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As said in other threads, I am surprised that they didn't take more of a steer from AOS's allegiance system, where if you have >20% of your army come from a different faction keyword as your main force, you lose your faction-specific bonuses and revert to metafaction bonuses.

E.g. a Blood Angels army can take 400 pts of guard and still be BLOOD ANGELS but if you take 500pts, you are just IMPERIUM and get bog standard stuff. Maybe give an exception for a super-heavy aux detachment so taking 1 knight doesn't ruin you.

Perhaps this will be part of a future Chapter Approved. Probably not.

And now we're talking about how to perfectly balance allies, when there are several different viewpoints on what that means.

Most probably agree it shouldn't be auto-always-take-allies. It's not so broadly agreed that it shouldn't be never-take-allies. But where to balance it in the middle?

I'd love for solo SM to be more common than SM + IG, but I wouldn't want SM + IG to never be the answer. On the other hand, I'd rather Custodes to be more common with IG than solo - they simply don't make a great solo army IMO (thematically, talking about goals, not crunch).

The appropriate balancing point is really, really hard to agree on. And even if we could, with all the different factions and options on the game, could you imagine trying to balance it?

Not even Chess is balanced. DOTA/LOL/Starcraft are being rebalanced all the time. 40k goes far beyond any of those in combinatorial complexity. How is it possible? Who could actually do it?

But, yet, 40k seems more balanced then ever. Or, at least, the top lists seem more varied than ever.

I'd love to see less Allies in the game. I think I have ideas that'd do that without destroying Allies entirely. But the more I think and read, the more amazed I am at how balanced GW has made the game.

(Not that there aren't some clearly boneheaded choices. I'm sure if they had a deployment cycle measured in days instead of quarters, things would be even better.)

 Silentz wrote:
As said in other threads, I am surprised that they didn't take more of a steer from AOS's allegiance system, where if you have >20% of your army come from a different faction keyword as your main force, you lose your faction-specific bonuses and revert to metafaction bonuses.

E.g. a Blood Angels army can take 400 pts of guard and still be BLOOD ANGELS but if you take 500pts, you are just IMPERIUM and get bog standard stuff. Maybe give an exception for a super-heavy aux detachment so taking 1 knight doesn't ruin you.

Perhaps this will be part of a future Chapter Approved. Probably not.

I suspect the reason they didn't use that system is they intended for mixed hybrid armies to become a thing. Want an army with 800 pts of Imperial Guard, 600 pts of Sororitas, and 600 pts of Adeptus Mechanicus? Have at it. That's intended.

 Nurglitch wrote:
The irony is that people used to complain that we never saw Space Marines and Imperial Guard fighting side by side.

I didn't.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Silentz wrote:
As said in other threads, I am surprised that they didn't take more of a steer from AOS's allegiance system, where if you have >20% of your army come from a different faction keyword as your main force, you lose your faction-specific bonuses and revert to metafaction bonuses.

E.g. a Blood Angels army can take 400 pts of guard and still be BLOOD ANGELS but if you take 500pts, you are just IMPERIUM and get bog standard stuff. Maybe give an exception for a super-heavy aux detachment so taking 1 knight doesn't ruin you.

Perhaps this will be part of a future Chapter Approved. Probably not.

I suspect the reason they didn't use that system is they intended for mixed hybrid armies to become a thing. Want an army with 800 pts of Imperial Guard, 600 pts of Sororitas, and 600 pts of Adeptus Mechanicus? Have at it. That's intended.

It is I still wish they had some sort of system in place that rewarded focused armies while still allowing for allies, to some extent they could have even done this through the brigade detachment it it were slightly more flexible. But it is clear that GW really only cares about detachments when talking about list building.

Breng77 wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Silentz wrote:
As said in other threads, I am surprised that they didn't take more of a steer from AOS's allegiance system, where if you have >20% of your army come from a different faction keyword as your main force, you lose your faction-specific bonuses and revert to metafaction bonuses.

E.g. a Blood Angels army can take 400 pts of guard and still be BLOOD ANGELS but if you take 500pts, you are just IMPERIUM and get bog standard stuff. Maybe give an exception for a super-heavy aux detachment so taking 1 knight doesn't ruin you.

Perhaps this will be part of a future Chapter Approved. Probably not.

