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Battle Brothers- an idea to revamp the Ally system


Thiagoma

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I’m all for making things more creative and fun.

I don’t see the harm in bumping the points up a little bit.

But if there would be a battle brother type thing, just have it where only if you take the BB you get an increase points for them.

id much rather look at and play against someone’s awesome themed army than vanilla one 

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1 hour ago, Mandzak-Miniatures said:

I’m all for making things more creative and fun.

I don’t see the harm in bumping the points up a little bit.

But if there would be a battle brother type thing, just have it where only if you take the BB you get an increase points for them.

id much rather look at and play against someone’s awesome themed army than vanilla one 

Really this discussion is geared to people playing Matched Play rules and competitive play. If you want to do thing like Battle Bros and be thematic like that in open play and Story play I’m more than fine with it. But it’s only really good there because there will be guys like me who will break it badly, it might be thematic with how I’d build it but you gonna lose badly.

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One of the reasons I prefer AoS over 40k is that 'soup' is rampant in 40k while the current AoS rule set restricts it in a competitive context.

I define soup as the mixing of multiple armies for competitive advantage.

I note that the OP's proposal is coming from the view of solving the problem of a lack of model variety for certain factions. I'd prefer GW to release more models and better rules for those factions, rather than introduce a more fluid ally system that could lead to the problem of 'soup' as we see in 40k.

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11 hours ago, Takaloy said:

Blood Angels have been consistently nerfed because one stratagem and one model is considered broken in Mixed Soup. I like the diversity of AOS, where every army has something different. I think allies is a good compromise, small enough it allows for special flavour without taking away the key piece of the main army. I wish 40K would do it the AOS way.

This is a perfect example of why 40k is so broken at the moment.

The problem was never Blood Angels by themselves. The problem was Blood Angels + Imperial Knight + Imperial Guard in a very specific combination. Cherry picking the most powerful units from each codex so that you'd have no weakness in your list.

So what do GW do? Nerf Blood Angels and to a lesser extent nerf Imperial Knights. Now both armies when played by themselves are even worse despite never being good to begin with. 

It's ****** design.

I'm getting off-topic though and I respect that the OP is not trying to suggest a 40k style of soup for AoS.

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I really do not know how to play 40k.

It is good to see the people reaction to the "too much soup" armies.

My idea would be more in line with a perk to the army that ally with their "lore buddy" than anything else really. The BB wouldnt get traits or keywords or anything else other than a small bonus.

Maybe 600 ally points instead of 400 if you only ally your BB or such. Somethong to generate variety without going GA mega soup but keeping to the army flavor.

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If they dont provide any benefits aside from just having more variety of bodies than it’s only slight better than just running the GA instead because only 1200 points( so at minimum 3/5 of your army) benefits from your allegiance abilities. unless you have some specific need for allies that your own units can’t provide it’s just better to not take a slot of additional allies because you are better getting synergies within your own army or just going GA. 400-600 points of unsupported units probably isn’t going to change much or change a lot depending on which armies are picked to pair up.

even without allegiance abilities 600 points of witches bring a lot more pain on the table vs 600 points of seraphon.

Edited by King Taloren
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51 minutes ago, Thiagoma said:

I really do not know how to play 40k.

It is good to see the people reaction to the "too much soup" armies.

And from us, the players that dabble in both 40k and AoS, increasing the allies allowance brings more of a negative experience in a competitive environment due to 'min-maxing'. 

On another note, as AoS matures  I'm hoping to see 'Mixed' or full blown 'City' Allegiances. For example, 'Tempest's Eye' have KO, dispossessed and freeguild in their roster and some synergy between them. I believe this might be what OP wants to see and I wouldn't be surprised if I'd show up in one of future campaign books. 

I rather GW introduce 'controlled' alliances into AoS then open the door to the community.

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2 minutes ago, Qaz said:

And from us, the players that dabble in both 40k and AoS, increasing the allies allowance brings more of a negative experience in a competitive environment due to 'min-maxing'. 

