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What's the worst scenario have you guys ever faced in terms of armies with allies. For me it would be the Astra Militarum w/Inq w/Grey Knights w/Skyshield Landing Pad w/Imperial Armour for those that would count Forgeworld into the mix. This army combo alone baffled me as this was the first time I found out about all these new FOC charts as my opponent pulled up the new FOC and I was stunned by how much it had changed. Got my experience of this last night playing somebody and told me about the forge world stuff he'd take such as Beast Hunter Shells and scoring tanks, but refused to play my Tyranids list because he called cheese on me for using FMC's claiming that his IG book had no anti-air which I had to hold down my laughter and eventually folded in as the argument was getting nowhere and I wanted to get started and after the game, I pretty much had to thank the Emperor that somehow I didn't get tabled and managed to tie it up. As someone who started out in the end of 4th but started playing in 5th, I personally don't use allies with the exception of my Aegis Defense Line as I enjoy using one detachment for personal preference on how I like to run my armies. I understand that there are those that love the allies for both fluff and gaming, and thankfully, my main group usually uses allies within reason such as just one ally and a fortification and I enjoy playing with them (the combo mentioned above was played by someone outside of my gaming group as the GW I go to was jam pack that day and so I went to an independent retailer). So what has been the most ridiculous case of allies abuse have you guys encountered on your tabletop?

Been quite lucky on that front. Only one person in my usual group actually uses allies, and he runs Blood Angels allied with Grey Knights (also an Inquisitor tagging along just because). Compared to many other things he could be running, I think that is quite reasonable to be honest.

The furthest i got was SM, INQ, GK.

Lots of fun being able to take stuff i like.

In my opinion, just combining lots of army books is not 'Ally abuse.' Sometimes there's a fluffy reason for it. Sometimes, someone just wants to use a certain army but doesn't have a lot of points for it and has to beef that army up with someone else.
For example, my army generally is a mix of Space Marines, Space Wolves, and Inquisition. (With a Fortification,) but only because there is no single codex that fits my army fluff. (They are a 21st founding Chapter who got lost in the warp, and after a several-century campaign to get back into realspace were left with no copy of the Codex Astartes, a lot of gear and imperial tech, and only about half the population of a normal chapter. Their recruits are happenstance and not drawn from any particular planet, (Seeing as pretty much nobody will take them,) their tactical doctrine is scattershot at best (Hence my use of multiple chapter tactics at every possible opportunity,) and they hire mercenaries and outsource their fighting when they can, to preserve the lives of their men. (I use the Inquisition codex to represent the Rogue Traders and mercenary squads they hire.)

I have yet to come against a really cheesy combination put together purely for army power, so that's nice.

Things like TauDar are nothing more than ally abuse. People can try to spin such things as "army theme" but it's B.S.

Especially since it's usually the same things you are seeing allied in, across lots of players.

Pretty much ANY of the books that are battle brothers impose some pretty lame tactics. Really, really dislike allies, and this is coming from a Tau player lol

This is an old one, but it involves allies, so it still counts...

In very early 2nd Edition, the boxed set came with a book called the Black Codex, which contained rules for every army in the game (as none had an actual codex at that point). Under the Black Codex rules, an Imperial Guard army could ally with Orks, as long as there was at least one unit of Blood Axe orks in the allies list. IG could also ally with Space Marines.

So one day, my gaming group and I lost all of our good sense and fielded an IG army with both SM and Ork allies, for no greater reason than the rules said we could.

Taudar. Saw his list, turned around and played a 500 pts match with a youngblood.

I know I have never played anything but mono-codex lists since 2nd edition, and have always had plenty of fun. Worst I might consider is Imperial Guard- Space Marines, or several Chapters of marines in an ode to the old "Crusade" armies from 2nd edition, but even the latter seems odd, and jarring to see on the tabletop.

I personally run the following lists:

Main Detachment: Space Marines (Imperial Fists)
Allied Detachment: Space Marines (Ultra Marines)
Inquisitor Detachment: Ordos Xenos

But then, this is a DeathWatch army at 2.5K - 5K based on Drop Podding Sternguard force with a fair few heroes in (Kantor, Telion, Lysander, Sicarius, Master of the Forge) while incorporating the Storm Wing dataslate formation when required

In this example, I feel the mixture of Allies and detachments works really well. At 5K I am literally fielding only 100 marines and while they are all tough as nails and geared up - it's offset by their small numbers.


