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This isn't a question as to the brokenness of allies, or how fluffy the choices of allies may or may not be.

My question is this: Have you, personally, started a new army that you had been hesitating to collect because of the start-up cost, that has been made more accessible by the fact you can include a smaller force as allies to an army you already own?

Yes. Not just one, but several. Tau, Grey Knights, Blood Angels, a second Space Marine force, and Dark Eldar. I also have Guard on order.

Absolutely!

I didn't for example ever want to honestly build another Guard army after the all-infantry Drop Guard force I built back in 4th, but thanks to allies I can now bring just a few squads of Feral Guard led by a Radical Inquisitor to fight alongside my Daemons.

I've also got a small Thousand Sons force in the works, plus a small band of Alpha Legionnaires led by their Sorcerer and a squad of Fallen Angels that I can always bring to games vs. my Dark Angel buddy.
Plus I've got ideas for things like a small 1000pts warband of the Oracles of Tzeentch, (one of the lost Abyssal Crusade Chapters), and I'd also love to do at some point some corrupted daemon-orks & fallen Eldar. (using Dark Eldar rules)



Allies are honestly the best part of 6th edition!
The only change I'd want to see made is to remove the Battle Brothers ability to cast psychic powers from/on your allies and stop allied characters from joining units.

Allies only become broken when players themselves choose to act like power gaming donkeycaves and abuse the crap out of the system.

Unless you count Inquisition (which I would never use under the GK codex) then I haven't started any new armies explicitly for the purpose of allying, but I would say allies as a whole has benefited the variety of all my armies. While I endeavour to change up lists every game, before I had 5 armies to choose from. Now I have 5 armies in any combination, vastly increasing the number of options, types of list and units that see play. Allies has done nothing if not made the game more enjoyable for me.

I find it a really good way to start a new army, I can pick up a HQ, troop and something cool to play around with and get painted, then if I'm happy I'm one troop choice away from a useable new army

Allies aren't a reason to start another army. I am not the target audience for this.

Got almost everything the IoM would send into a warzone.

Actually GW paralyzed some of their variety over here, digitalized Codices is all I say.

Yes. It's allowed me to use a couple small armies to make a force that can take on a larger army.
(Well... that and I love seeing Daemons + Tyranids + Orks go up against Space Marines.)

I was put off expanding my IG because of cost until Allies enabled me to field them with my existing BT. Now they're playable force because it incetivised me to invest more in them. I think allies is one the best concepts in the new book, as it allows one to make and take all those armies one could only dream of before (Gue'vesa, Stealer cults, Eldar corsairs) by combining armies. Although I have to admit that the execution was perhaps a bit off.

Nope.

If I was going to start a new army (and I have), it would be the point of having a new army, not to have a rump to stick onto something else.

And in general, I'd say allies have probably hurt variety. Instead of a bunch of people playing tau and a bunch of people playing eldar, you have a bunch of people playing taudar. There was a brief period where allies mixed it up while people were searching for their holy grail, but now...

I am a Tyranid player. So no, I guess I didn't pick up another army. :(

Nope. I've briefly considered adding allies to get specific units into my primary army (divination psykers, for example), but I've never even had any serious thoughts about expanding those potential additions into a full army. The closest I've come to using allies is using the FW variant lists to ally IG + slightly different IG, but that's just using different rules for the same models I already had.

I am probably the target audience for this. I already tended to buy a model here and there because I liked it and wanted to paint it. Now with allies I buy 1-2 more units and run it as allies. As you play around with your new allies you may realize you like their play style and the collection grows...I know mine certainly has.

Allies, bad idea in 2nd edition, worse idea now.

To the explicit meaning of the title: both yes and no.

The variation in the units I take is less because more things have been made sub-optimal and naff by allies marginally, but otherwise fielding allies for a time added some nice variation to my lists and some nice fluff gameplay with my Marines alongside my Guard.

