I kinda Hate the Order Grand Alliance

[Yeled]

There is a part of me that kinda hates the Order Grand Alliance. I know, I know...I'm probably a couple years late on this discussion. And I get the set up: Since Chaos dominated everything the remnants of civilization needed to band together in order to survive. But no matter how many times I try to like Order as a group I can't help but feel it's just kind of a hodgepodge of everything sort of good thrown together. There's a part of me that would like to see Order broken up into two or even three groups:

1. True Order Alliance - Azyr Stormcast and the daemons of Order, the Seraphon
   Pure, Strong, Oppressive; dwelling in Azyr and following the will of their God, Sigmar, they are dogmatic but come to the aid of the other two alliances.
    
2. Freedom Alliance - All human factions, all the Duarden, and a couple fallen Stormcast chapters
   Scattered in and about the Mortal Realms, they are focused on survival and freedom from slavery and Chaos but also from the oppression of the Stormcast, who seek to stamp out Chaos even at the expense of freedom. This group includes Devoted of Sigmar who have a different view of Sigmar than do the Azyr Stormcast, as well as a fallen group of (lessor) Stormcast who have broken away from Azyr (and therefore no longer resurrect or have their divinely inspired powers) and see the oppressiveness of their former brothers.
    
3. Fae Alliance - All Aelves, Sylvaneth
   Mystical, alien, fae, they dwell in the magic places in the spaces between the worlds, a force of nature rebelling against chaos.

I know it will never happen, and I'm not expecting to really change anything. I feel like getting it off my chest in a public forum. I would like this organization above so much better than the way it is set up now. I hope they move the story in that direction.  

[SuperKick]

I mean you could just think of them like that anyway. If you start breaking things up when do you draw the line? Probably at individual factions. Then the grand alliance's is pointless. 

[Yeled]

13 minutes ago, SuperKick said:

I mean you could just think of them like that anyway. If you start breaking things up when do you draw the line? Probably at individual factions. Then the grand alliance's is pointless. 

Perhaps. But you still have plenty of factions within each one. The Order Grand Alliance has 18 factions, including two of the biggest in Stormcast and Seraphon. Chaos has as many, but Death has seven and Destruction has 12. Other than the first Order group you'd still have alliances, and they'd be big enough.

It wouldn't be the end of the world to have six Alliances instead of four.

[chord]

Then you would probably end up breaking up chaos as each chaos god is constantly warring with each other. 

I think just defining Order as groups that want to build civilizations and protect them.

[Cerlin]

How is breaking up these things more a solution to other factions being too broken up?

I think allies are already a soft form of what you propose, and once more alliegence abilities happen you should see this more often. 

[Aezeal]

Considering the allies I think this is already a bit the case... Its just that against the other grand alliances they band together.

[Yeled]

Yeah, the allies system does start to move things in this direction. No doubt about that. And there is an argument to be made that the other factions could be broken up as well.

My feelings about the Order Grand Alliance is more a problem with the fluff  than anything else, though I think the way mixed Order (or mixed chaos or anything similar) can create weird, non-thematic combinations isn't ideal. For example, in the Wanderers threads we've been talking about how great the hurricanum is at buffing Wanderers themed gunline mixed order armies. I totally get why people use it--a +1 to hit is huge to a big line of shooters. And people take steps to proxy in models to represent the hurricanum that look more appropriate for a Wanderers army. But ultimately it's a nonsensical combination that is purely a game mechanic thing. Nothing wrong with it, per se, from a game play perspective. But do they really belong together?  Banding together, sure. But it's still a big, bloated thing that, imo, could use a little more nuance. 

[Tidings]

@Yeled That's why I even went so far as to make a new Warscroll with custom lore for my Wanderer Hurricanum! I refuse to put the actual model next to my Wanderers, it just doesn't make any sense to me at all. But the rules for it are basically designed for Wanderers, so I want to play it all the time. Hence the conversion. I don't really think this is a problem though, because the hobby of Warhammer has always been about personalizing and customizing your army.

The fluffy story for my Wanderers doesn't describe them as mixed Order, despite that being what I play. They have that alliance for the rules, but all the other units from other Order armies are converted/proxied in as Wanderer-themed. My Aleves don't teleport around and I've already come up with story for that.

My Wanderers trace their family lines back to the inhabitants of Tirsyth the Ashenhall, a realm of eternal Autumn in Athel Loren of the Old World. They have a similar home now in the Mortal Realms and keep the old customs forgotten by others. Their culture reveres death as much as birth, fully embracing it as part of the cycle of life. The long autumns of their new home represents this melancholy culture well. Instead of ambushing and running like other Aelves, who give ground to preserve their own lives, my Wanderers embrace the chance of death in battle and fight more stoically to defend their home. This represents the lack of teleporting granted by the Wanderers allegiance. 

