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Friday Poll on Allies. Where do you stand?

I think this will only turn into a flame war of epic scale. I am popping popcorn right now.

Allies like any other advantage goes back to the same core issue. People (particularly in a competitive setting with prestigious and prizes on the line) are going to take strong options. I don't see any complaints of people allying in Sisters of Battle with Ad mech. It's a few units from a few factions that create the soup issue and most of those have more to do with CP than anything else.

I want to be a force with allies in it to be equally powerful to a force without allies.

There is no option for that.

 Jidmah wrote:
I want to be a force with allies in it to be equally powerful to a force without allies.

There is no option for that.

I think it's this option:
"Allies should be allowed in all play, but nerfed so as to present little if any benefit in all play"
It's just worded oddly.

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 Galef wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
I want to be a force with allies in it to be equally powerful to a force without allies.

There is no option for that.

I think it's this option:
"Allies should be allowed in all play, but nerfed so as to present little if any benefit in all play"
It's just worded oddly.

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Allies are something I think 7th handled better than 8th because of the way army organization works now. In 7th if I took a bunch of guardsmen with my marines, all I got was a bunch of guardsmen with my marines. Now if I take guard or other cheaper allies, I get a ton of CP to make the rest of my army better in addition to getting the units I took. That's the core problem right now.

One of the core problems the game has at this point is that there's this idea that certain elements of the game should be intentionally overpriced for what they do, because "that faction is supposed to be bad at that."

As an example here: Ork shooting focused units like Flash Gitz and Deffcoptas. Tau melee support through Kroot allies. Non-infiltrated Genestealer Cult units like their Leman Russes and Transports.

It is one thing when an army simply lacks a given thing - say, Psykers, or heavy elite melee units in the Tau, or transports for the Admech. It creates a system where allies will always be the best however when the logic is "well, Custodes are an Elite Melee Army, so we'll make sure their Elite Melee are better FOR THEIR POINTS than the elite melee options available in the Guard."

No problem with allies here. Would be odd to see alliances between CSM and their Daemons banned. Or between Harlequins and other Eldar. Or within the Imperium.
I wouldn't be opposed to some kind of CP restriction for the respective detachment.

By far the best way to remove Allie bonuses would be to remove CPs from detachments all together.
Have Battle Forged give 3CPs per 500pts of an army limit. S 2000pt games, everyone would start with 12CPs.
WL traits and abilities that generate further CPs have already been addressed by the latest FAQ.

Done.

Allies need to change, there has to be costs to allies.

I voted and it seems to be the majority but doesn't quite reflect my actual view, which is that allies should be an option but not the only sensible option.

I'd like there to be an opportunity cost for taking an allied detachment - so the decision is...

Take a tiny amount of allies with a tiny (or no) penalty (ala Age of Sigmar)

Take a medium-large amount of allies and have a medium-large penalty.

I guess you could call that a "nerf" but for me it's the wrong language to use.

One thing to consider is that certain factions were clearly designed at this point to not be full stand alone armies. Even when they had a codex, Inqusition and assassins as a quick example are clearly never going to be fielded alone.

Having allied forces in abstract is cool...but...

They need to have drawbacks, being able to cherrypick the best units for each role from multiple armies, interacting in synergistic ways that dramatically increase an armies power beyond what any mono-army could offer, is a serious gameplay and balance issue.

The allies system is broken and needs major toning down. Allied forces should not be able to share CP's, if anything they should be treated as aux detachments and reduce CP's (harder to coordinate disparate forces with their own logistics and command structures).

The fact that Soup dominates, regardless of Imperial/Xenos/Chaos, speaks volumes.

 Galef wrote:
By far the best way to remove Allie bonuses would be to remove CPs from detachments all together.
Have Battle Forged give 3CPs per 500pts of an army limit. S 2000pt games, everyone would start with 12CPs.
WL traits and abilities that generate further CPs have already been addressed by the latest FAQ.

Done.

CP is not the only benefit from allies. Being able to mitigate weaknesses of your army is a major benefit that makes any army with allies superior to any army without. Unless you buff orks, tau or necrons to the level of an imperial, chaos or eldar allied army, at which point someone playing a mono-army from of those ally-armies will be unable to defeat one of the factions which cannot ally.

