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Allies in 2nd weren’t an issue. They were available and fluffy but weren’t abused badly. Now they are a major problem in 6th, 7th and 8th. But the player base has changed and a toxic style of matched play that is devoid of fluff and abusive of any loophole has made them a problem. The matched play community needs to sort out their house and arrange tournaments that reward fluffy lists played in a dramatic way. Points for painting, stories for armies and get it back to being the “hobby” it used to be.

That’s what I think anyway. I’m not criticising everyone who plays in tournaments I’m sure there are some lovely people who play in them but the style of play and lists aren’t related to the setting at all. I remember when tournaments first started you got pints for gorgeous armies and fair play. The reports of the tournaments were all about showing the beautiful and original armies people came up with. Now I don’t ever see a pic of an army in the reports. Just power play and spam. It’s a shame.

Allies weren't a primary issue in 7th outside just a couple of problematic builds, which were all focused on the issue of Invisibility having been a thing.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Allies weren't a primary issue in 7th outside just a couple of problematic builds, which were all focused on the issue of Invisibility having been a thing.

Allies aren't a primary issue in 8th outside just a couple problematic builds, which are all focused on the issue of CP sharing being a thing.

Lemondish wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Allies weren't a primary issue in 7th outside just a couple of problematic builds, which were all focused on the issue of Invisibility having been a thing.

Allies aren't a primary issue in 8th outside just a couple problematic builds, which are all focused on the issue of CP sharing being a thing.

Shared CP isn't the issue. The issue is problematic units. Slamguinus is broken with allies or with pure Blood Angels.

Lemondish wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Allies weren't a primary issue in 7th outside just a couple of problematic builds, which were all focused on the issue of Invisibility having been a thing.

Allies aren't a primary issue in 8th outside just a couple problematic builds, which are all focused on the issue of CP sharing being a thing.

I pretty much find both of these to be true. Whens the last time you saw Ad Mech allied with Sisters and an Inquisitor causing problems or someone taking Khorne Marines with Khorne Demons to replicate the old Demonkin Book. You don't because those builds don't exploit a few core weaknesses that 8th has. The current cheap Brigade, plus slam captain or custodes and maybe a knight are the issue, not allies as a whole.

HoundsofDemos wrote:


I pretty much find both of these to be true. Whens the last time you saw Ad Mech allied with Sisters and an Inquisitor causing problems or someone taking Khorne Marines with Khorne Demons to replicate the old Demonkin Book. You don't because those builds don't exploit a few core weaknesses that 8th has. The current cheap Brigade, plus slam captain or custodes and maybe a knight are the issue, not allies as a whole.

Absolutely. That's why I'm not so pleased with all these people who're trigger-happily pointing their nerf guns at the soup.

HoundsofDemos wrote:

Lemondish wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Allies weren't a primary issue in 7th outside just a couple of problematic builds, which were all focused on the issue of Invisibility having been a thing.

Allies aren't a primary issue in 8th outside just a couple problematic builds, which are all focused on the issue of CP sharing being a thing.

I pretty much find both of these to be true. Whens the last time you saw Ad Mech allied with Sisters and an Inquisitor causing problems or someone taking Khorne Marines with Khorne Demons to replicate the old Demonkin Book. You don't because those builds don't exploit a few core weaknesses that 8th has. The current cheap Brigade, plus slam captain or custodes and maybe a knight are the issue, not allies as a whole.

Also, there was that time where dual Daemon Primarchs reigned supreme until one got hit hard with the nerf bat which looked a lot like a book about getting dust out of armors.
Oh, and that time where brimstone horrors and alpha legion cultists would die and rise again as an army of pox walkers. Tiny, burning pox walkers that claimed to be Alpharius.
And let's not forget when Celestine was blessing everyone with her presence. EVERYONE ALL THE TIME.
I'd also like to take as second mourn for all those conscripts who gave their lives to protect Gulliman and his legendary retinue of assault cannon razorbacks.
Speaking of the big blue one: Remember when he went to Terra and promoted all custodes to captains, gave them jetbikes and change the codex astartes to read "every imperial commander shall be accompanied by exactly three golden bikes, no more, no less".

