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tneva82 wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
The problem is that those factions arent really armies, and treating them as such was a mistake. The Inquisition for example, is not a battlefield force in and of itself, rather it coopts other forces for specific objectives/campaigns.

I disagree. Taking an allies system like AoS's and allowing us to mix and match things isn't a problem. Heck, with the Imperium that's a feature, not a bug after all. The problem was not expanding that to other factions (Orks, Tau, Necrons), some of which are known for working along side humans (Eldar, Tau and Orks have all done so in various points in history) and I'd love for Necrons to go full space Egypt and start taking human slaves to work for them (I mean nothing gets the ego going quite as much as having a captive audience to listen to your insane ramblings and agree with your every claim, and with mindshackle scarabs that's even more possible than ever).

And that's not even going into Traitor Guard which needs some proper love as well.

Basically I'm saying there should be more play in the allies system than we currently have (maybe split it into broader groups like AoS "Order", "Chaos", "Destruction" set up) and bonuses should be tied to how many shared keywords you have in your list. Basically I'm saying copy AoS, but don't do so many tiny subfactions.

So basically everybody can take anything without hindrance as otherwise some factions will be better.

Say hello to necron tyranid custodes etc comboes)

AOS still has some restrictions (shared keywords, points limit) and mixing units like that would lock you out of certain bonuses you'd get for having a more concentrated (aka Monocodex) army.

Allies should be allowed for all normal play, using the rules which make the Alliance lore-friendly (no Guilliman and Montarion on the same team).

In tournaments, I am all in for banning allies completely except these specific factions: Genestealer Cults, Inquisition, Harlequins, Lost and Damned and Imperial Knights. These factions have very small unit and loadout choices that running them alone would lead to one dimensional armies.

 K9ofChaos wrote:

HoundsofDemos wrote:
Allies like any other advantage goes back to the same core issue. People (particularly in a competitive setting with prestigious and prizes on the line) are going to take strong options. I don't see any complaints of people allying in Sisters of Battle with Ad mech. It's a few units from a few factions that create the soup issue and most of those have more to do with CP than anything else.

I don't know much about the competitive perspective, but from what I can tell the Imperium of Man has more options for "allies" than the other xenos empires do. Mainly because an Imperial Guard Regiment teaming up with a Tyranid Hive seems kinda odd to me. Perhaps GW could introduce new types of Xeno factions that have better foreign relations with say, the Eldar or the Tau and than with the Imperium.

Sorry if I got anything wrong though. I remember reading my Dark Vengeance rule book, and it said that certain factions would only team up with each other when something is in dire straights and the fate of the universe is on the line or something. Once again, sorry if I misinterpreted what you were trying to say.

That's how 6th-7th handled it, and honestly it worked pretty fine.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

bibotot wrote:
Allies should be allowed for all normal play, using the rules which make the Alliance lore-friendly (no Guilliman and Montarion on the same team).

In tournaments, I am all in for banning allies completely except these specific factions: Genestealer Cults, Inquisition, Harlequins, Lost and Damned and Imperial Knights. These factions have very small unit and loadout choices that running them alone would lead to one dimensional armies.

You forgot Daemons.

 K9ofChaos wrote:


I don't know much about the competitive perspective, but from what I can tell the Imperium of Man has more options for "allies" than the other xenos empires do. Mainly because an Imperial Guard Regiment teaming up with a Tyranid Hive seems kinda odd to me. Perhaps GW could introduce new types of Xeno factions that have better foreign relations with say, the Eldar or the Tau and than with the Imperium.

Sorry if I got anything wrong though. I remember reading my Dark Vengeance rule book, and it said that certain factions would only team up with each other when something is in dire straights and the fate of the universe is on the line or something. Once again, sorry if I misinterpreted what you were trying to say.

Tyranids have mind control worms, or the IG in question are members of GSC. Honestly, there's a way to explain any faction combination in the lore

Morgasm the Powerfull wrote:

 K9ofChaos wrote:


I don't know much about the competitive perspective, but from what I can tell the Imperium of Man has more options for "allies" than the other xenos empires do. Mainly because an Imperial Guard Regiment teaming up with a Tyranid Hive seems kinda odd to me. Perhaps GW could introduce new types of Xeno factions that have better foreign relations with say, the Eldar or the Tau and than with the Imperium.

Sorry if I got anything wrong though. I remember reading my Dark Vengeance rule book, and it said that certain factions would only team up with each other when something is in dire straights and the fate of the universe is on the line or something. Once again, sorry if I misinterpreted what you were trying to say.

