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Maybe I'm too old-school... I dunno, but i feel like allies is the equivalent of cheating.

I play Tau (Yes, i've read/heard the rants about overpoweredness) but i feel that if i added, say, eldar i would just make an apparently harder army impossible to beat.

I feel so much so that i refuse to play anything other than pure tau despite how easy it would be to write it into the fluff.

anyone else feel like this?

I have to agree. Not because I'm afraid my army will become more nails, just because I don't like it. I collect my armies because I like the armies, and I'll use what's in their codex.


Von Chogg

 Von Chogg wrote:
I have to agree. Not because I'm afraid my army will become more nails, just because I don't like it. I collect my armies because I like the armies, and I'll use what's in their codex.


Von Chogg

This sums up my feeling pretty well. I play my army because I like them. They may have flaws and issues (that could be solved with allies) but that's part of their charm. I'm going to field my own assault marines and/or devastators, not ally in BA or SW. I don't need an IG blob to camp my objective.

The ally rules, like anything that gives you flexibility, has the potential for abuse. But also for doing some really cool things. I choose not to use them myself, but don't begrudge others. But if you use them to exploit some loophole, or put together some unjustified fluff-abomination, I'll get a little grumpy.

I don't have any objection to them other than the fact that the allies matrix is a bit wonky at times. I don't use them, but that's mostly because I don't feel like buying a second codex and some models for an army I might never actually play.

To summarize, I think it's a pretty cool idea that probably didn't get executed as well as it could have.

i've used allies since the start of 6th but only when i was wanting to start a new army, par example i took my main army at the time which was Blood Angels and allied in some Tau because i was wanting to start a tau force and utilised allies there to try out different units with my tau and continued to until my Tau force was big enough to stand on its own 2 Hoofs!

then like wise i used Eldar allies with my Tau when i decided i wanted to start and Eldar army and so the process repeated, now i have Fully fledged armies of space marines, tau and eldar and use no allies.

that for me was a perfect use of the system, and my 2 pennies on it

A friend was telling me how to improve my Wolves for a Tourney He started with a Valkyrie, sanctioned psykers and stormtroopers , I pointed out that it was a Space Wolf army but he just didn't seem capable of understanding that i didn't want allies he just said "you won't win without allies"

You should ally your space wolves with grey knights. For fluff reasons.

I agree.

It tends to close the loopholes that your army has and takes away some of the challenge of the game when you have them camping on the objective or what have you.

I'm not a big fan of the allies matrix as it currently stands, some have way too many allies (Imperial Guard), some have alliances that never should have survived past the alpha ruleset (Necrons & Grey Knights) and I do feel, even though I probably wouldn't take allies if I could, a bit slighted that my army was singled out to not be able to take advantage of this new rule everyone else can, despite pairings that make perfect sense fluff-wise. I'd like a more thought out and complex allies matrix; removing broken alliances/ones that don't make sense, creating one-way alliances, where you can have one army as your primary and the other secondary but not the other way around, and enforcing a maximum percentage of points for your secondary detachment would all go a long way towards fixing allies.

Even so, I still like allies, I think it was a good idea to bring what people where already doing formally into the game and gives people good opportunities to try a new army before making a significant investment in it. So while some alliances are a bit on the overpowered side, I don't think allies are broken on the whole.

Allies doesn't always feel like cheating.

When I saw chaos in 2nd ed - the demons and csms were in one book and you could take any of it.

I always liked armies comprising of a couple of characters, 2-3 squads of marines, a tank or two and a greater demon. By the time I'd managed to get a csm+demon army together it was no longer legal.

The allies matrix gave me that back.
I don't use allies for my other armies, but csm and demons looks so good on the tt.

Bad implementation, good idea. I like things that add more diversity to the game. Quicker codex updates, forgeworld, allies, all great.

I agree some allies outright break the game. I know that people like to defend Tau, to a point I agree with them, but when my brother took his Tau and allied them with Eldar using a Spirit Seer, Wraithblades, and a Wraithknight, it took the one weakness Tau had and absolutely removed it. Now given I went into that game blind without knowing a thing about what he was playing, he was visiting from his home state and I hadn't seen him in months, but when I put down my double LRC and Stormraven BT army I just looked at the board and said, "Might as well pick up my army now." What do you know by turn two the last thing I had on the board was the Stormraven with all of it's payload gone, two LRC gone, and two squads inside the LRC's gone. So yeah, allies can break the game right in half.