Yeah, good thing allies have never done anything useful outside of providing CP and casting invisibility.

I disagree with the claim that allies in modern editions were devoid of fluff, most players were playing some kind of fluffy army, and most still do. Tournaments are about exterme optimization and shouldn't be used as the yardstick for how most people use the rules of the game.

Lemondish wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Allies weren't a primary issue in 7th outside just a couple of problematic builds, which were all focused on the issue of Invisibility having been a thing.

Allies aren't a primary issue in 8th outside just a couple problematic builds, which are all focused on the issue of CP sharing being a thing.

That's not the case at all. Aeldari just mix and matches whichever units it wants to plug holes, and to give the additional of tools like Vect. Chaos takes the strongest units available split between a free choice of allies. Even Imperium, when you nerf the CP farm, is going to do the exact same thing, and the problem with allies will still persist.

 Jidmah wrote:

HoundsofDemos wrote:

Lemondish wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Allies weren't a primary issue in 7th outside just a couple of problematic builds, which were all focused on the issue of Invisibility having been a thing.

Allies aren't a primary issue in 8th outside just a couple problematic builds, which are all focused on the issue of CP sharing being a thing.

I pretty much find both of these to be true. Whens the last time you saw Ad Mech allied with Sisters and an Inquisitor causing problems or someone taking Khorne Marines with Khorne Demons to replicate the old Demonkin Book. You don't because those builds don't exploit a few core weaknesses that 8th has. The current cheap Brigade, plus slam captain or custodes and maybe a knight are the issue, not allies as a whole.

Also, there was that time where dual Daemon Primarchs reigned supreme until one got hit hard with the nerf bat which looked a lot like a book about getting dust out of armors.
Oh, and that time where brimstone horrors and alpha legion cultists would die and rise again as an army of pox walkers. Tiny, burning pox walkers that claimed to be Alpharius.
And let's not forget when Celestine was blessing everyone with her presence. EVERYONE ALL THE TIME.
I'd also like to take as second mourn for all those conscripts who gave their lives to protect Gulliman and his legendary retinue of assault cannon razorbacks.
Speaking of the big blue one: Remember when he went to Terra and promoted all custodes to captains, gave them jetbikes and change the codex astartes to read "every imperial commander shall be accompanied by exactly three golden bikes, no more, no less".

Yeah, good thing allies have never done anything useful outside of providing CP and casting invisibility.

Honestly I can't take people seriously that think that Cultists and/or Poxwalker shenanigans were broken.

HoundsofDemos wrote:

Lemondish wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Allies weren't a primary issue in 7th outside just a couple of problematic builds, which were all focused on the issue of Invisibility having been a thing.

Allies aren't a primary issue in 8th outside just a couple problematic builds, which are all focused on the issue of CP sharing being a thing.

I pretty much find both of these to be true. Whens the last time you saw Ad Mech allied with Sisters and an Inquisitor causing problems or someone taking Khorne Marines with Khorne Demons to replicate the old Demonkin Book. You don't because those builds don't exploit a few core weaknesses that 8th has. The current cheap Brigade, plus slam captain or custodes and maybe a knight are the issue, not allies as a whole.

When was the last time you saw a Guard list with nothing but Ogryns cause problems at a major? Obviously Guard is super weak and needs some serious buffs.

 Arachnofiend wrote:

HoundsofDemos wrote:

Lemondish wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Allies weren't a primary issue in 7th outside just a couple of problematic builds, which were all focused on the issue of Invisibility having been a thing.

Allies aren't a primary issue in 8th outside just a couple problematic builds, which are all focused on the issue of CP sharing being a thing.

I pretty much find both of these to be true. Whens the last time you saw Ad Mech allied with Sisters and an Inquisitor causing problems or someone taking Khorne Marines with Khorne Demons to replicate the old Demonkin Book. You don't because those builds don't exploit a few core weaknesses that 8th has. The current cheap Brigade, plus slam captain or custodes and maybe a knight are the issue, not allies as a whole.