I suspect the reason they didn't use that system is they intended for mixed hybrid armies to become a thing. Want an army with 800 pts of Imperial Guard, 600 pts of Sororitas, and 600 pts of Adeptus Mechanicus? Have at it. That's intended.

It is I still wish they had some sort of system in place that rewarded focused armies while still allowing for allies, to some extent they could have even done this through the brigade detachment it it were slightly more flexible. But it is clear that GW really only cares about detachments when talking about list building.

So I will preface what I am going to type with: "I agree with you." However, I would like to play devil's advocate, if only in an effort to replicate a discussion that may have been had between the rules writers regarding allies.

"I see your position, Breng77, that we should reward mono-armies. But does that not effectively ban soup from tournament play? Presumably, you would always go with the better option for tournament play. So we have to envision what we want tournament play to be. I argue, Breng77, that all else being equal, we would prefer to see a mixture of armies at tournaments, because that improves sales, encourages people to explore the entire model range available to them, and allows us more design space because we can release small mono-faction codexes like Custodes while ensuring those otherwise-bad codexes still have access to tools that allow them to compete at the highest level, through the ally system."

To attempt to rephrase/simplify (Unit - correct me if I didn't hit your point correctly - that's the point):

How do you not make Soup always the answer, while making Soup (or at least Allies) still the answer often.

With the added note of some books could only be written if Allies were viable (Custodes, etc).

Bharring wrote:
To attempt to rephrase/simplify (Unit - correct me if I didn't hit your point correctly - that's the point):

How do you not make Soup always the answer, while making Soup (or at least Allies) still the answer often.

With the added note of some books could only be written if Allies were viable (Custodes, etc).

I am fairly certain this is impossible, generally. Soup, as mentioned, inherently provides several advantages to an army simply by existing. At the highest, most competitive level, this means soup will have to be heavily restricted to break even with mono-builds, which means that armies designed to soup either ignore those penalties (but what is an army "designed to soup"? Custodes? Grey Knights? Sororitas? Imperial Guard?), and therefore become the most flexible armies in the game (and therefore the best TAC) or they just suck.

I would really like some more restrictions to allies in matched play. Something like that your warlord must have a faction keyword that correlates with at least 50% of your army points.(with the current restrictions that imperium etc doesn't count) Any other allied detachments cannot generate CP or use their specific stratagems. This would, in my opinion (which I know will be contested) make allies a decision that you have to weigh rather than just a simple improvement. Also as a small bonus it would be really easy to categorise army factions as you just have to look at the warlord.

I would personally just get rid of all the relics/traits that generate CP for a blanket +1/2 CP instead, with the changes to battalions & brigades most armies can get enough now anyways and that way we wouldn't have to keep track of two different "pools" of CP like some other posters in this thread has suggested.

I think some armies could reasonably be said to be more viable to have a codex written for with Soup being an option. IK, Custodes, Harlequins, Assasins, LOTD, etc. With their limited options, it's hard to justify a codex just for mono-them armies of them (although some can pull it off reasonably).

One codex seems to have been rewritten to effectively demand intrA-codex soup, even (DE)!

GK seem to be in an odd place where in 5th/6th they "became" a full-fledged mono-style faction, being ripped from Inq. And now, in 8th they seem to be getting the "sub faction" treatment, which feels unfair.

IG and Sisters both do Soup well, but conceptually do mono well too.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Breng77 wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Silentz wrote:
As said in other threads, I am surprised that they didn't take more of a steer from AOS's allegiance system, where if you have >20% of your army come from a different faction keyword as your main force, you lose your faction-specific bonuses and revert to metafaction bonuses.

E.g. a Blood Angels army can take 400 pts of guard and still be BLOOD ANGELS but if you take 500pts, you are just IMPERIUM and get bog standard stuff. Maybe give an exception for a super-heavy aux detachment so taking 1 knight doesn't ruin you.

Perhaps this will be part of a future Chapter Approved. Probably not.

I suspect the reason they didn't use that system is they intended for mixed hybrid armies to become a thing. Want an army with 800 pts of Imperial Guard, 600 pts of Sororitas, and 600 pts of Adeptus Mechanicus? Have at it. That's intended.

It is I still wish they had some sort of system in place that rewarded focused armies while still allowing for allies, to some extent they could have even done this through the brigade detachment it it were slightly more flexible. But it is clear that GW really only cares about detachments when talking about list building.

