Allies to beef up DA....?

[Marshal Wilhelm]

I was wondering if people here were using Allies to patch over the 4th ed. Codex?

Whilst count as had its time in 5th ed, you still missed out on some of the especially Dark Angelic things if you used C:SM for DA.

 

Now that you can have Allies, and you can use your DA miniatures to represent them [the Allies] as well as the host, no need for other Chapters getting involved in the Unforgiven's business ;) has anyone been taking advantage of it?

 

As in, taking Belial and Deathwing squads as part of the army, but taking a C:SM Bike Captain and Bike TROOPS to represent Ravenwing elements? Or using Khan on Moondrakken and unlocking outflank and hit & run to make them a little bit fancy.

 

Or taking Belial and Deathwing squads and using C:SM to represent regular green DA? For example, cheaper Tacticals, new Librarians with Ld10 and a spell list, etc.

 

So you could take your DA Heroes, Azrael, Ezekiel, a proper Chaplain, etc. and include them in a more enjoyable army, for example.

 

Even C:BA could be used, with their Tacticals being fine, and having Assault Marines that are actually decent in terms of equipment and using Decent of Angels. I could see a DA Librarian Dreadnought doing some therapy sessions with the Fallen - though Chamber 42 might need some extensions done to it :( Plus C:BA has usable Devastators in terms of better pricing. It does allow for a Reclusiarch, instead of the feeble Chaplain from C:SM, too. And C:BA Librarians allow for a different list of spells to enjoy.

 

Both of these choices allow for Riflemen Dreadnoughts to be fielded *gasp* and also some melee fun in the form of Ironclads, or Furiosos with Blood Talons or Frag Cannons, etc.

 

Thoughts?

[Chaplain Lucifer]

I personally dislike the allies table (I find it dumb) and can't see me fielding allies of any kind. Also, Since I usually play 1500-1750 points games I feel that there's no room in point for luxuries from others codexes... 1500-1750 feel like I barely have enough points to fit in my favorite DA units, let alone having to spend more points in a HQ and Troop that I probably don't like or need choice just to put in an extra toy from another codex.

[Jack Hitchcock]

I often use C:SM (painted as DA) as allied in my list. Generally I use librarian, scouts with camo cloaks and teleport homer, and some cheaper-than-DA vehicles.

A tactical DA squad is about 10 poits more expansive then a SM one, but can use the leadership of Belial (10), so it's better IMHO.

 

The only problem could be that you can't use allies effectively under 1500 points

[Brother Immolator]

I personally dislike the allies table (I find it dumb) and can't see me fielding allies of any kind. Also, Since I usually play 1500-1750 points games I feel that there's no room in point for luxuries from others codexes... 1500-1750 feel like I barely have enough points to fit in my favorite DA units, let alone having to spend more points in a HQ and Troop that I probably don't like or need choice just to put in an extra toy from another codex.

 

This, but If I ever find the courage to paint the blood angels from spacehulk, I think I might take them as allies. It aint worth for those models to either be chopped down or gather dust in the self.

[facmanpob]

Now that you can have Allies, and you can use your DA miniatures to represent them [the Allies] as well as the host, no need for other Chapters getting involved in the Unforgiven's business :D has anyone been taking advantage of it?

Thoughts?

Just one thought - If the primary detachment and allies are all painted the same, how does your opponent easily tell which models are using which codex? My personal view is if you are allying another Space Marine Chapter with your DA then they should be painted differently so that its obvious which is which.

[elphilo]

I have tried it, it worked out well but I felt really really dirty doing it. Not cheese wise, just a disappointment in my codex/myself.

 

Now that you can have Allies, and you can use your DA miniatures to represent them [the Allies] as well as the host, no need for other Chapters getting involved in the Unforgiven's business :) has anyone been taking advantage of it?

Thoughts?

Just one thought - If the primary detachment and allies are all painted the same, how does your opponent easily tell which models are using which codex? My personal view is if you are allying another Space Marine Chapter with your DA then they should be painted differently so that its obvious which is which.

