Allegiances and Factions and Allies

[Gecktron]

1 hour ago, BaldoBeardo said:

Battleline-if is "has allegiance X", not "is allegiance X". So you could take an StD force, use the StD allegiance to get your battleline-if, then give everything the Mark of Slaanesh and use the Slaanesh abilities.

Thats really just splitting hairs. Battleline-ifs are part of the allegiance ability. You don't get them if you don't use the corresponding allegiance.

If you have an Army made of Slaves to Darkness units, all with the Slaanesh keyword and you use the Slaanesh allegiance you don't get the Slaves to Darkness Battleline-ifs and you use the Slaanesh Allies list. Its really simple. Im not sure if thats a wording issue but the german Generals Handbook makes it really clear that Factions are determined by the shared keyword and not the name in the matched play points list.

 

[BaldoBeardo]

3 minutes ago, Gecktron said:

Thats really just splitting hairs. Battleline-ifs are part of the allegiance ability. You don't get them if you don't use the corresponding allegiance.

If you have an Army made of Slaves to Darkness units, all with the Slaanesh keyword and you use the Slaanesh allegiance you don't get the Slaves to Darkness Battleline-ifs and you use the Slaanesh Allies list. Its really simple. Im not sure if thats a wording issue but the german Generals Handbook makes it really clear that Factions are determined by the shared keyword and not the name in the matched play points list.

 

No, 'battleline-ifs' simply require that your army obeys the requirements for an allegiance, not actually that they use it when it comes to choosing abilities etc.

As for allies... I'd leave well alone, especially when it comes to the Chaos factions. You can have a Slaanesh Allegiance army with Bloodletter allies, so I'm leaving it alone until GW have figured out what they actually meant the book to say.

 

[Gecktron]

11 minutes ago, BaldoBeardo said:

No, 'battleline-ifs' simply require that your army obeys the requirements for an allegiance, not actually that they use it when it comes to choosing abilities etc.

As for allies... I'd leave well alone, especially when it comes to the Chaos factions. You can have a Slaanesh Allegiance army with Bloodletter allies, so I'm leaving it alone until GW have figured out what they actually meant the book to say.

 

No, my Book spells it out right there on page 86 under the "Faction & Allies" section that using allies doesn't break the armies allegiance, which includes allegiance abilities as well as Battleline-ifs. 

You can't have Bloodletters allied to your Host of Slaanesh army as they are not part of the allies list on page 92. And the Host of Slaanesh faction is a synonym for the Slaanesh allegiance as laid out on page 116.

[Xasz]

3 minutes ago, BaldoBeardo said:

No, 'battleline-ifs' simply require that your army obeys the requirements for an allegiance, not actually that they use it when it comes to choosing abilities etc.

#opinions

I haven't played a single person or tournament that would even remotely consider ruling it that way, because it goes against the very core of allegiances.

[BaldoBeardo]

19 minutes ago, Gecktron said:

You can't have Bloodletters allied to your Host of Slaanesh army as they are not part of the allies list on page 92. And the Host of Slaanesh faction is a synonym for the Slaanesh allegiance as laid out on page 116.

I completely, totally agree with you.

But I've been repeatedly berated for standing by that viewpoint in other threads.

So as I said, I'm waiting for GW to publish the words they actually meant.

[BaldoBeardo]

28 minutes ago, Xasz said:

#opinions

I haven't played a single person or tournament that would even remotely consider ruling it that way, because it goes against the very core of allegiances.

Hasn't that always been the case though?

You take (say) Saurus Guard in a Seraphon force, they count as battleline, but you can still opt to take Order Allegiance abilities?

[tolstedt]

37 minutes ago, Xasz said:

#opinions

I haven't played a single person or tournament that would even remotely consider ruling it that way, because it goes against the very core of allegiances.

Unless I misunderstand what you are saying, this is wrong.  

Ironjawz get their specific battleline units if they are Ironjawz allegiance, and (prior to GHB17) they took the GA destruction abilities.