So I will preface what I am going to type with: "I agree with you." However, I would like to play devil's advocate, if only in an effort to replicate a discussion that may have been had between the rules writers regarding allies.

"I see your position, Breng77, that we should reward mono-armies. But does that not effectively ban soup from tournament play? Presumably, you would always go with the better option for tournament play. So we have to envision what we want tournament play to be. I argue, Breng77, that all else being equal, we would prefer to see a mixture of armies at tournaments, because that improves sales, encourages people to explore the entire model range available to them, and allows us more design space because we can release small mono-faction codexes like Custodes while ensuring those otherwise-bad codexes still have access to tools that allow them to compete at the highest level, through the ally system."

It is about finding the balance of reward that evens things out a bit more. So maybe that is Mono-faction armies getting more CP per detahcment. IF Soup armies got the old 3 CP for a battalion and mono-faction got the new 5 for instance. It might not make mono-faction as good, but it at least would dissuade the use of soup as a CP battery. OR if the Brigade was something like 17 CP but required the 3HQ, 6 Troops, and min 1 of each other slot (elite, fast, Heavy) but required you to put 100% of your points into the detachment.

OR if mono-faction allowed you to get around some other restriction. Essentially something to encourage building armies in that style for a purpose rather than making it the auto-choice. The same thing I like allies for, use them to build an army that favors a playstyle.

I do think it is possible to make Allies/Soup neither auto-take nor auto-lose, to put it somewhere in the middle. But I also think a complete solution to Chess is possible. Doesn't mean it's gonna happen in our lifetime.

It seems simple on the face of it - in 6 pages we probably have 60 different "perfect" suggestions for how to do it. But once you peel each of them past the first pass, they introduce other imbalances.

Some may actually be more balanced than what we have now. Perfect balance is functionally impossible, but "better" balance is possible. Not as easy as we often think at first, but I'm sure it can be done.

Breng77 wrote:
It is about finding the balance of reward that evens things out a bit more. So maybe that is Mono-faction armies getting more CP per detahcment. IF Soup armies got the old 3 CP for a battalion and mono-faction got the new 5 for instance. It might not make mono-faction as good, but it at least would dissuade the use of soup as a CP battery. OR if the Brigade was something like 17 CP but required the 3HQ, 6 Troops, and min 1 of each other slot (elite, fast, Heavy) but required you to put 100% of your points into the detachment.

OR if mono-faction allowed you to get around some other restriction. Essentially something to encourage building armies in that style for a purpose rather than making it the auto-choice. The same thing I like allies for, use them to build an army that favors a playstyle.

I don't think it's possible to even things out. Harlequins, for example, would just be worse outright than pure Eldar if you prevent them from generating CP as well (when their codex comes out). If you say "well, you get 3 CP for a BN if you're soup" and you're running Ynnari, who are literally intended to soup, then you just have less CP than the exact same army with Craftworld Eldar.

The anti-soup crowd has already kneecapped some armies designed around soup (RIP Eldar corsairs). I'd like that not to happen, thanks.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Bharring wrote:
I do think it is possible to make Allies/Soup neither auto-take nor auto-lose, to put it somewhere in the middle. But I also think a complete solution to Chess is possible. Doesn't mean it's gonna happen in our lifetime.

It seems simple on the face of it - in 6 pages we probably have 60 different "perfect" suggestions for how to do it. But once you peel each of them past the first pass, they introduce other imbalances.

Some may actually be more balanced than what we have now. Perfect balance is functionally impossible, but "better" balance is possible. Not as easy as we often think at first, but I'm sure it can be done.

Well, yes, that's the goal. But we have to start somewhere, and starting here, with soup being the default, is just as valid as "ALL SOUP IS BANNED FOREVER" and then slowly introducing allies incrementally.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Breng77 wrote:
It is about finding the balance of reward that evens things out a bit more. So maybe that is Mono-faction armies getting more CP per detahcment. IF Soup armies got the old 3 CP for a battalion and mono-faction got the new 5 for instance. It might not make mono-faction as good, but it at least would dissuade the use of soup as a CP battery. OR if the Brigade was something like 17 CP but required the 3HQ, 6 Troops, and min 1 of each other slot (elite, fast, Heavy) but required you to put 100% of your points into the detachment.

