Alliances - thoughts

By Hroost, in Warhammer 40,000: Conquest

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I am really excited for that game! When the Invasion was announced i was happy, but back then i had wished similar LCG game in WH40k Universe. Dreams come true but...

Looking at the Alliance chart some thoughts are hitting me hard:

1) Eldar and Dark Eldar in team ? No way.

2) Space Marines and Tau ... emm?

Mabe if switch nr 1) and 2) ? I mean Eldars some rare times cooperated with SM. Its not a big differance but Eldar and Dark Eldar in team are a little pain in the.. a. :) what do u think?

Edited by Hroost
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We've discussed this in another thread too. Eldar and Dark Eldar have and will work together against other races. They are still the same species just vastly different philosophies.

Tau and SM too. Notably with the Ultramarines.

Edited by Toqtamish
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Besides, the game is set in one sector of space. The sector being something FFG made up most likely, thus they can make any alliances they want.

Of course it helps that alliances are already covered in video games/books/codecs.

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I was most surprised by Imperial Guard and Orks being able to team up myself.

I'm holding judgement for now on it though. I know back in the day, Orks could be more mercenary like, and maybe that's the tact they are taking.

Either way, I'm geeked about this game. Can't wait to get some more details.

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Going by the 6th edition rulebook for 40K that's how it is :/

I know Eldar/Dark Eldar will both listen to Harlequins so that's a maybe.

SM/Tau will fight Chaos as well.

I guess they just followed that.

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Couldn't the orks just loot the IG vehicles anyway?

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The buggest surprise is the IG and Orks alliance...seems hard to justify.

I'm certainly not versed in all the WH40K universe but even for a casual fan (read books mostly) I can't find how those two could make an alliance.

From what I can recall, Orks are mostly neutral right? They could rush a Waaagh! against Space Marines as they could against Chaos if that could give them what they want right?

I hope there will be some background story in the rulebook that explains this alliance.

What would be awesome is if FFG could include a mini novel in the core set telling the story of the different races and their motivations.

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Warhammer 40k 6th edition rulebook makes these factions "Allies of Convenience".

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Warhammer 40k 6th edition rulebook makes these factions "Allies of Convenience".

Good to know, thanks.

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I am more interested in how this alliance chart will work down the line when they add new factions. Are they going to have to redraw the chart everytime and I can see it getting confusing unless they only plan to keep these factions (seems silly with Necrons and Tyranids around). It would seem better to group armies to generic factions and those factions can ally based on a chart.

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Or they could add the new factions in the center and link them to the other 7 originals. That would work I guess.

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1) Eldar and Dark Eldar in team ? No way.

2) Space Marines and Tau ... emm?

Absolutely agree!

Eldar and Dark Eldar sounds impossible for me.

Space marines and Tau, maybe.... but still hard to believe. I'd rather team up SM and Eldar.

Orcs + IG also sounds unbelievable.

FF will get a lot of hate for this =)

The solution may be:

1. switch Tau and Eldar

2. allow alliance only with race to the right side with one exclusion - Orcs cannot team up with IG.

In this case possible alliances will look this way:

IG + SM

SM + Eldar

Eldar + Tau

Tau + Darl Eldar

Dark Eldar + Chaos

Chaos + Orcs

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You guys need to up yourselves on 40K lore. None of these are impossible and have been done before. Some go waaayyy back like the Orks and IG.

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Rites of war PC game: space marines, imp guard and eldar team up again tyranids. Basically join together to defeat the bigger threat, then go back to murdering one another once the hive is beaten.

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You guys need to up yourselves on 40K lore. None of these are impossible and have been done before. Some go waaayyy back like the Orks and IG.

I am not that good at 40K lore as probably you do. Could you please give me an example when Dark Eldar and Eldar worked together in the same team? If it is not difficult the same thing for Orcs and IG?

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You guys need to up yourselves on 40K lore. None of these are impossible and have been done before. Some go waaayyy back like the Orks and IG.

I am not that good at 40K lore as probably you do. Could you please give me an example when Dark Eldar and Eldar worked together in the same team? If it is not difficult the same thing for Orcs and IG?

Well the Orks being "neutral", meaning that as soon as they can fight they'll join anyone with a cause or not, have been Allies of Convenience (spelling?) with the IG.

So basically the Orks will join anyone as long as there's blood involved.

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Harlequins are respected by all Eldar, so they can easily lead an alliance of dark and basic eldar.

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You guys need to up yourselves on 40K lore. None of these are impossible and have been done before. Some go waaayyy back like the Orks and IG.

I am not that good at 40K lore as probably you do. Could you please give me an example when Dark Eldar and Eldar worked together in the same team? If it is not difficult the same thing for Orcs and IG?

I sure can. But will have to wait till later when I get home.

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The alliances on the alignment wheel are represented to some degree in 6th ed. 40K and, generally speaking, the wheel is well-arranged. However, there are still some issues with the alignment wheel from both a thematic perspective and a game-mechanics/design perspective:

1) It doesn't represent degrees of allegiance like the 40K allies matrix, so hypothetically you could end up in a meta where you see lots of DE/Chaos decks and, as they are classified as "desperate allies," this should really be reserved for corner case scenarios.

2) There are alliances that are not represented on the alignment wheel such as Tau/Orks and Space Marines/Eldar who are allies of convenience. Yet DE/Chaos make the cut?

