Your thoughts on Allies..Have you fought them yet?

[rpricew]

So I got my first game in against Allies in 6th edition and I was both impressed and disappointed with it.

I was playing Necrons with Tau, and it was 1020 point game. We realized that we played the rules wrong about halfway through the game but went ahead and kept playing.

Tau was the primary army with Necron allies.
Tau Force:
Commander with Plasma
Pathfinders with Devilfish
Fire Warriors (only one unit which was our mistake...as he should have taken two)
Broadsides

Necron Allies:
Overlord with MSS
Cryptek with Veil
Immortal Squad
Wraith unit (whip coils)

Tyranids:
Tervifex (Iron Arm & Warp Speed)
Devilgants
Hive Guard
Harpy
Raveners (devourers)
Termagants

Game was purge the alien on a 4x4 board. We set up with corners.
I got first turn.

I killed the Devilfish with glancing hits from the Hive Guard. Shot the Fire Warriors dead with Termagants. Lost Devilgants to Immortal shooting and Wraith charging. Lost 2 Raveners to Railguns. Tervifex rolled perils on the turn he charged the wraiths and lost 5 wounds to lucky rending rolls, Harpy was Overwatched out of the sky by Str 10 rail gun delivering Instant Death, Immortals with Cryptek Overwatched the rest of the Raveners into oblivion. Overlord stood by watching while the Tau Commander didn't want to come in from reserves. Game ended turn 4 with Tyranids being swept.

What impressed me was how the two armies complimented each other but also made up for their weaknesses at the same time. However, my friends were using an illegal list, and one of them would have had to cut back on specialists units to fulfill the troop slots.

What disappointed me was the same fact. Allies allows for some cool mix-ups and synergies, but its at a sacrifice for redundancy in the army. If they aren't battle brothers then they have to work independently of each other and if they are allies of convenience, then it's even worse.

What have been your experiences with the new allies rules and your Tyranids?

[ragnarok]

I wish the allie matrix was based on fluff, though that would probably mean people complaining about imperial armies getting too many allies, as most of them would be allies of somesort

[hiveelysium]

i think the tyranid should be able to ally with everyone through genestealer cults!!!!!

[kurbutti]

I don't really care. I'm repeating myself here, but the biggest problem I find is the fact that Allies somewhat expand your potential FOC, for having access to 3 HQ's, 4 Elites etc. I'm not OK with that. I was expecting at least some compensation. Other than that, no, I don't mind. I regularly play against a buddy who takes Farseer with his Dark Eldar. It's annoying, but nothing game-breaking. I use my Psychic Powers anyway, and eventually even the Farseer will get killed. I expect he will stop fielding him at some point entirely, because it really doesn't do that much. Occasional Guide/Doom, yeah... Wow.

Quite frankly, the Farseer is about as bad as it gets for the Psyker-Heavy lists I field. I'm aware of many powerful combinations, and I'm sure there are a lot more yet to be discovered, but nothing so far has really given me any serious concern. I fought against a GK/SM army today, but they die like the rest.

I've yet to see how things turn out at higher point levels... When FOC restrictions may actually become a concern. I guess it'll be ok.

[killme304]

Necrons with nob bikers as a scoring unit. I rest my case.

[wisdomseyes1]

Let's see, allies I have played against.

I played daemons allied with chaos. I played against chaos allied with daemons. There was angels allied with vinalla marines I played against. Guard allied with black templar.

Marines with daemon allies for Flamers and karios

Something I really like is how DIRT CHEAP personal icons are in chaos. Damn! 25 points for daemons to get an unreliable beacon, chaos gets it for 5 points and often even has an extra power added to it. It makes my units far more consistent so long ad they live. And the fateweaver putting fortune on marine armor is just wonderful, especially plague marines with a lash sorcerer.

The black Templar with guard was a pretty nonsensical game, do I can't really say.

Chaos getting daemon allies for Flamers and Karios is really an interesting game.

We are trying to get one of my friends (a tau and marine player) to ally them, sinse they are battle brothers (lulwut?) because he has been having a hard time with his tau and his marines. Thought it might help. Who knows.

[hyv3mynd]

Fateweaver + csm works, but icons do not.

I think it's pg81? CSM icons specifically say "lesser daemons, models in terminator armor, obliterators" so they don't work on codex daemons deep striking.

