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Hi Guys,

Just bought the 5th edition codex today and there is nothing about custom chapter as there is in 4th edition. HOWEVER, I have had a heated discussion with my small group of friends who I game with about the "we stand alone" minor drawback. The rule states quite clearly "May not use allies."

So as a group I have a Blood Angels army, my ally has a Dark Angels army. We play against a Tyranid army and a Chaos army that in the ally table says they are not allies but if they are fighting the same army, they may join forces to attack a foe. If they win they normally have a fight to the death too though

There's also a Tau army and an Eldar army underway but that's a digression...

So if I decided to continue my idea of my own chapter and I take the "We stand alone" minor drawback and continue to play in the current scenario, I can not treat the Dark Angels army as an ally but does this mean I automatically treat them as a foe along with all chapters of the Space Marines? There's also another issue that someone has said the Dark Angels don't ally with anyone anyway...

Can anyone clear these matters up?

Short answer, 1 Codex Per Player

Long Answer, If you are playing 2v2 there are no rules for it in the BRB. you have to agree with your opponents on how that would work. We play 2v2 battles all the time. One army cannot use the other special rules or transports but they are fighting as a team vs the other 2 armies.

As far as chapters go, make your own fluffy chapter is fine just choose a single codex for the rules your army will follow.

You're going to have to come up with your own answers on this one.

The main 40k rules don't cover anything other than a 1 vs 1 battle. If you're teaming up, you need to house rule things or play apoc (which requires you to house rule a ton of things). There's also no custom chapter rules in the latest SM codex. So, you can't do that without house rules.

Well are you using the 4e or 5e codex? There is no minor drawback in the 5e codex, so that's kind of a non-issue.

As for the scenario: it's custom so it all depends on what you guys want to play. There's no clear RaW for this.

As for my gaming group, we usually do 2v2 battles as well (3v3 when we have the players for it). But, we basically ignore the "allies" thing. We have chaos teaming with SM, teaming with 'nids versus Orks, and Eldar, and Tau. Just things that don't make sense in any way, but it doesn't really matter.

As for fluff reasons: I've always hated the "no allies" stuff in some codices. Really, anything from the Imperium will ally with anything else from the Imperium at any time. You could also, easily, create fluff for anything from the Imperium allying with Chaos, Eldar, or Tau. Really, the only armies that don't make sense allying with others are Tyranids and Necrons, and that is because of their "KILL EVERYTHING" policies.

Orks w/ anything: being manipulated
Eldar w/ anything: manipulating / fighting against a greater threat
Dark Eldar w/ anything: see it as an opportunity for whatever
Chaos w/ anything: [insert army name] has recently fallen to chaos
Imperial w/ imperial: durrrrr
Imperial w/ anything: fighting against a greater threat / manipulated
Tau w/ anything: fighting for the greater good
'Nids: don't really work with anything
Necrons: don't really work with anything

Well we all have 4e codices but I bought the 5e out of curiosity. I get where everyone is coming from and I thank you for your input, however it seems a bit silly to make a rule and then get around it by making the fluff say otherwise doesn't it?

After all this confusion I found another rule that suits me better by having 0-1 Landspeeder OR bike OR attack bike squadron. I hate the bikes and don't use landspeeders so I'm comfortable with that one. The other one was the inability to field psykers which again, I haven't used and don't think I ever will...

Shrike325 wrote:Well are you using the 4e or 5e codex? There is no minor drawback in the 5e codex, so that's kind of a non-issue.

As for the scenario: it's custom so it all depends on what you guys want to play. There's no clear RaW for this.

As for my gaming group, we usually do 2v2 battles as well (3v3 when we have the players for it). But, we basically ignore the "allies" thing. We have chaos teaming with SM, teaming with 'nids versus Orks, and Eldar, and Tau. Just things that don't make sense in any way, but it doesn't really matter.

As for fluff reasons: I've always hated the "no allies" stuff in some codices. Really, anything from the Imperium will ally with anything else from the Imperium at any time. You could also, easily, create fluff for anything from the Imperium allying with Chaos, Eldar, or Tau. Really, the only armies that don't make sense allying with others are Tyranids and Necrons, and that is because of their "KILL EVERYTHING" policies.

Orks w/ anything: being manipulated
Eldar w/ anything: manipulating / fighting against a greater threat
Dark Eldar w/ anything: see it as an opportunity for whatever
Chaos w/ anything: [insert army name] has recently fallen to chaos
Imperial w/ imperial: durrrrr
Imperial w/ anything: fighting against a greater threat / manipulated
Tau w/ anything: fighting for the greater good
'Nids: don't really work with anything
Necrons: don't really work with anything

I agree that the Necron generally wont have any long term alliances so if your going to really go by lore for determining teams, so far the only support is the Blood Angels 3rd company lead by Dante, and that was only in the face of the tyranids. So you could justify Necrons allying with Blood Angels.

The no allies part may have been a leftover from 4th ed referring to not allowing you to take armies like the GK and add them to your army back when they were in there previous codex.

shiftystylin wrote:Well we all have 4e codices but I bought the 5e out of curiosity. I get where everyone is coming from and I thank you for your input, however it seems a bit silly to make a rule and then get around it by making the fluff say otherwise doesn't it?

Umm, you DO realise this codex was also written for a previous set of rules, right?

If you're playing 4th ed, then go for it. Otherwise, you WILL hit issues with 5th ed rules and the 4th ed SM codex.

The "no allies" of that codex was in reference to Daemonhunters and Witchhunters, which could be taken as allied units in an army. So if he's only using his 4th ed codex then he's within the restrictions laid out be that drawback.

Chromedog: Yeah, I'm not planning to use 5th ed whilst everyone else is using 4th ed codex and rulebooks... The bit that you copied and pasted clearly states that "I bought the 5th edition out of curiosity" as in, I wanted to see what the 5th edition said about making a chapter, if it had any more ideas and if it was worth everyone upgrading to 5th ed yet.

After re-reading the replies I get what people are saying so I retract my question

"I get where everyone is coming from and I thank you for your input, however it seems a bit silly to make a rule and then get around it by making the fluff say otherwise doesn't it?"

So let me get this right.

Your group of people play with the 4ed. rules and those people who play Space Marines, Imperial Guard, Space Wolves, Tyranids, Blood Angels, Dark Eldar and Grey Knights do not use the current codexes for those armies, but rather the older ones?

Chrysis wrote:The "no allies" of that codex was in reference to Daemonhunters and Witchhunters, which could be taken as allied units in an army. So if he's only using his 4th ed codex then he's within the restrictions laid out be that drawback.

+1