On another note, as AoS matures  I'm hoping to see 'Mixed' or full blown 'City' Allegiances. For example, 'Tempest's Eye' have KO, dispossessed and freeguild in their roster and some synergy between them. I believe this might be what OP wants to see and I wouldn't be surprised if I'd show up in one of future campaign books. 

I rather GW introduce 'controlled' alliances into AoS then open the door to the community.

Indeed, Firestorm was pretty good, it is a shame it never got updated.

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I'm going to echo what others have said in that soup is bad for AoS, with 40k being the prime example. The most refreshing thing about AoS in it's current state is the ally restrictions. It keeps the game fun, thematic and more visually immersive and less open for list loophole abuse.

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Battalions, akin to how BoC function would be as close as I want to get with something along the lines of a themed mixed army in matched play. Another compromise might be something akin to Firestorm with the Great Cities, though I think these might work similarly to battalions, my familiarity is fleeting at best. 

 

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19 hours ago, King Taloren said:

Really this discussion is geared to people playing Matched Play rules and competitive play. If you want to do thing like Battle Bros and be thematic like that in open play and Story play I’m more than fine with it. But it’s only really good there because there will be guys like me who will break it badly, it might be thematic with how I’d build it but you gonna lose badly.

Almost everyone uses the matched play rules.  Those rules are less about being just "competitive" these days so much as they are the defacto rules that make sense.  It's more fun to play with proper points.  As such I don't see the harm in opening allies a tiny bit (Maybe to 600 points out of 2000?), because right now a lot of small-faction armies all are played with nearly the exact same load-outs and it is boring.  Sylvaneth is a great example where fighting would be more interesting if we'd see more wanderers on the table from time to time, and it fits thematically extremely well.  For example, seeing the spellweaver actually having a use with the sylvaneth would be cool, etc.

EDIT:  Also if an army becomes "broken" with 600 points of an ally, imo that means either the army or the ally are simply imbalanced.

Edited by Zanzou
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Open play and narrative doesn’t stop from using matched play rules but you can customize things much better. 

The main problem here is that while 600 of an army can benefit one it can over benefit another to the point of going way over the broken line.

600 points of wanderers isn’t near as destructive as 600 points of Daughters of Khaine allies. That enough to bring Morathi and a squad of ten witches or two full 30 woman squads of witches. 

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On 4/25/2019 at 5:22 PM, King Taloren said:

Really this discussion is geared to people playing Matched Play rules and competitive play. If you want to do thing like Battle Bros and be thematic like that in open play and Story play I’m more than fine with it. But it’s only really good there because there will be guys like me who will break it badly, it might be thematic with how I’d build it but you gonna lose badly.

Weird because I dislike narrative and open play.

Rule if cool and having fun is where I sit.

you can still have a theme without narrative and open play OR abusing rules.

The premise of the topic is based on providing new strategy and narrowing gaps in armies that need a boost due to lack of battle tome etc.

however this idea includes the concept of “battle brother”. An concept of which armies would most likely team up more so than normal, which is THEMATIC.

Edited by Mandzak-Miniatures
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1 hour ago, Mandzak-Miniatures said:

The premise of the topic is based on providing new strategy and narrowing gaps in armies that need a boost due to lack of battle tome etc.

Which the problem lies in that there are now more armies with battle tomes than there are without. And by the end of the year almost all if not all will have books so the concept is kind of only a patch job for something that won’t be an issue in six months.

The case comes down to either being open on who is battle brothers (which as most have pointed out is why so many of us who played 40k are very disillusioned with such a system from the terrifying rampant gamebreaker it is) , to severely limiting to who that people will complain because thematically this this and this army should all be battle bros but this and this are too broken when combined together at higher points allowed so it can only be that. 