Unlike other Wanderers, mine have more staunch allies in the form of Sylvaneth whom they share a home with. They also have powerful units (Executioners, Phoenixes, Hurricanum) that come from having a home and defending it stoically. Except mine are all converted or scratch built to fit the Wanderer aesthetic. The pure Wanderers who live nomadic lives don't have the stronger alliances or larger, more complex societies that my Aelves have. This represents the more varied unit selection in the form of the Order Grand Alliance. 

Basically, I like that the Grand Alliance of Order is so large, and I don't mind taking units from all across it. It allows for more freedom to convert and build my own models and it allows for a much greater variety of units to choose from. This makes the hobby more interesting to me, even if I wish the rules for Wanderers themselves were more flushed out. Since that hasn't happened, I'm glad the Order alliance is as large as it is. 

I guess my point is that by just writing my own fluff, I have completely justified using units that otherwise are laughably out of place. Like if I bought a box of Executioners and tried to come up with some ridiculous story about how they joined my Wanderer army, that would be dumb. But by making custom Executioners and just saying the ARE part of my Wanderer army and just fight exactly like the Dark Elf ones do, it's fine! They cease to be Dark Elves at that point and are just using the rules for that unit. 

[Yeled]

@Tidings, I totally get and appreciate the work you put into wrapping appropriate fluff around the army you've built. And I've seen pictures of some of the models you've put together to make them very Wanderer appropriate while proxying for other things like the hurricanum. I also understand why you play a mixed Order army to make up for essential unit types/battlefield roles that are missing when you limit yourself to a single, legacy faction like Wanderers. I think you and I approach the fluff of the setting from, well, at least similar positions. It's important to us and we both find out of place units to be at least discordant. You resolve that dissonance by making your hurricanum look like a Wanderer so that it fits.

I think this solution works, though I would guess that wasn't GW's intent. They want you to buy the models that they say represent the units they are supposed to represent. One thing that troubles me about the flexibility of a mixed order army where everything is allowable and appropriate in any army is the tendency to mix and match the best, most efficient units. Take their marketing around the allies system. Stormcast can ally with everything in Order, so GW went out of their way to show how great it is that you can throw vanguard raptors into anything. Ok. Fine. But is that really a good thing? Do we want every Order army to have vanguard raptors in it? Maybe that's GW's goal. Is that a good thing for players and the game?

Some of this is definitely addressed by the factions and allies system (at least where non-Stormcast are concerned) in that any army using a faction allegiance has to give up certain other units. Like I can't very well use the hurricanum if I want to teleport my Wanderers around. You choose not to teleport your Wanderers so you can use it in your Wanderer themed mix order army, and you get around the dissonant fluff by writing your own fluff and using a proxy model. But that is a lot of effort that most players won't choose to take. In many cases we'll just have a free peoples hurricanum in the middle of a Wanderers gun line formation, or even just a mix of seemingly random guys under the auspice of "We team up against chaos."

I also think this line is important: "... even if I wish the rules for Wanderers themselves were more flushed out. Since that hasn't happened, I'm glad the Order alliance is as large as it is." I totally appreciate the sentiment. But I hate the idea that it's ok to not flush out factions using the excuse that we can just throw in a Stormcast unit or something else to fill the missing role the Wanderers lack. If the Order Alliance werebroken up into several component parts we might see two positive benefits:

1. More factions outside of Stormcast could get support since they wouldn't fill every niche for a collection of 18 factions. If you had a Freedom Alliance and a Fae Alliance as I suggested above, GW would eventually need to start fleshing out factions in those alliances to make them viable. Factions like Free Peoples or Dispossessed might get some love. Maybe one high aelf faction and one dark aelf faction could become lead groups in an alliance of Fae. It would create diversity in the game rather than it being all Stormcast all the time.
2. The fluff would have a bit more substance, and wouldn't create the dissonance that you can I both feel when we look at the hodgepodge of units that comprise the Order grand alliance.

[Tidings]

I think this is a totally reasonable question/criticism of the current design of AoS's alliance structure. It's definitely weird and a bit frustrating to look across the table and see a mish-mash of units from 6 different armies. Without effort from that player, the army will almost certainly feel non-thematic and immersion breaking from a lore perspective. This is primarily an issue with Order, since there are many very distinctly different armies that can be fielded together. With Death this is less of a gripe, at least for me, since the ENTIRE faction of Death used to be one army before AoS. 

I think your point about GW having the freedom to be lazy updating an army because they can just take Stormcast to fill all the weak spots is also valid. Lazy is probably a bit harsh, but GW certainly seems to have a weird sense of priority when it comes to updating other armies, or just adding MOAR Stormcast releases. 

SUGGESTION FOR GW!!!  -  One thing that would be super amazing would be if GW released "bits boxes" for each faction. Like if they released tons of random bits for Wanderers that I could buy and then use when building Stormcasts, I would LOVE that. It would make building a thematic and cohesive army much easier despite using units from multiple factions. I would be much more inclined to buy stuff outside of my army that I like, but cringe at how much work it takes to make it look nice next to my existing units.

[BunkhouseBuster]

21 minutes ago, Tidings said:

SUGGESTION FOR GW!!!  -  One thing that would be super amazing would be if GW released "bits boxes" for each faction. Like if they released tons of random bits for Wanderers that I could buy and then use when building Stormcasts, I would LOVE that. It would make building a thematic and cohesive army much easier despite using units from multiple factions. I would be much more inclined to buy stuff outside of my army that I like, but cringe at how much work it takes to make it look nice next to my existing units.

I second this!  I have dreams of a united races of Order army, but right now there are not enough stylistic similarities to make a visually cohesive force without a lot of work, and I (like others) just don't have the time for that anymore.

[Seadee]

i know this is an old thread, but in regards to the alliance system, did you ever play Shadow of the horned rat or Dark Omen on the PC? 

these are the games that got me interested in Warhammer Fantasy  way back when and the campaign (single player) mode played very much like AoS and an Order alliance works.

so... AoS feels more like the game should be to me than oldhammer did... weird right? 

[CDM]

On 19/09/2017 at 7:23 PM, Tidings said:

@Yeled That's why I even went so far as to make a new Warscroll with custom lore for my Wanderer Hurricanum! I refuse to put the actual model next to my Wanderers, it just doesn't make any sense to me at all. But the rules for it are basically designed for Wanderers, so I want to play it all the time. Hence the conversion. I don't really think this is a problem though, because the hobby of Warhammer has always been about personalizing and customizing your army.

The fluffy story for my Wanderers doesn't describe them as mixed Order, despite that being what I play. They have that alliance for the rules, but all the other units from other Order armies are converted/proxied in as Wanderer-themed. My Aleves don't teleport around and I've already come up with story for that.

My Wanderers trace their family lines back to the inhabitants of Tirsyth the Ashenhall, a realm of eternal Autumn in Athel Loren of the Old World. They have a similar home now in the Mortal Realms and keep the old customs forgotten by others. Their culture reveres death as much as birth, fully embracing it as part of the cycle of life. The long autumns of their new home represents this melancholy culture well. Instead of ambushing and running like other Aelves, who give ground to preserve their own lives, my Wanderers embrace the chance of death in battle and fight more stoically to defend their home. This represents the lack of teleporting granted by the Wanderers allegiance. 

Unlike other Wanderers, mine have more staunch allies in the form of Sylvaneth whom they share a home with. They also have powerful units (Executioners, Phoenixes, Hurricanum) that come from having a home and defending it stoically. Except mine are all converted or scratch built to fit the Wanderer aesthetic. The pure Wanderers who live nomadic lives don't have the stronger alliances or larger, more complex societies that my Aelves have. This represents the more varied unit selection in the form of the Order Grand Alliance. 

Basically, I like that the Grand Alliance of Order is so large, and I don't mind taking units from all across it. It allows for more freedom to convert and build my own models and it allows for a much greater variety of units to choose from. This makes the hobby more interesting to me, even if I wish the rules for Wanderers themselves were more flushed out. Since that hasn't happened, I'm glad the Order alliance is as large as it is. 

I guess my point is that by just writing my own fluff, I have completely justified using units that otherwise are laughably out of place. Like if I bought a box of Executioners and tried to come up with some ridiculous story about how they joined my Wanderer army, that would be dumb. But by making custom Executioners and just saying the ARE part of my Wanderer army and just fight exactly like the Dark Elf ones do, it's fine! They cease to be Dark Elves at that point and are just using the rules for that unit. 

Err pics please this sounds amazing! And realty would love to see more people doing this, free cities are a good start though:)

[Aezeal]

On ‎16‎/‎09‎/‎2017 at 1:24 AM, Yeled said:

There is a part of me that kinda hates the Order Grand Alliance. I know, I know...I'm probably a couple years late on this discussion. And I get the set up: Since Chaos dominated everything the remnants of civilization needed to band together in order to survive. But no matter how many times I try to like Order as a group I can't help but feel it's just kind of a hodgepodge of everything sort of good thrown together. There's a part of me that would like to see Order broken up into two or even three groups:

1. True Order Alliance - Azyr Stormcast and the daemons of Order, the Seraphon
   Pure, Strong, Oppressive; dwelling in Azyr and following the will of their God, Sigmar, they are dogmatic but come to the aid of the other two alliances.
    
2. Freedom Alliance - All human factions, all the Duarden, and a couple fallen Stormcast chapters
   Scattered in and about the Mortal Realms, they are focused on survival and freedom from slavery and Chaos but also from the oppression of the Stormcast, who seek to stamp out Chaos even at the expense of freedom. This group includes Devoted of Sigmar who have a different view of Sigmar than do the Azyr Stormcast, as well as a fallen group of (lessor) Stormcast who have broken away from Azyr (and therefore no longer resurrect or have their divinely inspired powers) and see the oppressiveness of their former brothers.
    
3. Fae Alliance - All Aelves, Sylvaneth
   Mystical, alien, fae, they dwell in the magic places in the spaces between the worlds, a force of nature rebelling against chaos.

I know it will never happen, and I'm not expecting to really change anything. I feel like getting it off my chest in a public forum. I would like this organization above so much better than the way it is set up now. I hope they move the story in that direction.  

However in sight of the fact that chaos only recently had control of all the realms and still is a major threat... why would those alliances not work together in a grand alliance... lets call it GRAND ALLIANCE ORDER. Given the fact that stormcast seem to be the major order power in the realms and the military might of the rest is less significant I don't this the people in the freedom alliance would at this moment in time give the finger to sigmar just because he's oppressive (which btw isn't all that clear in the lore anyway.... while some chapters of stormcasts have a few darkshades of grey (gold?) the overall lore doesn't make it appear that Sigmars dominion can be compared to the 40K empire (I agree that it probably might come to that... but the lore isn't there atm.. so no general oppression yet, right?)

[Kaleun]

On 16.9.2017 at 1:24 AM, Yeled said:

There is a part of me that kinda hates the Order Grand Alliance. I know, I know...I'm probably a couple years late on this discussion. And I get the set up: Since Chaos dominated everything the remnants of civilization needed to band together in order to survive. But no matter how many times I try to like Order as a group I can't help but feel it's just kind of a hodgepodge of everything sort of good thrown together. There's a part of me that would like to see Order broken up into two or even three groups:

1. True Order Alliance - Azyr Stormcast and the daemons of Order, the Seraphon
   Pure, Strong, Oppressive; dwelling in Azyr and following the will of their God, Sigmar, they are dogmatic but come to the aid of the other two alliances.
    
2. Freedom Alliance - All human factions, all the Duarden, and a couple fallen Stormcast chapters
   Scattered in and about the Mortal Realms, they are focused on survival and freedom from slavery and Chaos but also from the oppression of the Stormcast, who seek to stamp out Chaos even at the expense of freedom. This group includes Devoted of Sigmar who have a different view of Sigmar than do the Azyr Stormcast, as well as a fallen group of (lessor) Stormcast who have broken away from Azyr (and therefore no longer resurrect or have their divinely inspired powers) and see the oppressiveness of their former brothers.
    
3. Fae Alliance - All Aelves, Sylvaneth
   Mystical, alien, fae, they dwell in the magic places in the spaces between the worlds, a force of nature rebelling against chaos.

I know it will never happen, and I'm not expecting to really change anything. I feel like getting it off my chest in a public forum. I would like this organization above so much better than the way it is set up now. I hope they move the story in that direction.  

I dont really agree honestly.

We have 4 major categories. So everybody can easily see where we stand.

The 4 major alliances have several logical sub categories which are connected via the allied tables.

Why on earth would you make the system more complicated with creating another dimension of categories? That makes no real sense.

Your issue could be implemented via adjustments of the allied table. Thats easier. Personally thats something I would agree to. Dont give the Stormcast the option to ally with every order faction. On the other hand I DONT want to see the Dark elve factions ally with other aelfs.

I think the Ally tables in the generals Handbook 2 did very well with showing who likes whom inside the major factions. That works fluffwise and with list building. We can also see which factions might come together in future battletomes.

I disagree with every step into an more complicated Age of Sigmar. Keep it simple!!

 

PS: Order itself doesnt stand for "good guys" there is no need for a difference between Stormcast and "fallen Stormcast". You can work that out with our army building and own fluff. Rulewise it is possible to build for you, while making no sense if forced to.

[Aezeal]

On ‎19‎/‎09‎/‎2017 at 8:23 PM, Tidings said:

@Yeled That's why I even went so far as to make a new Warscroll with custom lore for my Wanderer Hurricanum! I refuse to put the actual model next to my Wanderers, it just doesn't make any sense to me at all. But the rules for it are basically designed for Wanderers, so I want to play it all the time. Hence the conversion. I don't really think this is a problem though, because the hobby of Warhammer has always been about personalizing and customizing your army.

The fluffy story for my Wanderers doesn't describe them as mixed Order, despite that being what I play. They have that alliance for the rules, but all the other units from other Order armies are converted/proxied in as Wanderer-themed. My Aleves don't teleport around and I've already come up with story for that.

My Wanderers trace their family lines back to the inhabitants of Tirsyth the Ashenhall, a realm of eternal Autumn in Athel Loren of the Old World. They have a similar home now in the Mortal Realms and keep the old customs forgotten by others. Their culture reveres death as much as birth, fully embracing it as part of the cycle of life. The long autumns of their new home represents this melancholy culture well. Instead of ambushing and running like other Aelves, who give ground to preserve their own lives, my Wanderers embrace the chance of death in battle and fight more stoically to defend their home. This represents the lack of teleporting granted by the Wanderers allegiance. 

Unlike other Wanderers, mine have more staunch allies in the form of Sylvaneth whom they share a home with. They also have powerful units (Executioners, Phoenixes, Hurricanum) that come from having a home and defending it stoically. Except mine are all converted or scratch built to fit the Wanderer aesthetic. The pure Wanderers who live nomadic lives don't have the stronger alliances or larger, more complex societies that my Aelves have. This represents the more varied unit selection in the form of the Order Grand Alliance. 

Basically, I like that the Grand Alliance of Order is so large, and I don't mind taking units from all across it. It allows for more freedom to convert and build my own models and it allows for a much greater variety of units to choose from. This makes the hobby more interesting to me, even if I wish the rules for Wanderers themselves were more flushed out. Since that hasn't happened, I'm glad the Order alliance is as large as it is. 

I guess my point is that by just writing my own fluff, I have completely justified using units that otherwise are laughably out of place. Like if I bought a box of Executioners and tried to come up with some ridiculous story about how they joined my Wanderer army, that would be dumb. But by making custom Executioners and just saying the ARE part of my Wanderer army and just fight exactly like the Dark Elf ones do, it's fine! They cease to be Dark Elves at that point and are just using the rules for that unit. 

 I went a bit more the AoS way: 

My wanderers are the the expeditionary from hammerhal ghyra.

From the lexicanum:

Hammerhal Ghyra is located in the Jade Kingdom of Verdia in Ghyran is a city of golden domes and celestial spires. This city channels the lava that flows from Aqsha into carefully cut trenches that forms a wall of fire that hold back the plants of Ghyran.^[1] The air is noted by many visitors as tasting of cinders and smoke and the atmospherer as wet and humid. ^[3b] It is known as a stronghold of aelf-kind and many Free Peoples^[1] with parts of the city given over to vast groves of trees

There is a constant flow of molten rock from Aqsha and in return Ghyra provides the Aqshyan districts with food.^[1] Ghyra imports both stone and timber for building as the inhabitants are forbidden from logging in the realm as per the ancient laws of Alarielle, this is strictly enforced by the local Sylvaneth.^[3e] Ghyra uses its carefully channelled flow of molten rock to direct broad defensive canals in order to hold back the overwhelming fecundity of the Realm of Life.

Seems like a nice place to hail from as wanderers.

[MacDuff]

I kind of like the hodge-podge nature of order. Strong unified armies are easy to construct and often a bit better in games, but having rag-tag remnants of earlier armies or cities banding together offers limitless narrative potential. I often have Free People's hamlets with Empire fragments augmented by roaming bands of Grail Knights, groups of heroes after a ST or SOH adventure, wandering wizards, etc. It adds a lot to an ongoing storyline.

[Gaz Taylor]

+++ Mod Hat On +++

Just a gentle poke, but can we refrain from practicing the dark arts of Necromancy in this part of the forum (well in all of the forum, including Death but you can talk about it there). It's not really what we want to happen on TGA, especially when this could have been a new topic looking at what @Seadee has mentioned.

I'm going to lock this now