Allegiance for battleline is not the same as allegiance abilities.

This is also clearly stated in the GHB17.  You can choose your specific allegiance abilities or choose the GA abilities.  It does not remove your battleline if you do.

[Xasz]

Never mind, this whole topic is dissolving everything into a blur after a while.

[tolstedt]

Just now, Xasz said:

Never mind, this whole topic is dissolving everything into a blur after a while.

I figured you had meant something else.  Cheers.

 

[Thomas Lyons]

6 hours ago, Gecktron said:

You can't have Bloodletters allied to your Host of Slaanesh army as they are not part of the allies list on page 92. And the Host of Slaanesh faction is a synonym for the Slaanesh allegiance as laid out on page 116.

Correct.  To be very clear, you choose an Allegiance, then you choose your units, then you choose your Allegiance abilities.

Here are he relevant sections:

This is then what it says on page 116:

Allegiance, by the book, is fully dependent on a shared keywords.  Who is in an Allegiance is fully keyword based; notice that every reference to every Allegiance is a keyword. Period.  If a unit has the appropriate keyword, it is in that Allegiance.  Allegiance is not based on the Matched play profile faction lists in the GHB2017; if it were, you would never be able to field the new SCE Blacktalon in a SCE army since she isn't in the list. If a unit gains that keyword during setup,  they are in Allegiance.

As I noted previously, all indicators suggest that DoT, BoK etc are simply the default list for those god's allegiances.  These lists are not all inclusive; there are other things that are in Allegiance not included in these lists, especially those units that gain keywords on setup for example. The key is to look for whatever keyword unifies these factions- that is the determinative unifying factor according to what the Ghb says.

Now, once you've built this legal force, with appropriate allies, you can choose an Allegiance ability suite.  This choose is based on one thing: what are the  shared keywords your faction has, with appropriate exempted allies for a specific allegiance. Thus, you couldn't have bloodletters in a Slaanesh force; if you chose STD Allegiance, marked everything Slaanesh and brought in Bloodletter allies, then you could only be Chaos or STD Allegiance since everything doesn't have the Slaanesh keyword (the bloodletters dont), and they only get the "allies exemption" for STD Allegiance, since that is what the force is.  Now, you could make a STD force, and if everything was slaanesh marked, you could choose either Chaos, STD or  slaanesh Allegiance abilities (but only if literally everything had the slaanesh keyword). [ Edit: This example is wrong.  You can only choose either the allegiance you built your list in or the grand alliance you are part of.  You may never choose a third option that you may qualify for.  See the attached image immediately below.]

 

Also, as a final note, battalions have the keyword of the Allegiance you find them in and count as that force for list construction.  This means that you can choose an Everchosen battalion for a STD Allegiance list, but you have to use some of your allies allotment since it isn't an STD battalion.  I asked this on the WHTV stream on chaos day and Ben Johnson confirmed that you need to use ally points for out of faction battalions.  This would also mean that you can only do battalions that are in your allies list. Luckily, this only generally occurs with Everchosen, and they're in most allies lists. 

[TheOtherJosh]

4 hours ago, Xasz said:

Allegiance determines Battleline-if, so no you cannot be Slaanesh allegiance and at the same time use StD allegiance BLif.

So ... Slaves to Darkness "battleline if" requires that the Army be "Allegiance: Slaves to Darkness" This is different than BoK, Rotbringers, DoT and Hosts of Slaanesh.

2 hours ago, BaldoBeardo said:

No, 'battleline-ifs' simply require that your army obeys the requirements for an allegiance, not actually that they use it when it comes to choosing abilities etc.

In the Allegiance section on p.116 of the new GHB 2017 it says:

“...starting units and warscroll battalions in the army have the keyword for that allegiance, including any units that you assign a keyword to during set-up. For example, if all of the starting units in an army have the STORMCAST ETERNAL keyword, then the army can either have the ORDER or STORMCAST ETERNAL allegiance. When your army qualifies for more than one allegiance you must choose which allegiance your army will use before you set up any units. The allegiance you choose will apply for the duration of the battle...”

