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LONG VERSION: So last week my Thousand Sons CSM army broke 3000 points, and I've pretty much gotten tired of collecting more CSM crap, so i wanted to start a new army. My first thought was Eldar, but a friend of mine had just started getting into W40K after he helped paint one of my Predators, and wanted to get Assault on Black Reach. We were talking and I've pretty much decided to go halves with him on black reach; he gets the Marines, and I get the Orks. I had this idea that I'd buy some orks, and also buy Eldar, and play them as together as one army; like the Eldar had tricked the Orks into fighting with them. But i just had this feeling that mixing armies was horribly against the rules?

SHORT VERSION: can i mix armies? (like play orks and eldar together?)

Also my friend fell in love with the Imperial Guard tanks and was wondering if he could have some in a Space Marine force?

Uhm... Yeah, I'd say that mixing armies brings up all sorts of terrifying balance issues... That's why the "allies" system was set up with the Witch Hunters and Daemonhunters: The reason they can 'borrow' units from each other is because they're very comparable in power. Imperial Guard and Space Marine are radically different armies, though, and Ork and Eldar possibly even more so. I personally wouldn't do it... But hey, that's the glory of 40k. You can do pretty much as you please, providing your opponent agrees on it.

If youdo it, I would try to make up a scenario where the space marines are surrounded by the eldar and okrs and have to fight their way out or defend some mission objective. Attacking from different directions could help to balance the game somewhat by basically creating two small battlefields.

Greets
Schepp himself

If you want to minimize the impact of mixing armies, keep them on seperate force org charts and count them as different armies for the special rules (like vulcan, etc).

On the other hand, if you like finding wierd combos then mix them freely and you can do some really wild things.

YES!!!!

Only if you got a awesome story behind it... like

Chaos Wraithlord...

Eldar Prince captured by Dark Eldar and tortured to beyond insanity... Eldar rescues him whilst he is KO'd and drag him off but... the Dark Eldar snipe the prince. the eldar are like "take the spirit stone" and they get a farseer to imbue the stone with a wraithlord construct... but the wraitlord goes beserk and (after killing the farseer and many others) breaks out and runs off to be picked up by a chaos group.. they get a psycher to torture the soul to submision then they got themselves a wraithlord...

one of me mates came up with that...

Elegost

I'd be all for playing with mixed armies on occasion. As long as you can find like minded players to play against I don't see anything wrong with it. That's what adeptacon is all about.

Playing a mixed army against an unmixed army can lead to some rather lop-sided games though.

Yeah i have kinda wondered about this concept also. I wanted to take my 1k sons force with IG catchan and the 1k sons have enslaved the IG. I was planning on painting them in urban camo colors and have whip marks on them. Kind of egyptian influenced.

Mixing armys is good if your playing large point games and you can make it make sense. Such as my tyranids are assaulting a SM outpost, and chaos happen to want that same outpost, so they're helping the nids out some.

However, its really up to your foe. Most people would probably say no at points under 2k. Even so, however, making a balanced, good list of 1k of 2 armys would be kinda difficult. If you were facing me I'd take out the army half that is good at what my army does, then face stomp the other half hehe.

If its 3k+, then yes.
3k-, No.

Mixing armies is fine for fun games. You have to be aware that each army was designed with a weakness, so taking two different armies which cover each other's weaknesses could give you a super-strength combination.

For example if you combined Tau firepower with Ork numbers and H2H.

So there could be balance issues.

Vulkan termie spam and loota spam would be almost unstopable.

so, basically, just make sure the army isn't completely unfair, the other player(s) agrees, and a cool background makes it better?

most of the ideas we had for mixing armies were more along the lines of individual models though. like, i personally love Leman Russ tanks; me and my buddeh feel like adding a few to the fledgling SM force we're building.

also, i kind of want to take a carnifex, and an SM biker and some small chains and stuff to make like a tamed carnifex. just one, like name him and everything, and give it a back story.

The tame carnifex idea seems like it would be a better idea to make up a data sheet for like decrease his cc stats as hes chained up but increase bs leadership and maybe give him 1 more wound but you roll like you do for ork artilary 1-5 you hit fex 6 you hit rider if rider dies carnifex goes berzerk and attacks closest unit friendly or foe

i hve a valkyrie in my Ultramarine army i find it fair as long as you have the codex and other data to field it with you

lol, my favorite alley was TAU and NID's...backstory is the Tau learn to make the Pheromones that instruct the Nids, thus making Nids the Tau slaves. It was against Space marines and we made rules up for tau bombers droppping Pheromone bombs on each unit at the beginning of the game and on a roll of a 1, the nids wouldn't be able to attacks or defend themselves against said target ( i think i rolled 3 1's). But stuff like that is very enjoyable.

Eldar and orks is an easy backstory, because the Eldar have thier own agendas and they have been known to help poeple on day and destroy them the next. Just for everyday fun games, i think it's great. It adds backstories/uniqueness to the plain game. But don't try to do that at a tourny or you will get laughed at.