OR if mono-faction allowed you to get around some other restriction. Essentially something to encourage building armies in that style for a purpose rather than making it the auto-choice. The same thing I like allies for, use them to build an army that favors a playstyle.

I don't think it's possible to even things out. Harlequins, for example, would just be worse outright than pure Eldar if you prevent them from generating CP as well (when their codex comes out). If you say "well, you get 3 CP for a BN if you're soup" and you're running Ynnari, who are literally intended to soup, then you just have less CP than the exact same army with Craftworld Eldar.

The anti-soup crowd has already kneecapped some armies designed around soup (RIP Eldar corsairs). I'd like that not to happen, thanks.

Why would Harlies be worse than pure Eldar? Becaue they are written to be part of a soup and not a stand alone army? IN this case either their addition to an Eldar Soup makes that soup stronger, or it doesn't. If it doesn't they won't be taken regardless of what you do with CP, or they will be because the player is unconcerned with competing anyway. If they make the army stronger, why should that not have some sort of cost? IF that cost is something like 4-6 CP over the course of an army a player needs to decide whether the trade is worth that.

Personally I have no issue with Ynnari having less CP than a craftworld army as soul burst more than makes up the difference. Though that has to do with how they write the codex for Ynnari and how the addition of their characters works. If you are taking all craftworld units with just the Ynnari HQs maybe that is mono-faction, but having Ynnari with Harlies, Craftworld and DE is not.

Maybe you make every army select a Main faction, that faction must be the faction of their warlord and then all CP from that faction are at the normal 5, and "allied factions" produce only 3. I believe that things exist where both soup and non-soup can be viable choices, it is just a matter of determining what those are. If that is indeed not possible you end up in a situation where some number of players end up screwed and i don't believe that must be true.

Breng77 wrote:
Maybe you make every army select a Main faction, that faction must be the faction of their warlord and then all CP from that faction are at the normal 5, and "allied factions" produce only 3. I believe that things exist where both soup and non-soup can be viable choices, it is just a matter of determining what those are. If that is indeed not possible you end up in a situation where some number of players end up screwed and i don't believe that must be true.

Cue meme: "I WANT TO BELIEVE"

Jokes aside - sure. I believe it's not possible, you believe it is. I can't prove a negative, and you guys aren't games designers who are supposed to balance entire games. I guess it comes down to "we'll see what GW comes up with" but I have a hunch that you'll never see a healthy mix of soup/not-soup armies in the top 8 of LVO - generally one will be better than the other by even a tiny margin.

At least we can both agree that unreasonable people who just want soup outright banned are unreasonable.

Let tournaments figure it out for themselves. Missions and objectives (along with other rules) can be and are modified all the time.

I’m happy with the game as it is.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Breng77 wrote:
Maybe you make every army select a Main faction, that faction must be the faction of their warlord and then all CP from that faction are at the normal 5, and "allied factions" produce only 3. I believe that things exist where both soup and non-soup can be viable choices, it is just a matter of determining what those are. If that is indeed not possible you end up in a situation where some number of players end up screwed and i don't believe that must be true.

Cue meme: "I WANT TO BELIEVE"

Jokes aside - sure. I believe it's not possible, you believe it is. I can't prove a negative, and you guys aren't games designers who are supposed to balance entire games. I guess it comes down to "we'll see what GW comes up with" but I have a hunch that you'll never see a healthy mix of soup/not-soup armies in the top 8 of LVO - generally one will be better than the other by even a tiny margin.

At least we can both agree that unreasonable people who just want soup outright banned are unreasonable.

Yup, we are too far down that rabbit hole to ever ban allies again. They already scaled back significantly from where it was in 7th as far as which factions can take allies, to fall along fluff lines. I don't believe it would every be 100% perfect, but think it could certainly be closer than it is now. There is a big difference between top 8 LVO being one or the other, and almost every tournament army you see being one or the other. I think soup will always tend to be better, when available, but if say the brigade was more worth taking it might encourage some people to try out mono-armies for the extra CP bump. Right now a brigade given its requirements is really never worth taking over 2 battalions. Especially for armies that cannot do it super cheap.

As an ork player, I kind of still don't understand/care how keywords work, but in the big FAQ, didn't they say that all armies in a detachment must share one keyword in common, and that imperium and chaos didn't count?

If so, doesn't that prohibit you from taking 'allied' guard?

