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It is so-maligned by some (myself included. I know I'll be told I'm "wrong" here. Whoop dee doo. Fight me IRL...) because, like most things they do; GW implemented it in the most hamfisted way possible and not everything was created equal. So you are left with weird mishmashes of armies allied with themselves to get subfaction bonuses, odd things just thrown together on the battlefield with zero visual cohesion, especially at the typical game size 40k plays at. No, 30 odd Guardsmen and a random Knight showing up with a dozen Marines does not an army make.

"But that's how muh Imperium fights in the fluff!" they will respond. Maybe so, but that is in engagements involving hundreds if not thousands of troops and not normal 40k. Hell, there is even a game for that (Apocalypse) where souping wasn't just encouraged, it was allowed, and it just looks better. Mass combined arms Imperial force? Sign me up! Looks great on the tabletop. Hodgepodge of random units in a game not designed for that scale? Nope. Looks gak.

One (if not the only for some) of 40k's biggest assets is the visuals. Take that away by having an army that looks like someone hit the random button on Battlescribe and what are you left with? A good system? Don't make me laugh.

Other games get it right. Now, Warmachine is far from perfect on how Merc units are used as, just like in 40k there are a solid cadre of "always takes", but they are far from compulsory like they feel in 40k. You know why? Due to one simple word. "Faction" (almost as if 40k needs USRs... ). Many, many model have abilities that only affect "friendly faction" models. Mercs in your force are simply "friendly" (unless you take certain unit attachments) and are therefore unable to be used in the worst abuses of wombo comboing.

 techsoldaten wrote:


Also, let's separate soup from allies. I have a Daemon Primarch army with TS, Nurgle and CSM detachments. That's not soup, or at least most people would not call it soup. That's multiple individual detachments fighting together. Soup is where I put Abaddon, Typhus and Ahriman into a single Supreme Command Detachment and put it on the board. I can technically do that and get some benefit from doing so. But a lot of people find it objectionable and it doesn't make me feel real good about what I'm fielding.

I think this is an important distinction to make, and one that is often not made even by myself. Soup takes the idea of allies to an extreme that poisons the concept because there should have been a cost to it or more limitations (even a bit of both) but there isn't. Units from different armies buffing one another and beyond. There are simply not enough limitations with it.

As a chaos player, I have more than once (let's say in a 2kpts list) brought, for example, about 1100pts of Black Legion, then plugged in some death guard meat in a battalion and maybe even a supportive conclave of Thousand sons via SCD, all in different detachments but under an undivided BL lord's banner. This IS fluffy, it should be allowed. Another example is when I bring 1400pts of World Eaters and then 600pts of Khorne daemons. Again, this is fluffy and should be allowed, these types of allies are rampant through the fluff and daemons and CSM are just staple bedfellows. I would fight anyone that thinks this shouldn't be allowed lol

To answer the OP question, the problem isn't allies as a concept, it's people taking allies that don't have restrictions to the ultimate degrees to win or find the most competitive builds and GW's inaction to curtail that. The keyword system also allowed a little too much latitude.

I personally welcome the idea that in matched play there's a larger CP pool that you have to pay from to access allies, I think that's fair and makes sense, I don't mind there being some price of admission to using allies in terms of matched games but at the same time I reject the thought process that just because it's not balanced this second, it shouldn't exist at all because that's not the universe these things have been created to exist in and it's not actually tackling a problem, it's just putting it away. I want to be able to use as many of my models as often as I can within the confines of the formal rules.

There are issues with allies and soup. Allies should be restricted to their own detachments at least and the limitations or costs should go further than that but firstly, not to the point of making an allied list uncompetitive and secondly not to give mono-factions an advantage over allied lists. The two should be, as best possible, of equal footing.

Ultimately, I find the complaints about soup to be a little redundant. Any game that has nuance and detail to this level is going to struggle to be reasonably balanced; there's always going to be power lists. If you want perfect balance then you need simplicity in the set up such as that provided in Chess. You can't have flavour and balance. So if people are THAT concerned about soup because of a competitive or balancing issues, then really we should have the exact same models and stats with just different paint schemes and shapes/sizes.

