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I'm getting quite tired of the Allies and their addition in the 6th ed rules. It seems all you get is best of two books, min maxed, with the maximum cheesed out shenanigans possible. I long for the good old days of mono on mono army's battling it out. I fear with the addition of escalation and dataslates things will get only worse. How do you feel.?

I like the concept of Allies, but not what it allows some players to do. Also, I don't plan to add any allies to my forces, I prefer playing mono-army (even though I'm CSM). Unless allying regular CSM with Black Legion.

If my group min-maxed, I'd probably agree with you.

We don't though. We're mostly puritan mono-army players. And from our perspective it just gives us some interesting aesthetical options for our armies.
I'm building a small frateris militia for my sisters that's eventually gonna be used as a counts-as IG allies, for example.

Votes are currently 33% each, wow this is a complex problem.
Btw I like it because chaos + imp guard = lost and the damned are back.

Firstly, your topic title does not reflect your poll. "Have the screwed it up" is not the same as "was it a good addition".

To answer your threat title question, no. Everyone has access, so it is not a selective "this faction now autowins" thing. They HAVE changed how the game is played, as with all rule changes. That may make it less enjoyable for some, and more for others, but it does not "screw up" the game any more than changing from 5th to 6th in general does.

Allies, good in theory, occasionally bad in practice.

While it does allow for fluffy armies, which often do not work thanks to the battle brother, untrustworthy ally thing, for example Tyrannids and Guard should be a no brainer with genestealer cult types of things on the same token as chaos and chaos cultists, but unfortunately most players I have run into do it totally for the advantages of shoring up the weak points in their armies and since anyone with half a brain cell can spout some made up fluff reason as to why the two factions are working together I say yes, it has screwed up the game.

Now I will not play in tournies since I cant pick my opponents and will only play and play against mono-armies.

It's a good idea in theory but GW massively bungled it up. A codex should never be able to ally with itself regardless of build. That just gives you more FOC slots and is unfair to other armies like Orks or Tyranids.

Great idea - poor execution in terms of how and who allies with whom

Only problem I have with the allies system is that there is no conherency to it. Some armies get pair ups that make zero sense in the fluff, but then other armies are screwed out of allies because of fluff. Some matchups and their levels make zero sense. Absolutely stupid that ANY space marine chapter would ally with ANY xenos force at a level higher than they would ally with another space marine chapter. Just no sense to that at all.

Overall some armies get awesome pairings that can be heavily abused, while others get OK, but still useful pairings and still others get lousy pairings or allied levels that limit the impact the pair has. As for 'Nids and IG, as someone who's first army was a genestealer cult army, that would be interesting if you could ally *genestealers* to an IG army, but once the entire Tyranid swarm arrives the cult becomes just more fodder like the rest of the planet's inhabitants and resources so they would not fight together in a battle because the 'nids would eat them just as readily as the enemy in such an instance. Once the hive fleet arrives there is nothing special about the human parts of the cult anymore. Their only job is to help propogate the cult until they spawn a greater genestealer which then sends that psychic beacon out towards the hive fleet to draw it in. They cause havoc as the hive fleet gets closer, but once the hive fleet is there they have no special protections from the tyranid horde.

Just having allies isn't the problem. The problem is in the differing attitudes of players towards allies. There are those who ally for fluffy reasons and those who ally for extreme WAAC reasons and some in the middle. You need to find a group that approaches them the same way as you do to avoid headaches.

Skriker

Allies are a fun idea in theory. That said it is also a easily broken idea by players. I said it more than once if they would have had allies take away FOC slots instead of add it would have stopped a lot of problems. If they would have done it like that you could have a Ultramarines/salamander alliance if you wanted and it would have been for story reasons not so you could have anouther HQ/troop/Elite/Fast/Heavy slot.

They can be good or bad I just wish GW had made the Allies Chart more realistic. I.E. Dark Angels don't really trust anyone ever they only get along with the Guard because the guard generally doesn't question what the DA tell them. Conversely Most space marines won't do the same. Also Necrons and Blood angels should not be battle brothers.

I like allies. What I would suggest would be to remove the battle brothers. The worst of the cheesy combos are when independent characters are allowed to join units of other armyies to create terrible combos that were simply not intended. For example the baron, seerbike councel.

The ability to expand your armies slowly, have your forces work together and all is fine, But I think even the closest of 'battle brothers would be too leary to actually join each other's squads.

If I'm perfectly honest I feel as if allies should be an optional rule.... I feel it's there just to shift more wraithknights/riptides/ csm dragons etc

Well they haven't screwed up the game they have made more money!
I like they idea of allies but im not getting more codexs.

I feel that allies, in theory, could have been made to work on some level. The way they are currently implemented now is awful, it's almost exclusively used to create unintended synergies or fill capability gaps that were intentionally created for balance reasons, with lots of armies that absolutely ruin any sort of immersion in the background.

It certainly doesn't help that the allies chart makes zero sense either from a fluff or balance perspective. Tau battle brothers with Space Marines? IG able to ally with Chaos Daemons? It feels like there's latitude for stuff like Chaos Cultists (e.g. IG allying with Chaos) but not for Genestealer Cults (IG cannot ally with Tyranids), and thus the compromises are very inconsistent.

Much of the bigger balance problems could be solved by simply removing the Battle Brothers benefits, but it's still a borked system overall.

IG able to ally with Chaos Daemons?

They call them "Traitor Guard". There are Chaos-held systems that produce their own version of the Imperial Guard. Army Groups like the Blood Pact.

