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Hello! I've recently been collecting various imperial armies as I love the models and just wanted the current opinion on lists using 3 different factions within their own detachments.

I know there's been a general distaste of soup lists during casual play and I dont want to be "that guy". I do love mixing guard, marines and knights into an army. What opinions do you have on a player running a knight or two with guard and marine infantry? How do I keep it from being cheesy?

Thanks!

There is a difference between Imperial Soup for fluff,

aaaaannnnd running the loyal 32/rusty 17 to funnel CP to a trio of Custodes grav tanks, or a bunch of knights.

If you were to run 3+ Knights, a minimum-sized battalion of Guard for CP to supercharge them, and a couple of Space Marine Captains with jump packs and thunder hammers, that's the sort of competitive list that would be labeled as cheesy in casual play.

If you were to run a single Knight, a large battalion of Guard with varying units, and another battalion of Space Marine infantry, that's not at all on the same level and I wouldn't see any problem with it.

Basically it sounds like you're looking to assemble a thematically-mixed army, not one that min-maxes the strengths of each component, and that's fine.

I like playing soup lists; I can use chunks of my collection I wouldn't be able to use at all.

At the very least, I'll have the loyal 32 backing up whatever I'm doing. I also tend to bring at least a battalion of Sisters in my Custodes list so I can use the psychic denial stratagem and our deny the witch.

If you are just mixing marines, guardsmen and knights because of their look and fluff, you are already on the safe side.

If you are bringing soup for competitive optimization (loyal 32, smash captains, T8 spam), you probably shouldn't be doing that in a casual environment.

I wouldn't mind a themed 32 guardsmen. Yes you are doing it for min maxing reasons, but at least it would look ok.

I mean stuff like painting them in the livery of your knight house, or as Ultramar PDF etc. Saying here is a random bunch of Cadians or Catchans and here are my flesh tearers and here is a my knight just looks naff.

Play whatever you want, just be up front about what you're bringing when you ask if people want to play, and if they don't wanna play, don't sweat it. Try to coordinate games over facebook or something, so you don't end up sitting in a game store for hours without an opponent. Don't worry about the people who will label you as "that guy", they're not the kind of people you'd have an enjoyable game with anyway. As long as you're not bringing your list to crush new players, you're fine.

You'll find some overlap if you want to run a Guard detachment, a Marines detachment, and a Knights detachment just because; if you think of them as a cohesive entity rather than independent detachments just mashed together and try and plug holes in each other you'll find they can be strong, if you try taking a large number of units that do the same thing in all three you'll find yourself building forces that still have holes in them. If you take the best units and the best units only in Marines/Guard/Knights you'll find yourself with a tournament soup list.

Allies were never the issue, broken units were. Old Conscripts + Commissars were broken regardless if used with Custodes or Marines or Knights.

Or, opt to use CP gained with the appropriate detachments - can’t be ‘that guy’ if you aren’t using the CP battery to power knight strats.

It would work if they expanded the Custodes-esqe abilities to make them list wide, not detachment wide, and expanded them to all factions.

If your list is ALL Keyword Custodes units, the entire army gets +1 to the invuln Save. Or if the Entire List is Ultramarines you get +1 Leadership and +1 to Hit in shooting.

They could really incentivise the Mono-dex armies, but they won't because $$$.

Thanks for the replies everyone! I feel much more comfortable mixing and matching. Will post a list later but right now I'm feeling a knight with 2 armigers, 5 guard inf. Squads with tank commander/other supporting characters and a few intersessor squads with hellblasters. The new SM codex seems to encourage pure SM armies and I'll be losing out on doctrines though.

Please at least bring a Commissar and a Company commander instead of explaining why their are two company commanders leading half a platoon,though.

Please.

AdmiralHalsey wrote:
Please at least bring a Commissar and a Company commander instead of explaining why their are two company commanders leading half a platoon,though.

Please.

Commissars were nerfed to oblivion by GW, they made it pretty clear they don't want anyone using them.

Company Commander and Primaris Psyker is a good idea though.

 FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
It would work if they expanded the Custodes-esqe abilities to make them list wide, not detachment wide, and expanded them to all factions.

If your list is ALL Keyword Custodes units, the entire army gets +1 to the invuln Save. Or if the Entire List is Ultramarines you get +1 Leadership and +1 to Hit in shooting.

They could really incentivise the Mono-dex armies, but they won't because $$$.

Yeah because the way they're trying to incentivize the Marine mono army is not totally about the $$$$$$

AdmiralHalsey wrote:
Please at least bring a Commissar and a Company commander instead of explaining why their are two company commanders leading half a platoon,though.

Please.

I do a CC and a TC for my Loyal 32's HQ's.

AdmiralHalsey wrote:
Please at least bring a Commissar and a Company commander instead of explaining why their are two company commanders leading half a platoon,though.

Please.

You already have to explain why a reinforced platoon is called a 'battalion' to begin with, so taking 'Company Commanders' to represent a platoon leader and his sub isn't that unreasonable.

It can be done for the sake of theme or with models you like.

like a guardsmen fortification with a bunch of basilisks and mortars defending with some imperial fists. that makes sense.

but if you are souping the best of the best stuff for the sake of cheesing out wins then thats pretty lame in most contexts.

only place that it should ever be acceptable is in a tourny setting or for the sake of tourny practice games.

alphalegend2 wrote:
Thanks for the replies everyone! I feel much more comfortable mixing and matching.

Wow, only 9 responses in & you're worries have been assuaged.

 catbarf wrote:

AdmiralHalsey wrote:
Please at least bring a Commissar and a Company commander instead of explaining why their are two company commanders leading half a platoon,though.

Please.

You already have to explain why a reinforced platoon is called a 'battalion' to begin with, so taking 'Company Commanders' to represent a platoon leader and his sub isn't that unreasonable.

I really wish they would bring the 5th edition's platoons back. That was one of the most characteristic things about IG and could go a long way to make more of AM infantry viable.