Horus Heresy: Adding Allied Forces To Your Armies In The Age of Darkness
Games Workshop drops the info on how to add Allied Forces to your Horus Heresy army. Turns out there’s a pretty simple way of handling it.
During the Age of Darkness it was a fairly common occurrence for different armies to mix their forces to attack or defend key points of interest. Games Workshop has had allied rules in the past and now we’re getting a slight update to how those work in the upcoming new edition. It’s based on the detachment system and you probably already know where this is going.
“In the new edition of the Horus Heresy, it’s really easy to include allies in your army. We have already learned how Detachments and Force Organisation works, and adding allies is merely an extension to that.”
Allied Forces In The Horus Heresy
Above is the Allied Detachment. That’s basically all you need to add allies. They just have to be a different Faction than the Primary Detachment and they may include their own Auxiliary Detachments. It’s worth noting that none of those choices are mandatory. There’s still the “Prime Slot” for the Command slot — if you choose to fill it. That said, the kicker here is that you can’t spend more than 50% of your points on allied units overall. Again, this should feel very familiar to folks at this point.
“Just like your main Detachments, each Command slot you fill allows you to add another allied Auxiliary Detachment. This is a very flexible structure: you need a commander, but you may then unlock most other units you’d be able to use otherwise – using faction specific detachments and the first Command slot’s Prime Advantage to unlock Elite and Retinue units normally restricted to Apex Detachments. The only thing you’ll miss are High Command officers, Primarchs, and other warlords, but can you blame them for not playing second fiddle to your main force?”
There is one special case and that’s the Lord of War Detachment. It allows you to drop up to 25% of your points on a Lord of War from any faction.
To be fair, there really wasn’t a need for GW to reinvent the wheel here. Limited Allied Forces to 50% of the army makes a lot of sense. Otherwise, they’d be the main force at that point, right? While I personally like the concept of having a full force from a single faction I’m not opposed to this system. It also allows you to dabble outside of your chosen army. It’s a fun way to experiment with “that one unit you really like” from a different faction. I see this as win for the players. It’s the fairly standard allied system from GW, but it’s still a win.
What do you think of the allies system in The Horus Heresy? Would you want to change it up?
