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Hey everyone not sure if this is in the right section, in the allies matrix it says that space marines and chaos space marines cannot ally. but i have a chaos space marine army and an army of renegades using the space marine codex as they have just recently left the imperium could i use them as allies in this case? and if so what level of alliance would they have? (battle brothers,unholy alliance etc.)

No, you can't. Fluff does not justify breaking the rules. Try to use the crimson slaughter book to represent your recently renegade chapter.

If you have a renegade chapter and want to ally with CSM you could use the Black Legion book to represent the renegades (Provided they can ally with C: CSM I thought they could), or as Scipio has said use the crimson slaughter book to represent your recently renegade chapter.

Alright thanks i took a break from gaming and havent played since the end of 5th edition.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Oh and also the reason i was asking is because i want to take a squad or sternguard vets with my chaos marines

The only way around it is ifyour gaming group is okay with it, or you're playing apocalypse. (Last time I checked you ignore alliances for apoc games)

Neither the Black Legion nor Crimson Slaughter book is going to give you sternguard vets.

So, basically what you want to do isn't possible.

It's possible as long as your mates agree to it, just like any kind of homebrewed unit or rule. ("How about my Ork Army can take Imperator Titans as a Troops choice for 12 points per model?" "Um, okay.") Just don't show up to your FLGS and expect to be able to play it with someone you just met. And don't even show it to a tournament organizer, they'll break out in hives and have to go to the hospital.

Personally I'd say they'd be Allies of Convenience at best: Chaosites don't necessarily trust other Chaosites, and in this case the Chaos Marines would always be wondering if the recent defectors are actually Loyalists just trying to trick them and get their guard down, while the recent defectors would have centuries of tradition (and in some cases personal experience) saying "Chaos is evil, shoot it."

Also take a look at the Badab War books for the Tyrant's Legion army. From the IA 9 book and the FAQ, they can take allies of convenience with Space Marines or Imperial Guard.

 Ond Angel wrote:
The only way around it is ifyour gaming group is okay with it, or you're playing apocalypse. (Last time I checked you ignore alliances for apoc games)

It's not that you ignore alliances in Apoc but that any Come the Apocalyse selection now counts as Desperate Allies because the apocalypse has come.

 DeathReaper wrote:
If you have a renegade chapter and want to ally with CSM you could use the Black Legion book to represent the renegades (Provided they can ally with C: CSM I thought they could), or as Scipio has said use the crimson slaughter book to represent your recently renegade chapter.

Is it bad that I read Crimson slaugher as crimson laughter?

That book is rather laughable.

 Scipio Africanus wrote:

 DeathReaper wrote:
If you have a renegade chapter and want to ally with CSM you could use the Black Legion book to represent the renegades (Provided they can ally with C: CSM I thought they could), or as Scipio has said use the crimson slaughter book to represent your recently renegade chapter.

Is it bad that I read Crimson slaugher as crimson laughter?

That book is rather laughable.

Well you can't have Slaughter without laughter...

 DeathReaper wrote:

 Scipio Africanus wrote:

 DeathReaper wrote:
If you have a renegade chapter and want to ally with CSM you could use the Black Legion book to represent the renegades (Provided they can ally with C: CSM I thought they could), or as Scipio has said use the crimson slaughter book to represent your recently renegade chapter.

Is it bad that I read Crimson slaugher as crimson laughter?

That book is rather laughable.

Well you can't have Slaughter without laughter...

As long as it's maniacal then you've got the right idea.

I tend to like low, soft chuckling over maniacal laughter as you know where you stand with someone who bellows out evil laughter... the quiet chuckling ones though....

If you're wanting sternguard without any problems, why not use them as chosen? If you want the models then I wouldn't as well I would see a problem with them being used if they matched the army.

i just wanted the chance to be able to take 10 vets with combi meltas/plasmas and still have the awesome special ammunnition that the sternguard bolters have

If that's what you're looking for, from a rules perspective, you can't take Chaos at all. They don't ally to anything with specialty ammo.


