Allegiances and Factions and Allies

[Travis Baumann]

Pretty sure you would have to use the Rotbringers since the Daemons of Nurgle have no allies listed (which is really weird but that article seems to say that they are the same as Rotbringers for a lot of purposes.. you would just choose Rotbringers as your "Faction"  Nurgle as your "Allegience" since Rotrbringers are basically a bunch of heroes and Blightkings.  

I don't see any value in making a Slaves to Darkness army, taking them all with the Mark of Nurgle and then using their ally list unless you were dead set on Khorne allies.. the rest of the allies allowed are the same except you get Monsters of Chaos via Rotbringers.

I noticed that all the monsters of chaos are temporarily out of stock on the US GW site.

 

[Xasz]

25 minutes ago, Travis Baumann said:

Pretty sure you would have to use the Rotbringers since the Daemons of Nurgle have no allies listed (which is really weird but that article seems to say that they are the same as Rotbringers for a lot of purposes.. you would just choose Rotbringers as your "Faction"  Nurgle as your "Allegience" since Rotrbringers are basically a bunch of heroes and Blightkings.  

This got fixed in an FAQ.

Quote

Page 90 – Daemons of Nurgle Add the following to the table: ‘Allies: Brayherds, Chaos Gargants, Everchosen, Monsters of Chaos, Hosts of Slaanesh, Slaves to Darkness (excluding units with mark of Tzeentch), Warherds’

 

[Thomas Lyons]

5 hours ago, Nico said:

While it's not an entirely authoritative source, this article on the Community Site shows quite clearly how GW intends allegiances and factions and allies to work: "There’s still one Battleline slot to fill, and it’s time to start adding some heavy hitters to the army – Putrid Blightkings fit the bill nicely. As part of the Nurgle allegiance, Putrid Blightkings are effectively in the same army as Nurgle Daemons (as are any Skaven Pestilens units, Slaves to Darkness with the Mark of Nurgle, and Archaon himself). This puts us up to 1830 points, with 170 left to spare!" https://www.warhammer-community.com/2017/09/14/starting-a-nurgle-army-with-blightwar-sep14gw-homepage-post-2/

Which means that the community team is in alignment with my reading.  

[hobgoblinclub]

16 minutes ago, Thomas Lyons said:

Which means that the community team is in alignment with my reading.  

And mine. I think the answer is that the simplest solution is the right one. Why would they make it needlessly complicated? 

The irony here though, is that Nurgle, low Tzeentch, have so many units available, they're probably among the forces least in need of allies. Tzeentch certainly have the versatility to ignore allies. Nurgle have an even wider choice of units. Granted, they're not the best at maneuverability or shooting but they've got options and they're gonna be pretty spectacular when it comes to objective holding. 

[Gilby]

On 9/11/2017 at 9:58 PM, Squirrelmaster said:

 

1. Can I use one allegiance to determine what is battleline, while using the allegiance abilities of another? (e.g. Chaos Knights as battleline but Slaanesh Allegiance Abilities)
2. If I want to use allies, do all my non-allied units have to come from a single table in the GHB2017 (or can I use Slaanesh Marauders and Hosts of Slaanesh Allies*)?
3. If I want to use allies, do I have to use the allegiance abilities that match the faction I'm using the allies list of* (eg. can I use the Slaves to Darkness allies list but the Slaanesh allegiance abilities)?
4. Do my allies have to come from the relevant table, or is it enough for them to have the relevant keyword* (e.g. Mourngul as a "Nighthaunt" ally for a Deadwalkers army.

1. No pick an allegiance, you're army is that allegiance for all checks, ifs, etc. You can't have more than one allegiance.

2. People will disagree with me... but until I see someone quote the rule talking about belonging to a faction or 'breaking' faction, yes you can. The rules:

"The first step in picking an army is choosing it's allegiance. All of the units in the army must either have the allegiance, or be allied to that allegiance."

"Each faction lists the allegiences of the allied unit you can take".

"Pitched Battle profiles are split into a number of factions." And, "A model or warscroll battalions faction will usually appear as a keyword." 

You would be Slaanesh allegiance, you get to pick allies from the Slaanesh faction list.

3. You can't do this (your example about StD allies and Slaanesh allegiance that is).

"The first step in picking an army is choosing it's allegiance. All of the units in the army must either have the allegiance, or be allied to that allegiance."