When was the last time you saw a Guard list with nothing but Ogryns cause problems at a major? Obviously Guard is super weak and needs some serious buffs.

Well yeah some units do need the buffs.

Necrons, Tau and Orks can't soup. Nids can't really either, GCS is a special thing, and honestly, I feel like the GCS ally rules are a wonderful example of how to do allies!

They can't soup YET. I'd imagine that after the existing codexs are out brand new armies will be the majority of new models coming out. GW seems to past the endless regurgitating of existing codexs/models each edition. AoS seems to be the trailblazer here. And 3rd party manufacturers can't compete with you if they don't know what your releasing. Drop a new army and move on.

 Blndmage wrote:
Necrons, Tau and Orks can't soup. Nids can't really either, GCS is a special thing, and honestly, I feel like the GCS ally rules are a wonderful example of how to do allies!

Necrons aren't weak because they can't ally though and you know that.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Honestly I can't take people seriously that think that Cultists and/or Poxwalker shenanigans were broken.

No problem, I don't take people serious that fail at reading and understanding even the simplest posts

 Jidmah wrote:

HoundsofDemos wrote:

Lemondish wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Allies weren't a primary issue in 7th outside just a couple of problematic builds, which were all focused on the issue of Invisibility having been a thing.

Allies aren't a primary issue in 8th outside just a couple problematic builds, which are all focused on the issue of CP sharing being a thing.

I pretty much find both of these to be true. Whens the last time you saw Ad Mech allied with Sisters and an Inquisitor causing problems or someone taking Khorne Marines with Khorne Demons to replicate the old Demonkin Book. You don't because those builds don't exploit a few core weaknesses that 8th has. The current cheap Brigade, plus slam captain or custodes and maybe a knight are the issue, not allies as a whole.

Also, there was that time where dual Daemon Primarchs reigned supreme until one got hit hard with the nerf bat which looked a lot like a book about getting dust out of armors.
Oh, and that time where brimstone horrors and alpha legion cultists would die and rise again as an army of pox walkers. Tiny, burning pox walkers that claimed to be Alpharius.
And let's not forget when Celestine was blessing everyone with her presence. EVERYONE ALL THE TIME.
I'd also like to take as second mourn for all those conscripts who gave their lives to protect Gulliman and his legendary retinue of assault cannon razorbacks.
Speaking of the big blue one: Remember when he went to Terra and promoted all custodes to captains, gave them jetbikes and change the codex astartes to read "every imperial commander shall be accompanied by exactly three golden bikes, no more, no less".

Yeah, good thing allies have never done anything useful outside of providing CP and casting invisibility.

There were at least as many cases of this type in 7th, except that there they were not fixed.

Actually the current kind of "problems" given by allies are much more welcome than the kind found in 7th.
In 8th you have the problem of armies plugging holes with the help of other armies, which while it could be bad for gaming, it at least makes sense!
In 7th you had Cypher joining every imperial army because for some magical reason his presence could hide 20 Thunderwolves charging at you!

 Crimson Devil wrote:
They can't soup YET. I'd imagine that after the existing codexs are out brand new armies will be the majority of new models coming out. GW seems to past the endless regurgitating of existing codexs/models each edition. AoS seems to be the trailblazer here. And 3rd party manufacturers can't compete with you if they don't know what your releasing. Drop a new army and move on.

There's a close to zero percent chance that Necrons get multi-faction support, and even if they did it wouldn't make a damned lick of sense. Basically their options would be to separate the Canoptek stuff out into its own army, which would require them to isolate some units from the main codex, oir they would have to build a new faction around a dynasty that plays radically different from the "standard" Necrons like the Maynarkh, which again wouldn't actually diversify model options by that much. Necron Codex vs. Maynarkh Codex would basically be the difference between Space Marine Codex vs. Blood Angels Codex.

Necrons certainly don't have the radically different and unique subfaction possibility that Tyranids had with Genestealer Cults.