 

One way to do it is ONLY buying types of units from one Codex. As an example when I tried it, all my Tactical Marines were from C:SM, while all my terminators were from C:DA. If you were to do it like that I don't think people would have a problem. It only becomes troublesome when you start taking the same types of units from both codices, that is where I would draw the line personally.

[facmanpob]

As an example when I tried it, all my Tactical Marines were from C:SM, while all my terminators were from C:DA. If you were to do it like that I don't think people would have a problem.

Imo, I think quite a few people might have a problem with it, as it does come across as a bit cheesy. Tacticals are available in the DA codex after all, the only problem is they are more expensive than the C:SM counterparts. If I was going to ally, it would be to get something that isn't available in the DA codex, but I wouldn't ally with another chapter and then take a cheaper version of something in my own Codex.

 

Just my tuppence :D

[elphilo]

As an example when I tried it, all my Tactical Marines were from C:SM, while all my terminators were from C:DA. If you were to do it like that I don't think people would have a problem.

Imo, I think quite a few people might have a problem with it, as it does come across as a bit cheesy. Tacticals are available in the DA codex after all, the only problem is they are more expensive than the C:SM counterparts. If I was going to ally, it would be to get something that isn't available in the DA codex, but I wouldn't ally with another chapter and then take a cheaper version of something in my own Codex.

 

Just my tuppence ;)

 

Well if you ally with C:SM you have to have one troop, and that is either Tactical or Scouts. I really only did it to try out the Stormtalon :P

 

I also don't see how it is cheesy TBH. As long as you're not taking the tactical squads from both codices I don't think anyone can cry foul. Allies is a base rule and in order to follow that rule one must take a troop choice from the allied codex. Now I can see people being miffed they are painted the same as DA so they don't stand out as easily. But as I stated before as long as you're not mixing both Tactical Squad choices there isn't much anyone can do about it other than not play you, and if they won't play you because you want to run 1-2 decently priced Tactical Squads, then you probably don't want to play that opponent.

 

I agree with you on the point of allying is to get something that isn't available in the DA codex. The whole point is to help round out your army list. But sometimes you just want to get to that greener grass sooner and that is why I played a few games with allied C:SM :P. Though like I said before, I felt really dirty doing it because they weren't DA, they were still "counts as DA." Plus my true passion is the Deathwing, so my lists tend to lack Tactical Marines :D

[lhg033]

If I was going to ally, it would be to get something that isn't available in the DA codex,

 

combi weapons/other wargear options on sergeants for tacticals? DA are very 'light' on wargear so this would be a way of resolving that.

[Sarducci]

I have painted all my armies in a similar paint scheme, so they all look good on the table together. I usually use allies in large games, and more for fun then for effect. I have had Sisters of Battle with the Deathwing, for example. If you use allies and make your force weaker, or at least not better, few people complain and it can be more fun to bring a few uncommon armies (SoB, Pure Deathwing) than play all Space Marine (yawn, another one).

[pueriexdeus]

I did it once to field my unauthorized Storm Talon.

 

The army was predominately RW with Sammi on JB, demi CMD SQD w/AB, 2X Full RAS, an LST and a Gunfighter Dread.

 

C:SM; Libbi on Bike, 1X full Tac Sqd w/RZRBK, and 1X Storm Talon.

 

All in DA livery.

 

Facing a Daemon Army, won by Two VP's

 

Came in at 2000 points exactly.

 

I will do it again, I like the Storm Talon.

 

I will concur that as long as you keep your like kind units consistent to the Codex being used their should not be a problem. As far as counts as though I think using something like IG as Eldar/Orks as Storm Troopers etc, would be bad.

[IndigoJack]

I ally in C:SM for cheaper tacs and tanks, and better HQs and veterans. No one I've played against has cried cheese about this. Most people understand that C:DA was pretty much crap on arrival, and has only gotten worse due to codex creep. Allies go a long way to help level the playing field for old or poorly written codex (except 'nids, no one cars about you). Besides, there are far worse power combos to cry cheese over. Grey Knights/Necrons? That's pretty much pure power gaming, with little fluff to back it up.