An Imperium mono-army must be just as powerful as a knight-blood angel-custodes alliance, to archive that you need to have a drawback to allies.

 SHUPPET wrote:
Allies need to change, there has to be costs to allies.

There definitely should NOT be a cost to bring Allies, but they also should be giving out such blatant bonuses either.
Mono-Factions lists should be just as powerful as Soup.

 Jidmah wrote:

CP is not the only benefit from allies. Being able to mitigate weaknesses of your army is a major benefit that makes any army with allies superior to any army without. Unless you buff orks, tau or necrons to the level of an imperial, chaos or eldar allied army, at which point someone playing a mono-army from of those ally-armies will be unable to defeat one of the factions which cannot ally.

This has always been the issue with Allies since they were introduced in 5th ed (6th ed?) I can't remember anymore.

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 Galef wrote:

 SHUPPET wrote:
Allies need to change, there has to be costs to allies.

There definitely should NOT be a cost to bring Allies, but they also should be giving out such blatant bonuses either.
Mono-Factions lists should be just as powerful as Soup.

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Other games have sufficiently proven that allies without drawbacks are strictly superior to armies not taking allies. There is no need to go through all the mistakes to learn those lessons again.

 Galef wrote:

 SHUPPET wrote:
Allies need to change, there has to be costs to allies.

There definitely should NOT be a cost to bring Allies, but they also should be giving out such blatant bonuses either.
Mono-Factions lists should be just as powerful as Soup.
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How would you make mon-faction as powerful as soup without introducing any sort of cost to taking allies?

I don't understand your viewpoint here, or what you think that would look like.

I think what I am miscommunicating is that to me, cost = you pay something, which I disagree should happen
If you all mean cost = less bonuses, then yeah, I'm down.

There are several ways we could so this:
"Allied" detachments give no CPs. You can define "Allied" as those detachments that do not share a non-Battle Bro keyword with your Warlord.
Those detachments still have access to their own Stratagems, but as they lack a "commander", they gain "command" points. Any HQs for those Factions have given up their command to your Warlord.

Or Battle Forged lists that share at least 1 non-Battle Brother keyword for all units in all detachment receive a good deal MORE CPs than lists that do not.

The list can go on, there are so many potential fixes and GW seems to refuse to acknowledge any of them
The Warhammer Community article that accompanied the latest FAQ even said "Soup is still off the menu" which we all know far from true.

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 Galef wrote:

 SHUPPET wrote:
Allies need to change, there has to be costs to allies.

There definitely should NOT be a cost to bring Allies, but they also should be giving out such blatant bonuses either.
Mono-Factions lists should be just as powerful as Soup.

 Jidmah wrote:

CP is not the only benefit from allies. Being able to mitigate weaknesses of your army is a major benefit that makes any army with allies superior to any army without. Unless you buff orks, tau or necrons to the level of an imperial, chaos or eldar allied army, at which point someone playing a mono-army from of those ally-armies will be unable to defeat one of the factions which cannot ally.

This has always been the issue with Allies since they were introduced in 5th ed (6th ed?) I can't remember anymore.

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You have been able to take allies sense second edition. But they in general were pretty careful that they didn't do much for you, making them pretty rare in 2nd-4th iirc.

I am going to go ahead and say this poll sucks, because it doesn't allow for the option of "allies should be left as is and monofaction armies should be given a bonus".

Allies are fine. They work exactly as intended and some armies are unplayable without them (Inquisition, Sisters of Silence, Assassins, and arguably GSC (who lack the big bugs of Nids for durability or long range shooting of Guard whom they can ally in to even be playable now that Cult Ambush can't happen until Turn 2). No, instead we should be looking at a bonus for mono-faction armies so that they get a bonus for their lack of diversity (likely something like +3 CP).

Weird poll - literally no option for 'I think they're fine as they are'.

I'd prefer them to stay as they are but to have a slight buff to mono-faction lists (perhaps a bonus 3 CP or similar).

Oh wow - ninjad by someone who has the same opinion and proposed the exact same fix haha.