I believe that the key piece for Slaves to Darkness is the bit that I have in bold-italic.

A Slaves to Darkness Army that all have Mark of Slaanesh can be keyword "Slaves to Darkness" or "Slaanesh".

To qualify for the Slaves to Darkness "battleline if" (and use Chaos Knights or Chaos Marauders on Horseback as Battleline) one would need to meet the "battleline if" requirement of "Allegiance:Slaves to Darkness".  Which requires declaring that the Allegiance chosen is "Slaves to Darkness" not "Slaanesh".

This must be chosen prior to set up. 

It is that chosen Allegiance that then allows Allegiance Abilities, as referenced on the next section (same page):

“ALLEGIANCE ABILITIES
An army with an allegiance can use the allegiance abilities specific to that allegiance in any game of Warhammer Age of Sigmar.”

So, RAW ... a "Faction: Slaves to Darkness" army, that has chosen "Allegiance: Slaanesh" instead of Allegiance:Slaves to Darkness would not be able to use the Slaves to Darkness "battleline if" units as it doesn't meet the Battleline if requirements.

[tolstedt]

13 minutes ago, TheOtherJosh said:

So ... Slaves to Darkness "battleline if" requires that the Army be "Allegiance: Slaves to Darkness" This is different than BoK, Rotbringers, DoT and Hosts of Slaanesh.

In the Allegiance section on p.116 of the new GHB 2017 it says:

“...starting units and warscroll battalions in the army have the keyword for that allegiance, including any units that you assign a keyword to during set-up. For example, if all of the starting units in an army have the STORMCAST ETERNAL keyword, then the army can either have the ORDER or STORMCAST ETERNAL allegiance. When your army qualifies for more than one allegiance you must choose which allegiance your army will use before you set up any units. The allegiance you choose will apply for the duration of the battle...”

I believe that the key piece for Slaves to Darkness is the bit that I have in bold-italic.

A Slaves to Darkness Army that all have Mark of Slaanesh can be keyword "Slaves to Darkness" or "Slaanesh".

To qualify for the Slaves to Darkness "battleline if" (and use Chaos Knights or Chaos Marauders on Horseback as Battleline) one would need to meet the "battleline if" requirement of "Allegiance:Slaves to Darkness".  Which requires declaring that the Allegiance chosen is "Slaves to Darkness" not "Slaanesh".

This must be chosen prior to set up. 

It is that chosen Allegiance that then allows Allegiance Abilities, as referenced on the next section (same page):

“ALLEGIANCE ABILITIES
An army with an allegiance can use the allegiance abilities specific to that allegiance in any game of Warhammer Age of Sigmar.”

So, RAW ... a "Faction: Slaves to Darkness" army, that has chosen "Allegiance: Slaanesh" instead of Allegiance:Slaves to Darkness would not be able to use the Slaves to Darkness "battleline if" units as it doesn't meet the Battleline if requirements.

Same as before with the Ironjawz in GHB1, you can still get battleline if you take different allegiance abilities.

[Squirrelmaster]

Regarding "Battleline if" stuff, I don't think the rules-as-written are, or have ever been, 100% clear — but in the past GW have ruled that you can use allegiance-specific battleline units and still use the generic Grand Alliance allegiance abilities, so based on that I think most people will allow you to have multiple allegiances for determining what is/is not battleline, but only pick one of them for all your Battle Traits, Command Traits, and Artefacts.

Regarding allies, I think there are two main interpretations floating around: Either a mixed Slaves/Hosts army cannot have allies, or it can use the Hosts' allies table. At this point we're not sure, but until we have official word from GW I'd personally play it safe and not use allies if my non-allied units come from more than one faction table.

[Jaehaerys]

16 minutes ago, Squirrelmaster said:

Regarding "Battleline if" stuff, I don't think the rules-as-written are, or have ever been, 100% clear — but in the past GW have ruled that you can use allegiance-specific battleline units and still use the generic Grand Alliance allegiance abilities, so based on that I think most people will allow you to have multiple allegiances for determining what is/is not battleline, but only pick one of them for all your Battle Traits, Command Traits, and Artefacts.

