Ally Rules?

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**xlEternitylx**

Hey Dakka,

I've been out of the game since early 6th ed, kinda looking at getting back in. I've read the 9th ed. rulebook and I feel really stupid cause I can't find where the rules for allies are. Do you just take them as a detachment (at whichever size you want)? Can someone throw the page number at me so I can see where it is?

Thanks in advance,

**p5freak**

There are no allies.

**Stux**

p5freak wrote:
There are no allies.

To expand on this, your army must have a unifying faction keyword. You dont take allies as such, but you can take a detachment of Space Marines and a detachment of Custodes in the same army as they all have IMPERIUM.

They cannot mix in the same detachment though, as detachments must also have a shared keyword and it cannot be IMPERIUM, AELDARI, CHAOS, or TYRANID.

However, many armies (basically every army that's had a codex since like 2019) has abilities you will lose if you mix factions. So Space Marines will lose combat doctrines entirely if you have that detachment of Custodes.

Basically 9e is very hostile to using allies, and outside of narrative play (where you should probably just decide with your opponent what makes sense for the scenario), are generally best avoided.

**U02dah4**

P5freak stop trolling with wrong answers

In order to take allies in a battleforged army you have to share a keyword. E.g. Imperium so no blood angels/ necrons.

Each faction then needs to be in a seperate detatchment united by a key word that isn't imperium, chaos etc.

So you can take a Blood Angel detatchment and an aura militarum detatchment Iif you want

As they are both imperium.

Astra militarum and imperial knights are not really penalised for allying

In addition admech has a few options for more easily allying with imperial knights

However most factions lose something if allied for example space marines lose their doctrines

**solkan**

xlEternitylx wrote:
Hey Dakka,

I've been out of the game since early 6th ed, kinda looking at getting back in. I've read the 9th ed. rulebook and I feel really stupid cause I can't find where the rules for allies are. Do you just take them as a detachment (at whichever size you want)? Can someone throw the page number at me so I can see where it is?

Thanks in advance,

No more rules for allies, in the old sense. If you’re thinking about stuff like Space Marines with allied Imperial Guard, that falls under the requirements for a common keyword in the army. And I suppose so does Space Marines allied with Eldar, except that the answer for “Is this permitted? changes….

Stuff like the old full page allies chart is currently relegated to the realm of narrative (a.k.a. “If this is what you’re doing, you should have a strong enough sense of what you want to do that you don’t need GW to write the rules for you, and just make sure everyone involved has the same idea what’s going on.”) play.

**xlEternitylx**

I think I mostly understand.

So, restating what everyone else said to make sure I understand, is that
- "allies" in the sense I'm used to doesn't exist.
- keywords for a faction allow different codexs to match together (eg Imperium forces will have keywords that let them be together)
both in detachments AND with detachments (I can plop a Space Wolves Dread into a detachment of space marines, or take a whole detach of Space Wolves, both is cool)
- there are penalties for taking stuff that doesn't have the same keywords (army is not "battle forged", I'm only loosely understand that to mean "pure")

Where I'm still a bit confused is when you say "relegated to the world of narrative." Last time I heard that, GW introduced having to roll to figure out what psychic powers you had, which ultimately made my army way to swingy and was why I left. I would use a small Tau detachment with the troops as a tax to get 6 broadside to cover my Eldar (or, sometimes a small Space Wolves detachment, love me some Murderfang).

So under the new rules, I can't take a unit of tau in a Eldar detachment (nothing new there) and instead I have to take it as it's own detachment, and suffer whatever penalties there is for not being battle forged Eldar. Correct?

Thanks

**Stux**

You cannot take a Tau detachment and an Eldar detachment in the same army, as they have no shared faction keywords.

Every unit in your army must have a unifying keyword (except for UNALIGNED units, but thats a whole other thing).

In addition to that, you can only have units in the same detachments if they shared a faction keyword other than IMPERIUM, AELDARI, CHAOS, or TYRANIDS. Eg you can't have Custodes and Space Marines in the same detachment because their only shared faction keyword is IMPERIUM, but because they have that keyword in common they can be in the same army, just in different detachments.