 Galef wrote:
I think what I am miscommunicating is that to me, cost = you pay something, which I disagree should happen
If you all mean cost = less bonuses, then yeah, I'm down.

There are several ways we could so this:
"Allied" detachments give no CPs. You can define "Allied" as those detachments that do not share a non-Battle Bro keyword with your Warlord.
Those detachments still have access to their own Stratagems, but as they lack a "commander", they gain "command" points. Any HQs for those Factions have given up their command to your Warlord.

Or Battle Forged lists that share at least 1 non-Battle Brother keyword for all units in all detachment receive a good deal MORE CPs than lists that do not.

The list can go on, there are so many potential fixes and GW seems to refuse to acknowledge any of them
The Warhammer Community article that accompanied the latest FAQ even said "Soup is still off the menu" which we all know far from true.

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Ah, I see.

So yeah, gaining 0 CP for an allied battalion and 5 CP for a same faction battalion is a cost in my book.

 ClockworkZion wrote:
I am going to go ahead and say this poll sucks, because it doesn't allow for the option of "allies should be left as is and monofaction armies should be given a bonus".

Allies are fine. They work exactly as intended and some armies are unplayable without them (Inquisition, Sisters of Silence, Assassins, and arguably GSC (who lack the big bugs of Nids for durability or long range shooting of Guard whom they can ally in to even be playable now that Cult Ambush can't happen until Turn 2). No, instead we should be looking at a bonus for mono-faction armies so that they get a bonus for their lack of diversity (likely something like +3 CP).

I thought I had covered that option with the Allowed, but nerfed to give no benefit.

First option is silly as it's one that's literally impossible to do

Indeed. The best fix would be to give additional CPs to army lists that contain only units that share a non-Battle Brother keyword with your Warlord.

The "fluff" explanation for this is that your units are more efficient at taking orders from your WL as he would be you same sub-faction.

Maybe the BF CPs earned are ONLY earned for lists like this and they get +5CPs? So you can either take ALL BAs and get 5CPs + any your detachments bring, OR you could take a Guard Battalion to get 5CPs + any your BAs bring.

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Double CP for all detachments that share all faction keywords with your Warlord?

tneva82 wrote:
First option is silly as it's one that's literally impossible to do

Yeah. GW has no success in removing things from games.

 Jidmah wrote:
Double CP for all detachments that share all faction keywords with your Warlord?

That's a good idea too! A really good idea, actually!
But I would bump Battalions back down to only 3CPs per pre-FAQ BRB with this change

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 DoomMouse wrote:
Weird poll - literally no option for 'I think they're fine as they are'.

I'd prefer them to stay as they are but to have a slight buff to mono-faction lists (perhaps a bonus 3 CP or similar).

Oh wow - ninjad by someone who has the same opinion and proposed the exact same fix haha.

Great minds think alike?

Seriously though, I feel like allies aren't the problem now that the CP battery has lost it's rechargability when compared to how it was, I feel like it's that monofaction armies aren't given enough support to make them feel like they can compete with a mixed army. Plus when your only allies are other Septs, Hive Fleets, Dynasties or Clans from the same book it makes it hard to shore up holes in your army the same way (even if allies cost you some "toys" it tends to be a stronger list regardless), and free CP feels like the easiest and most straight forward buff you can give to make up for that. Otherwise we'd be looking at something like, an extra warlord (or an extra warlord trait on your warlord), a free relic, or some other options that I'm sure would end up being horribly abused.

 Galef wrote:
This has always been the issue with Allies since they were introduced in 5th ed (6th ed?) I can't remember anymore.

They were a general thing in 2nd edition, restricted to specific 'allied faction' books from 3rd to 5th, and then with 6e onwards you started to get taudar, etc.


There are a bunch of competing issues with allies that are going to screw someone over no matter which way GW goes - you have factions with no allies, factions who aren't particularly playable except as allies, factions that have been chopped up into several pieces, and others that get cherry picked in ways that either make them better out of their faction than as part of it or which cover some integral drawback of another faction.


Solutions like handing out CPs to mono factions just beat on the factions who can't play mono. GW need to expand or consolidate the outliers into credible stand-alones so that allies become a clear benefit for all rather than a necessity for some.