 Vaktathi wrote:
On top of the points others have made about competitive and balance issues, from a thematic/fluff standpoint, many rarely see soup/allies being taken advantage of for actual fluff reasons but rather almost exclusively just for the aforementioned competitive reasons, and more importantly, a lot of these factions don't actually operate together that much or on such a close tactical level, when they do it's a rare notable exception, not something that should be seen often.

Eldar/Dark Eldar for instance are normally pretty deadly blood enemies, not simply wayward cousins, and the Dark Eldar coming to Iyanden's assistance for example is more about humiliating Iyanden and needling them about having to conscript their dead and be saved by those they consider filthy deviants than it is about uniting against the Tyranid menace (which doesn't really affect the Dark Eldar at all from the relative safety of the Dark City). Space Marines involved in a large campaign alongside the Imperial Guard typically share no direct chain of command (and indeed SM's are typically forbidden from taking command of Guard/Navy forces without specific dispensation to do so post-HH) and often never even see one another. For example, the Siege of Vraks where the Dark Angels show up, blow up the spaceport, and leave without coming anywhere near the actual main battle lines or doing much other than telling the Guard forces on the planet "we did what we came to do, peace out", that's how it normally works. When we see Space Marines commanding Guard forces and fighting directly alongside them on Armageddon, that's a notable major atypical event.

From a lore perspective, seeing a lot of these forces operate so closely together so often tends to get a bit weird.

That`s not allies-specific though.

All Dark Eldar-Marine alliances or whatever are probably still more plausable and far more common in-universe than, say, Ahriman actually fighting with Thousand Sons, instead of getting slaughtered by them on sight, or Typhus joining with Morarion, etc..

 ArcaneHorror wrote:
With the changes revealed for the next edition revealed, it seems like GW seems to be continuing with punishing people who make armies made up of different codices. While I do think that adjustments need to be made when cheesy combos get out of control, I don't see anything wrong why it's so bad with having broadly allied factions part of the same army. In the lore, SM frequently fight alongside Knights, Sisters, and Guard, while Chaos faction like DG and TS often fight alongside other CSM warbands. Eldar factions do team up, and so forth. Different factions working together can play off each others' talents, but it's not like they are inherently overpowered. Why does there seem to be this attitude that making an army consisting of allied factions seem to be such a bad thing?

As it was you could just take best of every faction ignoring weaknesses. Plus get more CP than pure. At zero cost. None.

Now you still can but you at least pay.

Ask yourself. If you can get +1 to hit to your devastators for free why NOT take it? With allies you can cherry pick best at no cost. That's essentially free buffs to your army. Before question is "why soup". Question was "why NOT soup".

There needs to be price to pay for power. Free buffs screw balance.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Jidmah wrote:

From the way they worded it, they might even attach a price tag to mixing and matching sub-factions from the same codex, so you can't attach the perfect army trait to every unit like orks or space marines do without a drawback.

Yeah. Finally there would be actually be point in playing mono kulture/regiment/etc. Playing say mono evil sun isn't all that optimal. Pure melee doesn't really work but evil sun tank bustas? Umm not that good. Bad moons just better. Before there was literally no point not to take bad moon/deathskull if you wanted tank bustas. Now there's at least CP saved. Small reward for staying pure.

I think that we have some factions that act as magnets that draw factions together.

Any collection and arrangement of allied Imperial factions, no matter how ridiculous it might otherwise seem, makes perfect sense if you add an Inquisitor and the enemy is the target of said Inquisitor's Quarry.

While it was always somewhat fluffy for Harlequins or Corsairs to work with either CWE or DE, it only really makes sense for DE and CWE to be in the same army when you add Ynnari- another magnet for alliances.

As for Tyranids, GSC are the ally magnet for the faction. It really does make sense for Guard and Nids to be a part of the same force if GSC is on the table- especially a large table where Guard take a flank and Nids take a flank with GSC holding the centre supported by the other forces when necessary.

But yeah, at a tournament, and from a design perspective, it is brutally hard to design a game where this diversity is supported, but which is also balanced. As pointed out earlier, it's only really possible by baselining each faction to the point where their identity as a distinct faction is at least partially diminished.

