Allies - The Non-Competitive Choice

[Polaria]

Reading through the allies and scenario rules I'm beginning to think that for competitive games the allies suck really hard unless you are at Battle Brother level. Basically seems like at Battle Brother level allies are just and extension for your Codex with the little draw-back of having to pay for an additional HQ.

If I got the rules correct at less than Battle Brother level the Allies actually start to significantly hinder your game. Even Allies of Convenience are counted as "enemy" units so they not only can't Score, but they actually act as hostile Denial units, denying your own Scoring units if they end up within 3" of an objective... I don't know about you, but I'm pretty sure I'll never run any allies if they are not Battle Brothers.

[ForgottenLore]

Even Allies of Convenience are counted as "enemy" units so they not only can't Score, but they actually act as hostile Denial units, denying your own Scoring units if they end up within 3" of an objective...

Hmmm, Hadn't considered that angle before. It has also been brought up that Eldar allies of convenience with a farseer for psychic defense would inhibit your own psykers as well.

But yeah, The only level really worth bothering with except for serious fluff purposes is Battle Brothers.

[IAMNOTHERE]

Not got my teeth into allies yet but all this non battle brother stuff tells me that you use them as chaff.

Charge them straight into your opponents guns and don't worry about them.

[Polaria]

Not got my teeth into allies yet but all this non battle brother stuff tells me that you use them as chaff.

Charge them straight into your opponents guns and don't worry about them.

I would say that is the only thing you can use them for and, unless you run a very expensive and elite army, you might still be better of using your own units for chaff...

[Chem-Dog]

If I got the rules correct at less than Battle Brother level the Allies actually start to significantly hinder your game. Even Allies of Convenience are counted as "enemy" units so they not only can't Score, but they actually act as hostile Denial units, denying your own Scoring units if they end up within 3" of an objective...

Two questions.
1: If they are considered hostile, can I shoot at them? Like just after I've charged them into something.
2: Do they still deny enemy Objectives?

I'm asking because I really haven't looked into the Allies thing yet. At 2k points my army has loads of stuff left out, I'm not about to start filling out space with things that'll take up more space when I'm already rotating units through lack of points.

I can't imagine though, it'd be that hard to last turn shuffle your allies out of any potential self denial situations. Or deploy allies who are entirely dedicated to meat-shield or unit assassination duty.

It has also been brought up that Eldar allies of convenience with a farseer for psychic defense would inhibit your own psykers as well.

I'm away from my rule book at the moment so I can't check the relevant entries, just how does this work?

[Gaargod]

I'm confused. The Desperate Allies section very clearly states desperate allies are non-scoring, non-denial troops. Which implies that this is different from Battle Brothers / Allies of Convenience, who are scoring/denial - after all, they come from your FoC, so why wouldn't they be?
Yet, you have a point that they are treated as enemy units in lots of respects. So perhaps they don't.

If so, that makes Allies a lot less of a no-brainer. Unless you can be Battle Brothers, allies can be very restrictive - it might still be worth it to cover specific holes in your armylist (i.e. taking Guard hydras + vendettas, sigh), but you have to be a lot more careful.



Also, I was thinking about how to seriously infuriate fluffists. Consider that you get 1 allied detachment per main force - ergo, at 2k you can have 2 (even specifically says so in the main rules). However, they only need to ally with you - there's nothing stopping an IG player having Chaos Daemons and Grey Knights together. Dunno how'd they interact of course...

[ForgottenLore]

I'm asking because I really haven't looked into the Allies thing yet.

The rules for Allies of Convenience say that they are treated as enemy units that you can't shoot, target, attack... basically target in any way. Don't have the book so can't give the exact wording but it lists a whole bunch of stuff that you can't do to them, but seemingly leaves some loopholes.

Also, I was thinking about how to seriously infuriate fluffists. Consider that you get 1 allied detachment per main force - ergo, at 2k you can have 2 (even specifically says so in the main rules). However, they only need to ally with you - there's nothing stopping an IG player having Chaos Daemons and Grey Knights together. Dunno how'd they interact of course...

The rules specify that, when using multiple detachments both primary detachments must come from the same codex, and both allied detachments must come from the same codex. So you can only ever use 2 codexes short of apocalypse.

