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HoundsofDemos wrote:
I think his point is that necrons are a very strong codex, were others such as sisters of battle or chaos marines benefit from allies to make them strong.

As a space marine player the fact that i can legal splash in a little guard or have a inquisitor show up to commandeer my forces really makes armies feel fluffier and helps meld the background to the table top.

I agree with this when I play my sisters. In bigger 1850pt battles I will take an allied attachment of either Knight/s or marines (in drop pods mostly) with at least a stormtalon. normally the sister's are enough but there is always that nagging feeling that I'm going to get trumped in the air race.

Experiment 626 wrote:
... I don't want to see allies removed or else banned because of a minority of try-hards and noob-slayers giving allies a bad rap.

Unfortunately, it is just these folks who drive off new players, returning player, and non-competitive players before they become a solid part of the community. It's hard to grow a hobby is someone is feasting on the low-hanging fruit.

JMHO

Heybiff


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Hawkeye888 wrote:
IG are just falling behind in a powerful meta.

Forgive me, but I've been out of the game for a while. What's meta?

The larger gaming environment whether in your local area or for the game more broadly. What a typical game/list/army etc will look like. Some local metas may have lots of flyers, another may ban LOWs, another better bring only the most competitive list or get stomped.

The term is not specific to 40k and is used for many other games like magic and others.

Allies are broken gak that needs to go away. Yes some armies have strong codex and others lack. But back in the day each army was built to be somewhat competitive on its own, with some weaker units to balance it out.

40k now is the entire army is generally super power and with no weak spots.

The only way to correct it imho is to first of all get rid of allies. For groups that benefit or could use - consolidate into one book. Such as daemons and WOC. Etc. Then with a new edition rebalance and re release new books for all the armies. No need for new models - but 8th and the new armie books all drop at the same time - with the same rules referenced and the same "balance" found. Each book could even contain new units or things to be followed up with later releases.

But imho this "style" of releasing a new main rule book, then slowley releasing a new army book/ units every few months untill you have some from previous older from the new rules and newest awsome - it creates massive unbalance that can only be fixed by unloading the scales and resetting.

But allies have to go. And I'm half inclined to think "formations" should be gone as well. They work ok for apoc .... But not normal games.

lemondaze wrote:
I've been out of the game for a while, so I suspect that this is something of a gradual change but...since when did using allies become so normalized?!!

7E really took all the gloves off and basically said "go wild", and so people did, particularly when they saw how badly you could break the game with it.

It dismays me to see so many gamers happily combine two forces. Often, it will be to address a weakness in one army with the strength of another (which for me, kinda defeats the whole point of a faction-based game). Very rarely it will be for fluff reasons and even then, the fluff is normally retrospective.

I'd feel - frankly - a bit of a fraud for having some of these combos. I see the correlation between SM and IG, but some really do boggle the mind.

It's a real shame as I see it diminishing the value and character of each race or faction :(

You very certainly aren't alone.

 DarthSpader wrote:
Allies are broken gak that needs to go away. Yes some armies have strong codex and others lack. But back in the day each army was built to be somewhat competitive on its own, with some weaker units to balance it out.

40k now is the entire army is generally super power and with no weak spots.

The only way to correct it imho is to first of all get rid of allies. For groups that benefit or could use - consolidate into one book. Such as daemons and WOC. Etc. Then with a new edition rebalance and re release new books for all the armies. No need for new models - but 8th and the new armie books all drop at the same time - with the same rules referenced and the same "balance" found. Each book could even contain new units or things to be followed up with later releases.

But imho this "style" of releasing a new main rule book, then slowley releasing a new army book/ units every few months untill you have some from previous older from the new rules and newest awsome - it creates massive unbalance that can only be fixed by unloading the scales and resetting.

But allies have to go. And I'm half inclined to think "formations" should be gone as well. They work ok for apoc .... But not normal games.

I disagree. Sure there are some broken combinations that players will exploit. But not every combination is as broken as Thunderdome or Draigostar.

I'm confused; didn't people build armies to minimize weak spots back before allies came in with 6th edition? This is just a different way of list building. Are there ways that it could be modified to improve balance? Definitely, but I don't think that we should scrap all of the allies system just because of a couple glaring issues.

There are plenty of people that don't want every Marine codex rolled into one book, but that could actually work. Stapling the spawn of the Dark Gods onto their human servants, merging three totally different cultures of Eldar into one army, or cramming the Sisters of Battle in with the Grey Knights and the rest of the Inquisition just wouldn't work out. You'd have to keep the individual factions seperate enough to where they might as well be different armies. It also wouldn't solve any of the broken combinations you see on the tabletop.

I'm all for releasing new and updated rules if they're accompanied by book updates at the same time. But that's never going to happen. GW exists to sell models, and the models promote the new book. The best we can hope for is that the remaining 6th edition books are updated in a balanced way.

 TheNewBlood wrote:
I'm confused; didn't people build armies to minimize weak spots back before allies came in with 6th edition? This is just a different way of list building. Are there ways that it could be modified to improve balance? Definitely, but I don't think that we should scrap all of the allies system just because of a couple glaring issues.

My main gripe with allies isn't the fluffy lists or even the powerful deathstar combos as such, it's that the ally system is just one more excuse for GW to not care about any sort of balance between the bare-bones armies. And ofc another reason to sell more models and books... My SoB don't have integrated AA, flyers or psykers, the best AT is still a Meltagun and ofc still no drop pods like they use in the fluff. But, says GW, you can have all that if you only buy a few more armies - or perhaps just one if it has all the things you lack! Try some allied Space Marines, they're good and have the largest profit margin for us anyways.

Back in 3rd every army hated everyone else. The only ones who didn't were the IOM stuff, and even then there was a serious distrust and suspicion of heresey. GW even printed st one point, (I think in the first Gk book) a table saying why they would be fighting another army.

Everyone hated everyone and especially the evil guys hated the Xenos or chaos - and God forbid an allies tournament showed up - "why would my army be allies with THEM??? We HATE them!!!" And so on. Now.... Everyone bro fists everyone else and it's all one big happy campfire where instead of blowing each other to pieces it's a friendly match of paintball or something.

If my plan for world domination works, and i gain control of GW - the first thing out the door is allies. Followed fast by formations and detachments.