Main Detachment: Chaos (Thousand Sons)
Dataslate: Be'Lakor

In this example, Be'Lakor is acting as an elevated Thousand Sons Daemon Prince - again I feel it's fluffy without cheese



Then we come to some of the forces I've played against:

1) Space Marines with Tau firebase support cadre and Eldar Seerstar
2) Eldar, Tau, Storm Wing dataslate,
3) Ghost Warriors with Tau Firebase and some other crud

- I forget half of the rubbish I've seen and they're all probably just melding into one horrid mess in my memory. In short, people are more interested in winning at all costs with non-sensical power lists rather than keeping the game competitive within the realms of reason.

Never faced, but contemplated running for giggles -

Primary Detachment - Eldar Corsairs
- squad of Kabalite Warriors and Fire Dragons as Corsair Elites.
Allied Detachment - SW (led by Cypher)
IK Detachment
Inq Detachment
LotD Detachment
Tau Firebase Suporrt Cadre

Only need about 8 Rulebooks, plus some dataslates.

I will say that I really want to add in some Necron allies to my Tau army, mainly because I think the models and the faction are really awesome. They will plug some things I lack and have really cool abilities. (wraiths for a counter charge unit, immortals and a lord with a res-orb to hold objectives, and a unit of deathmarks with a despair tek just because I love the idea of deep striking in reaction to something on my opponent's turn).

Might end up being the start of a second army. Fielding an ~500 point allied detachment seems to be a good start on that.

Oh, and I plan on giving the usual metallic color scheme a pass and painting them up in an eye searing nova-bright yellow (gotta love ceramics)!

If used correctly, allies are a great mechanic.

For example, i play orks with ig allies. They were comsquad with master of ordnance, vets with AC and a leman russ Exterminator with Pask. I'd not call it overpowered, besides, it's fluffy that imperium 'hires' willing orkses to deal with threats they can't handle on their own. You know, when there's no WAAAAGH, some klanz like blood axes interact with humans not only chopping them to death. If umiez can provide flashy gear and enough good enemies to fight against, why not!

Ig provides some nice long ranged support and backfield sitting. Now with new AM codex i'll have to buy a second russ to make Pask legit and will probably have to get rid of comsquad and get a few sniper rigles for vets.

But some allies are over the top. Typical taudar. Inquisitors. Eldar + dark eldar. Battle brothers alliances are very unballanced and sometimes annoying.

Waaaghpower wrote:
In my opinion, just combining lots of army books is not 'Ally abuse.' Sometimes there's a fluffy reason for it.

That was the claim from Tyranid players. "Ally us with Guard!" they said. "It's like Genestealer cults" they claimed. We all knew the truth. They didn't want Chaos style cultists. They wanted minimum vets in Vendettas allied to their biomancy enhanced FMC spam.

I used to run Buffmander with plasma cannon armed devastator marines. Had someone threaten to stab me while I slept if I ever did it to him again.

I've seen Taudar aplenty and what I call "Grey Tau"

Grey Tau is simple. most of the infantry are Grey Knights of some kind. But all long range attacks are handled by a large team of Broadsides with railguns or some other Long range battlesuit team that is built to maul tanks, large infantry, heavy guns etc that might have a slight chance of threatening the Grey knights who run around either meleeing things to death or just grabbing points.

This was before Riptides but still it never lost, even when people tried to design an army around killing it. The GK would tarpit and melee anything to death and those out of arms reach would get railguned into dust.

I was personally able to put a large dent in this force with my IG heavy armor. killing numerous GK and at least 2 out of 3 Broadsides using Leman Russ executioners on the GK and battle tanks on the Broadsides. But I didn't manage to stop him from grabbing the objectives, but it was as close as I personally got.

MarsNZ wrote:

Waaaghpower wrote:
In my opinion, just combining lots of army books is not 'Ally abuse.' Sometimes there's a fluffy reason for it.

That was the claim from Tyranid players. "Ally us with Guard!" they said. "It's like Genestealer cults" they claimed. We all knew the truth. They didn't want Chaos style cultists. They wanted minimum vets in Vendettas allied to their biomancy enhanced FMC spam.

We wanted something, anything.

And now all we have are skyblight swarms and living artillery. No more Biomancy Swarmlord for flavor even.

Yay.

But Taudar are fluff-compatible.. I know most of you people get that combo overshadowed by the fact that it's simply powerful on the table. Fluff-wise Tau ARE most likely to ally in with Eldar. Next in line would be the Imperium and Dark Eldar(but not haemonculi covens after what Rakarth did ).

