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I see a lot of threads in this vein of changing something about the game's balance, "fixing" the game, fixing 6th edition and everyone has their different opinions about pretty much everything, but consistently, in almost every thread, people bring up the allies index and how it ruined or broke the game. I just wanted to get an accurate read of what percents of people hold the belief that allies broke the game and of people that don't.

Oh and if you think that allies should be in the game but they broke it and it needs to be changed, or you think that they shouldn't be in the game but they didn't break it either, feel free to leave a comment explaining as well as your response to the poll

I think you should have a "yes but no battle brothers" option. I think that would get many hits. Given the choice above, I'd rather have no allies than have allies with battle brothers as an option.

Allies should exist but not with battle brother rules. While armies allying makes sense, it really doesn't make sense for a Space Marine captain to personally lead an IG squad or an Archon to hang with a bunch of Seers.*
Allies probably shouldn't have their own FOC slots either, but use your main detachment slots; they shouldn't be a way to subvert FOC limits.

(* I could see certain characters, like Inquisitors working differently and being able to join any Imperial unit, but that would require re-writing Inquisitor rules taking that in account, so that hey would not just be cheap divination buffers.)

I voted no, but I'd also be fine with yes if there was no Battle Bro option.

Allies yes. Battle brothers no.

With allies I think that if all battle Brothers functioned basically like Daemons and CSM (they can cast psychic powers, use effects on allied models, but cannot join squads) I think it would fix a lot of abuse. Eliminating Battle Brothers does much the same. But really I think the ability to join squads is the big abuse, take that away and now you cannot include a psyker with minimal support just to buff allies very effectively, you cannot drop a charcter into a unit for hit and run, or the Tau buff commander into allied units.

Agreed with the no battle brothers crowd. Allying with your own faction is rather cheesy too, IMO.

Yes.

Sisters + IG is great and loretastic.

The only allies that should exist should be Imp Guard Space Marines, Choas Space Marines and Daemons and maybe Eldar Dark Eldar, but they shouldnt be able to join units or use transports. Spells and such make sence.

I like the idea of allies but agree with no battle brothers and using one FOC. It makes sense for imperial forces working together, csm and daemons, and so on. I have never used allies, I still run pure lists.

I like Allies in concept, I just think the execution is poor.

Breng77 wrote:
With allies I think that if all battle Brothers functioned basically like Daemons and CSM (they can cast psychic powers, use effects on allied models, but cannot join squads) I think it would fix a lot of abuse. Eliminating Battle Brothers does much the same. But really I think the ability to join squads is the big abuse, take that away and now you cannot include a psyker with minimal support just to buff allies very effectively, you cannot drop a charcter into a unit for hit and run, or the Tau buff commander into allied units.

No, that thing between the Daemons and CSM is a TERRIBLE idea.

Can't join a Juggernaught riding Khornelord with other riders, can't join a palaquin riding nurgle lord with plaguebearers.

It's just so unfluffy and irritating.

If your opponent is using allies, does he get to equal his FoC like his primary FoC? I thought it just shows that for allies you can only have one of each slot?

I don't use Allies but what's the main issue with battle brothers?

Yes - I love the idea - sort out the execution and we are golden.

Johnnytorrance wrote:
If your opponent is using allies, does he get to equal his FoC like his primary FoC? I thought it just shows that for allies you can only have one of each slot?

I don't use Allies but what's the main issue with battle brothers?

The stacking of special rules and psychic buffs to make units more powerful than single codexes are capable of (In most cases).

The current trend of supplementing the FoC or ignoring it altogether through the use of Allies/Slates is also worrying.

I voted yes. It is a cool idea

But as others say, poorly executed. The allies chart is a pain if you like the background, and count me in for the "No Battle Brothers" club.

IG with Marines and BA, maybe SW, and Sisters
CSM and Daemons.
Marine chapters with eachother (not GK)


No other Battle brothers, honestly. Armies from a different RACE? No way. GW seems to have given Tau Eldar and SM so they wouldn't be alone or something, not for any fluff reason. But, that doesn't explain Nids...