Tyranids have mind control worms, or the IG in question are members of GSC. Honestly, there's a way to explain any faction combination in the lore

Yeah, IG allying with Tyranids is actually one of the easier alliances to justify. That's the whole point of Cults, to infiltrate Humanity's defences. They use a mixture hybrids, who go out and take up roles throughout the society they are infiltrating, and psychic mind control.

Once the infestation gets deep, local commanders can be indoctrinated into the cult even! Anyone who doesn't go along with them would get BLAMMED, just like the Imperium would do anyway.

Allies are very good when you are not doing min-maxing. Maybe problem are competitive tournaments?

What comes to command points I would pleased to see that you could use command points only for faction who earned them.

 Draco wrote:
Allies are very good when you are not doing min-maxing. Maybe problem are competitive tournaments?

This is the worst logic ever. Most things are pretty fair when you aren't min maxing, it balances itself out. Sounds like you're not playing competitively and don't want to change how your list currently works. That makes sense, and I can empathise, which is why you probably shouldn't restrict yourself to matched play rules if you aren't playing competitively.

The game has to be built and balanced at the min-max competitive end. Otherwise you're basically relying on telling people to build worse armies all the time in order to keep it "fair". That isn't fun for anyone and can be a minefield of arguments (just look at early AoS when there were no points at all and you either used the old points or had to debate/argue over what was fair for you both to take

All Alliances make sense in a way:

Grey Knights with Chaos Space Marines? Those Chaos Space Marines want to redeem themselves.

Space Marines with Orks? Ork mercenaries.

Mechanicus and Tyranids? Artificial Hive Minds.

Warhammer 40k is a very large universe. You can stretch your imagination to make almost any scenario possible. The thing is that it shouldn't translate into tabletop gaming experience. Not only would that be overly convoluted, but it also takes away the identity of each faction if any can become friend with another at certain times.

For this reason, I am 100% against using Astra Militarum in Chaos instead of Lost and Damned or Astra Militrarum and Tau in Tyranids instead of actual Genestealer Cults. GW can release new rules and models, but they should distinguish sub factions from their parents. You should not have the best of both worlds and ruin the faction just so that you can slap the face of every people on the opposite end of the table with your win-at-all-cost list.

bibotot wrote:
All Alliances make sense in a way:

Grey Knights with Chaos Space Marines? Those Chaos Space Marines want to redeem themselves.

Space Marines with Orks? Ork mercenaries.

Mechanicus and Tyranids? Artificial Hive Minds.

Warhammer 40k is a very large universe. You can stretch your imagination to make almost any scenario possible. The thing is that it shouldn't translate into tabletop gaming experience. Not only would that be overly convoluted, but it also takes away the identity of each faction if any can become friend with another at certain times.

There is established lore on this kind of thing and it's not at all part of the universe and none of what you said is even really plausible at all. It's fine if you want to do your own stuff, but if you have minimal knowledge of the lore don't pretend it works lorewise because of some catchphrase. "Necron's caught Red Thirst!". That's your own thing, and you can have fun with your models and universe, but it's no more fluffy than Tau Tyranids. "Tau pheromone domination!"

Considering allies are only LIMITED in Matched play (you can do whatever you want in Narrative and Open play), the limits we have are explicitly for Matched Play and Matched Play alone.

GW in their infinite wisdom think that the current pools of allies are what they want in matched play, so that is what we have. If they feel that matched play needs more alliance limitations, they will make more down the road. Or they can add them as "Organised play suggestions" like the rule of 3.

That is the most gakky part of the ally charade.

All or nothing people. In for a penny in for a pound.

I prefer not to be in btw. Match play= no or highly limited allies for me.

 BaconCatBug wrote:
Considering allies are only LIMITED in Matched play (you can do whatever you want in Narrative and Open play), the limits we have are explicitly for Matched Play and Matched Play alone.

GW in their infinite wisdom think that the current pools of allies are what they want in matched play, so that is what we have. If they feel that matched play needs more alliance limitations, they will make more down the road. Or they can add them as "Organised play suggestions" like the rule of 3.

in many areas you will not find anybody willing to play matched or open play. there are a lot of players who consider themselves hardcore and match only. These players often have never been to a tournament beyond a local gamestore. They show up with the flavor of the month netlist, lose to the actual good players but beat the players who came with fluff lists and declare themselves tournament veterans. In my area I can find a few open/narrative options for my army (orks with chaos space marines) in 6th and 7th I could ally them and had fun, its mercenary orks with alpha legion paying them and providing fire support. But only a handful of players actually will play and going into a store I cannot find a match because everybody wants matched play and my armies lack a liek keyword.

only real restriction I would go for, over the current keyword system and "Battle Brothers", detachment limit etc is that one faction must have at least 50% of point, and this one must be the one the warlord comes from, they are the army, the others are 'attached' to it.