But meh. As the edition has gone on I've felt more compelled to do mono-Codex IG because I strongly enjoy playing it and have every unit named and its feats tallied. I've gotten sick of being put in games with foregone conclusions so I just keep a firm, no-risk structure outside of the odd dataslate model like Cypher or the Inquisition Codex Inquisitors.

Yes, of course it did. I used to like to abuse allies in 2nd as well...

I am 12Tyranid and what is thisallies?

I've considered grabbing some Necrons or SOB for my DA army, but I'm not sure - it feels really gimmicky.

Kinda sorta.

Have I bought units from new armies? Yes. I actually bought several units of Blood Angels to ally into my Space Wolves, and it worked fairly well. I also picked up a squad of Rangers and a single Farseer (as well as a codex) for Eldar to use as allies for my Tau.

Have I started a new army, though? Eh, I don't know if I'd really say that. I mean, I play Tau using an allied Farseer with a single minimum squad of Rangers on occasion. Does that make me an Eldar player now? I can just barely run three troops and an HQ with Blood Angels, does that make me a Blood Angel player? While I do think that the allies rules have let me branch out a little and try new codices, and I'm pleased with them solely for that reason, I don't really think they've made me start up entire new armies.

Being able to ally daemons and chaos marines is pretty good. Overall I'd like allies if it weren't for battle brothers shenanigans

This.

Allies as an idea is ok by me, but the allies matrix is beyond gonzoed.

I think everyone should be frenemies at best

I'd be happy with allies if it were a house rule suggestion instead of part of the main rules.

 Ascalam wrote:
This.

Allies as an idea is ok by me, but the allies matrix is beyond gonzoed.

I think everyone should be frenemies at best

They are. In 40K that is called battle brothers as you can still come within arm reach of your frenemy without punching them.

No.

Allies have not benefitted variety in terms of armies or "lists", but really what is variety other than the quality or state of being different or diverse; the absence of uniformity, sameness or monotony? (you go google define feature)

The application of the allies matrix in my personal experience has been incredibly uniform in so much that certain combinations become incredibly obvious, so much so you could make a cynic out of the most die hard fanboy apologists. There is quite a lot of "sameness" from list to list, how many daemon armies have a helldrake? How many cameos is the riptide going to make? Armies with allies become tedious and sometimes just plain dull. While certain lists or armies can become boring to face even without allies, I really do prefer to play without allies, one codex vs another. It may not fix imbalances or unseat tau/eldar but I still find it more enjoyable than playing with allies. There will always be a certain amount of homogenization from codex to codex. We all hope for a codex to offer a fair amount of choice in terms of "builds". Things like good internal balance will always encourage diversity in army composition from codex to codex. All allies does is toss a wrench into an already unbalanced collection of codex's and serve to underline the increasingly undeniable reality that there is no plan for where this game is going.

The game has gotten too permissive, too gi joe, too.. well.. dumb. Less is more, play with one codex.


Oh and as to the poll question, in my own case no. To be honest though both times I've started a new army it was more or less accidental with no foresight or plan and often on tenuous financial foundation It seems like a chicken/egg type situation, a lot of people who in all likelihood would have started another army anyway will likely decide that ya somehow without the existence of allies they wouldn't have been able to rationalize starting another army when in all likelihood there was nothing rational about their spending habits on 40k stuff in the first place and that lack of discipline in the face of cool models was pretty much always going to lead to other armies. It's a bit like the "everything happens for a reason" bs, what it really means is "you make up a reason for totally random arbitrary causality".

No, because I already had a ton of different armies by the time 6th edition came out, but I did sqwee with joy because it meant I had rules I didn't pull out of my butt to use my Sisters and Marines together, like I had been strongly feeling the urge to do for a while prior.

well I did proxy a coteaz and servo skulls , so I guess it did make me start a new army .

Makumba wrote:
well I did proxy a coteaz and servo skulls , so I guess it did make me start a new army .

lol exactly