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Eh, I guess this is the right section of the forums to post this.

There has been a lot of compaints that the ally matrix makes little sense. I revised it for fun and tried to make it more fluffy.
I also altered the colours to make it more intuitive (and not to get mixed up with the real one.)



Here's the original for comparison:

I would have used the color dark green instead of grey.

1) Tyranids can ally with grey knights and imperial guard?
2) Tyranids still can't ally with themselves?

chrisrawr wrote:1) Tyranids can ally with grey knights and imperial guard?
2) Tyranids still can't ally with themselves?

They can't ally with Grey Knights...
They can ally with IG to represent genestealer cult or mind slaves.

No one can ally with themselves.

oh whoop, looked at the bottom wrong.

Meh, still feels wonky to me. What about Sisters and Orks then? If you're gonna reach that far back for fluff, they've got their fingers in all those delicious pies.

No one can ally with themselves because...? If anyone could, it would be tyranids and orks able to.

chrisrawr wrote:oh whoop, looked at the bottom wrong.

Meh, still feels wonky to me. What about Sisters and Orks then? If you're gonna reach that far back for fluff, they've got their fingers in all those delicious pies.

No one can ally with themselves because...? If anyone could, it would be tyranids and orks able to.

Because you can't take an allied detachment of yourself.

Again, why? Especially for nids, which probably teamed up with another splinter, and which also DESPERATELY NEED THE ABILITY.

Oh God, not the genestealer cult argument. Look, if Tyranids could take guard allies, the vast majority wouldn't do it to make a fluffy genestealer cult, they would do it to take fliers and tanks, which genestealer cults don't generally have. Even then the tyranid army would probably have to be guard allies, because the various generations of crossbreeds, as well as mutants and allied humans would greatly outnumber the genestealers. Please, let this argument die, I don't care if you can take other nids as allies to get some more slots in your FoC, just please stop it with the genestealer nonsense.

A fluffy genestealer cult using allies would be something like
Tyranid Prime
A few genestealers (maybe two squads of 10, perhaps a few more)

Guard Allies
Primaris Psyker (Magus, or whatever the purestrain psychic human face to the cult is called)
Ratlings or Ogryn (abhumans and mutants generally ally with them, take it or leave it either way)
2 Guard Platoons, no meltas or plasma guns, tons of basic guardsmen
Rough riders (meh, would probably be more like farmers riding on horses, but whatever)

And trust me you wouldn't beat anything with an army like that, you would just get shot to bits and murdered in close combat

Buttons, you're of course right that many people would use allies to create unfluffy armies, but you really cannot avoid that unless you have rules limiting which specific units can ally which eachother, and that would just be madness.

You can also ally Emperor's Children with Dark Eldar, and that makes no sense whatsoever, even though some other chaos allies might.


And that Genestealer Cult army you outlined looks really cool to me. (Sure it might suck, but still...)

Why not dark eldar and nids? Dark Eldar use Beast Masters to control captured Nids.

Yes! Someone who knows Space Wolves and Dark Angels don't mix!

Crimson wrote:
You can also ally Emperor's Children with Dark Eldar, and that makes no sense whatsoever, even though some other chaos allies might.

To an extent it might be, but it depends on the situation. While he doesn't worship Slaanesh specifically (don't think he actually worships chaos in any form, just loves experimenting) Fabius Bile could still be considered a member of the Emperor's Children, and the other marines are his various followers, aides, experiments, and potential experiments. Fabius Bile was actually educated for a while in the tower of flesh or whatever by the Haemonculi, so he does have some political allies in the Dark Eldar. Also, no Eldar should ally with chaos IMO since both the Dark Eldar and Eldar hate chaos as a whole.

I also have to say one thing, there was a thread in 4chan about this, where anyone could modify it however they wanted. I made everyone brothers in arms, just to stop the bitching. Is it unfluffy? Of course, but unfluffiness will be apparent in 90% of all competitive armies anyway, at least that balances armies and leaves open options for friendly or fluffy games allowing one to implement combos that one might not think of at first (like a fluffy 'stealer cult of any species, or a renegade psyker releasing daemons (daemons with IG allies, the latter being lead by a primaris psyker)).

If everyone was battle brothers:

They all stop fighting and everyone gets along. The necrons use the tyranids' biomancy to acquire new bodies and they find out that the Hive Mind just wants love, deep down inside of it.

The adeptus mechanicus create a love-bomb from an old blueprint and fire it into the maw of the hivefleet, and now genestealers are at all the parties and all the carifexes are uguufexes.