B.c why play with 99% of the army when you can just cherry pick the top 1%.

 Jidmah wrote:
It's not a bad thing, but having multiple codices to draw from is an inherent advantage over drawing an army from a single codex.
If there is no downside to doing it, there is no reason to play an army from a faction with the option to soup using only a single codex.

If you pick Chaos Space Marines as an example, there is no reason not improve your army with more powerful psykers from the Thousand Sons codex and more powerful troops from the daemons codex. You gain nothing from playing pure CSM instead.

From the way they worded it, they might even attach a price tag to mixing and matching sub-factions from the same codex, so you can't attach the perfect army trait to every unit like orks or space marines do without a drawback.

Doctrine is just for marines. While game is heavily marine heavy soup is still more than just marines.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Vaktathi wrote:
On top of the points others have made about competitive and balance issues, from a thematic/fluff standpoint, many rarely see soup/allies being taken advantage of for actual fluff reasons but rather almost exclusively just for the aforementioned competitive reasons, and more importantly, a lot of these factions don't actually operate together that much or on such a close tactical level, when they do it's a rare notable exception, not something that should be seen often.

Yeah. 3 marine smashhammers souping up with other elements...that's pretty hard to explain sensibly in background but very common.

I'm never really sure about fluff-based arguments for... well, anything, because everyone's fluff is different.

To my mind - sorry folks who disagree - DE and Eldar made up over their "Its High Elves and Dark Elves in SPAAACE" fluff ages and ages ago. I'm thinking probably late 3rd - certainly by 5th.

They don't like each other. Yes.
But lets be honest - Dark Eldar don't like other Dark Eldar.
They however prefer "Aeldari" to just about every other species in the galaxy. Much like how humans make deals with other humans... we don't make deals with monkeys.

Pretty much every piece of recent Eldar fluff has been about trying to show how there is a single Aeldari society, that maybe is a bit fractured and riddled with distrust - got to have conflict and endless attempted assassinations - but people still communicate and act together.

Also not really convinced on aesthetic reasons. A unifying 3 colour scheme can basically make almost any army tie together to be part of a greater whole. Maybe this is from playing too many computer games - but if you have red marines, with red Ad Mech, with red Sisters and red Guard - you are just going to see a sea of red. I don't think you would see a major clash - but that might just be me.

Sunny Side Up wrote:
Ahriman actually fighting with Thousand Sons, instead of getting slaughtered by them on sight,

Wat?

I think you mean Magnus there, or you need to re-educate yourself...

The key issue with “soup” in 8th was it encouraged Cherry Picking the best unit’s from all available codices, gave you more CP for doing so, without any real drawback to account for the advantages.

My primary interest in 40k is the social / gaming aspect. So I don’t mind soup per se, but without drawbacks to balance the advantages, I disliked the implementation.

Karol wrote:
I always had problems in defining, in non game terms, what kind of an army was the IG with castellan and some BA jump captins with 15 scouts.

[IMPERIUM]

Next...?

 purplkrush wrote:
Each army was designed with specific strengths and weaknesses in mind. Soup is a crutch for people who can't play their armies. It only came about couple of editions ago.

Every edition of the game has had allies as a mechanic, to some degree or another.

 Grimtuff wrote:
Other games get it right. Now, Warmachine is far from perfect on how Merc units are used as, just like in 40k there are a solid cadre of "always takes", but they are far from compulsory like they feel in 40k. You know why? Due to one simple word. "Faction" (almost as if 40k needs USRs... ). Many, many model have abilities that only affect "friendly faction" models. Mercs in your force are simply "friendly" (unless you take certain unit attachments) and are therefore unable to be used in the worst abuses of wombo comboing.

Not to forget that every Merc/Minion unit in the game has a list of factions it will work for - there are very few with universal access. You might find a unit/character is a "must have" for Cryx, but Cygnar might not be able to use it (and Trollbloods almost certainly won't).

I like the idea of allies alot, but the 8th ed implementation is horrible. Using allies should be allowed, but make it reasonable, impose strict limits on points/power level for allies, heck, why not limit unit choices too while you're at it.

That "1/4 of points max for allies" is a good step in the right direction. I'd also not allow HQs, and would severly limit the availbility of units outside of troops slot (power level cap could be a good limiter).