Now on the other hand sometimes it makes a lot of sense. I love the fact that I can play my Daemons and CSM together again, it is one of my favorite armies. I like to play my own Tau with Ork Freebooter allies, but even playing that I feel like it is cheese. The allies system allows you to completely negate the weaknesses of an army and to me that is silly.

I primarily play Tyranids, what are allies? You can eat those, right?

*Grumbles about lack of genestealer cults*

I think it is a bit like cheating, I like the challenge that collecting an army you find enjoyable with all it's weaknesses and bonuses part of the fun, but if you get a chance to just pick and choose units in a way to win every time then it really doesn't hold true to what the hobby is all about!

I don't play much and I never would use the allies rules simply as I don't like the feel it gives the game and I don't want to collect a piecemeal force just to win a game.

Some allies make a lot of sense, Eldar and Tau (there's quite a bit of hinting that the Eldar at the very least created the Ethereal caste), Space Marines and Imperial Guard, and CSMs and Daemons.

Then there are alliances that make no sense like the Grey Knights being more okay with allying Necrons than some imperial factions.

And then we're left out in the cold because we don't get genestealer cults.

I love allies and like most of the pairings because it makes a more unique game. And yes, I like patching up my armies that have glaring holes because GW refuses to fix them when given opportunities to do so (Space Wolves STILL lacking a flyer/AA).

Sisters of Battle also stand a lot to gain from a Vendetta in keeping with their in your face style. Having a defense line isn't fitting, to me.

And Grey Knights being whores with Xenos is nothing new. I wonder where they got their tesseract labyrinths from...? Also, new crons are a lot more diplomatic when it fits their needs.

And bringing a dual raider list from the oldest codex and getting smashed by sixth edition armies isn't a fault of allies... It's a combo of old rules and too many points in too few baskets.

Hoping for an allies supplement in the future to add smaller faction!

Units from army 1 + units from army 2 is not inherently overpowered or even good to tell you the truth. There are some combinations that are pretty scary or min/maxed and you'll see a lot of unfortunately, but as a rule, there's nothing wrong or overpowered about allies. And Tau aren't overpowered, they're just new and people don't know exactly how to deal with everything yet. Codex to codex is fairly balanced this edition, even if some internal balance is off.

Like everything in this game it is open to abuse.
You have people who use allies to 'fix' weaknesses in their armies and you also have people who just love to buy 500pnts of an army so they can play/paint it.
It also opens up countless possibilities in army-construction.

And I really can't stand it when people say it's not "fluffy".
They write the story, so if they write a story about Crons and BA working together: that's fluff.

The idea is cool, while the matrix could perhaps be tweaked a bit. And I'm not too happy about some combos I've seen - allies taken from one army's most powerful units adding to another army's most powerful units to really max out on something. But that's possible, and I can live with it.

What I actually don't like is being told to take allies to "fix" whatever weakness my army might have. I wanted to play army X, not take the minimum HQ + 2 Troops and then load up on army Y to do the hard lifting.

 TheKbob wrote:
I love allies and like most of the pairings because it makes a more unique game. And yes, I like patching up my armies that have glaring holes because GW refuses to fix them when given opportunities to do so (Space Wolves STILL lacking a flyer/AA).

Sisters of Battle also stand a lot to gain from a Vendetta in keeping with their in your face style. Having a defense line isn't fitting, to me.

And Grey Knights being whores with Xenos is nothing new. I wonder where they got their tesseract labyrinths from...? Also, new crons are a lot more diplomatic when it fits their needs.

And bringing a dual raider list from the oldest codex and getting smashed by sixth edition armies isn't a fault of allies... It's a combo of old rules and too many points in too few baskets.

Hoping for an allies supplement in the future to add smaller faction!

Fix glaring holes and plenty of opportunities? Plenty of codex lack AA/Flyers so that isn't really something that is an easy fix...unless you mean giving grossly over costed Flakk missiles to all MLs with an FAQ in which case that still wouldn't fix many of the codex that we have now. It feels weird to read that you want them to fix all the holes in your army and until they do you are going to use allies to patch those holes. Do you want all armies to be good at everything? Having weaknesses is what makes the game interesting, if all armies were good at everything than there would be no reason to play one army over another aside from aesthetics.