Its not really worth the hassle to force it into matched play. 1: it adds rules that aren’t really needed, 2: if you need to have 800 points of allies to make your army work something is wrong, outside of a couple far reaching cases most current (by current I mean a standing 2.0 battletome) armies are quite fine standing alone. 3: Certain armies are quite powerful stand-alone from even their allegiance abilities. Why I keep pointing out witches, they are super effective killing machines even without Hag Naar and Khaliebron coven rules. A good size group with a Hag Queen or two and you have doubled your kill potential for 600 odd points. Sequitors also have similar issues of being really good even without being in Stormcast. Who to you make battlebrothers within a Grand Alliance? Nagash kind of already is everyone’s battlebro in death. Destruction gets the worst of it with their five factions remaining.

but this is a very permissive ruleset so if your friends will let you play it this way knock yourself out. It’s better to leave it as something between you and your opponent. Not something that will show up in big tournament play like LVO. People already dislike Nagash’s soup army of undeath.

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17 hours ago, Zanzou said:

EDIT:  Also if an army becomes "broken" with 600 points of an ally, imo that means either the army or the ally are simply imbalanced.

Or it means that the amount of models contained in that 600 points has a better synergy and power than a 400 point ally block. Much in the same way that a Skirmish game is as different as a 500 point normal game vs a 1000 vs 1500 vs 2000 vs 3000

Each successive block has a wildly new level of synergy that can be brought to the table. Anyone who has played a progressive league or even just playing as they build their armies will tell you that the different point values can wildly change how an army functions. 

Idoneth is a entirely different beast when you play at small values. At 500 points you can’t run eels because the king (who is required to make eels battleline) takes half your points and there isn’t enough for two battleline units. So you run foot sloughing Namarti Thralls and Reavers so you are much slower and not as tanky. Once you hit 750 and 1000 points you get a huge power spike with being able to run eels.

Some armies don’t have such wild swings but a good many do.

400 points is fairly balanced overall because there are very few units that can build into a dangerous problem. That’s one unit of 30 witches and a Hag Queen. It’s still deadly but  it’s a single unit that will die from a very stern glare if you focus it down.

600 points now you have two units of full 30 or two 20s and a couple of Queens. This is nearly double and harder to deal with. Because chances are one of those units is going to give you a verybad day before you can kill them all. And then you still have the rest of your opponents army to deal with.

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24 minutes ago, Thiagoma said:

 

I dont play 40k but it looks complex to make an army.

It’s slightly complex. You choose a setup for a detachment which gives you a limited number of slots that are filled by the various units, each one serving differing functions. 

Where Sigmar has Battleline, Heroes and Behemoths, 40k has Troops, HQ, Heavy, Fast, Super-Heavy, Elite and Flyers and every unit is divided into one of those classes.

One choice lets you take 6troops and up 2-3 of everything else. Others focus more heavily on one or the other specialties.

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On 4/27/2019 at 6:55 AM, King Taloren said:

Or it means that the amount of models contained in that 600 points has a better synergy and power than a 400 point ally block. Much in the same way that a Skirmish game is as different as a 500 point normal game vs a 1000 vs 1500 vs 2000 vs 3000

Each successive block has a wildly new level of synergy that can be brought to the table. Anyone who has played a progressive league or even just playing as they build their armies will tell you that the different point values can wildly change how an army functions. 

Idoneth is a entirely different beast when you play at small values. At 500 points you can’t run eels because the king (who is required to make eels battleline) takes half your points and there isn’t enough for two battleline units. So you run foot sloughing Namarti Thralls and Reavers so you are much slower and not as tanky. Once you hit 750 and 1000 points you get a huge power spike with being able to run eels.

Some armies don’t have such wild swings but a good many do.

400 points is fairly balanced overall because there are very few units that can build into a dangerous problem. That’s one unit of 30 witches and a Hag Queen. It’s still deadly but  it’s a single unit that will die from a very stern glare if you focus it down.

600 points now you have two units of full 30 or two 20s and a couple of Queens. This is nearly double and harder to deal with. Because chances are one of those units is going to give you a verybad day before you can kill them all. And then you still have the rest of your opponents army to deal with.

I get your initial point but again you bring up isolated DoK units that I think have no special cross-faction synergy with the rest of the opponents' army, they are just strong by themselves.  Which, if scary to you, means those units themselves might be a little broken since it's not even a special combo. I don't know much about Daughters of Khaine but they are definitely winning a lot of tournaments right now however skaven and FEC are up there as well so this may just be a recent battletome issue...