Dark Eldar and Eldar reconcile after finding the old ones who were hiding under a rock while they played a massive game of Go! and got carried away, and the Old Ones shut off the Warp Agitator, killing the Chaos Gods.

The Orks, freed of the Warp Agitator, ascend to their final form and burst into the new foundation for webway expansions.

The emperor is reincarnated and all the primarchs, found and recovered from chaos, are reunited as a happy family. Horus comes back just to say that the afterlife is great now, and all the dead people ever are having fun.

Humans and Eldar from all the colony ships and craftworlds sent across the voids between galaxies make contact through the new webways and the universe is full of happiness forever the end.

The old apocalypse allies chart lets Tyranids ally with Chaos, Dark Eldar and Orks as something along of "allies of convenience". Just saying.

The allies matrix has me wanting to make a fandex for 'human mercenaries' that provides a different look from Imperial Guard, that way they don't have to be allied to every side that has humans with guns.

I still find it odd that Eldar and Dark Eldar are 'battle brothers'. They should really not be much closer than space marines and their chaos brethren. Both view the others as traitors, but I could see them being desperate allies.

I'd even make Dark Angels only 'allies of convenience' with the Imperial Guard. They don't like abhumans too much.

Other than that, well done.

chrisrawr wrote:Again, why? Especially for nids, which probably teamed up with another splinter, and which also DESPERATELY NEED THE ABILITY.

Because its silly. And thats what the second FoC at 2k is for.

amanita wrote:I still find it odd that Eldar and Dark Eldar are 'battle brothers'. ... Both view the others as traitors,

No they don't. They view each other as an unwelcome uncle at a family gathering, but still family.

chrisrawr wrote:If everyone was battle brothers:

They all stop fighting and everyone gets along. The necrons use the tyranids' biomancy to acquire new bodies and they find out that the Hive Mind just wants love, deep down inside of it.

The adeptus mechanicus create a love-bomb from an old blueprint and fire it into the maw of the hivefleet, and now genestealers are at all the parties and all the carifexes are uguufexes.

Dark Eldar and Eldar reconcile after finding the old ones who were hiding under a rock while they played a massive game of Go! and got carried away, and the Old Ones shut off the Warp Agitator, killing the Chaos Gods.

The Orks, freed of the Warp Agitator, ascend to their final form and burst into the new foundation for webway expansions.

The emperor is reincarnated and all the primarchs, found and recovered from chaos, are reunited as a happy family. Horus comes back just to say that the afterlife is great now, and all the dead people ever are having fun.

Humans and Eldar from all the colony ships and craftworlds sent across the voids between galaxies make contact through the new webways and the universe is full of happiness forever the end.

While that sounds hilarious my point was "feth fluff, just let people do what they want" the tournament scene would probably be a bloody mess of unfluffy alliances, but who cares? Who goes to tournaments to play fluffy battles? Outside of tournaments it could give one the ability to think of fluffy alliances that the developers might have not thought of (like genestealer cults or monsters created by haemonculi)

As for Nids allying with themselves, why not? They need some boost, and a boost to their FOC before 2000 points would be nice. Everyone else can take 4 from each slot, 8 troops, and 3 HQs before 2K points due to allies, why can't nids?

Ok for Dark angels

Imperial guard: AOC
Space marines: AoC
Space wolves: AoC
Black templars: AoC
Blood angels : AoC
Grey Knights: DA
Sisters: DA
Eldar: CoA
Deldar: CoA
Necrons: CoA
Tyranids: CoA

DA should not be able to ally with ANY alien faction and most imperial ones do not trust DA.
DA would not ally with any Inquisitorial faction either unless under the most dire circumstances.

Desperate Allies represents a situation where you have to be actively worried that your 'ally' might stab you in to back midfight. Even though certain imperial factions (like Dark Angels and Inquisition) certainly do not like eachother, once they have a common foe they can put their differences aside for the time being.

Crimson wrote:Desperate Allies represents a situation where you have to be actively worried that your 'ally' might stab you in to back midfight. Even though certain imperial factions (like Dark Angels and Inquisition) certainly do not like eachother, once they have a common foe they can put their differences aside for the time being.

He's got a point, the Dark Angels have supposedly opened fire on allies before, or at least threatened to do so (there's an incident in the Codex with a Black Templars cruiser actively threatened by the DA fleet as the BT guy refuses to hand a prisoner over they just captured as a team - the cruiser never makes it back to the rest of the BT), and the Dark Angels are known to simply leave a warzone when approached by curious Inquisitors and Ecclesiarchy clergy.