 

My favorite ally combo with C:SM is a librarian w/ pyromancy and sternguard vets with 5x combi-meltas and 2x heavy flamers in a drop pod. (scouts or tacs to fill out the required troop slot). The sternguard show up with the DW and put a huge threat in the opponents deployment zone turn 1. Interceptor means pretty much nothing to the vets, because nothing has enough rate of fire or a low enough AP to hurt them too much. They can deploy 6" from the drop pod, giving you a huge margin of error for deep strike scatter, and if the librarian takes the primaris pyro power, you now have a 3rd heavy flamer in there. This unit is a swiss army knife of pain. Land raider? Blow it up, flame the contents. Hordes? Fire special ammo,nflame everyone. This unit can easily put 20 wounds on a unit. Combat squad them to put pain on two separate targets. I especially like using it as a combo breaker. If someone was foolish enough to build their army around one unit, this unit has the ability to stop it. Yes, it's an expensive unit to throw away by DS into enemy territory, but it rarely fails to wreck something. This unit works even better when properly supported by DW.

 

Haha, sorry about the rant, I just really <3 my sternguard.

[Marshal Wilhelm]

As Indigo said, DA & SM/BA is certainly going to be weaker than a streamlined GK, IG and SW list. A] If you are winning half of your games with C:DA anyway, then you probably don't need to change a thing :) B] But if you are getting clobbered, a bit of a mashup with another Dex could get you from, say, winning a third of your games up to more like half of them....

 

If your gaming buddies don't want you to get better than winning half your games, like in 'A' and they also don't want to try Allies, or taking stronger lists, etc. then you play appropriately to your environment and leave things be with C:DA.

If your situation is more like 'B' and you are generally the punching bag, but your 'buddies' lament you increasing your on-table power, and they are winning the other two-thirds of the games, it would seem that they are actually the WAAC gamers -> they'll keep you down because you are using a poor Codex, but would begrudge you of spicing it up a little? That seems pretty mean to me.

 

If you are both looking to expand into 6th ed, assuming you have easy going gaming buddies, then Allies for you in the form of SM or BA is pretty cheap if you are using count as, and you can save your pennies for something grand, rather than buying another Librarian, Tactical squad and Rhino.

 

There is no rule saying Allies must be painted as units from that Codex. You can actually have, in DA livery, Tacticals from both C:DA and C:SM if you so wish. As a nod to being nice, avoid that to keep confusion low. All Termy units are from C:DA, all Tacticals are from C:SM, etc.

 

And keep Clubs next to the native DA units and Hearts next to the introduced SM units. ^_^

 

I ally in C:SM for cheaper tacs and tanks, and better HQs and veterans. No one I've played against has cried cheese about this. Most people understand that C:DA was pretty much crap on arrival, and has only gotten worse due to codex creep. Allies go a long way to help level the playing field for old or poorly written codex (except 'nids, no one cars about you). Besides, there are far worse power combos to cry cheese over. Grey Knights/Necrons? That's pretty much pure power gaming, with little fluff to back it up.

 

My favorite ally combo with C:SM is a librarian w/ pyromancy and sternguard vets with 5x combi-meltas and 2x heavy flamers in a drop pod. (scouts or tacs to fill out the required troop slot). The sternguard show up with the DW and put a huge threat in the opponents deployment zone turn 1. Interceptor means pretty much nothing to the vets, because nothing has enough rate of fire or a low enough AP to hurt them too much. They can deploy 6" from the drop pod, giving you a huge margin of error for deep strike scatter, and if the librarian takes the primaris pyro power, you now have a 3rd heavy flamer in there. This unit is a swiss army knife of pain. Land raider? Blow it up, flame the contents. Hordes? Fire special ammo,nflame everyone. This unit can easily put 20 wounds on a unit. Combat squad them to put pain on two separate targets. I especially like using it as a combo breaker. If someone was foolish enough to build their army around one unit, this unit has the ability to stop it. Yes, it's an expensive unit to throw away by DS into enemy territory, but it rarely fails to wreck something. This unit works even better when properly supported by DW.