Again if an ally is just too strong in and of itself with no special cross-faction synergies, then that's not a problem with allies that's a problem with the units, imo.

Edited by Zanzou
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Allies are fine as long as they do not get access to their own allegiance abilities.

One of the main reason why 40K soup is in such a bad shape is because they allowed allies to have access to their own faction's special rules and tactics (similar to AOS allegiance abilities). This breaks the game.

If this translates to AOS, you will have death players running list like 2 Gristlegore AGKoTG and 2x30 LoN Grimghast Reapers. 🤣

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14 hours ago, Zanzou said:

I get your initial point but again you bring up isolated DoK units that I think have no special cross-faction synergy with the rest of the opponents' army, they are just strong by themselves.  Which, if scary to you, means those units themselves might be a little broken since it's not even a special combo. I don't know much about Daughters of Khaine but they are definitely winning a lot of tournaments right now however skaven and FEC are up there as well so this may just be a recent battletome issue...

Again if an ally is just too strong in and of itself with no special cross-faction synergies, then that's not a problem with allies that's a problem with the units, imo.

I’m not particularly scared of witches. My army has one of the best counters for an unsupported group with or without a Hag. Mostly I’m just using them as an example of one the easier to abuse unit that can be allied, and how big a power spike they get. On their own they are pretty squishy and if they run into anything with 4+ armor or higher they get in trouble real fast. Though horde and chaff units will just die 80% of the time they charge into one.

Though a question here. If your army has no allies that has synergies with your own, you aren’t going to take something that can’t support itself or be strong on its own are you? 

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40k could stand to take more ideas from the AoS matched-play army construction system and not the other way around.

If there are good fluff reasons to allow certain armies to cross-pollinate more than they already can via the allies system then the Battalion system seems ideal to solve that.  There are already battalions in some armies that combine factions and bypass the ally point limitations.  Once GW finishes up with getting all of the major armies updated with 2nd edition Battletomes I think it would be cool if they created a campaign/supplemental expansion book or two that added some new battalions into the game independent of the army battletomes.  They could use that as an opportunity to explore more mixed-faction battalions that work with the narrative theme of the expansion.

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On 4/24/2019 at 2:42 PM, Thiagoma said:

Here are the objectives around this idea:

-Increase variety of gameplay and armies pn the table, without braking the theme or lore of factions

-Solving the lack of model variety in some factions.

 

What would be the idea:

Each army would have a battle brother faction, the go to ally that makes more sense regarding lore and aesthetics. This battle brothers puld use a pool of points different from the ally one.

So you pick a Faction as usual, and your army must contain at least 1200 pts of the chosen faction.  The remaining 800 would be split into 400 ally pts and 400 Battle Brother points. Jist like Allies, the Battle Brother units would not share traits, bonuses or keywords from the original faction.

Lets pick Wanderers as an example:

Lets say their Battle Brother would be Sylvaneth. The army would have acess to 400 ally pts and 400 Sylvaneth points.

What would that acomplish: it would provide wanderers with behemots and new units to choose from, create new ways to field the army and new strategies around that particular alligeance.

The system would also help factions such as Fyreslayers, Ironjaws, FeC who lack units variety, while keeping lore and looks intact.

Also it would reduce the power gap that happens currently between mixed GA armies and "pure" ones.

What do you guys think?

 

I've only skimmed the thread, so someone else may have posted this already, but isn't what you're describing pretty much what the Gloomspite Gitz book has done, with Moonclan, Spiderfang and Troggoths all having their own distinct allegiance abilities and synergies within themselves, but being able to mix freely under the same main allegiance? Heck, Beasts of Chaos has also done it with Brayheards, whatever minotaurs are called now, Thunderscorn and Monsters of Chaos; Legions of Nagash with their gorillion ex-Vampire Counts microfactions; and you could just about argue that the Khorne, Tzeentch and Nurgle books just about do this with their mortal and daemon factions.

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