[nameless]

I'm not bothered by the allies. I like them. I have two other armies, Ork and Dark Eldar although I haven't used them yet (only Tyranids).

I've played against a Eldar/Dark Eldar with a fortuned Shadowshield Baron with Eldred and a unit of dire avengers, plus a ravenwing jetfighter. I think it worked really well, but they weren't really used the best (I also had to force the Eldar player to try it out) but there is definitely a lot of options to take and explore.

I have a feeling that my group wont used them much. We had a 6 month campaign and no one even explored the idea of doing it.

[rick]

The twilight army (blood angels + space wolves) have been frak grenading faces at my local club..

Or at least attempting to.. Orkz got beat, and hard, but I managed to hold the ground (barely) by dragging the "relic" inch-by-inch back to the edge of the board.

[paxmiles]

No games of 6th yet.

For allies, seems to be a double edged sword. On the one hand, they fill gaps in armies that weren't filled before. On the other hand, allies increase the minimum required FOC which increases costs before extras in list creation.

In example, my CSM are facing issues with the ally rules (chaos daemons) because both codex feature expensive troops and expensive other options. Two units of 6 noise marines, lucius, a herald, and 1 unit of 6 daemonettes and I'm looking at a bare list of 534pts, with only 18 scoring models. As is, this force cannot destroy high AV tanks, do any real damage to flyer, or have much chance against anything in shooting or assault.

I think finding the balance is even harder in 6th, having access to double FOCs, allies and buildings really adds challenges in creation of an all comers list (also known as a list that isn't tailored to a specific opponent).
-Pax

[coredump]

Wait, you stopped swooping with your Harpy, and *charged* his broadsides???

And dont' feel bad about the ally thing, imagine if he hadn't bothered with his Tau. Then he could have really kicked butt.

[N.I.B.]

I've played mostly against Necrons in 6th ed so far, and the only allies that felt unbalanced was scoring Nob Bikers - they bring insane utility for their points, can anchor a flank independently of the main Necron army and forces you to dedicate a serious amount of your army to handle them. They bring punch and mobile staying power in a codex that has a hard time holding objectives. They have worse wound allocation shenanigans than ever, and overall badassness in combat and good shooting (high volume TL shots).

But the meta is very early and I don't think we've seen the most OP stuff yet. People are experimenting and usually end up with a worse mixed army list than a 'pure' normal force.

It's hinted that GW are aware of the position of Tyranids and that we will get some kind of love down the road.

[rpricew]

Jul 24, 2012 23:26:07 GMT killme304 said:

Necrons with nob bikers as a scoring unit. I rest my case.

Have you played against this? I'm looking for real world feedback, not theoryhammer

Jul 25, 2012 7:55:52 GMT rick said:

The twilight army (blood angels + space wolves) have been frak grenading faces at my local club..

I literally laughed out loud at the name of this... Are their captains named Edward and Jake too?

Jul 25, 2012 8:45:57 GMT coredump said:

Wait, you stopped swooping with your Harpy, and *charged* his broadsides???

It was the last model on the board... I thought "what the heck!"

Jul 25, 2012 8:45:57 GMT coredump said:

And dont' feel bad about the ally thing, imagine if he hadn't bothered with his Tau. Then he could have really kicked butt.

That's how I felt too... good thing about the Allies in this situation was the Tau and Necrons were owned by two of my friends who hasn't played any games in 6th yet, so they were able to team up and "Purge The Alien" together, instead of one of them watching.

[killme304]

Jul 25, 2012 12:59:54 GMT rpricew said:

Jul 24, 2012 23:26:07 GMT killme304 said:

Necrons with nob bikers as a scoring unit. I rest my case.

Have you played against this? I'm looking for real world feedback, not theoryhammer

I haven't played necrons at all in 6th, but I have played orcs. Have you ever tried to kill a bunch of nob bikers in 6th? They are stupid hard to get rid of and pack a high speed punch. A 10 man unit "feels" harder to kill than 5 terminators (only slightly exaggerated). Their stat line doesn't show it, but they are stupid to deal with.

[paxmiles]

Ran my CSM with daemon allies and got my but kicked to an IG list that my SM would have tabled.

IG list was pretty bad and really didn't play to their strengths too much. However, my list was very lacking too.

Allies really present a challenge in list creation, especially with the more expensive armies.
-Pax