Themed subfactions vs. full Grand Alliance

[wayniac]

Curious what others think here, since I'm considering starting a new AoS army and this problem is really limiting any choices that I decide to make because I am more or less an army purist, in that I like to pick a specific subfaction and focus on that, devouring the lore and trying to make a force that completely sticks to the background. With AoS though it seems like that's more detrimental than anything else because most of the subfactions released thus far seem to be pretty limited in scope with what they have available, almost as though you are expected to be pulling from the Grand Alliance book as well to build your army.  However, I find it very hard to look outside of a specific faction from a fluff/narrative/theme approach; for example I play Flesh-Eater Courts currently, so I have like 3 units, 7 heroes (3 of which are variations of the same guy) and 2 monsters and that's it for my army choices, but the fluff purist in me is like it's "wrong" (relatively speaking of course) to ally in other Death factions even though I'm allowed to do so, because it doesn't suit the theme of the army I envision to mix and match, and makes it that much harder in many cases to really build a story around a cohesive army, but I can't help but shake the feeling that the intent is that you cover gaps in your own subfaction with things from the whole Grand Alliance, whether you want to or not. 

Does anyone else experience this, and if so how do you cope? Do I need to just learn to consider everything in the alliance as being my "army" not just the specific subfaction I like? Like, I can't help but shake this feeling that it's not the "spirit of the game" to adjust my own army narrative in order to fit in allies where they don't really make sense; it feels like trying to game the system and take what might be "best" over what makes the most sense for the army. It feels like maybe this is because I play Death (I imagine Order would go the same since they have such disparate factions) even though I remember the days when it was just "Warhammer Armies: Undead" and you had everything together.  It seems though Chaos and Destruction would be easier to just consider the entire alliance as an army with different subgroups (or clans for Destruction).

[TerrorPenguin]

I play death too, I know what you mean but I think given that flesh eater courts are essentially delusional, it wouldn't bee too hard to have a thematic reason for them having skeleton warrior allies but just seeing them as other 'valiant knight' allies.

Having said that I am waiting for deathrattle to get a new battletome as that would be my preferred faction, but in death at the moment there are no alliance abilities specific to e.g flesh eater courts, so you may as well choose from the whole range.

I do know what you mean though....

[wayniac]

It's one of those things where it's pretty hard to justify because I usually am a purist and like cohesivie armies; for instance a reason I could never play Eldar in 40k is because they never looked coherent with the different Aspect Warriors.  I did have the idea to include like a Morghast unit as "angelic messengers of the gods" or some such, but honestly I find that the Death faction seems the most one-dimensional as far as any sort of ambition, it seems to boil down to kill (or eat in FEC) all the things, while your Order/Chaos/Destruction have more goals that can be determined for the sake of army narratives.

[polarbear]

I don't think the intent is for people to have to cover their gaps with grand alliances, as the new allegiance abilities/lores/etc. incentivize staying within one faction. I think to some degree the grand alliances are/will become kind of the fallback armies if you don't have a cohesive force, as most players probably want unique abilities and whatnot. 

I think that system works pretty well. The only thing bugging me from an OCD perspective is paint schemes and basing. I want all my units from one GA to be able to be played together and look cohesive, but I also want my different unique armies not to look the same as each other of course! Face hammer was talking about this and had a good idea to make similar basing with different flairs perhaps.

[Aeryenn]

I excatly understand your problem. I remember when I first started playing Warhammer 40k: Conquest LCG. Astra Militarum allying with Orks? C'mon, be serious. You want to be a competetive player and want to run an Astra deck? That's a must.

So your choice should be based on what do you expect from the game. There are people who see only stats and digits. On the other hand you have people who want to dive in the setting and feel part of the world. For me AoS is still just painting and lore. I live in a small town and I believe to be the only AoS player in 70 km radius. There is no need for me to build optimised 2000 points army. I'd rather have 5 Start Collecting! boxes with 5 different factions than have 1 army containing 40 same units.

[Broken]

I think sub factions are more "you get a bonus if you use an army with limited options" which is a great idea. You have a clear defined character to your army that the larger ones don't. I think the bigger problem is the way the forced or order are massive while other forces are made up of only 1 or 2 factions each. It could of been split better to give non-order alliances more options.

There are groups that allow for a cross over if you're desperate for narrative but want more than 1 faction. You have treefolk and stormcast under the same battalion, but you have to take set units. This works pretty well and could lead to some interesting narrative armies and basing. They talk about crossing a frozen sea in the story, so you could base all your models that way. It's underutilized but your bases can tell part of your narrative rather than just being sand and rocks.

[Jamopower]

I think this is quite good example of how you can pull out a theme, even if "ruleswise" there wouldn't be much of a theme:

 

[jamierk]

I'm about to attempt a Phoenix temple list for Cancon next year. I like the way we can take 2 lists and selectively pick and choose when to play it. I am certainly getting some advantage from my 70-80 Phoenix guard on the table, but no magic and no range is a tough hit to take. The reason I think it can work though is the scenarios themselves that reward bodies on objectives, not kill points or multi wound models. Just my 2cents, it'll be interesting to see what it stacks up like.


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[KhaosZand3r]

To be fair, FEC seems to have the most options of any newer subfaction right now, save for Stormcast and maybe Bloodbound.