Ally-friendliest Chapters, game mechanics-wise

[N1SB]

The current meta favours pure, single subfaction armies (whereas if you remember back to early 8th the popular thing was "Imperial soup").  With the Marines 2.0 codex providing Combat Doctrines for a pure Astartes army, it's almost like gimping yourself if you use Marines in any other way.  I'm just wondering, now that I think all the Marine-related Psychic Awakening books have come out, if there are new ideas.

 

Thus, my ask - assuming I want to add some Marines to another Loyalist faction, like to support an Imperial Guard army, which are the ally-friendliest (or, flipside, the least-penalised in effect) Chapters to draw from?  I'm asking from a gameplay mehcanics perspective.

 

An example, from the Traitor side - running a Nurgle Daemon army, I used to draw my Daemon Princes with Wings from the Death Guard, because Death Guard Relics were better than the Daemon ones.  What I'd have "lost" would have been their Legion Tactic, which didn't matter for 2 reasons: 1) it dealt with guns and Daemon Princes didn't have any and 2) it only applied to Infantry and Hellbrutes, so it wouldn't have applied anyway.

 

 

+++++

 

 

My problem - I can think of actual Loyalist examples, gameplay-wise, but they so match the lore, I fear I'm missing the forest for the trees.  Of course we want the crunch to match the fluff, but my point is I'm probably missing better ideas because of it.

 

Salamander Detachment with Minimum Sized Tactical Squads with a Lascannon or Eliminators - "Forged In Battle" re-rolls make their shooting all the better for relatively low-cost.  They'll form static firebases in the back, so they don't feel the need for Doctrines like other units would.  Meanwhile, any HQ they come with provides pretty good combat support for other non-Marine Loyalist factions, because they don't need to stick around their own to provide re-rolls, making them really good allies.

 

Space Wolf HQs - equipped with melee weapons to Heroically Intervene at longer range with close combat support for other non-Marine factions.

 

Blood Angel Slamguinius - probably still very popular, but I haven't seen them in my meta much even before the GW lockdown.

 

In all these examples, when allied they lose their Battle Doctrines, but that loss is practically unfelt, thus were the obvious ones in my mind.  However, as you can see with Salamanders and Space Wolves especially, these 2 Chapters very famously get along with regular humans to the point of happily mingling with them, so of course they came to my mind; that's actually my problem.

 

Anyway, just brainstorming, I want to start a new Marine project but there's so much interesting stuff across the Imperium I might want to dabble across different factions.  Thanks in advance for any thoughts you may have.

Edited April 13, 2020 by N1SB

[Dracos]

Raven Guard "ally" with Imperial Guard all the time. They just never see the Astartes coming or going ;) They can focus on taking out characters while guard clear the hordes.

[CCE1981]

Everyone loses Doctrines,

Chapter - Doctrine - Loses

Black Templars - Assault - auto-wound on 6 to hit when charging

Salamanders - Tactical - +1 to wound with Flamers and Meltas

Blood Angels - Asssult - +1 attack

Dark Angels - Devaststor - Extra Range

White Scars - Assault - +1 Damage

Ultramarines - Tactical - move and shoot

Imperial Fists - Devastator - +1 damage Vehicles & Buildings

Iron Hands - Devastator - heavy weapons move and fire, re-roll 1s

Ravenguard - Tactical - +1 hit & wound Characters

Space Wolves - Assault +1 hit on a 6 in melee

 

So there is all that based off of Doctrines, the Salamaders further have a Stratagem, Self Sacrifice, that allows a Salamanders Infantry unit of 5 or more to prevent an Infantry unit from being shot.

[jaxom]

Deathwatch, fluff makes perfect sense and all you lose mechanically is Combat Doctrines. Oddly enough, SoB and Black Templars are a nice, fluffy combo, but it's losing the SoB rules which makes it mechanically a poor choice.