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But I'd probably allow it in a friendly game at a Desperate Allies level.

From a fluff perspective, Chaos factions generally don't trust each other.

Damn i just thought it would be a pretty fluffy unit seeing as the iron warriors are very tech savvy surely they would be able to get their hands ion specialty ammo and other technology

Aside from the combi-weapons, Thousand Sons do almost the same thing as Sternguard anyway, for similar points costs.

It wouldn't be very fluffy to run 1k sons with iron warriors given their distrust/dislike of sorcery and the gods

 whitedragon wrote:
Aside from the combi-weapons, Thousand Sons do almost the same thing as Sternguard anyway, for similar points costs.

Really? I'm glad to hear someone say good things about 1,000 Sons, because they've got lovely fluff but I keep reading how they're terrible on the tabletop. Or maybe you're saying Sternguard and Sons are both terrible in similar ways? They seem rather different rules-wise to me, but I don't know Codex:CSM that well... Please enlighten me!

What you can do is just use the space marine codex entirely and use chaos models.

A chapter master can be modeled with a chaos lord (with all kinds of cool shields from the fantasy chaos warriors range if you wanted to use the shield eternal, and many ACTUAL burning blades if you wanted to bring that), chaos marines as tactical marines, etc.

Chosen in a Dreadclaw assault pod (forgeworld, or convert your own) can suffice for the land and melta shot, but they lack special ammunition.

I run a chaos-themed blood angel list, with all sorts of awesome conversions for their jump packs and such, including berserking marauder-torso death company and terminators with fantasy chaos shields and lances from the knight kit. (that's their thunder hammers).

But as the others were saying, just ask your gaming group. My group, as long as it's not a tournament, will let me ally my chaos daemons with my evil blood angels. That's technically using the chaos daemons book with one of the space marine books, but who cares? Every model is chaosy and evil, and they like the look of it all. Plus it's something they never get to play, and the daemon characters generally can't join/be joined to most marine units anyway, so there's very few real nasty combos that can come from such an alliance.


I say just ask them if you can do it. Offer to count them as allies of convenience, rather than battle brothers, to keep psychic powers, special rules, and characters from joining that would otherwise enhance the power.

 SisterSydney wrote:

 whitedragon wrote:
Aside from the combi-weapons, Thousand Sons do almost the same thing as Sternguard anyway, for similar points costs.

Really? I'm glad to hear someone say good things about 1,000 Sons, because they've got lovely fluff but I keep reading how they're terrible on the tabletop. Or maybe you're saying Sternguard and Sons are both terrible in similar ways? They seem rather different rules-wise to me, but I don't know Codex:CSM that well... Please enlighten me!

They are have AP3 bolters + relentless, which is really handy. They cost about the same points as Sternguard marine, and take up the same slot in the FoC unless you can unlock them as troops. Alot of folks like Sternguard for the Special Issue ammo, of which one of the bolts is an Ap3 round (but has the "Gets Hot" rule). So in this regard they are similar. The Sternguard have some other special issue ammo, and access to combi-weapons, while the Thousand Sons have a Sorcerer, but they can be used in similar ways and then you don't have to ask anyone's permission because you are straight out of the Chaos book.

And as for it being "unfluffy", I don't really think anything is "unfluffy" these days with Allies and all the other shenanigans that you can put together on the tabletop. But, if you want to do a neat conversion, you can instead convert your thousand sons to be "Iron Warrior" robots or something as well.

 CrashCanuck wrote:

 Ond Angel wrote:
The only way around it is ifyour gaming group is okay with it, or you're playing apocalypse. (Last time I checked you ignore alliances for apoc games)

It's not that you ignore alliances in Apoc but that any Come the Apocalyse selection now counts as Desperate Allies because the apocalypse has come.