It’s essentially lopsided, and really only benefits certain Imperial Armies.

See, CPs and Stratagems are the coin of the realm, yes? Used well with other buffs certain units can become super Killy.

Now, in their native forces, overall points costs keeps things relatively sane. Yes, you can Smash Captain, but maybe only once or twice.

Add in Loyal 32? Congratulations. For Not Many Points, you’ve bagged loads of cheap CPs, and even better, some cheapo backfield objective holders.

In essence, those that can effectively Soup get significant bonuses.

Eldar, Tyranids, Necrons and Orks? Yeah no dice. Because you can’t Soup that well. This of course means Space Marines and Imperial Knights get an unfair advantage.

They could have sorted a chunk of the "Allies!" problems with an "allied force detachment", feel free to bring multiple of them, but the only units outside you codex are in there, then have them reasonably limited, say:

1 HQ
2-4 Troops
0-1 Fast Attack
0-1 Heavy
0-1 Elite

have this cost no CP, but also provide none


idea that you will now be able to spend CP to bring allies works for me - just needs to be such that they cost more than they bring (say allies generate no CP)

 Dysartes wrote:

 Grimtuff wrote:
Other games get it right. Now, Warmachine is far from perfect on how Merc units are used as, just like in 40k there are a solid cadre of "always takes", but they are far from compulsory like they feel in 40k. You know why? Due to one simple word. "Faction" (almost as if 40k needs USRs... ). Many, many model have abilities that only affect "friendly faction" models. Mercs in your force are simply "friendly" (unless you take certain unit attachments) and are therefore unable to be used in the worst abuses of wombo comboing.

Not to forget that every Merc/Minion unit in the game has a list of factions it will work for - there are very few with universal access. You might find a unit/character is a "must have" for Cryx, but Cygnar might not be able to use it (and Trollbloods almost certainly won't).

Doh! Yes, forgot about that bit. Not played WMH in a while, despite there being a cabinet full of minis next to me as I type this (and typed that!) that I could have just glanced over to to remind myself...

Is the Auxiliary Support Detachment (the one that costs a CP) supposed to be how you bring in allied forces? Like, the 3 detachment limit is specifically for organized play, so you can bring as many allied units as you have CP.

 Blndmage wrote:
Is the Auxiliary Support Detachment (the one that costs a CP) supposed to be how you bring in allied forces? Like, the 3 detachment limit is specifically for organized play, so you can bring as many allied units as you have CP.

In 8th no you take any detachment usually a battalion for the CP and can go ham.

In 9th the whole system has been upended.
CP is dependent upon game size.
Your first detachment is free
You pay CP for each additional detachment
You Pay CP for each additional codex you want units from

You can still bring allies in 9th, it just finally has a downside unlike 8th where its all free bonuses.

 Grimtuff wrote:

Doh! Yes, forgot about that bit. Not played WMH in a while, despite there being a cabinet full of minis next to me as I type this (and typed that!) that I could have just glanced over to to remind myself...

My brother and I actually just started up Warmahordes when this whole lockdown nonsense started and I gotta say, reading about the 'Theme Forces' has made me wish something along those lines would have come into play for 40k.

 Dysartes wrote:

Karol wrote:
I always had problems in defining, in non game terms, what kind of an army was the IG with castellan and some BA jump captins with 15 scouts.

[IMPERIUM]

Next...?

I think maybe you've misunderstood the question. Karol is asking what such an army is supposed to represent from a fluff perspective, since the Imperium does not regularly deploy integrated combat units consisting of Imperial Guard with Knights and led by Space Marines. These are typically independent assets; often used in the same operations, but with their own independent chains of command, logistics, and deployment.

This is rather different from taking, say, a 1000pt detachment of Guard along with a 1000pt detachment of Blood Angels, where each is based around a Battalion and represents a functionally coherent fighting unit in its own right.

To use a historical wargaming analogy, it's the difference between being able to take a battalion each of Americans and Brits in a WW2 game, versus being able to take an army consisting of mostly Americans but with Russian artillery pieces and a couple of Canadian officers for some reason. The former is allies, the latter is soup.