I can only echo what has already been said in the thread thus far.

The concept of allies is a good idea, it's execution (mainly the way it favors some armies and allows some cheesy list-building) I take exception to.

Were this allies "issue" to be "fixed" I think it would best be done by removing battle brothers as an option.

Battle brothers = bad
Additional FOC slots = bad
Some of the combos like Necrons and Grey Knights = bad

 Guitarquero wrote:
The only allies that should exist should be Imp Guard Space Marines, Choas Space Marines and Daemons and maybe Eldar Dark Eldar, but they shouldnt be able to join units or use transports. Spells and such make sence.

So... no Sisters/IG?

No Orks/IG to represent Freebootas?

No Eldar/IG to represent corsair mercenaries?

No Inquisition at all?

I love allies. I wanted them before 6th, and was so excited that they got added.

Yes, there should be allies.

Battle brother status should not exist for armies outside your own race, and not even within it in some cases.

No one should trust the Grey Knights enough to consider them battle brothers, because you never can be sure when what is going on is just a trap to test your devotion and purity.

Rumbleguts wrote:
Yes, there should be allies.

Battle brother status should not exist for armies outside your own race, and not even within it in some cases.

No one should trust the Grey Knights enough to consider them battle brothers, because you never can be sure when what is going on is just a trap to test your devotion and purity.

Hmm difficult one that one - depending on the fluff not that many people know they exist and even fewer seem to know that they tend to carry out purges - although the the afterrmath of war against Chaos on Armeggeddon changes this plus some of the entries in the Codex.

You can come up with a reason for virtually anyone to fight alongside (or indeed against) another army.

I think most people agree that the problems currently is that the fluff and the table don't match - which is important for the forging the narrative aspect of the game plus some combos are just too good.

IMO, allies should be a house rule. I'm not opposed to allies, but they should be decided upon by the players at the time, not written in to the core rules of the game. That way players can decide if they want to take and allow a certain Imperial Guard unit to supplement a Space Wolf army.

Before the allies rules existed this is what we used to do anyway. Let the players decide if a certain combination is unbalanced or not and decide for themselves whether or not they care if it's unbalanced.

It's really too much to balance across allies. Different troops are worth different amounts of points across different armies because they fit within a specific role in their given army. Allies completely destroys that unless the allies rules has so many negatives that it's almost pointless to take them.

At most, I'd be happy to see very specific ally options written in to the codices themselves. So, you could have as a Fast Attack option, may take allied units of "X, Y, Z" where X,Y,Z are specific units in different armies. However the problem with that is the way codices are released gradually. It's only work if they dumped the idea of having a new codex every couple of months.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

At most, I'd be happy to see very specific ally options written in to the codices themselves. So, you could have as a Fast Attack option, may take allied units of "X, Y, Z" where X,Y,Z are specific units in different armies. However the problem with that is the way codices are released gradually. It's only work if they dumped the idea of having a new codex every couple of months.

I think even with gradual codex releases this would be great. In theory this method would prevent allies from being OP, so the old codices that are missing allies would not be at a disadvantage.

Actually, if GW really wanted to take proper advantage of digital distribution, they could release a allies supplement for each codex. This way when an allied option gets updated in a new edition, all GW has to do is also update the digital ally codex and everyone would just need to download the latest version. With this method they could really reign in the OP combinations ( if they cared about game balanced...)

Allies are a great addition.
How it was implemented...
The thing that "breaks" it is t battlebrothers aspect.remove that and it would be fine.

I like allies. As a long time player, I'd built up a sizable collection of IG, but was reluctant to start a new army as I wouldn't be able to play "1500 points" for a long time.

Now I can work my allies in slowly, and still play sizeable games with my new models.

I think that the Allies Matrix, while fluffy, is stupid. When the models are on the table, it doesn't matter how they get along in the fiction.

Treat all factions as Battle Brothers, but they can't join each other's squads. It would make sense that a BA Librarian would put buffs on his friend's units, even if those friends are Tyranids.