Allies disappear entirely in Apocalypse; all units in the entire game regardless of codex are now effectively treated as Troops of your home codex.

 whitedragon wrote:
[helpful things]

Thank you!

 whitedragon wrote:
But, if you want to do a neat conversion, you can instead convert your thousand sons to be "Iron Warrior" robots or something as well.

Ooooh, neat idea. With forcefields justifying their invulnerable saves instead of magic, I would think.

Yeah Im already gonna be doing the same kind of thing with some forge world mk3 armour marines to be used as plague marines the toughness and feel no pain coming from the thick frontal armor that the mk3 has

Arguably the next best thing to taking Sternguard is a squad of Chosen with Plasma and Draznicht - or however you spell his name - from the Crimson Slaughter Supplement for PE.

Yes. You can do it.
They're your armies. You can do whatever you want with them.
Ignore "The naysayers who say nay" in this thread. What you want to do IS possible.

Where you're going to run into issues is finding opponents. If you're part of a regular group of gamers/friends, run your idea by them and see what they think. The biggest problem most would have is making sure you're not just cherry-picking the few great units from the CSM codex to ally with the SM.

I forget the category, but you should use the one where, basically, they can barely stand each other - the worst they can be & still ally.

Eric
-Who allied Nids and IG to make a Genestealer Cult.

 whitedragon wrote:

 SisterSydney wrote:

 whitedragon wrote:
Aside from the combi-weapons, Thousand Sons do almost the same thing as Sternguard anyway, for similar points costs.

Really? I'm glad to hear someone say good things about 1,000 Sons, because they've got lovely fluff but I keep reading how they're terrible on the tabletop. Or maybe you're saying Sternguard and Sons are both terrible in similar ways? They seem rather different rules-wise to me, but I don't know Codex:CSM that well... Please enlighten me!

They are have AP3 bolters + relentless, which is really handy. They cost about the same points as Sternguard marine, and take up the same slot in the FoC unless you can unlock them as troops. Alot of folks like Sternguard for the Special Issue ammo, of which one of the bolts is an Ap3 round (but has the "Gets Hot" rule). So in this regard they are similar. The Sternguard have some other special issue ammo, and access to combi-weapons, while the Thousand Sons have a Sorcerer, but they can be used in similar ways and then you don't have to ask anyone's permission because you are straight out of the Chaos book.

And as for it being "unfluffy", I don't really think anything is "unfluffy" these days with Allies and all the other shenanigans that you can put together on the tabletop. But, if you want to do a neat conversion, you can instead convert your thousand sons to be "Iron Warrior" robots or something as well.

This is pretty far off the mark. Thousand Sons have Slow and Purposeful, not Relentless, which means no overwatch and no running. Yes, they have AP3 rounds without Gets Hot!, but having no combi-weapons means they have no way to scratch vehicles, hordes or 2+ saves. Yes, Thousand Sons have a Sorcerer, but the Sorcerer is expensive and limited to the garbage Tzeentch powers. On the other hand Sternguard have access to Drop Pods, so they don't need to worry about how to get across the field. Couple that with Combat Squads and cheap combi-meltas and you can arrive and vaporise two vehicles without any real risk before the opponent can have a crack at them.

Thousand Sons pay a premium for AP3, a 4++ and a Sorcerer. But they end up being hobbled by their complete inflexibility, the complete opposite of Sternguard. Sternguard can be equipped to deal with any threat, Thousand Sons are and can only be equipped to deal with 3+ saves in the open. All of their offensive bonuses are negated by putting their target in a Rhino, which they won't be able to break open unassisted, or by sitting in cover.

 Scipio Africanus wrote:
No, you can't. Fluff does not justify breaking the rules. Try to use the crimson slaughter book to represent your recently renegade chapter.

Disagree. You can use any excuse you want to break the rules so long as your opponent is cool with it. Probably wouldn't be super fluffy for them to be battle brothers, though.