 Arachnofiend wrote:
There's a close to zero percent chance that Necrons get multi-faction support, and even if they did it wouldn't make a damned lick of sense. Basically their options would be to separate the Canoptek stuff out into its own army, which would require them to isolate some units from the main codex, oir they would have to build a new faction around a dynasty that plays radically different from the "standard" Necrons like the Maynarkh

Both of which are entirely possible. GWs first step will be to fragment the codex into two or more pieces (kroot /canoptek) and their second step would be to have one generic ultracron or ultratau book with several additional cron/tau++ factions using a mix of upgrade sprues and unique units.

They aren't going to do that though, is the thing. Maybe they move the kroot to their own codex because they're distinct enough in both function and aesthetic from Tau that they could be independent, but there's nothing they could add as a Necron subfaction that wouldn't just feel like something that was stolen from the main book.

 Arachnofiend wrote:
They aren't going to do that though, is the thing. Maybe they move the kroot to their own codex because they're distinct enough in both function and aesthetic from Tau that they could be independent, but there's nothing they could add as a Necron subfaction that wouldn't just feel like something that was stolen from the main book.

Kharadron Overlords. Idoneth Deepkin.

If you can't think of a new distinct ally for Necrons, you don't have as much imagination as it seems GW have. If they want Necrons to have distinct allies, they'll think of something.

Whether you like it is another question of course!

 Arachnofiend wrote:
They aren't going to do that though, is the thing. Maybe they move the kroot to their own codex because they're distinct enough in both function and aesthetic from Tau that they could be independent, but there's nothing they could add as a Necron subfaction that wouldn't just feel like something that was stolen from the main book.

Codex C'tan.

Spoletta wrote:
There were at least as many cases of this type in 7th, except that there they were not fixed.

Actually the current kind of "problems" given by allies are much more welcome than the kind found in 7th.
In 8th you have the problem of armies plugging holes with the help of other armies, which while it could be bad for gaming, it at least makes sense!
In 7th you had Cypher joining every imperial army because for some magical reason his presence could hide 20 Thunderwolves charging at you!

Problems are still problems. Just because your car is on fire instead of your house doesn't mean everything is awesome.

Allies are a pain and generally a bad thing.



Yep!
See first up most armies are marketed and sold and bought through a unified identity of the faction itself. A combination of their visual style, playstyle and lore. Whilst those three components will change in priority from person to person and also change for different armies with the same person, they underpin the core of how armies are bought and sold in the hobby.

When you then, long after introducing armies, try to introduce allies with different factions as a formal rule, you can run into a mess.

1) The allies can break internal balance. Essentially because each army was made to stand on its own, yet with its own weaknesses, its possible to use allies to fix designed blind spots in an army; and/or to build up on the strong points. It essentially favours more extreme min-maxing of armed forces which can result in many vanilla armies being unable to compete on an even standing (which is bad because those are the gateway to most new players)

2) The allies can appear useless - if you manage to avoid option 1 then option 2 is that taking allies almost means nothing. This is good for game balance, but can make it rather a farce to even bother.

3) The allies breaks the visual identity of the game.


This can be even worse when you group allies based upon lore elements only not upon game balance. Consider that Marines have a wealth of allies to draw from, whilst Tyranids had nothing until Genestealer Cults came along. That is a huge disparity in allies and gives one army extreme min-max and another not.




Personally I feel that the best way to handle allies is casual style. Have a fixed set of core rules for single armies and then have a bolt on top allies option that lets you have rules to take allies, but which isn't designed to be used at the competitive end of the game.




The other option is to build allies into the game from the very beginning. That's hard to do for something of Warhammer Maturity unless GW goes the Age of Sigmar path and introduces it by shattering armies into sub-factions (which quite honestly might work in time for AoS but its a VERY VERY messy appraoch and can backfire - look at the Elf players who once had a 10K army in points, who now have bits of armies that can't quite work on their own at all).

I have 0 problems with allies losing their chapter/whatever tactics if they are mixed in an army, not just detachment. Even not sharing CP is allright.