Regarding allies, I think there are two main interpretations floating around: Either a mixed Slaves/Hosts army cannot have allies, or it can use the Hosts' allies table. At this point we're not sure, but until we have official word from GW I'd personally play it safe and not use allies if my non-allied units come from more than one faction table.

Pretty sure Thomas Lyons cleared this up in his post. That's the angle I'm taking and makes most sense.

 

 

[Captain Marius]

The Ironjaws comment has knocked me for six So you pick your army, inc Allies and BLifs following the pitched battle profiles e.g 1600pts of Slaves inc 3 BLif knight units, and 400pts of Khorne daemons.

Then just before setup you pick your allegiance from any shared keywords in your main force. So in the example above, my legal Slaves faction army could pick allegiance Chaos for GA abilities, Slaves for faction specific abilities... or i could mark all my units Slaanesh and take the Slaanesh allegiance abilities and happily run them alongside those khorne daemons, having followed the rules of the GHB to the (blood)letter, AND followed the Ironjaws Precedent! 

Errata please

[hobgoblinclub]

2 hours ago, Thomas Lyons said:

Correct.  To be very clear, you choose an Allegiance, then you choose your units, then you choose your Allegiance abilities.

Here are he relevant sections:

This is then what it says on page 116:

Allegiance, by the book, is fully dependent on a shared keywords.  Who is in an Allegiance is fully keyword based; notice that every reference to every Allegiance is a keyword. Period.  If a unit has the appropriate keyword, it is in that Allegiance.  Allegiance is not based on the Matched play profile faction lists in the GHB2017; if it were, you would never be able to field the new SCE Blacktalon in a SCE army since she isn't in the list. If a unit gains that keyword during setup,  they are in Allegiance.

As I noted previously, all indicators suggest that DoT, BoK etc are simply the default list for those god's allegiances.  These lists are not all inclusive; there are other things that are in Allegiance not included in these lists, especially those units that gain keywords on setup for example. The key is to look for whatever keyword unifies these factions- that is the determinative unifying factor according to what the Ghb says.

Now, once you've built this legal force, with appropriate allies, you can choose an Allegiance ability suite.  This choose is based on one thing: what are the  shared keywords your faction has, with appropriate exempted allies for a specific allegiance. Thus, you couldn't have bloodletters in a Slaanesh force; if you chose STD Allegiance, marked everything Slaanesh and brought in Bloodletter allies, then you could only be Chaos or STD Allegiance since everything doesn't have the Slaanesh keyword (the bloodletters dont), and they only get the "allies exemption" for STD Allegiance, since that is what the force is.  Now, you could make a STD force, and if everything was slaanesh marked, you could choose either Chaos, STD or  slaanesh Allegiance abilities (but only if literally everything had the slaanesh keyword).

Also, as a final note, battalions have the keyword of the Allegiance you find them in and count as that force for list construction.  This means that you can choose an Everchosen battalion for a STD Allegiance list, but you have to use some of your allies allotment since it isn't an STD battalion.  I asked this on the WHTV stream on chaos day and Ben Johnson confirmed that you need to use ally points for out of faction battalions.  This would also mean that you can only do battalions that are in your allies list. Luckily, this only generally occurs with Everchosen, and they're in most allies lists. 

An excellent post @Thomas Lyons.  I think you've brought a lot of clarity to the debate.

Can I please recommend that, rather than scrolling past, everyone reads this post before adding their comments below?  It would be frustrating to have to perpetually tread the same ground.

Just to be clear (because this is where the debate really go going) you believe that you can take marked StD in a Khorne/Tzeentch/Nurgle/Slaanesh list and still have 400 points of allies?  In other words Tzeentch is DoT?