You pick allies based on the army's allegiance.

4. Again:

"Each faction lists the allegiences of the allied unit you can take".

Rules say if it has that keyword you can take it as an ally. Again, I know people disagree with me on this, but I'm reading directly from the GHB2017 and it says you can.

On 9/11/2017 at 10:36 PM, Killax said:

5. Can Allies have their own Allegiance? Based on page 76 the suggestion is they can, does this mean armies can have multiple Allegiances and thus all abilities?

That is not the suggestion. The idea of army allegiances is not being discussed in that section it is talking about how you choose allies.

[Killax]

5 minutes ago, Gilby said:

That is not the suggestion. The idea of army allegiances is not being discussed in that section it is talking about how you choose allies.

Again it specifically states that Allies can have a different Allegiance. Which in turn is not a Keyword term, it's an added rule. If you can have a different Allegiance you suggest you recieve the full benifit aswell. It also doesn't matter that it's early in the sentence of explaining of what Allies are. It's specifically suggesting you can have different Allegiances in a single army. In addition the Allies section on that page does discuss Allegiances. 



So when we go over it again:
1. Allied units can have a different Allegiance to the rest of the army. What this entitles is not explained.
2. Allies as a rule are covered by Pitched Battle chart, better put the suggestion is there that Faction dedicate Allies, not Allegiances. Which means certain Allegiances have unknown Allies, if at all.
3. Is a very clear point repeated.
4. As above, this Allies rule does discuss Allegiances abilities here. This part is clear but does not limit an army to one Allegiance either, better put it does not remove the option to have Allies with a different Allegiance, as per point 1.

 

[Gilby]

It feels like this is just derailing the topic and trying to be like "look everything in the rules is chaos ignore the rules." But okay...

42 minutes ago, Killax said:

Allegiance you suggest you recieve the full benifit aswell.

What is the 'full benefit'? Do you mean all the allegiance abilities? At the top of every allegiance ability page it specifically states that the allegiance abilities "are available to an [allegiance name] army".

And page 74 tells you how you pick your army allegiance: "The first step in picking an army is choosing it's allegiance. All of the units in the army must either have the allegiance, or be allied to that allegiance."

Is there any other benefit I'm missing? I don't really see what your point is otherwise?

 

More importantly could you show me the rule about 'belonging to a faction' and 'breaking faction'. You've been telling people in other topics that they can't take allies if all their units aren't from one faction list but I can't see where that rule is?

[Killax]

8 minutes ago, Gilby said:

It feels like this is just derailing the topic and trying to be like "look everything in the rules is chaos ignore the rules." But okay...

What is the 'full benefit'? Do you mean all the allegiance abilities? At the top of every allegiance ability page it specifically states that the allegiance abilities "are available to an [allegiance name] army".

And page 74 tells you how you pick your army allegiance: "The first step in picking an army is choosing it's allegiance. All of the units in the army must either have the allegiance, or be allied to that allegiance."

Is there any other benefit I'm missing? I don't really see what your point is otherwise?

As Ive stated the exact same on page 1 this isn't really derailing the topic whatsoever. 

If I see Allegiance showing up as an option for Allied units itself it means the full Allegiance. As Allegiance as a rules term has it full set of own rules.

The point remains that Allies as a rule state that Allied units can have a different Allegiance to the rest of the army. 

[Gilby]

7 minutes ago, Killax said:

As Allegiance as a rules term has it full set of own rules.

Allegiance rules? As in those on pages 118 onwards?

[Thomas Lyons]

1 hour ago, Killax said:

Again it specifically states that Allies can have a different Allegiance. Which in turn is not a Keyword term, it's an added rule. If you can have a different Allegiance you suggest you recieve the full benifit aswell. It also doesn't matter that it's early in the sentence of explaining of what Allies are. It's specifically suggesting you can have different Allegiances in a single army. In addition the Allies section on that page does discuss Allegiances. 



So when we go over it again:
1. Allied units can have a different Allegiance to the rest of the army. What this entitles is not explained.
2. Allies as a rule are covered by Pitched Battle chart, better put the suggestion is there that Faction dedicate Allies, not Allegiances. Which means certain Allegiances have unknown Allies, if at all.
3. Is a very clear point repeated.
4. As above, this Allies rule does discuss Allegiances abilities here. This part is clear but does not limit an army to one Allegiance either, better put it does not remove the option to have Allies with a different Allegiance, as per point 1.

