one uber list that everyone brings as an instant win, and allies will get banned in everything but the most casual of games.

Allies would ruin the game.

Why take a battlewagon when you can have a Landraider?

Why take a Daemon Prince when you can take Long Fangs?

TH/SS terminators standing next to Fateweaver?

I can easily see it being explaoited to the point of extreme nerd rage.

Even in a fun friendly game... it would become troublesome.

So I guess it's too late to tell you it's just for team games.

DeffDred wrote:Allies would ruin the game.

Why take a battlewagon when you can have a Landraider?

Why take a Daemon Prince when you can take Long Fangs?

TH/SS terminators standing next to Fateweaver?

I can easily see it being explaoited to the point of extreme nerd rage.

Even in a fun friendly game... it would become troublesome.

There's an ally matrix stating what cannot be together.

Fateweaver will have to contend standing next to Thousand Son Marines.

An ally FoC could make it balanced, but there would have to be strict controls on what could ally and what could not.

Maybe no more then 20% of your point total in allies, max of 3 units, restrictions on ICs from different codices joining allied squads.

If you want to take Allies in a "fun" game, you can.

Though the language here is misleading, implying that a competitive, hard fought and finely balanced game is not "fun". That's the MOST fun in wargaming, win or lose.

As for fluffy lists, the "fluffy" will be vastly outweighed by the ridiculous. If you wanted to have fun games with a fluffy list, no one was stopping you. What this will do is poison or confuse pick up games no end.

juraigamer wrote:So I guess it's too late to tell you it's just for team games.

No, it's not. Check out the rumor thread. There's a screenshot of a 2500 pt game , 2 players, with Imperial Guard/Grey Knights and CSM/Daemons.

Allies would do to this edition, what they did to last edition.

Ruin the game.

The moment you can pick and choose units from all codexs is the moment any semblance of codex balance gets thrown out the window.

I can think of some combos that at least 2 of my armies will not want to face. Adding a GK librarian to Blood Angels so that unit can strike at S6 (and rollign 2d6 for armor pen) with Might of Titan and I 10 with Quicksilver on all of their attacks is pretty nasty. Couple that with a Blood Angels Librarian leading said unit and using Unleash Rage that coudl lead to a terminal case of dead for the other unit. Granted I used 3 psychic powers there but such occurences are not unheard of. I know some Eldar players using 3 or 4+ psychic powers a turn.

DeffDred wrote:Allies would ruin the game.

Why take a battlewagon when you can have a Landraider?

Why take a Daemon Prince when you can take Long Fangs?

TH/SS terminators standing next to Fateweaver?

I can easily see it being explaoited to the point of extreme nerd rage.

Even in a fun friendly game... it would become troublesome.

1) A battlewagon is open-topped, and is much cheaper than a LR? A better question is "why bring a LR for your TH/SS termies when you can bring a battlewagon"

2) Are those other combos legal? I did not think C:SM and Demons would be allies, nor CSM and SW.

Yes, it can be exploited, I agree. Much like multi-classing in 3.5 D&D was exploited by powergamers.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Grey Templar wrote:An ally FoC could make it balanced, but there would have to be strict controls on what could ally and what could not.

Maybe no more then 20% of your point total in allies, max of 3 units, restrictions on ICs from different codices joining allied squads.

I would think that having your FoC limits still in place would help.

IE - Sure you can bring that hydra tank battery to your GK army, but it chews up one of your HS slots, so you can only bring 2 psydreads.
Simply the point of allying would force you to take 2 HQs, and limit you to 1 from each codex.

Check out the thread. It looks like you can add that allied FoC to your original FoC, so 4 heavy slots if you like.

This might be faulty info, but from what I read, you are restricted to taking 1 HQ 1 Troop and 1 Other. I have yet to see the the WD myself, but this would alleviate some of the problems since you can't spam outside codex units....

Gives me proper chaos with CSM, Daemons and IG.

And for this I am eternally grateful.

I'm not a competitive gamer, but I think this has some neat fluff values.

Proper Chaos Armies.

Having Guard hold the line until the Angels of Death (SM) come.

A proper Blood Axe klan (Imperial allies).

Allies will break this game. It might be able to be built a bit fluffier, but the game will be unplayable. I will never play anyone using allies.

To all the ones saying that Allies will break the game:
In my opinion, the game broke when GW added more armies than they could competently handle. The game already has a few broken armies that can easily destroy another, assuming competent generals. The recent 5th edition codexes have, mostly, curb stomped the 4th & 3rd editions. A special mention goes to Tyranids, a 5th edition dex that people often cite. Note I myself have never played or played against 'Nids.

Personally, I want to see just how broken the game gets before
A) Enough people leave the hobby.
B) GW changes their game plan.

I'm still gonna play, I've got a mixed 2k Tau/Elysian Gue'Vesa army.

So sit back, and enjoy the fireworks folks!

Marzillius wrote:Allies will break this game. It might be able to be built a bit fluffier, but the game will be unplayable. I will never play anyone using allies.