Also, @Ben Johnson told you battalions are taken from allies list?  Do you think would be true even for something like Fatesworn Warband with everything marked Tzeentch?  Isn't it true that a battalion shares the keyword of everything in it?  If it was taken under allies would the constituent warscrolls also be classed as allies, making it impossible to take?

[Nico]

Good post Tom.

I suspect that this little known rule wasn't being taken into account:

 

So Fatesworn and its contents could be Everchosen or Tzeentch or Chaos for example.

[TheOtherJosh]

 

3 hours ago, Thomas Lyons said:

Now, once you've built this legal force, with appropriate allies, you can choose an Allegiance ability suite.  This choose is based on one thing: what are the  shared keywords your faction has, with appropriate exempted allies for a specific allegiance. Thus, you couldn't have bloodletters in a Slaanesh force; if you chose STD Allegiance, marked everything Slaanesh and brought in Bloodletter allies, then you could only be Chaos or STD Allegiance since everything doesn't have the Slaanesh keyword (the bloodletters dont), and they only get the "allies exemption" for STD Allegiance, since that is what the force is.  Now, you could make a STD force, and if everything was slaanesh marked, you could choose either Chaos, STD or  slaanesh Allegiance abilities (but only if literally everything had the slaanesh keyword).

I believe this section is not accurate based on the example below:

Faction: Slaves to Darkness

All units in the main Faction force come from StoD, and All StoD units have been Marked Slaanesh.

Legal Allies: Blades of Khorne (bloodletters)

Reminder: Allies are ignored for determining Allegiance.  “In a Pitched Battle, you can spend some of the points for your army on a faction’s allies without changing the army’s allegiance." (p.86 GHB 2017)

Legal Alliance options: Chaos, Slaves to Darkness, Slaanesh

Note: Bloodletters would not meet requirements for StoD or Slaanesh Allegiance abilities or traits and would not benefit from those abilities if those Allegiances were chosen. If Allegiance:Chaos was chosen, the bloodletters would meet that requirement and would be able to benefit from Allegiance abilities and traits.

And that follows from the allegiance section as that then allows Allegiance Abilities, as referenced on the next section (same page):

“ALLEGIANCE ABILITIES
An army with an allegiance can use the allegiance abilities specific to that allegiance in any game of Warhammer Age of Sigmar.”

[hellalugosi]

thanks for clearing that up @Thomas Lyons

i was reading through the thread and was trying to figure out what i was missing, as pre-ghb2017 we ran lists of IRONJAWZ and NIGHTHAUNT etc, taking their battleline-if options while still being eligible for the Grand Alliance allegiance ability.  

Under the notion that the allegiance for LIST BUILDING does not have to be the same as allegiance for ABILITIES. So per this, the standard process of list building that we've been doing since GHB2016 would be correct. 

1. Take allegiance for list building. (Ex: Ironjawz take gore-gruntas as battleline-if)

2. Take allegiance for eligible abilities (Ex: Can take GA: Destruction instead of Ironjawz Abilities without breaking battleline-if)

 

[Xasz]

I think Thomas Lyons is on the right track but the case TheOtherJosh described kills it for me.

Are we considering this an oversight? A side-effect?

It surely doesn't feel intended.

 

[Thomas Lyons]

2 hours ago, hobgoblinclub said:

An excellent post @Thomas Lyons.  I think you've brought a lot of clarity to the debate.

Can I please recommend that, rather than scrolling past, everyone reads this post before adding their comments below?  It would be frustrating to have to perpetually tread the same ground.

Just to be clear (because this is where the debate really go going) you believe that you can take marked StD in a Khorne/Tzeentch/Nurgle/Slaanesh list and still have 400 points of allies?  In other words Tzeentch is DoT?

Also, @Ben Johnson told you battalions are taken from allies list?  Do you think would be true even for something like Fatesworn Warband with everything marked Tzeentch?  Isn't it true that a battalion shares the keyword of everything in it?  If it was taken under allies would the constituent warscrolls also be classed as allies, making it impossible to take?

