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So I had an idea the other day what of we completely got rid of the allies matrix COMPLETELY, and instead just make several broader codexes like IoM having IG SM and SoB in it, one for DE and Eldar, one for Inquisition, GK, assassins, etc. Then you could still have unbound for want the armies to mix.

So basically, nids, tau and necrons get nothing. Everything else is cool?

No I was thinking maybe expanding the nids to maybe get new/ unique units depending on their hive fleet. For tau you could increase the types of Kroot/Vespids so they have enough units to field their own army. Not sure about orks. Each new codex would have to a comparable amount of units so more would have to be made for some of them
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 Melcavuk wrote:
So basically, nids, tau and necrons get nothing. Everything else is cool?

They've already been utterly shafted on Allies.

For practical purposes this suggestion would do absolutely nothing except reorganize where different units are.

Possibly worse in that it makes the current broken cross-faction synergies for the IoM even easier to achieve in a battle forged list since the mandatory limitations are further reduced.

So making it like most people I know take their Allies.Nobody here takes anything, but Battle Brothers.

Sorry, man. Not a fan of this idea. A book that encompass all of the Imperium would have to be enormous, and it would be signficiantly larger than its equivalents. Eldar/dark eldar would be quite a bit smaller, even if you rolled harlies, exodites, and corsairs into it.

'Crons would be very lonely creatures as would orks. 'Nids having more unit/biomorph options is something I'd like to see in t heir own book, but having enough options to come close to the Eldar or Imperium books seems... unwieldy and unlikely.

Tau sub factions getting fleshed out would be fantastic (yay kroot!), but that would still be tiny compared to Eldar/Imperium.

Plus, it doesn't really fix the most common forms of ally abuse.

Now, having all the marine rules rolled into a single (largeish) book is something I could maybe get behind, but I don't even feel that's as necessary now that GW is releasing new content for each faction at a fast pace. Previously, it would have been a good way to make sure all factions get a comparable amount of love rather than having a repetitive marine book clogging up the production pipes.

Hmm. Rolling all marines together is still very doable, I think. Just not as necessary.

Getting rid of allies in general would be unfortunate (I love that I can finally run my true kin/craftworlder list, and IG/Sister/Marine lists are actually pretty fluffy), but I'd be fine with allies being seen as more of a "variant" rule separate from tournament games and such.

That'd cut on GW income as they'd sell less books. And less people would buy a helhuge imperium book for like 300+$.

 koooaei wrote:
That'd cut on GW income as they'd sell less books. And less people would buy a helhuge imperium book for like 300+$.

Not to mention, those who have no interest in the other Imperial Armies than the ONE they play.

 Anpu42 wrote:

 koooaei wrote:
That'd cut on GW income as they'd sell less books. And less people would buy a helhuge imperium book for like 300+$.

Not to mention, those who have no interest in the other Imperial Armies than the ONE they play.

Included in " less people would buy a helhuge imperium book for like 300+$"

Here's a better idea: remove allies from the game entirely, don't change the codex system. Let's go back to the days when you played a single army, not a random collection of whatever you feel like bringing.

 Peregrine wrote:
Here's a better idea: remove allies from the game entirely, don't change the codex system. Let's go back to the days when you played a single army, not a random collection of whatever you feel like bringing.

Yep, like an army of LOTD that auto-loose cause they have nothing on board turn 1. Or assasins that are designed as a non-single army in the first place.

There's allready a number of armies that are designed as allies. Get rid of them? Than we have a bunch of newly-born squats. Integrate in all the codexes that they're designed to work with? Than we have a situation where we have a Chimera with one profile and the same Chimera with another profile.

That's the same as disallowing forgeworld cause it's another book.

 koooaei wrote:
Yep, like an army of LOTD that auto-loose cause they have nothing on board turn 1.

Only because whatever idiot wrote the codex forgot to include a drop pod style rule where some of your army comes in on the first turn (IIRC the rule is even in some of the special missions, they just didn't bother adding it to the army rules). Fixing this one mistake is a much better solution than relying on allies to provide an awkward "solution".

Or assasins that are designed as a non-single army in the first place.

Put them back in the GK codex where they belong. The only reason they're a single army is so that GW can make you buy another book.

That's the same as disallowing forgeworld cause it's another book.

