Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Can I take only an allied detachment as my army? I know in basement hammer, anything is possible and I've introduced one or two friends to the game by playing 750 point games built on allied detachments. But if I wanted to play a small game around 750- 850 points because I just started another army, could I show up to the LGS with one troop, one HQ and no more than one Fast, Heavy and elite unit, and say I'm fielding an allied detachment and still consider it battle forged?

No. An Allied Detachment may not be the primary detachment, being the detachment from which the Warlord is chosen.

Want an easy way around that? Add in a 25pt Inquisitor Warlord and keep him off the table in Reserves as long as possible or hide him in a bush.

Yeah addkng an inquisitor works though you should probably make him psyker mastery level 1 And a force sword (he gets divination)

 Powerfisting wrote:
Can I take only an allied detachment as my army? I know in basement hammer, anything is possible and I've introduced one or two friends to the game by playing 750 point games built on allied detachments. But if I wanted to play a small game around 750- 850 points because I just started another army, could I show up to the LGS with one troop, one HQ and no more than one Fast, Heavy and elite unit, and say I'm fielding an allied detachment and still consider it battle forged?

As others have said you MUST have a warlord and a warlord can never be in an allied detachment so you can't make a battle forged list with just an allied detachment. Put any other detachment or formation in your list though and you are fine.

What army did you just start that would make you want to do this? Depending on the army you may have several options available. If its an imperium of man army at 850 points you probably have an open seat in a transport to hide an inquisitor in but you might just want to look at army specific detachments. The Objective secured benefit isn't all that great with a single troop choice and there are other detachments with a single troop required.

Why can't you just add the 2nd troop?

 JimOnMars wrote:
Why can't you just add the 2nd troop?

Because then you may as well take a Combined Arms Detachment, and Allied Detachments are all about minimal investment to get an Elite, Fast Attack or Heavy Support choice from somewhere other than the rest of your army!

 DJGietzen wrote:

 Powerfisting wrote:
Can I take only an allied detachment as my army? I know in basement hammer, anything is possible and I've introduced one or two friends to the game by playing 750 point games built on allied detachments. But if I wanted to play a small game around 750- 850 points because I just started another army, could I show up to the LGS with one troop, one HQ and no more than one Fast, Heavy and elite unit, and say I'm fielding an allied detachment and still consider it battle forged?

As others have said you MUST have a warlord and a warlord can never be in an allied detachment so you can't make a battle forged list with just an allied detachment. Put any other detachment or formation in your list though and you are fine.

What army did you just start that would make you want to do this? Depending on the army you may have several options available. If its an imperium of man army at 850 points you probably have an open seat in a transport to hide an inquisitor in but you might just want to look at army specific detachments. The Objective secured benefit isn't all that great with a single troop choice and there are other detachments with a single troop required.

I bought Dark vengeance again for the chaos models, but now I have all these Dark Angels just around. I might convert them to chaos too, but was wondering what I could do other than that. On the flip side, I really don't want to have to buy a fourth codex because then I would be obligated to buy 2000 points of Dark Angels.

That'a disappointing though. I guess I will either ebay them or convert them into something else.

You could run the Dark Angels as an Allied Detachment alongside a Chaos Space Marines Combined Arms Detachment.

Just paint every model in the dark vengence box dark angel colours and run them as fallen dark angels

 Powerfisting wrote:
Can I take only an allied detachment as my army? I know in basement hammer, anything is possible and I've introduced one or two friends to the game by playing 750 point games built on allied detachments. But if I wanted to play a small game around 750- 850 points because I just started another army, could I show up to the LGS with one troop, one HQ and no more than one Fast, Heavy and elite unit, and say I'm fielding an allied detachment and still consider it battle forged?

If you're using the DV set why don't you have a full combined arms detachment? It comes with 2 HQ and 2 Troops (split it into two tac squads, one with cannon and one with plasma), then an elite and a fast. In total, if you throw upgrades on the librarian (power field or whatever) it comes up to just under 750.

If you need another sergeant i would paint bolter chosen dark angel colours, and the middle of the boltgun ammo blue and it looks like a combi-plasma.

Using dark vengence you can have a fully legal allied detachment of imperial guard having a company command squad and a veteran squad

Can someone point me to where it says you HAVE to take a non-ally detachment? All I see if you can pick any number of detachments, then select 1 to be your primary. Since they are all allied detachments you can't pick any and thus can't have a warlord which doesn't allow you to roll on the warlord trait. But there is nothing in there saying you have to take something other than an ally detachment.

I believe this would be similar to if you took a force that does not have any characters, meaning that you would not be able to select a warlord.

optimusprime14 wrote:
Can someone point me to where it says you HAVE to take a non-ally detachment? All I see if you can pick any number of detachments, then select 1 to be your primary. Since they are all allied detachments you can't pick any and thus can't have a warlord which doesn't allow you to roll on the warlord trait. But there is nothing in there saying you have to take something other than an ally detachment.

I believe this would be similar to if you took a force that does not have any characters, meaning that you would not be able to select a warlord.

You can't take an Allied Detachment on it's own because it says it cannot be your primary detachment.
Your primary detachment is the one with the Warlord.
You MUST have a warlord.
If you have no characters, any non-character becomes warlord. You get no warlord trait, though.

optimusprime14 wrote:
Can someone point me to where it says you HAVE to take a non-ally detachment? All I see if you can pick any number of detachments, then select 1 to be your primary. Since they are all allied detachments you can't pick any and thus can't have a warlord which doesn't allow you to roll on the warlord trait. But there is nothing in there saying you have to take something other than an ally detachment.

I believe this would be similar to if you took a force that does not have any characters, meaning that you would not be able to select a warlord.