How exactly would it do this?

Navy air cav for a DKoK list!

Rules rumours for allies as they stand-

-Only one of each FOC slot for an Ally

-1x HQ and 1X Troop are mandatory

-Only certain factions can ally with others

I'm sure there will be many more restrictions in place to prevent tomfoolery.

Don't see the issue, if you choose not to play an ally yourself than you are consciously putting yourself at a disadvantage by not making use of an available option, same as if you decided not to use a Pyschic Hood against an army utilising Psykers. Yes it is very likely an IG army with GK Termis, Librarian and Dreads will beat an IG army without those things- BUT the option is there for you to counter with your own GKs or any other allied faction!

Allies only increases the tactical options available and the diversity in armies, which equals more fun. People will always find ways to 'break' the game through the rules; the rules are not designed for ultra-competetive play. If you ware concerned about the people you play with exploiting these new rules to create stupidly broken armies, then either build your own power-army or find a non-gakky group of people to play with.

I'd finally be able to field my IG alongside my BT at GW.

DeffDred wrote:Allies would ruin the game.

Why take a battlewagon when you can have a Landraider?

Because you'll also have to take a troop and HQ of Space Marines in order to get LR, meaning you'll be paying at least 170 points on top of the LR. You can do that if you want Also highly unlikley orks will ally will Imperials.

DeffDred wrote:
Why take a Daemon Prince when you can take Long Fangs?

Because Chaos can't ally with Space Wolves?

DeffDred wrote:
TH/SS terminators standing next to Fateweaver?

Space Marines allying with Chaos Demons...are you drunk or something?

I think a lot of people are grossly over-reacting to the ally rules. We don't understand them fully yet and there's no reason to suppose that they will leave the game open to exploit.

Dog. wrote:Rules rumours for allies as they stand-

-Only one of each FOC slot for an Ally

-1x HQ and 1X Troop are mandatory

-Only certain factions can ally with others

I'm sure there will be many more restrictions in place to prevent tomfoolery.

Don't see the issue, if you choose not to play an ally yourself than you are consciously putting yourself at a disadvantage by not making use of an available option, same as if you decided not to use a Pyschic Hood against an army utilising Psykers. Yes it is very likely an IG army with GK Termis, Librarian and Dreads will beat an IG army without those things- BUT the option is there for you to counter with your own GKs or any other allied faction!

Allies only increases the tactical options available and the diversity in armies, which equals more fun. People will always find ways to 'break' the game through the rules; the rules are not designed for ultra-competetive play. If you ware concerned about the people you play with exploiting these new rules to create stupidly broken armies, then either build your own power-army or find a non-gakky group of people to play with.

There may be disadvantages we don't know yet to the ally rules, not to mention Tyranids have no allies.

If I may guess, maybe you'd be able to take a second FoC of the army you run. But I dunno.

Dog. wrote:
Yes it is very likely an IG army with GK Termis, Librarian and Dreads will beat an IG army without those things-

Uhh not really. One army will have a fully utilised FOC with mechanised infantry creating an AV 12 wall and a threat range of melta death. The other will have a few tanks and some footslogging heavy infantry. The all guard army would have the upper hand easily.

ZebioLizard2 wrote:There may be disadvantages we don't know yet to the ally rules, not to mention Tyranids have no allies.

If I may guess, maybe you'd be able to take a second FoC of the army you run. But I dunno.

You can always ally your own faction. So even if you don't want to spend money on (the start of) a new army, effectively everybody will now be able to take 3 HQ choices, and presumably 4 HS/FA/Elite.

Allies were handled well in 2nd edition.

Each codex had a list of allied armies they could take choices from, up to 50% of the main army total. But back then Allies were also listed as part of the 'support' section of the codex, which essentially meant that you could take Allies, but that cut down on what you could take for tanks, etc. Kind of a precursor to Heavy Support.

My buddy and I always have the following house rule allowing Allies:

-Must be from the "allowed" list for that codex/army.
-Take up the same Force Org slots as from their original codex
-If there is a limit on how many of a certain squad choice can be fielded in the original book(0-1, 0-3, '1' etc), it stands for the numbers for allies, too.
-The "Main Force" must include equal or more choices from each section of the Force Org chart as their Allies. So if I pick a squad of Elites from the Imperial Guard to go with my Ultramarines, I must have one or two choices already filled from the Space marine codex.


It can still be cheesed, but truly "for fun" games completely eliminate that facet completely.

i think its great, it allows me to take a Dread libby in my DA (as they should anyway) or even a storm raven/talon in my Ravenwing, its not all about powergaming, some stuff from other codex's just fit well with others (theme wise)

good ones are

Imp guard/SM
Imp guard/CSM
CSM/Deamons
DA/SW
Orks/CSM
Tau/Ultras
Tau/Imp guard

Fluff wise there are loads i havent mentioned, if someone wants to make a OP tourny army then leave em be, i have no interest in playing them, but if there having fun each to there own