No it's not. FW rules are published in separate books, but they're still a single army list. If you add a FW unit to your IG army you're still playing IG, not some half-IG hybrid. If you play the FW Elysian drop troops list you're playing a pure Elysian drop troops army. This is not at all the same as the allies situation, where you can have an IG primary detachment, a Tau formation, an inquisitor, an assassin, a C:SM allied detachment, a knight, and a Tyranid formation, all in the same army. The concept of "I play X army" is gone and replaced by "I brought X/Y/Z units today".

 Peregrine wrote:

That's the same as disallowing forgeworld cause it's another book.

No it's not. FW rules are published in separate books, but they're still a single army list. If you add a FW unit to your IG army you're still playing IG, not some half-IG hybrid. If you play the FW Elysian drop troops list you're playing a pure Elysian drop troops army. This is not at all the same as the allies situation, where you can have an IG primary detachment, a Tau formation, an inquisitor, an assassin, a C:SM allied detachment, a knight, and a Tyranid formation, all in the same army. The concept of "I play X army" is gone and replaced by "I brought X/Y/Z units today".

If you add an assassin to your ig army, you're still playing IG.

 Peregrine wrote:
Here's a better idea: remove allies from the game entirely, don't change the codex system. Let's go back to the days when you played a single army, not a random collection of whatever you feel like bringing.

Having recently returned to the game, I couldn't believe that this system existed, in this particular format. I know it allows freedom, but the idea of Chaos and Imperial troops being able to field on the same side "come the apocalypse" is in direct opposition to most fluff.
Orks and Chaos, no problem, Imperial and Eldar or Tau, no problem, But anything allied with Tyranids, how would that work? You can only twist the narrative so far before it becomes utterly pointless.

 r_squared wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
Here's a better idea: remove allies from the game entirely, don't change the codex system. Let's go back to the days when you played a single army, not a random collection of whatever you feel like bringing.

Having recently returned to the game, I couldn't believe that this system existed, in this particular format. I know it allows freedom, but the idea of Chaos and Imperial troops being able to field on the same side "come the apocalypse" is in direct opposition to most fluff.
Orks and Chaos, no problem, Imperial and Eldar or Tau, no problem, But anything allied with Tyranids, how would that work? You can only twist the narrative so far before it becomes utterly pointless.

Fluffwise, tyranids have genestealer cults. Basically, battlebrothers with IG and probably some other races.

And CSM could easilly run alongside with marines from loyalist's chapters. Those marines have just turned and use all the same gear and tactics - it hasn't changed yet.

Fluff is not a problem. On the opposite - it's there to support your mad tabletop ideas.

I agree the fluff on allies can reason out even some of the most exotic of alliances (A good friend ran counts-as nids with his IG as Bio-Engineered Predators from a Magos Biologis research facility). In practice what you can fluff out or see on the table is completely different however.

But, if going on background the allies system still doesnt make sense. Why no Gu'vesa for tau, Cults for Nids. No Renegade (but not yet chaos) Marines with Chaos Legions. The current system is clunky and poorly implemented, but cutting it down to "Imperials get all their allies in one book" just makes it more one sided.

Yeah I see what you mean. Allies are still broken though and blatantly in the Imperiums favor.

I think the issue is, that half the armies in the game are imperial.

This wasnt such a problem when 1 codex was one army, the background of the army was an added extra. But when one army can include X number of codex's, supplements, formations now suddenly the fact that half the game codex's can build a single force, factions made up of a single codex lack that variety, the ability to choose (or to do so at heavy penalties).

For the sake of "Balance", in the theory that all codex's were made equal (not true, but roll with it) either everyone should ally with everyone equally, or nobody with anybody.

Otherwise we assume that each codex adds a value of X to the army as a battlebrother.

Tau and Marines both start at Y

The "value" of the armies after potential battlebrother allies is:

Tau: Still Y
Marines: Y + 11X (all codex's plus assassins, LotD, tempestus etc)

 Peregrine wrote:
Here's a better idea: remove allies from the game entirely, don't change the codex system. Let's go back to the days when you played a single army, not a random collection of whatever you feel like bringing.

Let me play my Daemonhunters with one book and then we'll talk.

Here's a thought. Most ally combinations (bar except maybe stuff like Grey Knights and Chaos) can be explained by fluff - be it GW or personal. With that in mind, what about simply doing away with the Ally Matrix in its entirety and simply set it that all factions can ally with everyone but their default state are as Desperate Allies (unless taken from the same faction). Each additional detachments on top of one's Primary Detachment can be upgraded to "Allies of Convenience" or "Battle Brothers" for a fixed cost of 50 and 150 points respectively. Likewise, the detachment could be downgraded to "Come the Apocalypse" for a return of 50 points, to a minimum of 0 points for the allied detachment.