I wouldn't like for them to not be able to use stratagems, because stratagems are cool. The same goes for relics and warlord traits (But probably those last two should be limited to the faction of your warlord)

This way you can't take a unit of Dark Heart kabalite warriors to use the Vect stratagem because you don't have CP. And allies actually lose something vs mono armies. But playing an allied force doesn't feel like playing with the indexes, you keep some personality if you build your allied force as that, two complete forces that ally together with their own sinergyes and CP, like a Sisters of Battle batallion+Black Templars batallion. (This for example wouldn't stop Slamguinus with scouts+Imperial Knight+Imperial guard from existing, but it would be much more weak. You wouldn't be able to give relicts or use stratagems with the single Castellan, Imperial Guard would lose their regiment doctrines, and only the BA detachment with your warlord captain would be able to take relicts to make them slamguinus. And Custodes Jetbikes yould lose the +1 to their invul save, and their relics too. An army much more manegable to a pure force that has their sub-faction bonus active and can use stratagems in all of his force)

Of course, some units like Assasins or Sisters of Silence should receive an exception to this to be usable, just like they have an exception and can be used in a vanguard detachment without HQ right now.

The killteam factions have created a good example for factions that are meant to be allied and not to be used for stand-alone armies.

Basically you could create a separate detachments for those kind of mini-factions, for example:

Sisters of Silence Detachment, 1-6 elite choices, 0-6 dedicated transports. Command benefits 3CP, these CP can only be spent on Sisters of Silence stratagems.

 Arachnofiend wrote:
...but there's nothing they could add as a Necron subfaction that wouldn't just feel like something that was stolen from the main book.

No different from splitting chaos marines and daemons, or spinning off harlies from eldar to give a few examples. And GW haven't been adverse in the past to taking one or two units and turning them into a book either (deathwatch for instance).

I started 40k with codex witch hunters and it was a great little army. Loved seeing the great variety of units and aesthetic; being able to take along a few token units of guard i had at the time to represent PDF roped in by the inquisitors made for some great looking setups as well as stories.

Sad times when the codex was split up into the various different elements that made up my army. To me that was like as saying to space marines that scouts and devastators were getting their own codex and you couldnt field them in your army anymore. Made no sense.

Now enter 8th edition. I cannot articulate how incredibly happy i am to be able to field my old witch hunter army again.
I couldnt care less what the competitive types think or do to abuse the game. Let them have their cookie cutter netlists. Im content with allies and am in a warm fuzzy place.

HoundsofDemos wrote:
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 don't know much about the competitive perspective, but from what I can tell the Imperium of Man has more options for "allies" than the other xenos empires do. Mainly because an Imperial Guard Regiment teaming up with a Tyranid Hive seems kinda odd to me. Perhaps GW could introduce new types of Xeno factions that have better foreign relations with say, the Eldar or the Tau and than with the Imperium.

Sorry if I got anything wrong though. I remember reading my Dark Vengeance rule book, and it said that certain factions would only team up with each other when something is in dire straights and the fate of the universe is on the line or something. Once again, sorry if I misinterpreted what you were trying to say.

 ClockworkZion wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
The problem is that those factions arent really armies, and treating them as such was a mistake. The Inquisition for example, is not a battlefield force in and of itself, rather it coopts other forces for specific objectives/campaigns.

I disagree. Taking an allies system like AoS's and allowing us to mix and match things isn't a problem. Heck, with the Imperium that's a feature, not a bug after all. The problem was not expanding that to other factions (Orks, Tau, Necrons), some of which are known for working along side humans (Eldar, Tau and Orks have all done so in various points in history) and I'd love for Necrons to go full space Egypt and start taking human slaves to work for them (I mean nothing gets the ego going quite as much as having a captive audience to listen to your insane ramblings and agree with your every claim, and with mindshackle scarabs that's even more possible than ever).

And that's not even going into Traitor Guard which needs some proper love as well.

Basically I'm saying there should be more play in the allies system than we currently have (maybe split it into broader groups like AoS "Order", "Chaos", "Destruction" set up) and bonuses should be tied to how many shared keywords you have in your list. Basically I'm saying copy AoS, but don't do so many tiny subfactions.

So basically everybody can take anything without hindrance as otherwise some factions will be better.

Say hello to necron tyranid custodes etc comboes)