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All,

I'm new to 7th edition. I am getting back into it from the glory days of 2nd edition. I'm having trouble understanding the Points/Force organization charts.

I am confused on the

Detachments

Allies

What are the limits to each special slot.

HQ

Elite

Heavy

Fast

Thank you,

Signed,

Confuzzled

Post this in YMDC

So in 7 th, your Army will be composed of multiple "Detachments". A "Formation" is a detachment with special restrictions, that gains special rules/slots in exchange.

The most basic detachment is a Battleforged army. Ignore unbound because unbound is stupid. A Battleforged Army consists of MANDATORY 1 HQ choice, and two Troops Choices. Then, from there, you can add more HQs, Troops , Elites, Fast Attack and Heavy support choices to make up your army.

If you choose to use a formation, you don't get the usual slots that a Battleforged army gives you. For your first few games, definitely use the Battleforged army.

Allied Detachments are special detachments you add to your main force. They are like "mini" Battleforged armies. The mandatory slots are 1 HQ choice, 1 Troop. The complex thing about allies is that in 40k, some armies are more likely to not hate each other than others. That's where that weird chart you see in the book comes in.

Armies which are "battle brothers" are considered to be part of the same overall allegiance. The various armies of the imperium, both Chaos armies, and both Eldar armies are considered battle brothers. Battle Brothers may join independent characters to units of the allied army, and may ride in the allied army's transport vehicles. If you take, for instance, Guard and Space Marines together, a Marine chaplain may join a platoon of guardsmen to inspire and lead the troops, or a tactical squad of marines can commandeer a Chimera if they need to move across the field quickly.

Allies of Convenience are armies that are separate but not averse to working together. It's not uncommon for Orks to hire themselves out as mercenaries, so they're Allies of Convenience with many armies.

Desperate Allies are forces that hate each other but, when pressed, may form a very temporary alliance for mutual survival. Space Marines may consider working with devious Xenos scum if the alternative is death at the hands of a tyranid horde, but they won't like it. These forces will have a chance to forfeit their actions each turn if units get too close.

Finally, Come the Apocalypse is two entirely separate armies who are at the same place at the same time by coincidence, and are not really working together at all. An Eldar detachment may use the confusion of a tyranid invasion to steal away some sacred artifact from a sturdy imperial garrison. To represent this, these count as desperate allies who can't even deploy near each other.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Basically I would suggest playing your first game of seventh with a single Battleforged army. You play to a certain points value, say 1500 points.

When you take a unit, look at which slot it belongs too. For instance, a Dreadnought is an Elites choice.

You then subtract it's point cost from how much you have left, and cross off one of your three "elites" slots. You have a limit of three elites choices. So as a space marine you might take 1 Dreadnought, 1 Scouts and 1 stern guard. You could not, however, take four Dreadnoughts.

So just starts your army with 1 HQ and 2 troops, and build from there until you hit your points limit. But do not take more units in a particular slot than you are allowed (usually 2 HQs, 8 Troops, 3 Elites, 3 FA, 3 HS, including the mandatory slots).

One final note: if you take a dedicated transport for one of your units, say a Rhino for your tactical squad, that vehicle counts as a unit in whatever slot the infantry it's transporting is (the rhino would count as a troop in game) but doesn't take up any slot. So if you took 3 Elites and gave them all transports, you would still take up only 3 Elites slots.

WOOOT!!!

That was an amazingly simple and polite response.

Thank you!

Yes, that was a really simple response.
Sadly it's also false on a lot of points.

'Allied Detachment' has nothing to do with 'allies'. (Yes, that sounds weird. But in 40k it are different things)
A 'battleforged' army has nothing to do with 1 HQ, 2 Troops, etc.

I'll explain it correctly:
When building an army you can pick between unbound and battleforged.
Unbound = Any number of Formations and any number of loose units.
Battleforged = Any number of Formations and any number of Detachments.
This means you cannot mix whatever you want. You cannot take a Formation, a Detachment and some loose units.
Warlord = The 'general' of your army, the detachment that contains him is what we call the Primary Detachment.
You can also have a Warlord in an Unbound army, but I will ignore that for a moment.

A Detachment means that you take a specific amount of slots for everything and you fill those with units from a Faction.
A "Combined Arms Detachment" requires 1 HQ and 2 Troops and you can fill it out with other stuff (read the BRB to see what you can add).
You also have an "Inquisitional Detachment" that requires only one HQ at minimum; but you are also limited to only units from the Inquisition Codex.
Then we have the "Allied Detachment", which has a minimum of 1 HQ and one Troops. But this Detachment also has a restriction: It may not contain your Warlord and MUST be from another Faction as your Primary Detachment.
We have a lot of Detachments and most of them are restricted to certain Factions (like: This Detachment can only contain Orks), the "CAD" and the "Allied Detachments" are one of the few that can be taken by any Faction.

So now you probably wonder: "Why care about Detachments, that seems like a lot of trouble?"
Well, Detachments don't just have restrictions and limitations. They also have bonuses!
We have Detachments that give your units Deep Strike, super-scoring, T1 Deep Strike, etc, etc.
And most of the time you already picked units that fit in a Detachment, so why not make it a real Detachment and gain some small bonuses!

Now you are probably wondering the same about Formations
Formations are basically Detachments with stricter limitations and bigger bonuses.

The Allies-chart is a table in the BRB.
Every Faction can play together now, but there are special rules for many combinations.
Ultramarines with Imperial Guard are best buddies, so there is hardly an issue.
But how about Ultramarines with Tyranids? You better keep those away from each other!
The Allies-section in the book tells you exactly how those armies act if you play them together to defeat an opponent.


For a new player (to 7th edition) I have two pieces of advice:
1) http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/617215.page
Go to this thread and try out Battlescribe, it's software for pc, mac, iOS and Android that lets you build an army.
When you pick too many units for a slot like HQ, it will warn you and it will do that if you pick too few.

2) Just take your books and look at the Detachments you can pick from.
Let's say you play Dark Eldar!
You take the Realspace Raiders Detachment because you like the bonus since it gives you additional cover.
You then add at least 1 HQ, 2 Troops and 1 Fast Attack to your army.
Then you add any additional amount of units as long as the Detachment allows it.
You now have an army to play with!