 

Haha, sorry about the rant, I just really <3 my sternguard.

 

This is more what I am talking about :D

[Xyon]

Im ok with the idea of taking allies, in some cases it might be more fun to make DA the allies and just take C:SM as the main force, or C:BA. In order to make them easier to 'tell apart' you could paint the units taken from other codex as successor chapters to the DA, which would make it a little more justifiable in my mind, like 110%, since allies are all ready a 100% thing in my head.

[facmanpob]

As an example when I tried it, all my Tactical Marines were from C:SM, while all my terminators were from C:DA. If you were to do it like that I don't think people would have a problem.

Imo, I think quite a few people might have a problem with it, as it does come across as a bit cheesy. Tacticals are available in the DA codex after all, the only problem is they are more expensive than the C:SM counterparts. If I was going to ally, it would be to get something that isn't available in the DA codex, but I wouldn't ally with another chapter and then take a cheaper version of something in my own Codex.

 

Just my tuppence ;)

 

Well if you ally with C:SM you have to have one troop, and that is either Tactical or Scouts. I really only did it to try out the Stormtalon :P

 

I also don't see how it is cheesy TBH. As long as you're not taking the tactical squads from both codices I don't think anyone can cry foul. Allies is a base rule and in order to follow that rule one must take a troop choice from the allied codex. Now I can see people being miffed they are painted the same as DA so they don't stand out as easily. But as I stated before as long as you're not mixing both Tactical Squad choices there isn't much anyone can do about it other than not play you, and if they won't play you because you want to run 1-2 decently priced Tactical Squads, then you probably don't want to play that opponent.

 

I agree with you on the point of allying is to get something that isn't available in the DA codex. The whole point is to help round out your army list. But sometimes you just want to get to that greener grass sooner and that is why I played a few games with allied C:SM :P. Though like I said before, I felt really dirty doing it because they weren't DA, they were still "counts as DA." Plus my true passion is the Deathwing, so my lists tend to lack Tactical Marines :mellow:

 

i understand all of your points and agree with you on pretty much all of them - and yes, allying is the only way we could currently field any of the flyers so we have no choice on that score. Just to clarify that I wasn't saying that I thought it was cheesy, just that I thought there might be some people out there who would (not sure that it came across like that in my post though), especially if its a pick-up game against someone you don't know. Against mates or as part of a friendly club scene I don't think anyone would have a problem with it. I must admit to not fully hoisting in that you were allying the C:SM with your Deathwing though, so sorry about that. In fact I would happily ally my own Ravenwing with C:SM in order to field a Storm Talon, as I think the Talon goes really well with the biker theme! :)

[Brother Immolator]

Too much talk about the templars, has made me thinking of stealing a 20 man blob and a crusader from a friend of mine, cramming them in and using them as an assault unit... Hm... BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD! :Facepalm!

[Isiah]

Hmm well I'm currently rethinking my allies strategy and re-looking at old favourite of mine, the Grey Knights. The new Allies rule allows me to take similar units to those that I used to take anyway: 1 x HQ of GKGM or Brother-Captain and 1 x Troops of GK termies to kick off with. I don't see much need to do anything than pull out the old models and blow the dust off :lol:. However as Allies of Convenience the mix isn't as comfortable as it once was (no attaching the GK character to a DW unit to DW assault for instance). Nevertheless the new mix of weapons and other abilities is a temptation over and above the limitations - and a force multiplier to a 'standard' DW force as it currently stands.

 

Cheers

I

[Avon Rekaes]

Personally, I don't see the least bit of a problem with running an allied detachment of C:SM and painting everything to look like DA. So my 3rd tactical squad from C:SM is cheaper. Yeah, and? If I paid the points, and I'm under or at the agreed points limit, what do you care what my models are painted like? You should be happy that I've taken the time to completely paint my army before I fielded it anyway.

 

C:SM Tacticals may have different options, true. They may have different squad compositions other than 5 or 10 men, true. But as long as I model and represent everything with WYSWIG, there's no cheese involved. So that Sergeant from C:SM painted as a Dark Angel has a teleport homer. So what, I paid for it by the rules. It's clearly mounted right there on his (dark green) backpack. You're really going to raise a hue and cry because I didn't paint him blue? I call shenanigans.