Take a look at the warlord rules, you can have a non-character model be a warlord if there are no characters in your army at all (they don't get warlord traits if that happens). And it's entirely possible to do that if you make a battle forged list using nothing but formations. Allied detachments throw a monkey wrench in that process because they cannot be primary detachments and cannot contain your warlord, and so if an allied detachment is your only detachment you cannot fulfill the mandatory requirement to nominate a warlord.

Anyhow, as SharkoutofWataMade mentioned you can just entirely sidestep this issue for the nominal fee of 25pts. The "primary detachment" concept has almost no impact in-game other than who your warlord is.

 Ond Angel wrote:

optimusprime14 wrote:
Can someone point me to where it says you HAVE to take a non-ally detachment? All I see if you can pick any number of detachments, then select 1 to be your primary. Since they are all allied detachments you can't pick any and thus can't have a warlord which doesn't allow you to roll on the warlord trait. But there is nothing in there saying you have to take something other than an ally detachment.

I believe this would be similar to if you took a force that does not have any characters, meaning that you would not be able to select a warlord.

You can't take an Allied Detachment on it's own because it says it cannot be your primary detachment.
Your primary detachment is the one with the Warlord.
You MUST have a warlord.
If you have no characters, any non-character becomes warlord. You get no warlord trait, though.

However you do not select your primary detachment until after your army has been chosen.:

"An army is made up of any number of detachments" (quoting from memory)

Done, I have made a battle forged army.

Does the BRB say "You must" select a primary detachment or "you may" select a primary detachment?

As far as I can see you have not made a battle forged army without the ability to select a warlord

You don't 'select' which detachment is going to be your primary detachment. Your primary detachment is the detachment that contains your Warlord, and the Warlord is NOT optional.

Also, just in chase anyone is confused about the timing:

Warlords are nominated when you "choose your army". You need to select your warlord as a normal part of list building, and since you can't nominate a warlord if your only detachment is an allied detachment, you can't legally complete all the mandatory requirements when "choosing your army".

Fair play, didn't have the brb in front of me so I couldn't reference that.

Cheers

 Powerfisting wrote:

 DJGietzen wrote:

 Powerfisting wrote:
Can I take only an allied detachment as my army? I know in basement hammer, anything is possible and I've introduced one or two friends to the game by playing 750 point games built on allied detachments. But if I wanted to play a small game around 750- 850 points because I just started another army, could I show up to the LGS with one troop, one HQ and no more than one Fast, Heavy and elite unit, and say I'm fielding an allied detachment and still consider it battle forged?

As others have said you MUST have a warlord and a warlord can never be in an allied detachment so you can't make a battle forged list with just an allied detachment. Put any other detachment or formation in your list though and you are fine.

What army did you just start that would make you want to do this? Depending on the army you may have several options available. If its an imperium of man army at 850 points you probably have an open seat in a transport to hide an inquisitor in but you might just want to look at army specific detachments. The Objective secured benefit isn't all that great with a single troop choice and there are other detachments with a single troop required.

I bought Dark vengeance again for the chaos models, but now I have all these Dark Angels just around. I might convert them to chaos too, but was wondering what I could do other than that. On the flip side, I really don't want to have to buy a fourth codex because then I would be obligated to buy 2000 points of Dark Angels.

That'a disappointing though. I guess I will either ebay them or convert them into something else.

Oh super easy fix/conversion then. Paint them as dark angels, except the green should be SUPER dark, I mean so dark people might argue that its black dark. Those are the pre-heresy colors worn by the dark angles. See once upon a time a bunch of DA turned to chaos and a huge chunk of the DA got sucked into the warp during a little DA on DA battle. These guys are called "The Fallen" and still wear those old colors. Paint all the Dark vengeance models in that scheme and poof you've got a seet themed army. Want it to look a little more unified? The Dark vengeance models can have bits here and there replaced with parts from chaos kits to give the army a more unified look or you can be a little more aggressive with converting them. Either way it will be fluff rich force. Also don't forget Cypher, the best of the Fallen, is a chaos HQ choice, and an easy counts as model to build from bits (if you don't like the model GW sells)

But if you want to try out the Dark angels rules you actually have enough models for a real combined arms detachment. use the Company master model as Azreal so you can use those terminators as troops. The tactical squad will be another troop choice and you still have enough slots for just about everything else.If you got the limited edition chaplain you'll have to choose between him and the Librarian.

I actually really like that all the 'fancy' models in the DV set for the DA will work as the named HQ choices in the codex.

You can actually use all the hq choices, just make the librarian an inquisitor in power armour and psyker powers with a force sword

To the OP:

Refer to the section, "Choosing Your Army", starting on page 116

Page 117, "Battle-forged Armies" / "Primary Detachment".

- A Player using the Battle-forged method must organize all the units they want to use into Detachments.
- Every army has a Primary Detachment ... whichever Detachment contains your Warlord is your Primary Detachment

Page 122, "Allied Detachment - Restrictions"

- This Detachment cannot be your Primary Detachment.


So, because the Allied Detachment can't be your Primary, and you must have a Primary to be Battle-forged, you can't have a Battle-forged army containing only an Allied Detachment.

But if you want to try out the Dark angels rules you actually have enough models for a real combined arms detachment. use the Company master model as Azreal so you can use those terminators as troops. The tactical squad will be another troop choice and you still have enough slots for just about everything else.If you got the limited edition chaplain you'll have to choose between him and the Librarian. 

Or he could just split the Tac squad into two 5 man squads rather than one 10 man unit. Remember a 5 man unit can take either a heavy or special weapon. No need for proxies or conversions...