**xlEternitylx**

Oh...dang, that's real disappointing.

Last question then, can characters who have the unifying key word, but are part of different detachments, still join the other units? Eg can my Marneus Calgar and Tigurius (spelling? Sorry) join a Space Wolves termie squad and go bust em up in Cc? Or are they now compartmentalized, and they can be part of the same army, but not the same squad?

Thanks again

**Leo_the_Rat**

Characters don't join squads anymore. They stay independent units. That isn't saying that they can't fight the same enemy unit at the same time but for all intents and purposes they are treated as individual units. So, if you had Calgar, Tigerus and, a unit of wolves attack an enemy unit when the enemy unit attacks it could choose any or all of your units to attack. Also, the enemy can interrupt your attack sequence using the appropriate stratagem. So it could go Calgar, enemy, Tigerus and then, wolves.

Hope that helps.

**nosferatu1001**

The concept of an IC joining units has been removed from the game.

There are rules such as look out sir that apply to "small" characters (under ten wounds) that gives them the old "squad " protection you're used to.

**xlEternitylx**

Whooo boy, it's changed a lot over the years. I suppose that's to be expected....guess I'll just have to read yonder rulebook very carefully and pretend I don't know anything from previous eds.

Thanks all, immense help.

**nosferatu1001**

Even the AP system is different - instead of it ignoring saves of its value or worse, it's now a negative modifier to the dice roll you compare to your save value. Eg you roll a 4 against an ap-2 weapon, your roll is now a 2 - meaning a terminator would pass but a marine wouldn't.

**p5freak**

U02dah4 wrote:
P5freak stop trolling with wrong answers

You stop giving wrong answers. There is no such thing as allies in 9th like there was in 6th, which was the question asked.

**JNAProductions**

p5freak wrote:
U02dah4 wrote:
P5freak stop trolling with wrong answers

You stop giving wrong answers. There is no such thing as allies in 9th like there was in 6th, which was the question asked.

There are still allies, in that you can take Guard and Marines together.

Your answer might be technically not wrong, from a certain point of view... But it's not helpful. At all. And can easily be misleading, and therefore the opposite of helpful.

**xlEternitylx**

I appreciate all the guidance.

I think I got it under control, sans one last thing. Some of the detachments, such as the Outrider or Spearhead, have a 0-3 for troops. I'm quite used to always having to have a troop tax, so I want to confirm that I'm reading this right. I can build an army (with the faction keywords) that have no troops? Eg, I could run my Tau as a Spearhead, load up 2 HQs and 6 Heavy Support (5 squad of Broadsides and a Riptide), and just blow the opponent to pieces without having to worry about useless troops? All while they control the objectives (since all I see about controlling a point is "more models than opponent", in range, and not an aircraft)?

(If so, hot damn, I can just run two separate armies of all my favorite units, rather than a selective amount of both in an "ally" setup like I used to.)

**JNAProductions**

It costs more CP than your Warlord’s Patrol, Battalion, or Brigade.

There’s also the rule of 2/3/4, which limits how many non-Troop and non-Dedicated Transport units you can take. Max of 3 of the same datasheet in a 2k game, excepting Troops and DT.

**xlEternitylx**

JNAProductions wrote:
It costs more CP than your Warlord’s Patrol, Battalion, or Brigade.

Because those other detachments have this "you get CP +x if your warlord is from here" thing, I take it?

JNAProductions wrote:
There’s also the rule of 2/3/4, which limits how many non-Troop and non-Dedicated Transport units you can take. Max of 3 of the same datasheet in a 2k game, excepting Troops and DT.

Ahh. I don't see the 2/3/4 thing, can you throw me a page number (or rule name) so I can find it?

**nosferatu1001**

It's in the rules for matched play, as open and narrative are different

You're also missing the rule "objective secured" and that missions have secondary objectives. While you may think that's a winning strategy I can assure you it isn't...for now. It's entirely possible you won't get to the middle objectives until turn 4 , then you get one turn of decent scoring and the games over with you losing

Have a look at how actual competitive armies are built - goonhammer have a very good Tau codex write up.