 

1) Yes, they do have a different allegiance since they have a different set of keywords that don't match the current allegiance.  All Allegiance is based on keywords; they are simply referring to these units as being part of a different allegiance.  In ghb2017, being part of an allegiance or faction does not grant you access to those Allegiance abilities unless they are in an army of that allegiance.

2) Every faction has an allegiance, which is a denoted by a specific shares keyword of that faction (Pestilens for Clans Pestilens). Correspondingly, since allegiances correspond to a faction, they have the allies of the faction. 

3) Allegiance abilities are available to an army If that army has that allegiance.  Allies by definition are not an army of that allegiance, so they don't get the Allegiance abilities.

 

[Pingii]

Trying to wrap my head around this. I realise that there might not be a 100 % correct answer right now as GW have not yet clarified how they meant it to work. But I tried to summerize what's said in this thread and the information from the Warhammer Community site. I realize that the concept "Faction Group" doesn't exist in the game and have no rule support what so ever, but I use it to explain the missing layer between allegiance and faction. I do not claim that this is RAW but it might be RAI, or at least a try to make sense of all this until GW gives us some clarification. I also realize that there is not really 4 "factions" of Slaves to Darkness except for in terms of taking them within other "faction groups" or as allies. 

What do you think of this? Is it useable? Is this the way you would interpret the rules? 

[Thomas Lyons]

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2017/10/15/chaos-warscroll-updatesgw-homepage-post-4/

And now we have confirmation of the factions of the Chaos Gods being equivalent to their allegiance.  

This, coupled with the keyword for Monsters of Chaos addition, only further confirms that allegiance is keyword based and every allegiance has exactly one keyword or keyword cluster that aligns a unit with that faction.  Factions are functionally useless, what matters are the unifying keywords for allegiance.

My reading was correct.  I'll leave it at that.

[hobgoblinclub]

You beat me to it Tom!

Pleased to see they've confirmed its as simple as hoped.

Now to get on painting up my mixed Nurgle force...

[Squirrelmaster]

Good to know. Presumably that means I can't use the Slaves to Darkness allies list and the Slaanesh allegiance abilities, even if all my non allied units have both allegiances.

It does mean that I can use my Exalted Greater Daemon of Slaanesh and still use the Hosts of Slaanesh allies table though, so I'm happy.

[someone2040]

5 hours ago, Squirrelmaster said:

Good to know. Presumably that means I can't use the Slaves to Darkness allies list and the Slaanesh allegiance abilities, even if all my non allied units have both allegiances.

It does mean that I can use my Exalted Greater Daemon of Slaanesh and still use the Hosts of Slaanesh allies table though, so I'm happy.

That's correct.

You choose your allegiance first (SLAANESH), and then you must build a SLAANESH allegiance army.

This means you get special 'Battleline if SLAANESH' choices, but cannot benefit from 'Battleline if SLAVES TO DARKNESS' even if all models in your army have the SLAVES TO DARKNESS keyword (because you've chosen to build a SLAANESH army).

You then can choose to either use toe SLAANESH or CHAOS allegiance abilities, but cannot use SLAVES TO DARKNESS (As it specifically mentions that you must pick either your allegiance or the Grand Alliance allegiance abilities).

 

I think the only thing that's a shame is they haven't updated Slaves to Darkness to be allies with Monsters of Chaos. The regular Slaughterbrute scroll still exists (it's in the Monsters of Chaos, and in the updated package) and still requires the SLAVES TO DARKNESS HERO keyword. So pretty disappointing (and pretty illogical) that they cannot ally.

[Nevvermore]

On 2017-10-15 at 6:28 PM, Thomas Lyons said:

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2017/10/15/chaos-warscroll-updatesgw-homepage-post-4/

And now we have confirmation of the factions of the Chaos Gods being equivalent to their allegiance.  

This, coupled with the keyword for Monsters of Chaos addition, only further confirms that allegiance is keyword based and every allegiance has exactly one keyword or keyword cluster that aligns a unit with that faction.  Factions are functionally useless, what matters are the unifying keywords for allegiance.

My reading was correct.  I'll leave it at that.

Not really. It's still just as unclear in the GHB, but luckily GW have confirmed how they want it to work, which is how most people thought but not what the book actually said.

So glad they fixed it. Now tournament organizers and players actually have a clear ruling to go on.