And to simplify things, for armies composed of >2 detachments, the alliance status MUST be homogenous across the entire army.

Wyldhunt wrote:
Sorry, man. Not a fan of this idea. A book that encompass all of the Imperium would have to be enormous, and it would be signficiantly larger than its equivalents. Eldar/dark eldar would be quite a bit smaller, even if you rolled harlies, exodites, and corsairs into it.

'Crons would be very lonely creatures as would orks. 'Nids having more unit/biomorph options is something I'd like to see in t heir own book, but having enough options to come close to the Eldar or Imperium books seems... unwieldy and unlikely.

Tau sub factions getting fleshed out would be fantastic (yay kroot!), but that would still be tiny compared to Eldar/Imperium.

Plus, it doesn't really fix the most common forms of ally abuse.

Now, having all the marine rules rolled into a single (largeish) book is something I could maybe get behind, but I don't even feel that's as necessary now that GW is releasing new content for each faction at a fast pace. Previously, it would have been a good way to make sure all factions get a comparable amount of love rather than having a repetitive marine book clogging up the production pipes.

Hmm. Rolling all marines together is still very doable, I think. Just not as necessary.

Getting rid of allies in general would be unfortunate (I love that I can finally run my true kin/craftworlder list, and IG/Sister/Marine lists are actually pretty fluffy), but I'd be fine with allies being seen as more of a "variant" rule separate from tournament games and such.

Personally, I wouldn't like to see all marines rolled together, but not really for rules purposes. I actually enjoy the fluff, and I'd hate to see all my SW fluff go from half a codex to 1-2 pages.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Peregrine wrote:
Here's a better idea: remove allies from the game entirely, don't change the codex system. Let's go back to the days when you played a single army, not a random collection of whatever you feel like bringing.

I agree with this like 95%. The one exception I would allow is that all Imperial armies should be able to take IG, and only IG, as an allied detachment, and this is mostly just because while SoB, Astartes chapters, the Inquistorial Ordos, etc., tend to act autonomously of each other, they usually serve as elite forces, leading the charge, augmented by thousands of IG as shock troops.

To be honest, im with peregrine.
Go away with the allies crap and put the new "armies" back where they were before all of this.

I know it adds variety, but it worked alot better with pure armies rather than a mash of whatever is in the drawer at the time.

Also, do away with this unbound crap while they are at it.

But why get rid of the Matrix? You could do that really expensive codex AND the Matrix.

 Jackal wrote:
To be honest, im with peregrine.
Go away with the allies crap and put the new "armies" back where they were before all of this.

I know it adds variety, but it worked alot better with pure armies rather than a mash of whatever is in the drawer at the time.

Also, do away with this unbound crap while they are at it.

God, I can't stand unbound. So, as a penalty for taking your all-elite, super cheese list, you don't get to reroll your Warlord Trait? Oh no, what a crippling disadvantage, I don't think. Honestly, with the frankly minimal requirements of the CAD, not to mention the sheer number of additional detachments presented in all the codexes, there's no reason why players shouldn't be expected to fulfill the basic requirements of an FoC. I mean, with the CAD, most armies can fill the basic requirements with less than 200pts of models, and still leave plenty of room for the stuff they really want to run.

What happens to the orks?

Sure, but an IOM codex would be HUGE. The allies matrix should go, because it highly favours the Imperium. I would merge like this:

SM, BA, DA, LotD, SW- Codex: Space Marines

Inq, SoB, GK- Codex: Inquisition (Adding Deathwatch Stuff)

IG, MT- Codex: Imperial Guard

IK- Codex: Mechanicum

Eld, DE- Codex: Eldar

CD, CSM- Codex: Forces Of Chaos (Adding Traitor Guard Stuff)

Leaving Us With:
Imperial Guard
Inquisition
Mechanicum
Space Marines
Necrons
Eldar
Tau
Orks
Chaos

Where the are Tyranids?

Don't you dare mesh my beautiful blood angels and and dark angels with the normal.Marines! We deserve our own codices!

(Realistily though, do you know what that would cost for one book?)

So becouse some people "Abuse" the Ally Matrix it should be scrapped?