It should be noted that a Genestealer Cult is used to spawn an uprising before the Tyranid Fleet arrives. It is meant to weaken the planet's stability and defenses to make its consumption easier on the Fleet.

That said, the Genestealers are as much food as anything else on the planet, and old fluff indicates that they will often flee ahead of the forward edge of the Fleet, to avoid this fate (and, also, to seed a new planet), so it makes some fluff sense to not have a Genestealer Cult represented by Tyranid and IG allies, as within a Genestealer Cult you have only a very small range of bioforms available.

 Psienesis wrote:


They call them "Traitor Guard". There are Chaos-held systems that produce their own version of the Imperial Guard. Army Groups like the Blood Pact.

It should be noted that a Genestealer Cult is used to spawn an uprising before the Tyranid Fleet arrives. It is meant to weaken the planet's stability and defenses to make its consumption easier on the Fleet.

That said, the Genestealers are as much food as anything else on the planet, and old fluff indicates that they will often flee ahead of the forward edge of the Fleet, to avoid this fate (and, also, to seed a new planet), so it makes some fluff sense to not have a Genestealer Cult represented by Tyranid and IG allies, as within a Genestealer Cult you have only a very small range of bioforms available.

I get that they were trying to do "traitor IG" here, I really really do, but my overall point was that they're oddly inconsistent about such things, you could make just as much justification for Genestealer cults as for IG operating alongside Daemons (as opposed to CSM), and many other such things. That said, ultimately this isn't expressed by GW in any way, they don't say "this is here to portray traitor IG", they just say that the standard, loyalist Imperial Guard can ally with Chaos, while it's utterly impossible for Tyranids, and Tau are somehow staunch Battle Brothers with all Codex Adherent Space Marine chapters

The Allies matrix is appalling, with stupid shenanigans like BT being better allies with Eldar than they are with SoB.

Allies are an excellent addition, and quite possibly my favorite change in the newest edition.

Great idea, crappy implimentation. Kind of like religion.

I like when allies are used for fluffy purposes. I don't like when allies are used purely to win games.

 EVIL INC wrote:
I like allies. What I would suggest would be to remove the battle brothers. The worst of the cheesy combos are when independent characters are allowed to join units of other armyies to create terrible combos that were simply not intended. For example the baron, seerbike councel.

The ability to expand your armies slowly, have your forces work together and all is fine, But I think even the closest of 'battle brothers would be too leary to actually join each other's squads.

This. Allies good, battle brothers bad.

Everyone with everyone, all at Allies of Convenience IMO

Edit: Also "I ally with (practically identical codex X) to get another force slot" is also bs

I have never been a fan of some armies being crap at dealing with some things while others (marines) get to be good at everything. Being able to pick from multiple lists is a nice quick-fix and makes choosing an army more a question of what I want to do than what my forces are good at. If I want to play shooty orks, I'm not forced to accept that I just won't be able to handle tough vehicles; I can take some Tau or Imp Guard to deal with them. When I play Tau, I no longer have to rely of utterly destroying all resistance before advancing on objectives; I can take orks or space marines to close with the enemy.

Sure, some overpowered (or, more often, over-hyped) units become more available, but I'm far from convinced that is a bad thing. If there are going to be unbalanced units in the game, surely it's better that they are available to many forces rather than just the most recently updated guys?

Now, I do think that the implementation could have been a lot better. Some forces seem to have access to much better options than others and the level of background justification is all over the place, as many others in this thread have noted.

Overall though, I think they make the game better than it would be without them.

The whole basis of 40K is that various armies have different strengths and weaknesses.

The allies system subverts that, allowing weaknesses to be covered over and strengths to be doubled up.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
The whole basis of 40K is that various armies have different strengths and weaknesses.

The allies system subverts that, allowing weaknesses to be covered over and strengths to be doubled up.

QFT

Conceptually, it's fun. In practice it fails. In terms of comeptitives, I think it holds no worth. Every army has its pros and cons. Bringing units, as Kilkrazy mentioned, that shore that up or bringing things that doulbe your might just simply don't work in a fair and proper way. Along with that, by providing imbalanced favors (Nids have no allies, Chaos tend to have mediocre at best alliances, Imperium gets all da bling) certain armies over others.

In terms of just for fun, it works... but it already worked. In 5th edition, I played casual and most of the time it would be like yo we got a Nid player, a CSM player, and two imperial players. Ummmm Imperial vs everything else. Not fluffy but it happened. Along with that, sometimes you would have somebody be like "Can I bring daemons to use with my CSM army to represent my Word Bearers?" and the response was a "alright". Simply put, player consent can do magical things

I disagree with the premise of the poll. GW hasn't screwed up the game with any one single event, they are in the middle of a constant process of screwing up the game. Are allies bad? Sure. But can you really point to them as the single defining event, rather than Revenant titans in normal 40k, or the idiotic IGOUGO turn structure, or microtransaction "books", or any of countless other terrible decisions?

welshhoppo wrote:
Allies, good in theory, usually bad in practice.

Fixed that for you. Allies made it so varying Space Marine chapters could work together to accomplish a goal, or CSM and Daemons could be united under a patron god. It also gave us Taudar, Space Marines brofisting Tau, and Black Templars preferring to work with Eldar (Xenos!!) over Sisters of Battle. The system was made poorly, although the idea could have been grand. As such, I pretty much see it as a joke.

Allies are good. It's just battle brothers which is broken, causing a lot of the stupid combos in this game. Personally, I'd downgrade BB allies to Allies of Convenience.