Breng77 wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Breng77 wrote:
Maybe you make every army select a Main faction, that faction must be the faction of their warlord and then all CP from that faction are at the normal 5, and "allied factions" produce only 3. I believe that things exist where both soup and non-soup can be viable choices, it is just a matter of determining what those are. If that is indeed not possible you end up in a situation where some number of players end up screwed and i don't believe that must be true.

Cue meme: "I WANT TO BELIEVE"

Jokes aside - sure. I believe it's not possible, you believe it is. I can't prove a negative, and you guys aren't games designers who are supposed to balance entire games. I guess it comes down to "we'll see what GW comes up with" but I have a hunch that you'll never see a healthy mix of soup/not-soup armies in the top 8 of LVO - generally one will be better than the other by even a tiny margin.

At least we can both agree that unreasonable people who just want soup outright banned are unreasonable.

Yup, we are too far down that rabbit hole to ever ban allies again. They already scaled back significantly from where it was in 7th as far as which factions can take allies, to fall along fluff lines. I don't believe it would every be 100% perfect, but think it could certainly be closer than it is now. There is a big difference between top 8 LVO being one or the other, and almost every tournament army you see being one or the other. I think soup will always tend to be better, when available, but if say the brigade was more worth taking it might encourage some people to try out mono-armies for the extra CP bump. Right now a brigade given its requirements is really never worth taking over 2 battalions. Especially for armies that cannot do it super cheap.

I agree it could be closer.

I'm also going to provide an anecdote (which isn't intended to support an argument but may illustrate a problem with soup) about why I take an Adeptus Mechanicus detachment in my superheavy tank company if I'm playing competitively:

The Tech-Priests are simply better than their Imperial Guard counterparts. It's just true. They're also 5 points more, but that 5 points gains them:
1) +1 to repair rolls for one of them (Warlord Trait)
2) Access to Forge World dogmas / canticles / stratagems (Graia stratagem is my only psychic defense)
3) Access to badass stratagems (Tech-Adept lets them repair twice).

There is no iteration of the Imperial Guard Tech-Priest that will gain those things, and therefore, it will always be optimal for me to bring soup if I am looking to repair my tanks in the field. Reducing the soup battalion to 3 CP? Doesn't make up for the difference in repair rolls (average 2 for an IG TPE, average 6 for my AdMech TPE), doesn't make up for the loss of psychic defense. The mere fact that Adeptus Mechanicus has a codex that can do different things to the Imperial Guard codex is sufficient to make it an auto-include for me - so short of giving the Admech Tech-Priest Enginseer the Astra Militarum keyword (like their friends do in the Astra Militarum codex), there's not much that can be done.

Right, and that is how allies should be. Right now however there is no trade off in CP for doing that same thing. I'm fine with people making a decision to improve their armies through allies when it facilitates a specific playstyle. IN your case helping your tanks. What I am not a fan of is the same ally choice being an auto-include in all play styles of a faction because it gives you cheap CP. It should never really be "I want to play Blood Angles, but I need more CP to do what I want to do, so I'll throw in this cheap guard for no other reason then giving me CP,"

For instance I play Ravenguard + Sisters, because it suits the playstyle I want. I have also done Dark Angles + White Scars, for the same reason.

Kap'n: The FAQ changed detatchments, not armies. So you can't take Bobby as your HQ (Codex:SM) and take a Tac squad, an IG squad, and a BA sqaud as your troops. You can take an SM detatchment, an IG detatchment, and a BA detatchment in one Imperium army, though.

I don't see how Adeptus Astartes bringing a detachment of Astra Militarum is a problem for the game. SM aren't exactly taking the stuff out of major events with or without allies. And it isnt ruining the fluff. The only problem I have with it is that it's too much of a no-brainer, auto-take for most armies, especially eliete ones. There should at least be meaningful choices with regard to allies. Guard detachments should be an inexpensive way to put boots on the ground and generate some CP. They can take up space and prevent deep strike. So if they were to generate 3 CP per a 200 pt ish batalion I think that's fair, but the 5 CP batalion (and the 12 CP brigade) should only count if it matches the faction KW of your warlord. Furthermore, I think someone else suggested changing the AM WL trait and relic to only recycle CP for Astra Militarum Strategems... I think that's very fair. But if you'd rather put that 200 pts toward your own SM army and get more CP, but fewer bodies and less board space, I think that's a meaningful choice.

