Allies as it were.

[Disciple of the Lion]

I've recently come to playing 40k after years of looking on and thinking to myself how awesome it looked, however I've got a question that I haven't been able to find an answer to. How does mixing two armies work, if it's even possible at all? I've looked through the codex and the GW website but can't seem to find anything related to the issue and it may be I'm just inept or blind, it's been known to happen. Now I don't mean like mixing Spacer Marines and Chaos Space Marines, that's just ridiculous. I mean more like Space Marines/Daemonhunters or Chaos Daemons/Chaos Space Marines, stuff like that. Also I apologize if this is a horribly noobish question.

[gcsmith]

no rules for this sorry.

[Bean]

It is a pretty noobish question, but since you're new to the game, I don't imagine anyone will hold it against you ;).

The answer is that, by default, armies must be composed of units which all come from a single Codex. You pick a codex, then choose units from that codex to put in your army. You may not choose units from other codices unless there is a rule in your chosen codex (or the other codex) which tells you that you may do so.

Currently, there are two codices which have that sort of rule: the Codex Daemon Hunters and the Codex Witch Hunters. They have rules for including Space Marines, Imperial Guard, and each other in their armies, as well as rules for being included as allies in Space Marine armies, Imperial Guard armies, and each other's armies. They only allow for a certain selection of units to be allied across codices, so, if this is something in which you're interested, you'll want to pick up a copy of the Codex and look at the rule yourself.

But, be forewarned: both of these codices are on the block for revision--and you can bet that when they're revised, there will no longer be "allies" rules. So, you might have a year or two or three in which you can take allies, but, at some point, those rules will almost certainly be removed from the game.

No other codices allow for allies, as far as I'm aware. That said, you can do anything you want as long as your opponents agree to it. If you're just planning to play with a small group of friends, ask them if they're willing to let you mix a couple of codices together. They probably won't mind.

Just don't expect your average random opponent to want to play against an army with allies, unless you're using the allies rules from either the Daemon Hunters or Witch Hunters codices.

[Disciple of the Lion]

Ah I see, thank you for clearing that up for me :-) I'll do my best to curb my the noob within me from now on.

[Iron Father DuffiKus]

dont worry about the question being noobish...... i have been playing Warhammer for 22 years.....im still learning......or im just a bad player

[Drew da Destroya]

Like Bean said, there really aren't rules for this (short of Apocalypse, which pretty much throws most of the army composition rules out anyway), but if you're just playing with your friends, ask them if they mind. They probably won't, as long as you aren't using it to field some crazy broken combination... like your Lash Prince moving people into range of your "allied" Thunderwolves, or something.

But it won't really fly in an official tournament setting. One way you can sort of get away with it, though, is through "creative modelling". My one friend tends to play Khorne-heavy Chaos Marines, so his summoned daemons are Bloodletters. He's still using the Summoned Lesser Daemon stats, but the models are cooler.

[TSINI]

yeah, no "official" rules in the Big rulebook

there used to be an assumption that every 2000 points was an detachment. and every 2000 points you could add a detachment of another army or of superheavies (a superheavy detachment being 3 superheavy tanks of similar design, 2 baneblades and a shadowsword for example)

this is mentoned in forgeworld books occasionally, but is in no way a legal "rule" but between friends is a good way of spicing up larger games. for example, a 2000 point imperial guard army could then have a detachment of 500 points of space marines to aid them.