As I said, I had no idea what I was going against when I brought my dual LRC list but I have had plenty of success with that list against most 6th armies. Regardless of what army I decided to bring, whether it be my Nids, Chaos, Tau, or Eldar, unless I brought a list almost exactly like it in which case it would have ended up being extremely boring.

I like it.

I like to paint and model, but why would I buy any Tau or Eldar if I'm only interested in about 500-750 points worth of stuff. My group plays 1500 to 2000 point games.

Now I can ally them in and justify my purchases. Brilliant model selling move, honestly.

The Allies matrix allows for some weird combos but I plan on using some but only if the fluff works and also since I have multiple armies it will allow me to use a lot of my stuff together such as the Ultramarines and IG, or Grey Knights.

Allies as a concept is cool, but the preformace is lacking.

See, I dont use allies, I don't even use auxillaries with my tau, but I love facing thematic allied forces.

A guard force with a small group of marines backing it up, a chaos cult with demon support, these kind of stuff.

But when stuff like GK/necron show up, I just go "huuh? hoooow?"

That table is full of holes, things that make no sense, and general awkwardness.

Arbiter_Shade wrote:
Do you want all armies to be good at everything? Having weaknesses is what makes the game interesting, if all armies were good at everything than there would be no reason to play one army over another aside from aesthetics.

I think a lot of gamers wish their chosen army was unbeatable and every unit was an exemplar of battlefield perfection. I've always believed that codex creep has as much to do with placating gamer egos as it does with promoting new armies and units. Collectors get emotionally invested in their collections; regarding 40k, they want their army to be the best. Fluff gets wrapped into this to create a horrible feedback loop.

I think allies are cool. As many have stated, CSM and Demons should never have been separated. I like that IG can ally with pretty much anyone, since they can represent so many things. I also agree, it should have been better thought out, limiting unit selection and point allotment. But, on the whole, it's a positive move for a company that makes lots of mistakes.

The only thing allies cheat is my wallet.

I now own a whole bunch of things I would have never bought just so I can put them on the table.

I'm torn. I adore the fact that the allies rules allow you to reunite chaos space marines and daemons, or chaos and IG for a more comprehensive latd army than just using cultists. Letting you take vast platoons of guardsmen supported by a small elite space marine force is another fluffy and awesome opportunity that allies make possible.

In tournaments I think it's the same. You expect people to be as competitive as possible, so you can't complain about people covering their weaknesses

I also see how taking a joint SM and Eldar armies against chaos (ect) can sometimes make sense in campaigns. But using the rules like that really bug me when they're used over and over in casual or pickup games.

Spetulhu wrote:
What I actually don't like is being told to take allies to "fix" whatever weakness my army might have. I wanted to play army X, not take the minimum HQ + 2 Troops and then load up on army Y to do the hard lifting.

On the other hand you cannot expect every army to be good in everything.
I think supplements are a good way of dealing with that.

 Yonan wrote:
Bad implementation, good idea. I like things that add more diversity to the game. Quicker codex updates, forgeworld, allies, all great.

That's all well and good for a non-competitive setting, but when you get to where people are using allies to fill their armies weak spots, you have people playing armies with no weaknesses.

As far as I am concerned, allies allows players to take unit choices that provide their army with things they where never meant to have, and in most case should not have. In other words, every army has to have a weakness and allies takes away from that.

Sadly, I know why Games Workshop came out with the allies system. It has nothing to do with a balanced game. Its just about selling more models, and competitive players suffer as a result.

I used an allied detachment of daemons for my CSM until my daemon army became big enough to play solo. Now I don't use allies and probably won't do again.

Allies is an obvious fluffy funtime tool that naturally extends itself well to competitive listbuilding. However, I like to turn that back on itself. Build the competitive list, then ask yourself, why does that exist? I've always held that if you can't make a list fluffy, you aren't trying hard enough.

I've been bringing Tau fire support to supplement my Traitor Legion band. With in-your-face elements like Plague Marines and Heldrakes, the Tau are much more free to deploy aggressively for firing positions. So the challenge to me was writing the fluff for that. The Legionaries lied to the Tau with the truth. They are absolutely interested in tearing down the old stultifying Imperium so that humanity can reach its true potential. The death of the False Emperor is absolutely for the Greater Good. The cadre, bereft of their ethereals and naive to the truth of Chaos, said, sure, that seems legitimate. It never occurs to them that for the traitors, turning the entire galaxy to Chaos is the greatest good.