New Player Army Question

[SeiaDoon]

First, I'm new to the community and new to the hobby.  Sorry if this is a stupid question but here it goes.

In all the YouTube battle reps I've watched and as I've read people's posts about their armies on forums I've noticed that they are all just one faction of a Grand Alliance.  Do people take advantage of the allies rule when making an army?  1 Unit per 4 being outside the main army faction if I remember what I read correctly.  Seems like it would make for a fun and dynamic armies but again, I don't see people doing this.  Maybe I just haven't been exposed enough.

I got to thinking about this because I got the Soul Wars set to start and thought about getting one of the Order start collecting to mix with my SCE.

Thanks all!

[King Taloren]

It largely depends on what you are playing and what you need allies for. Your allies don’t benefit from any of your main army’s mechanics so it’s best to have something that can work on it’s own or you can get a unit that can buff/help it stay alive

.

[SeiaDoon]

So really its a function of... min maxing for lack of a better term.  In as much as if you have X number of points to work with you get the biggest bang for your points by having all units in the same faction thus getting the same battle traits and such where an ally unit from the same Grand Alliance but not same sub-faction would get no bonuses.

Meaning if you are you just playing causally (open play) it doesn't matter as much but if you are competing it would be a detriment.

[Overread]

It's sort of min-maxing but its also partly because many people prefer single faction based armies overall. AoS has been weighted very nicely so that whilst there are Grand Alliances, the army mechanics make it beneficial to take mono-faction armies or rather I should say monobattletome because several battletomes (such as Gloomspite Gitz and Skaven) are combined arms approaches adding several forces together under one banner. 

That said many alliance blocks are subtle in how allies are drawn in - eg if you were playing Daughters of Khaine you could bring a Shadowblade Assassin - you might not even notice that it's not a DoK unit because visually its still in the same "dark elf" aesthetic from the old designs. So they blend in very well. 

 

Allies do happen, but they are penalties for them. Eg they don't get army traits whilst allied mages cannot take spell lores from their own battletome nor from the faction they are joining - though if you're using realm battlefields they can use the realm spell lore, same as any other mage on both sides. So when you take an ally its either a casual game or you're looking for something very specific that has to fill a good niche of its own. 

 

They can also be good for army flavour and composition fun - some armies like Flesh Eater Courts don't have a huge roster so sometimes its fun to bring something else allied in. 

 

 

 

Also note the original Grand Alliance books are very old now and quite out of date with how AoS has changed. We don't know if GW will release new overall Grand Alliance rules/books - my personal hope is that if they do then it wants to be subtle, I think AoS, like most wargames, works best when factions mostly stand on their own. When there's balance between factions and factions can have strengths and weaknesses whilst also having their own lore, style and flavour.