Just like working with Necrons(say, Inq + IG + Necrons) would work for the Imperium in some fluffy cases. Neither side would want their world to be corrupted by Daemons and some Newcron leaders are reasonable enough to trade and negotiate. So is hiring Orks or Dark Eldar pirates.

The only ridiculous case I happened to see once on the table was Tau + Chaos Daemons. There's no fluffy way on how to explain that combo as those two forces have literally nothing in common and their goals are conflicting.. unless it was some Commander finding a tainted artifact and asking the weird xeno bound inside for help against some terrible, hellish menace such as the Imperium( ) or Tyranids offering to release it from it's prison!

DKoK Siege Regiment allied with DKoK Assault Brigade

I think I am the only one using allies at my FLGS.

Might see what the Scions can do, we'll see.

 Kain wrote:


And now all we have are skyblight swarms and living artillery. No more Biomancy Swarmlord for flavor even.

Yay.

There was nothing flavourful about Swarmy. If you want to play the flavour/fluff angle Nids shouldn't have SC at all.

Basically two big White Scars bike squads, triptides, some broadsides, plus one perfunctory unit of fire warriors in reserve, Legion of the Damned, and two inquisitors just to give stuff prescience and because it made total fluff sense.

Hate the base 1 inquisitor attachment just to give the army servo skulls and a roll on divination for next to no points whatsoever.

MarsNZ wrote:

 Kain wrote:


And now all we have are skyblight swarms and living artillery. No more Biomancy Swarmlord for flavor even.

Yay.

There was nothing flavourful about Swarmy. If you want to play the flavour/fluff angle Nids shouldn't have SC at all.

What? Out of all of the SC Swarmlord is the only one who makes sense in most battles, seeing as how the Hivemind resurrects and uses him when they are losing due to tactics. Now granted most of the others don't make a whole lot of sense.

The whole faction gets resurrected after battles, singling out a special snowflake because they "are losing due to tactics" is a joke, their MO is to drown the enemy in biomass.

I remember fondly that Eldar+Tau+Inquisition+Force field army. It was so fluffy!

MarsNZ wrote:
The whole faction gets resurrected after battles, singling out a special snowflake because they "are losing due to tactics" is a joke, their MO is to drown the enemy in biomass.

Yes, but what I am talking about is directly from the codex(pg. 59) "The reincarnation of the Swarmlord appears to be a stress-induced response by the hive fleets, once triggered when its prey can not be defeated through biological adaptations alone.". If you want to stick with the old fluff thats fine, and I sort of understand having the same types of issue with old versus the newcron fluff, just don't assume that everyone else is going to stick with the old fluff.

Firstly, read your signature and apply it to my posts as well. Nowhere did I insinuate that you have to agree with me.

Secondly, I also was talking about material published by GW.

Thirdly, Swarmy is gone, apparently it's you who is stuck on old fluff.

What? First off the Swarmlord is in the 6th edition codex, thats where I pulled the quote from the "forces of the Hive Mind" Swarmlord section.

As for the other material that Gw published, I was under the assumption that new stuff superseded the old (of course I might be wrong on that). And I never said that you were trying to make people agree with you.

You said I was assuming everyone agreed with me by 'sticking with old fluff', must I quote it?

And I was under the impression Swarmy was gone, which as you can see would clearly be something I agree with. Now I remember he just got a nerf. Shame. I still think Tyranid SC are stupid. Now, I suggest we allow this topic to get back on track.

We hardly use allies in my area. One used to play SM with Inquisition (he's trying Eldar now) and sometimes I bring FE to mingle with Tau. Our IG/AM doesn't like the idea of allies, one guy plays Tyranids and the others don't bother with it

 Klerych wrote:
But Taudar are fluff-compatible.. I know most of you people get that combo overshadowed by the fact that it's simply powerful on the table. Fluff-wise Tau ARE most likely to ally in with Eldar. Next in line would be the Imperium and Dark Eldar(but not haemonculi covens after what Rakarth did ).

Just like working with Necrons(say, Inq + IG + Necrons) would work for the Imperium in some fluffy cases. Neither side would want their world to be corrupted by Daemons and some Newcron leaders are reasonable enough to trade and negotiate. So is hiring Orks or Dark Eldar pirates.

But Necrons and Inq are Come the Apocalypse... generally people won't play armies in such a way. I understand the IG being the proxy for this, but I understand the ally table works between everyone, not the main detachment.