3) The 6th ed. 40K allies matrix may be in line with the latest GW fluff, but a lot of us 40K players view it as a marketing scheme to get people to buy out of faction miniatures. I prefer my 40K with more paranoia and xenophobia. Factions that are battle brothers are OK occasionally and these and other alliances such as those mentioned above could be enabled by specific cards in Conquest. This last point is obviously more a matter of taste than an objective comparison between the alignment wheel and the allies matrix. In the grim darkness of the far future, I'd like to see less friendship.
I realize that the alignment wheel will almost certainly remain in place if for no other reason than that the core set must include enough cards to construct playable 50 card decks. While this is an advantage for the core set, it may become a liability for the long-term health of the game. Combined, the pitfalls of the alignment wheel listed above could potentially lead to issues with deck diversity and corner case alliances that are now somehow commonplace.
To offer one hypothetical, if Orks and IG prove to be highly synergistic, then suddenly you'd find yourself playing against lots of competitive Ork/Guard decks. I don't mind this combination sometimes (Blood Axes, mercenaries) but it would be a shame if all competitive Guard decks included Ork allies. That's just one hypothetical example but we all know that when decks are optimized for competitive card games, you tend to see similar archetypes over and over. The stultification of deck lists is both common and unfortunate in card games; look at Sith control in Star Wars where two or three objective sets have been dominate since release. It's even worse when it's some strange combination that may not be entirely unthematic but still shouldn't be commonplace (e.g. Orks/IG or DE/Chaos).
The easiest way to address these issues is to do away with the alignment wheel altogether and embrace the distrust and xenophobia of pre-6th ed. 40K. Occasional alliances could be made possible through card text.
If alliances are to play a large role in the game, I think the alignment wheel could at least be more flexible. A more elegant design solution would be to indicate potential ally factions on the warlord cards, e.g. a Blood Axe warlord could ally with Imperial Guard, whereas a Gahzghkull warlord card would not allow guard allies. This would also provide a design mechanism through which we could see other ally possibilities such as Chaos with corrupt Guard, Orks manipulated by Eldar, etc.
This hypothetical change would not require re-balancing individual cards or an overhaul of the core rules. In practice, all that would be required is that warlord cards display the icon of the faction(s) with which they may ally and a number that indicates how many cards from other factions that hero's deck may include.

If allies were specified on the warlord cards, it would even be possible to adjust the degree to which a particular warlord might be willing to accept allies. That is to say, a one warlord might be willing to accept 10 allied cards in the deck whereas another warlord might accept only 5. Abandoning the rigidity of the alignment wheel also opens up more interesting combinations such as a radical Inquisitor warlord that would allow for some daemon cards to be included in the deck, or a less xenophobic IG commander to take Tau allies. In cases where alliances might create powerful synergies, balance can be maintained by simply restricting the number of ally cards permitted. This just seems like a more flexible and modular system that would allow for more thematic, diverse, and customizable decks.

There are plenty of ways this might be addressed and this is just one possible suggestion. I'd just like to see groundwork in place for a highly thematic and diverse meta for this promising game.
EDIT: Added introductory paragraph and clarified incorrect terminology
Edited by Attrition
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I'm quite surprised that some people think that Eldar & Dark Eldar wouldn't team up together, they are the same race and in the 40K 6th edition are "Battle Brothers", which makes sense to me.

What gets me is the idea of Dark Eldar and Chaos being allies, that makes no sense to me, because the Eldar, regardless of which variety hate chaos and anything chaos related. They are trying to avoid being consumed by the chaos god they created and I couldn't imagine them teaming with chaos, this comes from a DE & chaos SM player in 40k. They are only labelled as "Desperate allies" in the 6th Edition rules too.

However, it would be interesting to see what you could come up with combining both forces in the game.

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I'm viewing a few of these alliances as either being of convienence against a much greater foe or just one force using the other. If I am playing a Dark Eldar deck, it makes perfect sense that the D.E. are -using- Chaos to further their ends...just as I can see an Ork deck utilizing looted Imprial Gaurd stuff. I think that is what they are going for here. Maybe "alliance" was a bad term lol...

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Dark Eldar are unlike to aly with anything Slaanesh related... and even then some kind of colaboration may arise as they are slaving and torturing just to please Slaanesh and avoid being devored. Alliances with other Chaos Gods seems more easy, specially Khorne, that is a prominet figure in the Eldar mithology in the form of Kaela Mensa Khaine. Apart from the Gods itself, allying with cultist and other kind of outcasts seems natural for a race such as the Dark Eldar ^_^

On the Tiranids and Necron theme i bid they will be put aside from the wheel.

Anyway, i should have prefered not wheel at all, and instead that suitable allies depended on the commander card.

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Yeah, there has to be stuff like this to make the game work mechanically. This is a regular discussion for us and LOTR: the lore, as such, has to be bent here and there to make the game side of things enjoyable. It seems FFG have done their due diligence, though. If anything it will make us casual fans look a little more closely at the fluff.

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while I feel that theme needs to be respected, as good designer also knows when to ignore it for the health of the game play. I have slight tweaks about the faction pairing, but anyone that has any experience in card games can see that something like this HAD to be done.. and as 40K is so .. well 40K-ish there would never be a way to make factions that would please everyone.

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Anyway, i should have prefered not wheel at all, and instead that suitable allies depended on the commander card.

This would be a nightmare for design.