 G00fySmiley wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:
Considering allies are only LIMITED in Matched play (you can do whatever you want in Narrative and Open play), the limits we have are explicitly for Matched Play and Matched Play alone.

GW in their infinite wisdom think that the current pools of allies are what they want in matched play, so that is what we have. If they feel that matched play needs more alliance limitations, they will make more down the road. Or they can add them as "Organised play suggestions" like the rule of 3.

in many areas you will not find anybody willing to play matched or open play. there are a lot of players who consider themselves hardcore and match only. These players often have never been to a tournament beyond a local gamestore. They show up with the flavor of the month netlist, lose to the actual good players but beat the players who came with fluff lists and declare themselves tournament veterans. In my area I can find a few open/narrative options for my army (orks with chaos space marines) in 6th and 7th I could ally them and had fun, its mercenary orks with alpha legion paying them and providing fire support. But only a handful of players actually will play and going into a store I cannot find a match because everybody wants matched play and my armies lack a liek keyword.

Same. I bought AdMech to have some Dark Mechanicum in my Chaos army. Using them was a bit tricky with that CtA 12 inch deployment limit, but it was still cool.

leopard wrote:
only real restriction I would go for, over the current keyword system and "Battle Brothers", detachment limit etc is that one faction must have at least 50% of point, and this one must be the one the warlord comes from, they are the army, the others are 'attached' to it.

That's one of the more sound solutions. Doesn't AoS have a similar system already?

AoS restricts allies based upon their Grand Alliance group and then again based upon specific lists of allowed allies within their Battletomes/rules.

There are ways to get more allies outside of that, but the further out you go the more you lose out on faction specific abilities and traits which are often powerful and very desirable. Essentially AoS lets you take lots of allies, but puts the bonus on having a more mono-faction force with some room in it for taking standard allies.

Most armies are a single core force with the standard 400 points (at 2K full game points) of allies. This was further restricted in making you only allowed to take 1/4 in units as allies as well.


The armies that tend to fare poorly are the tiny ones that are one or two models big; which is mostly a function of them not yet being addressed by GW for adjustment or rebalancing (legacy from the early Kirby days of AoS)



Plus when you take allies the allied units often won't benefit from command traits or faction abilities and mages which are allied in can't use the faction lore nor their own faction spell lore. So they are restricted to the spells on their warscroll and any realm-spell lore (if you and your opponent decide to use realm rules for the battlefield). This not only feels right in terms of how allies are taken, but it also means that min-maxing with allies isn't straight forward nor always going to happen.

 BaconCatBug wrote:

leopard wrote:
only real restriction I would go for, over the current keyword system and "Battle Brothers", detachment limit etc is that one faction must have at least 50% of point, and this one must be the one the warlord comes from, they are the army, the others are 'attached' to it.

That's one of the more sound solutions. Doesn't AoS have a similar system already?

Pretty much, except 80% need to be main faction, up to 20% allies.

The allies rules for GCS are pretty good. What if we used those as a template?

 Blndmage wrote:
The allies rules for GCS are pretty good. What if we used those as a template?

Because it makes perfect sense that a Catachan Jungle Fighter, someone who has learned to kill animals with their bare hands before they can even talk, suddenly forgets how to be Swole because some crispy boys in Green and some ammonia smelling pasty boys in Black showed up and started shouting "orders".

 BaconCatBug wrote:

 Blndmage wrote:
The allies rules for GCS are pretty good. What if we used those as a template?

Because it makes perfect sense that a Catachan Jungle Fighter, someone who has learned to kill animals with their bare hands before they can even talk, suddenly forgets how to be Swole because some crispy boys in Green and some ammonia smelling pasty boys in Black showed up and started shouting "orders".

It makes perfect sense that we fire flamers at airplanes

It makes perfect sense that we can only take 3 terminator squads when some factions have entire companies of them

It makes perfect sense that n autogun bullet travels 24" straight without losing any hitting power at all and then and then drops to the floor harmlessly when it goes a millimeter past that length.

I get that your gimmick is to complain about the rules at all times but sometimes you have to recognise this is a game, not a simulation and sometimes rules are made for the sake of gameplay. A force built out of free picking the strongest guys from two separate factions SHOULD be stronger in reality than a force the same size picked from just one. But capturing that just tosses balance out the window. His suggestion really wasn't that bad either, it does make some sense that if you weren't in command of an OP you may not be able to get much use out of your unique battle doctrine as you would otherwise.

I don't think it does nearly enough on its own anyway though, but I think it's one piece that should be considered.

Chapter/Regiment/ETC tactics represent (In general) the coordinate style of fighting of a specific force.

Is just as coherent to make them lose those bonus if they are mixed in the same detachment with others factions than in the same army. Is just a balance decision.