I wouldn't necessarily say there's a huge risk of them shooting each other, but at the same time it is a worse relationship than the "normal" Alliance of Convenience that I see as a default between Vanilla Marines and SoB.

Also, SoB+SW should be Desperate Allies at best. They've just come out of a three weeks war against each other - a Sororitas punitive expedition to Fenris after the Space Wolves murdered a bunch of priests foolishly trying to investigate reports of heresy in the Chapter. The ceasefire between Space Wolves and the Ministorum is very, very fragile.

Lynata wrote:

Crimson wrote:Desperate Allies represents a situation where you have to be actively worried that your 'ally' might stab you in to back midfight. Even though certain imperial factions (like Dark Angels and Inquisition) certainly do not like eachother, once they have a common foe they can put their differences aside for the time being.

He's got a point, the Dark Angels have supposedly opened fire on allies before, or at least threatened to do so (there's an incident in the Codex with a Black Templars cruiser actively threatened by the DA fleet as the BT guy refuses to hand a prisoner over they just captured as a team - the cruiser never makes it back to the rest of the BT), and the Dark Angels are known to simply leave a warzone when approached by curious Inquisitors and Ecclesiarchy clergy.

I wouldn't necessarily say there's a huge risk of them shooting each other, but at the same time it is a worse relationship than the "normal" Alliance of Convenience that I see as a default between Vanilla Marines and SoB.

Also, SoB+SW should be Desperate Allies at best. They've just come out of a three weeks war against each other - a Sororitas punitive expedition to Fenris after the Space Wolves murdered a bunch of priests foolishly trying to investigate reports of heresy in the Chapter. The ceasefire between Space Wolves and the Ministorum is very, very fragile.

Agreed, DA and BT are (in modern terms) insane, one is ultra zealous (BT) the other is paranoid beyong rational reason (DA) and both utterly despise aliens, not in the same way normal chapters do, I mean actually attack on sight despise and not "bromance for the time being".

DA and the inquistion would only work together in the most dire circumstances (with exception to the deathwatch) and as said above, we know that they have abandoned or directly attacked imperial forces, DA are the most Chaotic of the space marine chapters and in my opinion only 1 step away from damnation.

Formosa wrote:DA are the most Chaotic of the space marine chapters and in my opinion only 1 step away from damnation.

Not the Space Wolves? The DA at least try to hide it ...

amanita wrote:I still find it odd that Eldar and Dark Eldar are 'battle brothers'. They should really not be much closer than space marines and their chaos brethren. Both view the others as traitors, but I could see them being desperate allies.

uhh by what reckoning? They regard each other as odd but not traitors. They are more likely to ally with each other than they are with anyone else. They trade with each other. Eldar travel to and from the dark city. They can actually leave, provided they are piratety enough.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
My biggest problem is Guard and Chaos Marines/Daemons not being battle brothers. Traitor Guard/Chaos guard is not a rare occurance to say the least. Legions of IG go traitor every day. Most of them do not join chaos but a large portion(1/3) ultimately do.

I dont like Crons being regular allies with GK.

I still maintain that DA allies should look like this:

Dark Angels and Black Templars as Battle Brothers?
From what I've heard, they've got some serious issues with each other after that incident with "The Voice".

Lynata wrote:Dark Angels and Black Templars as Battle Brothers?
From what I've heard, they've got some serious issues with each other after that incident with "The Voice".

I left the Imperial allies as they were for the most part, I was more concerned that one of he most xenophobic and paranoid chapters could ally with xenos and trusted the Inquisition.

DA should have no Battle Brothers. They trust nobody, only DA successor chapters.

Lynata wrote:

Formosa wrote:DA are the most Chaotic of the space marine chapters and in my opinion only 1 step away from damnation.

Not the Space Wolves? The DA at least try to hide it ...

Hey lad, dont confound our freedom of spirit with the taint of the chaos. We know where our hearts and loyalty lays, it is in the Emperor, the All Father, not in the corrupt institutions who claim to speak for him. We dont say welcome to chaos in our ways, we kill it with steel, braveness and force of will, or we die trying.

Lefting the character: Space Wolves and Dark Angels are not enemies, they are very proudfull allies with some rivalry. Booth Space Wolves and Dark Angels chapters make it clear that every time they meet (acting as allies, probably) they must have a ritual fight between 2 of their great champions, unarmored and unarmed, just to remember the old cism between their Primarchs. No one die in such battles...