Order allies

[Feii]

Hello, 


I a a new AoS player and I wanted to ask how do allies work here? I sometimes see lists with like 1 unit of allies that just share the order keyword with the rest of the army but I guess the main army do not lose its abilities? But other times you see a mesh of all kind of order things and they dont have a faction bonuses and are there just because they have good synergies. What is the point when your army still its bonuses? Why can I find some stormcast lists with 1 singular kroak what are they losing by having him in the army? 

[Overread]

Broadly speaking allies from outside of your battletome won't get the army allegiance abilities from your army battletome. So if you are running Daughters of Khaine and take some Stormcast, they won't get the Daughters of Khaine allegiance abilities. You get exactly what is on the Stormcast model warscroll cards and nothing else.

 

Now sometimes armies will have battalions which have allies within them. These battalions might have a bonus which is applied to all the units, allies and regular, that form that battalion only. It's still not the allegiance abilities, but it can give some allied units some additional features. Note units of your own army within a battalion still get your army allegiance abilities - again its just the allies that don't get them.

 

What you get as a bonus for taking allies is access to things you might not otherwise get. For example an army which has few to no mages might ally in a wizard to help with countering enemy  casters or to have the ability to cast specific spells (again you'd only get the spells on their warscroll). Or perhaps you want to bring in a powerful monster or a cheaper ranged unit. There are many reasons why you might take an ally both tactically and purely because you want too. 

[Feii]

1 hour ago, Overread said:

Broadly speaking allies from outside of your battletome won't get the army allegiance abilities from your army battletome. So if you are running Daughters of Khaine and take some Stormcast, they won't get the Daughters of Khaine allegiance abilities. You get exactly what is on the Stormcast model warscroll cards and nothing else.

 

Now sometimes armies will have battalions which have allies within them. These battalions might have a bonus which is applied to all the units, allies and regular, that form that battalion only. It's still not the allegiance abilities, but it can give some allied units some additional features. Note units of your own army within a battalion still get your army allegiance abilities - again its just the allies that don't get them.

 

What you get as a bonus for taking allies is access to things you might not otherwise get. For example an army which has few to no mages might ally in a wizard to help with countering enemy  casters or to have the ability to cast specific spells (again you'd only get the spells on their warscroll). Or perhaps you want to bring in a powerful monster or a cheaper ranged unit. There are many reasons why you might take an ally both tactically and purely because you want too. 

So if I take some allies I can still declare my army to be let's say Stormcast but I wont lose anything only the ally I am bringing in would not benefit from anything stormcast?

[zilberfrid]

3 minutes ago, Feii said:

So if I take some allies I can still declare my army to be let's say Stormcast but I wont lose anything only the ally I am bringing in would not benefit from anything stormcast?

Correct.

There are also armies where you can add a few things from outside the army at a certain ratio, like Stormcast and (depending on subfaction) Sylvaneth or Kharadron in Cities of Sigmar that do get some allegiance ability. I think it was possible to have only 25% in unit number and some 5-10% in points value from the original warscrolls in something like Tempest's Eye (Cities).

Do note that not every army can get everything of the Order keyword as allies, Stormcasts are an exception for this.

[Overread]

Exactly, however you can only take a limited number of units and points for allies. For example at 2K points you can only take 400 points worth of allies in your army. One or two armies have some special conditions that let you get around that limit, but its broadly speaking how things work. Eg Gotrek belongs to no army and he's over 400 points in cost, but has a rule that allows him to be taken anyway (of course he'd be your only ally model). 

 

You can take a "Grand Alliance" army. These let you pick units from any army in your Grand Alliance; but you then belong to no one army. There are Grand Alliance rules and allegiance abilities and such, but they are generally a bit weaker than "pure" armies. So there's the option if you want to go down that path, but its not the "best" path power wise.