I need to add one additional addendum.  I did get one thing wrong, and it is this:

 

You cannot choose a third allegiance for allegiance abilities.  You can choose either the allegiance of your construction, or your Grand Alliance allegiance; no other options are available.  The clause suggesting you can choose an allegiance that you have the keywords for suggests that is for step 1 from my post, not step 3.  

Battalions that are out of faction/have other keywords use allies points.  For example, Fatesworn is an Everchosen keyword battalion and is found in the Everchosen list, so utilizing it in a Tzeentch list utilizes allies points for it.  This came from Ben Johnson on day 2 of WHTV's First Blood GHB2017 week.  If you rewatch it, you can listen to Ben's response and see the discussion in the chat.

2 hours ago, Nico said:

Good post Tom.

I suspect that this little known rule wasn't being taken into account:

 

So Fatesworn and its contents could be Everchosen or Tzeentch or Chaos for example.

This clause was written before the GHB2017 allegiance rules were published.  This is based on how Allegiance abilities worked in 2016.  I suspect you'll see clarification of this on battle tomes from here on out given that there are rules for dealing with stuff like this utilizing the allies system.  Again, Ben's response directly contradicted this.  

2 hours ago, TheOtherJosh said:

 

I believe this section is not accurate based on the example below:

Faction: Slaves to Darkness

All units in the main Faction force come from StoD, and All StoD units have been Marked Slaanesh.

Legal Allies: Blades of Khorne (bloodletters)

Reminder: Allies are ignored for determining Allegiance.  “In a Pitched Battle, you can spend some of the points for your army on a faction’s allies without changing the army’s allegiance." (p.86 GHB 2017)

Legal Alliance options: Chaos, Slaves to Darkness, Slaanesh

Note: Bloodletters would not meet requirements for StoD or Slaanesh Allegiance abilities or traits and would not benefit from those abilities if those Allegiances were chosen. If Allegiance:Chaos was chosen, the bloodletters would meet that requirement and would be able to benefit from Allegiance abilities and traits.

And that follows from the allegiance section as that then allows Allegiance Abilities, as referenced on the next section (same page):

“ALLEGIANCE ABILITIES
An army with an allegiance can use the allegiance abilities specific to that allegiance in any game of Warhammer Age of Sigmar.”

@TheOtherJosh, you'll see given what I just posted that this example is impossible.  You can only choose the allegiance you actually belong to or the generic Grand Alliance you are part of for allegiance abilities, not a third option that you share the keywords for.  The clause people are using is referring to choosing your allegiance, not your allegiance abilities. 

[Thomas Lyons]

7 minutes ago, Xasz said:

I think Thomas Lyons is on the right track but the case TheOtherJosh described kills it for me.

Are we considering this an oversight? A side-effect?

It surely doesn't feel intended.

 

See the post I just made. 

[Nico]

I suspect Ben didn't have that rule in front of him or in mind at the time. I don't see any reason to change that rule. 

[Thomas Lyons]

2 minutes ago, Nico said:

I suspect Ben didn't have that rule in front of him or in mind at the time. I don't see any reason to change that rule. 

Very possible.  We may or may not get clarification on this.  If you want to build conservatively, calculate off keyword battalions with allies points.  Otherwise, don't.  Most would never know anyways.

[Xasz]

17 minutes ago, Thomas Lyons said:

See the post I just made. 

Yeah I saw it right after I send my post... but to be absolutely certain:

We choose an allegiance at the start of list building. (or at whatever stage, the rules are always ambiguous about the order of steps in that process but for clarity's sake lets roll with at the start, it shouldn't make a difference in the end)

-> access to their BLifs, allies, allegiance abilities

If I'd take Slaves to Darkness and take all StD units, I'd be able to use their BLifs and so on but even if I mark everything with Khorne I could only choose between StD and chaos abilities.

If I'd take Khorne (BoK), I could take all StD units that are marked with Khorne, I cannot use StD specific BLifs and have to abide by the Khorne allies. I then can choose between Khorne abilities and chaos.