 

That said, I would still clearly explain to my opponent "This Tac Squad is part of my C:SM allied detachment and has options from it with appropriate point costs"

 

After that? They're all BS/WS/T 4, baby. He has no justifiable reason to call cheese on my paint job.

 

(And then the Drop Pod with the C:SM Librarian and Sternguard painted up as a Deathwatch Kill-Team lands.)

[Isiah]

I'm intrigues to know why people want to complicate things by painting their allies as DA? Why not just field them looking as the allies they are?

[Cypher 102]

It's not that complicated. All of my green models come from Codex: Space Marines. All of my white models come from Codex: Dark Angels. All of the black ones depend on the preference of the player as to whether they're Sammael and friends or Khan and friends.

[elphilo]

I'm intrigues to know why people want to complicate things by painting their allies as DA? Why not just field them looking as the allies they are?

Probably because they only have Marines painted as DA and want to try out all the SM goodies. That's why I did it ^_^

[Chaplain Lucifer]

Personally I would have a beef playing against a DA army with allies painted as DA. In the heat of battle is easy to forget the allies follow different rules, so that may impair some decisions during gameplay. But that's just me.

[Avon Rekaes]

I'm not really one for obstinate ruleslawyering, but I'm already obligated to tell you what each of my units does and where it comes from. If you're my opponent, and I have one tactical squad out of three that has Combat Tactics, just ask me which one it is if you've forgotten I already said "The one with the Power Axe Sergeant is the Allied Detachement" while setting up deployment. Let alone a clearer indicator, like a Teleport Homer that ONLY C:SM Tac Sgts can get.

 

As for why I want to paint an allied C:SM tactical squad as Dark Angels, it's because I'm only allying to get a specific non-troop choice. That's the one that's nifty and cool and I want to stand out. Like I mentioned earlier, I'm converting a 10-man squad of Sternguard Veterans to look like a Deathwatch Kill-Team, lead by a Deathwatch Librarian.

 

That makes a certain amount of fluffy-sense. A self-contained "unit" of Deathwatch fielded with a force of "pure" Dark Angels. The fact that I need to take a C:SM troop choice before being allowed to take the Sternguard messes up the fluff of the situation. So, what, I have two Deathwatch Kill-Teams, except only one has their signature alternate ammo? And the other operates like a normal tactical squad? And now I have twenty Deathwatch marines painted on the field, so visually it looks like a much more significant detachment than the one expert insertion team I'm going for.

[Brother-Sergeant Bohemond]

I think it is perfectly fine, as long as you make it clear what is what.

[Marshal Wilhelm]

I'm intrigues to know why people want to complicate things by painting their allies as DA? Why not just field them looking as the allies they are?

 

Because we have all chosen our faction because we think they look the most handsome ;) I mean, it is not that I think other Loyalists are ugly or anything, but I like the look of a few Chapters more than others.

 

Also, it is an aesthetic thing. It looks nicer having one unified force on the table, rather than a few higgledy piggledy units thrown into the mix.

However, if the whole force was The Damocles Gulf Crusade, and all units were varied, then that would actually become appealing again. ^_^

 

 

I'm intrigues to know why people want to complicate things by painting their allies as DA? Why not just field them looking as the allies they are?

Probably because they only have Marines painted as DA and want to try out all the SM goodies. That's why I did it B)

 

:D

 

 

Personally I would have a beef playing against a DA army with allies painted as DA. In the heat of battle is easy to forget the allies follow different rules, so that may impair some decisions during gameplay. But that's just me.

 

I think for that reason, I would try to keep my PA squads from C:SM/BA and my TA squads as C:DA. Technically having a few Tactical squads from different Codices is fine, but as you say, in the interest of being as clear as possible, I'd avoid it.

 

I think that DW squads make better TROOPS than DA Tacticals do anyway, so I wouldn't think it was a loss by not having C:DA Tacticals in my army.

 

:tu: