Crazy question: Do we still need Grand Alliances?

[Melcavuk]

I think this could be fantastic ways of playing, and alot like many narrative campaigns already do for their local groups. But I do get how having the GW stamp of "its ok to do this, you get these special rules" would encourage more people to do so, there tends to be alot of resistance to doing things outside of the list of things GW themselves have rubber stamped.

Flexible, growing and expanding allegiances that suit evolving fluff of specific sub regions would make for fantastic campaign books.

[Overread]

I think that the 20% limit is a good thing honestly and I think trying to get rid of it would be a bad move on two fronts:

1) In most cases people get into the game becasue of a single army force that works as a single faction identity in terms of visual design and mechanics and lore. I'm not saying joint forces are not interesting, but that the game works best when individual armies are standing strong rather than "souped" forces where you've got less visual identity of a faction.

2) Balance wise it makes things a nightmare. Either the rules have to go so simplistic that there's little real variation between arimes or you have continual updates to repair broken combos that arise because different armies can now fix their internal weaknesses with an ally. Furthermore even if you make every allied block "work" you might well find that some of the more extreme areas of flavour are lost and that variation is weakened because that's one sure and easy way to prevent min-max problems.

 

 

On a third point I'd say that if you started having lots of overlapping alliance blocks it might seem really complicated for a newbie. Right now even with factions like Order having lots of subgroupings, its really easy to get into and see how the game works. Now in the future could I see Order (as its the biggest) fragmenting - sure it could very well happen. Already blocks like the Dark Aelves can only ally with each other and Stormcast so if they broke out and made their own Grand Alliance block it wouldn't harm many other forces. 

But I can't see anything like that happening until 3.0. Plus there's a risk of angering players who were making use of the current alliance system who are hten denied taking certain allies (eg a Stormcast player used to bringing witch aelves now couldn't). 

[stato]

GA work great, they give structure, they form a basis for development, most of all they allow people to have a bunch of models and a way to use them.

I dont see an allies system as an improvement, this all seems to fall back to the usual posts about how they dont like X faction being aligend with Y.  This ignores the fact they cant ally unless you take a GA in matched play games.

[amysrevenge]

32 minutes ago, Overread said:

On a third point I'd say that if you started having lots of overlapping alliance blocks it might seem really complicated for a newbie.

This I think is probably the best argument against my idea. 

My counter would be that you still have the tactic that 90% of players use already, and is the obvious choice for a new player: a normal Battletome faction.  Pretty much nothing would change for a Fyreslayers army - you'd still look to their Pitched Battle Profile for the list of allies, you'd still be beholden to 20%/1 in 4, nothing would change (the only potential change would be that there would be the potential for an outside GA faction in the ally list, where lore-appropriate).

The only complication would be for the person who currently plays GA:Order (or one of the other 3 - you know, that one guy who plays GA: Death?).  There wouldn't be a GA:Order, but there would be a set of Free Cities and etc. to pick from.

[Ollie Grimwood]

1 hour ago, JPjr said:

What you’re describing sounds good but isn’t that just* narrative play?

 

*”just” he says as if this isn’t the pinnacle, the platonic ideal, the supreme glory and final form of this hobby.

Now you’re talking sense. 

Unlike an earlier poster who suggested Destruction Aelves.  Never! Not even in a straw man hypothetical way. The only Aleves we want in Destruction is in the bellies of the other Destruction factions. 

[Nullius]

Among other things Grand alliances are incredibly useful as a sales tool. You can point to the wall with new players and say “anything in the same grand alliance can be an army,”  which is true. The old system of allies (as opposed to the frankly brilliant keyword method of army construction) was cumbersome, arcane, and irritating.

finally the grand alliances open up the field for mad converters and endlessly delighted narrative gamers without bringing the whole army-construction house down, as it were.

[AaronWilson]

I think GA work perfectly  for matched play and narrative is a excellent way to break the shackles and explore more combinations outside the confides of matched play.