[Spiney Norman]

Yeah, they kind of screwed up with the allies rules, they way it is written desperate allies actually have fewer downsides than allies of convenience.

Scoring units are any troop units from your army, so a convenience allied troop unit is scoring for your army, however because it is treated as an enemy unit it also denies you any objective it tries to control. For this reason if you have a troop unit from your main army controlling an objective next to a convenience allied unit, they also deny you that objective because they are treated as an enemy.

In addition I don't see anything to say that just because a convenience ally unit is counted as an enemy unit for you it automatically counts as a friendly unit for your opponent, IMHO they would count them as enemy units too, which means they still deny objectives to the enemy as normal.

The most annoying thing about convenience allies is that they Can't control an objective because they auto-deny themselves.

On the other hand because all desperate ally units are non-scoring and non-denial units they cannot deny objective controlled by your main army's troop units.

[Bubble Ghost]

The quote is "Units in your army treat Allies of Convenience as...", not "Allies of Convenience are treated as..." It looks like pretty deliberate language - it doesn't matter what my units treat that allied squad as, the game treats it as part of my army. I think that's what the intent is anyway, so it's both pedantic lawyer-speak and RaI.

[Polaria]

I'm confused. The Desperate Allies section very clearly states desperate allies are non-scoring, non-denial troops. Which implies that this is different from Battle Brothers / Allies of Convenience, who are scoring/denial - after all, they come from your FoC, so why wouldn't they be?
Yet, you have a point that they are treated as enemy units in lots of respects. So perhaps they don't.

The rules for Allies of Convenience say that they are treated as enemy units that you can't shoot, target, attack... basically target in any way. Don't have the book so can't give the exact wording but it lists a whole bunch of stuff that you can't do to them, but seemingly leaves some loopholes.

p.123 says following "You control an objective if there is at least one model from one of your scoring units, and no models from enemy denial units, within 3" of it"

and

"Denial units are those squads that can prevent an enemy from controlling an objective."

I know this really needs a FAQ or an Errata, but at moment RAW seems to read like this:

Allies of Convenience can be Scoring, but can't actually Score as they are "enemy denial units" at the same time. The only exceptions to this are Heavy slot Vehicles in Big Guns Never Tire and Fast slot Vehicles in The Scouring as in those scenarios Vehicles can Score but still not Deny.
Allies of Convenience are Denial units for you.
Allies of Convenience are Denial units against you.

Desperate Allies are not Scoring
Desperate Allies are never Denial units

[ForgottenLore]

The quote is "Units in your army treat Allies of Convenience as...", not "Allies of Convenience are treated as..." It looks like pretty deliberate language - it doesn't matter what my units treat that allied squad as, the game treats it as part of my army. I think that's what the intent is anyway, so it's both pedantic lawyer-speak and RaI.

I'm not sure what your point is BG? It does look like pretty deliberate language, but what are you saying it is intended to say?

[Bubble Ghost]

I read it to mean that it wouldn't apply to things like the scoring system, because you don't use your troops' perspective of what a scoring unit is, you use yours, the player, and that of the game rules. All that the sentence about them counting as enemy units yadda yadda is for is to explain how they combine rules, powers, targeting etc. while the game is in progress.

And when I said "deliberate" language, I meant that I don't think they would have phrased it in this slightly awkward, long-winded way, weirdly phrasing it from the point of view of the in-game units, if not to mean that. They would just have said "Allies of convenience are treated as as...", rather than "Units in your army treat allies of convenience as..."

[samiens]

From a RAW point of view, allies of convenience are scoring and denial units where applicable by mission. They will deny allied units taking objectives if within 3" and can't take an objective if within 3" of a main army denial unit (probably, it doesn't actusally state this. The key thing is the point that has been made that only your units treat them as enemies who cant be targeted etc, they still form part of the army.

That said, I fully believe the intention is for them to score/dwny as normal but RAW isn't that they never score because they always deny as far as I can see.

You can get really silly and argue that the objective doesn't see allies of convenience as enemies, just your units di but im not going down that road...

[Bubble Ghost]

I think both RaW and RaI support the same thing. It looks at first glance as though they goofed and accidentally made allies deny your own objectives, but take it apart properly and I think nothing of the sort happens. If you're doing evil rules lawyering to support the intent of the rule, and overthrow a daft reading of some confusing wording, it's not evil.

