Hi all,
I was just wondering what people thought about allowing allies to take either the inspiring talisman and/or the helm of confidence.
It would allow the appearance of more wizardy allies characters or allow people to add a single unit for allies and inspire them for a small amount of points.
Any thoughts ?
Not a fan really - last thing you need are people grabbing goblin wizards and having the unlock unit getting access to inspiring
The armies are designed to have some specific powers/strength other armies may have difficulty to get. This is compensated by weaknesses the armies have. Taking allies helps to compensate for these weaknesses. If allies were allowed to take magical artefacts, they would compensate the weaknesses even better and could unbalance the game.
Originally, in the 2ed the allies were allowed to take magical artefacts and people found ways to misuse it, so the later CoK editions had addressed the issue and since then allies cannot take magic items. I hope it stays this way.
Unpopular opinion time.
I don’t like allies in Wargaming. Each faction had an inbuilt weakness, or area they are not good at. Whether that be stats or cost making them less numerous. Allies are a way to plug that weakness, which just seems a bit off to me.
Never liked them, aside from scenario where it is fluffy to have 2 or more factions come together to stop an overwhelming force.
Not sure it is actually that much of an unpopular opinion really 
It is however the reason that I now have 9 armies!
Iirc in a recent US event 4 armies had FoN allies (despite no one taking a FoN army) and understand that those were heartpiercers/unicorn or HP/wiltfather; 3 lots of ogre allies - boomers or siege breakers.
An allies matrix, or a far more restrictive list of what you can take would restrict much of the abuse, while still leaving things flexible for fluff builds.
Potential example is the mythical section of the KoW Historical’s book - there are some general archetype units (zombies, ogres, a large cav option, a middling fkying monster etc) but nothing really good?
The other option, while keeping them, is maybe a +10% cost increase?
Really like that part of the historical book, a nice way to add a light bit of fantasy/myth into the games. When and if there is a new set with 3rd edition rules and points I hope they keep that. Also helps with Historical Vs Fantasy match ups.
It’s not that unpopular; as @Sceleris touched on, allies in KoW are mostly used for competitive edge with little to no regard for the lore.
Also; artefacts for allies were banned with good reason.
Allies for a theme and/or to “try using new units” are greatly outnumbered.
Allies often become armies though, so it’s good for Mantic.
Although I dislike allies in KoW, I do like them for historical wargames.
Allies were common in ancient armies and lists in historical wargames often have “gaps to fill” because the lists are made to be historical, rather than balanced. Which allies one can take are kept historical though and most historical players are in it for the history to some extent.
In part, given the modeling freedom & count as rule in KoW, the often trotted out excuse “have models I want to use” becomes moot - as you probably can anyway.
Same here, in Historicals they make sense as well, history is full of battles where allies/mercenaries where used.
One thing that would be nice to see on Kings of War, would be something similar to the old monsters from WFB. Where players were allowed to take a few monsters from a generic pool. Chimera, Dragon, Manticore, Bat Swarms, etc.
I like to have everything under an inspiring bubble, so this can often put me off the idea of allies. So I’d reach for those two items, if it were permitted.
However, I don’t think the example you picked will win many people round! I’d like to see more mages with spell-based items and not the talisman - it’s a bit of a boring utility pick.
It’s more of a problem for the armies without an ASB option. Not a major gripe or anything, but I’d prefer it if more prince/hero level characters were inspiring. Maybe then the talisman could be dropped?