Feast of Blades '13

Tuesday, November 6, 2012

The Issue of Convenience

Hey all, so it's time to talk about an issue with allies. Which is if you are not battle brothers is it even really worth it, and if it can be how. So most competitive pundits will probably say no to the prior so it makes awnsering the latter the real issue.

It comes down to a simple issue of synergy. Battle brothers can share rules, join units, and give each other psychic benefits creating a synergy between the two parts. Once you reach allies of convenience you lose all of these abilities. So synergy lessens....

So how do we make these allies useful? Well they need to be independently useful in their own list roll. If not they just become a waste of points and a detriment to the list as a whole.

For instance trying to use eldar or dark eldar as allies for IG. If you aren't using them to buff your assault and only for more shooting or scoring is it all that worth it? Well no not really as they are probably not as good as a list that just used pure IG. Does this mean taking convenience armies as allies in a non improving roll is not good? Not at all as it can still work but it may not be an efficient use of the allies rule. But if it works for you and is fun go ahead. Just because it isn't a boost doesn't make it off par with the list you would have used instead anyway.

Really where we can see an efficient use of independently useful allies is bringing in dedicated efficient assault unit into a shooty army or vice versa.

So when using a non battle brother ally really debate yourself inside if it is worth it. If it is not at least on par with your normal army then it may not be...more on this later....

1 comment:

  1. I agree. Pretty much the only reason I can come up with for using an ally of convenience is to play a narrative scenario for a bit of fun.

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