[ChaplainCharlie]

Ok people, I know we are all Nerds here and get huge throbbing erections from finding flaws in the rulebook so that our non-existant 40k e-penises can be waved about in real life by saying that you "broke the game" or some other ****. That's not news really.

Ask yourself this: Would the games designers have specified, SPECIFIED no less, that desperate allies can not score and can not deny objectives when the words before it state that "treated exactly as Allies of Convenience" if they would have meant any other thing than that allies of convenience are indeed scoring units part of your army, but the animosity between the two grunts is so big that they treat them as enemies, but won't attack them.

Trying desperately to bash your head against the wall and prove that a mechanism is broken, when it clearly is meant to work perfectly fine, is sheer stupidity. Feel free to continue proving to yourselves and others that no, any other allies than battle brothers can not capture objectives for you, but know that in so doing you're just wasting time and hacking yourself in the foot with a cleaver. A much more constructive debate is the dilemma of charging through cover. Try that on for size and then get back to these little tidbits of absurdity.

It's fun and all to find rules to "exploit" or spot where some ambiguity rises in the rules, but seriously people. You've JUST been treated to a splendid edition full of amazing rules, artwork, background and possibilty. Is this really the way you want to spend your time? Debating whether a rule is mistakenly written so that it somehow can be interpreted to cripple itself? If that's your thing then go on by all means. I know people getting their kicks from stranger habits. But debate that somewhere where the rest of the community doesn't have to shake its head in shame. Go to a GW store and bother a Redshirt or something. That's what they get paid for...

The rules state very clearly that your units consider allies of convenience as enemies, but can not harm them. Your units. Not your army. Not you. Not the game's victory conditions. Only your units. The point of this is that you can not mingle within 1" of them and you can't target them in any way for bonuses or somesuch. It is a simple way to save lots of words. It inhibits the use of your other, MAIN, units in concert with these allies, but that is it.

At the end of the game, your units don't crown you champion, the game does. The game looks at where your units are, what they have acomplished under your guidance and how these meet up with the objectives of the game played. Your units have absolutely zero say in how the game ultimately ranks their performance at the end of the game. Even if you had a squad of allied infantry near an objective controlled by your own scoring infantry, they would still hold it. Why? Well, the squad might think they are hostile, but the game does not. For all intents and purposes of the game, these units are part of what you have purchased and controlled, ie they are your force. From the game's perspective, there are units that are scoring and controlled by player "YOU" within the scoring distance of an objective. Thus you control it.
The rule regarding holding an objective states that there must be enemy (denial) units within 3" of the objective, but because the models in your army are allied, not enemy, they do not count. Your army might regard them as enemy, but they are still allied. Otherwise you would be purchasing enemies with your points and that is not how the game works.

I can understand that for some this might be very hard to comprehend, but take a leap of faith and just trust that the rules work just fine and roll with it. If you come across a tournament or other thing where for some odd reason allies of convenience deny your own units, then that's the tournament organizer's decision. If you want to debate this question with your casual or habitual gaming partners, feel free to do so, but I have some psychic ability and will predict that such conversations will not result in happy gaming buddies in most cases.

[Polaria]

I'm not trying to "prove" the game is broken, because its not. I simply have no idea what RAI might have been in this case.

I see your point in why would the writers deliberately write out that Desperate Allies are never Scoring or Denial units, but it doesn't negate my point on why the writers deliberately write out that Allies of Convenience count as "enemy units" except that you can't shoot, assault or target them?

I mean why bother writing that they count as "enemy units" if they don't, for rules purposes like Scoiring, count as enemy units after all?

[lantzkev]

They count as enemy units for the purpose of your units.

Say your character has assaulted a unit, and your desperate allies assault a unit and the unit is made of one demon prince or lets just say one character, they can't be involved in the combat, or provide the moral "get em boss" bonuses because they are enemies for your character.... Even though they are your units, and count as your unit for capturing etc.

Your units, not you, treat them as enemy units. Which means you can't cast beneficial things, if your unit has an ability that says +1 attack for every friendly model, etc it doesn't trigger off them....