I've said this in numerous threads before (concerning the same topic).

When I was playing 40K, I was interested in narrative games, not competitive stuff. Bringing competitive soup was simply a visual indicator to me that you weren't interested in the same kind of game I was, and thus made it easy to avoid certain players. Not in a mean-spirited way, but it very openly indicates "I'm playing to win using the best components of any book I can buy", vs. "I love this army and enjoy playing it, even with its flaws", etc.

Now, if you had a cool fluffy and narrative army that involved soup, that's fine...but it's always been exceptionally easy in 8th to spot competitive soup vs. story driven soup. Early in the game it was Celestine and Guilliman leading hordes of "conscripts"...later it was Knights, the loyal 32 and smash captains, etc. etc.

As an adult, none of us have heaps of free time, so I won't bother pursuing a game with someone who's looking for tournament-competitive style gaming, when I am not.

Very much agree there’s a world of difference between Soup (cherry picked for power and abuse of CPs) and a list representing a Crusade force, with various elements of the Imperium’s forces, done because it looks cool to have Sisters and Marines amongst Imperial Guard.

One thing that hasn't been mentioned about soup that I don't like is that certain factions are expected to soup. Gw seems to have designed most chaos factions to work as soup. Sorry, I don't want to have to use other armies, I should be able to play my Night Lords as a pure army without losing anything.

I'm fine with not getting all the toys, but the ones I get should work. That means better balanced codexes. Csm and loyalists shouldn't want to take a knight, for instance, our own super heavys should be good enough to take. Maybe not as good as a knight but still good enough to actually be viable.

One of my armies is GSC, and given the limited range of models for the Cult, souping up gives me access and excuse to get my hands on the vast pool of interesting AM kits....for example the Baneblade. I don't want to build an entire AM army, but I do love some kits in the range.

The other army is Nids and I don't really like souping up with them. I can't even stand doing two hive-fleets in a list, first, because there's literally ONE documented instance of cooperation happening in the entire lore, and survivors of the first force actually submitted to the synapse creatures of the other.

And second, Nids simply look best as a wave of models with the same paint scheme. Two hive fleets mean two paint schemes mean disrupted immersion.

 catbarf wrote:

 Dysartes wrote:

Karol wrote:
I always had problems in defining, in non game terms, what kind of an army was the IG with castellan and some BA jump captins with 15 scouts.

[IMPERIUM]

Next...?

I think maybe you've misunderstood the question. Karol is asking what such an army is supposed to represent from a fluff perspective, since the Imperium does not regularly deploy integrated combat units consisting of Imperial Guard with Knights and led by Space Marines. These are typically independent assets; often used in the same operations, but with their own independent chains of command, logistics, and deployment.

This is rather different from taking, say, a 1000pt detachment of Guard along with a 1000pt detachment of Blood Angels, where each is based around a Battalion and represents a functionally coherent fighting unit in its own right.

But how is that different?
Two batallions on one hand
A batallion, superheavy detachment and Supreme command on the other hand.

The triumvirate is in charge, but all the other marines are busy elsewhere,or really just the three guys were sent (ignore that they're captains, think of them as movie marines) in the first place.

The castellan is the leader of the knights, but the marines are in charge.
Same with the guard.

This could be staight out of a novel, as long as you ignore the marine ranks.

Lotta people here talking about cheese not soup.

Kayback wrote:
Lotta people here talking about cheese not soup.

There's no real difference.

Kayback wrote:
Lotta people here talking about cheese not soup.

The two are synonymous in 8th and you know it.

The difference is that the only reason why someone is playing the second army is to maximize efficiency at zero cost.

 Grimtuff wrote:

Kayback wrote:
Lotta people here talking about cheese not soup.

The two are synonymous in 8th and you know it.

Using the occaisonal R&H allies makes me a cheeser now





Wait what

Not Online!!! wrote:

 Grimtuff wrote:

Kayback wrote:
Lotta people here talking about cheese not soup.

The two are synonymous in 8th and you know it.

Using the occaisonal R&H allies makes me a cheeser now





Wait what

And now it'll cost us cp!

If R&H don't get new rules in the fw rewrite the army is doomed.