Building allied detachments.

Ever since 6th hit, I've thought one of the best ideas in there is allies. I *love* allies.  It just adds so much variety to what you see on the table.   This is, to me, a win-win for everyone involved. Gamers get access to more units.  Modelers get more opportunities for painting and conversions. And GW sells more stuff.

Back in January 2012 I started to build a Space Wolf army..razorback spam. Then 6th hit and that changed completely. I just sat on the models for a long time.  I finally finished building and started painting the models, I have a full 1000pts of them.  I plan on running them as allies for my Tau.


I am also thinking about other allies. Mainly, CSM for my Orks.  I have a pretty good idea of the models I want ...flying demon prince with back mace, noise marines and a helldrake.. but the hard part is what I want to do with the modeling.

Specifically, if I should just build a regular CSM force or do something more interesting. Basically I'm thinking of building some Orks as chaos marines. An Ork with CSM shoulder pads, backpack and bolter. All done in Slanneshy pink!  The demon prince? How about a Ghaz model with wings?  Noise marines? Goff rockers, obviously.  Helldrake? Ork riding a dragon.

I also have a couple boxes of eldar models (Farseer, bikes) that I might either trade or use for Tau allies..sigh.


When thinking about an allied force, especially when you have multiple main armies, is which army are you building it for?  The main problem that I'm trying to figure out is basing. All 3 of my main armies are based differently, so trying to use a single allied force for more then one is hard. I would like to use my Blood Angels as allies for my Space Wolves as well...plus using my BA as codex marines for the Tau (which I've done). 

So much to choose from, so many options. So many ideas! It kinda makes me in a hobby lock as I can't decide what to do, how to do it and if I do it wrong I'm stuck with models I don't like.

But next up is a commission I need to hit pretty hard (still recovering from OFCC) while I think about it.