I like CP but really think they should overhaul it. make each player get a set number of CP per turn (i'd suggest 3). Then allow some detachments to add 1 or 2 CP and others to subtract or add zero CP. Batallion +1 brigade +2, auxiliary still minus 1. all others 0. I love command points and would love stratagems to be more essential to tactical decisions on the battlefield and to be more independent than just who brought to most imperial guard battalions/ brigades.

compound this with as an ork player I just get annoyed that thanks to keywords I cannot run my orky traiter guard and orkified renegade space marines with them (holdovers from 6e and 7th allies), built and modeled around ork freebootas, space marine renegade pirates, and imperial guard privateers all working together for the love of loot. cannot play in 8th because nobody in my area plays anything outside of matched. would be cool to have the extra CP in addition to be being fieldable but alas xenos don't matter so cannot usually get alternative cheap cp and/or allies at all.

PiñaColada wrote:
I would really like some more restrictions to allies in matched play. Something like that your warlord must have a faction keyword that correlates with at least 50% of your army points.(with the current restrictions that imperium etc doesn't count) Any other allied detachments cannot generate CP or use their specific stratagems. This would, in my opinion (which I know will be contested) make allies a decision that you have to weigh rather than just a simple improvement. Also as a small bonus it would be really easy to categorise army factions as you just have to look at the warlord.

I would personally just get rid of all the relics/traits that generate CP for a blanket +1/2 CP instead, with the changes to battalions & brigades most armies can get enough now anyways and that way we wouldn't have to keep track of two different "pools" of CP like some other posters in this thread has suggested.

There are no "current restrictions".

There are beta restrictions that have been proposed, but they are not actually full rules yet.

I would be curious to see how a few larger mono-faction tournaments would play out. I would imagine it would be ruled by Death Guard, Dark Eldar, Tyranids, and Imperial Guard.

 Kanluwen wrote:

PiñaColada wrote:
I would really like some more restrictions to allies in matched play. Something like that your warlord must have a faction keyword that correlates with at least 50% of your army points.(with the current restrictions that imperium etc doesn't count) Any other allied detachments cannot generate CP or use their specific stratagems. This would, in my opinion (which I know will be contested) make allies a decision that you have to weigh rather than just a simple improvement. Also as a small bonus it would be really easy to categorise army factions as you just have to look at the warlord.

I would personally just get rid of all the relics/traits that generate CP for a blanket +1/2 CP instead, with the changes to battalions & brigades most armies can get enough now anyways and that way we wouldn't have to keep track of two different "pools" of CP like some other posters in this thread has suggested.

There are no "current restrictions".

There are beta restrictions that have been proposed, but they are not actually full rules yet.

Sure, fair point. I'm saying assuming the current beta rules are going into effect unchanged with the next FAQ, something along the lines I talked about earlier would be a step in the right direction to implement as new beta rules.

Nobody runs SM and AM as a competitive army not including BA but then you’ll be seeing some jetbikes as well.

Elite armies should be the only ones with bonus CP and recover CP on X rolls. Madness giving that trait and relic to the most widely available allied race with the cheapest detachment filling costs.

 Eldarain wrote:
Elite armies should be the only ones with bonus CP and recover CP on X rolls. Madness giving that trait and relic to the most widely available allied race with the cheapest detachment filling costs.

Ehhhh...I'd argue that the cheaper armies, ideally, are going to be the ones using the most Command Points and should potentially have just as many options as elite armies with the bonus CP/recover CP on X rolls.

The problem comes down, however, to the fact that Stratagems don't really scale well when we get into the larger games. If things like the <Regiment> or <Chapter> or <Whatever> stratagems could be taken as scaled perks or we just had more of them in general? I think it would start to balance itself out.

As it stands, there's some stratagems that I just can't ever see being used. Either they're tied to units that are universally panned or something that people just don't give a hoot about and it becomes a big deal.

 Kap'n Krump wrote:
As an ork player, I kind of still don't understand/care how keywords work, but in the big FAQ, didn't they say that all armies in a detachment must share one keyword in common, and that imperium and chaos didn't count?

If so, doesn't that prohibit you from taking 'allied' guard?

It's on a DETACHMENT bases not an ARMY basis. You can still take a detachment of Astra Militarum and a detachment of Space Wolves in the same army, for example.