Longtime Dakkanaut
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What you like in your previous 40k life has no relevance to this game. Armies and factions play completely different. Saying you liked x or y means very little when x or y aren't straight up ports. Saying you prefer a certain plsy style or certain tactics is also irrelevant, as most armies, while they have preferences are simply not pigeonholed into a 'shooty' army, or a 'fast' army...
To answer your queries, cygnar, retribution and protectorate all have knightly orders. Khador are angry Russian imperialists. Trollbloods and orks are completely different.
Here is a description of the warmachine and hordes factions. Perhaps this will help your choice.
Trollbloods: Braveheart Trolls - Large, tough, strong with a kilt and tartan wearing scottish highlander theme and a back story that begins like the Trail of Tears, until their version of "Crazy Horse" starts winning when he binds the tribes together. The most "good guy" choice, with some Dirty Dozen, Braveheart and the Incredible Hulk thrown in for spice. Pieces can cost more than average to collect because they are larger and require more metal to manufacture. trollbloods are seen as the "brick" faction. they tend to grind out an attrition based win. they hit hard, but their true strength is being able to buff themselves up with multiple layers of buffs and snnergies (kinda like the protectorate), and absorb whatever you throw at them, and laugh it all off. they are also the "humourous" faction. No, they're not orky, and no they're not comedy, but they have some amusing moments, especially as the faction as a whole always seems to be hungry they like drinking, fighting and carousing with the trollblood maidens afterwards. they have a lot of shaman and "rock/stone" themed magic, and shamans, and they have a lot of "irregular" forces - in that i mean, they are a bunch of barbarian "warriors", instead of rank upon rank of "soldiers", and they tend to fight with a scavenged mix of guns, swords, axes, hammers, bison cavalry, lots of attitude, and general trollish badassery.
Skorne: Roman/Samurai Legions with slightly more torture and pain. A mix of Roman, Samurai and Persian influences, particularly in fancy ornate armor. A cruel empire of slavery, war and conquest revolving around a warrior society, a warrior cult that glorifies death in battle against overwhelming odds (its their only way of acheiving immortality as the Skorne reject the gods, and face only oblivion on death otherwise) and a study of death magic and ancestor worship. The Skorne despise the gods, and especially those who worship dieties, and consider themselves all the stronger for standing on their own, without any dieties to aid them. They are the hordes faction that is most likely to look like an organized army in uniform. They employ enslaved crocodiles, the elephantine Titans, their infantry tends to be heavily armed cataphracts, light infantry equipped with spears, shields, swords, needle gun things. and then there is a soul fueled terracotta army of warrior-stone golems to bolster their numbers. they posess movement shenanigans, huge damage output and great resilience, along with nasty pain-fuelled magic.
Legion of Everblight: Blighted evil goblin-ice elves who worship a dragon (who commands them with a tyranid-like hive mind) that has genetically twisted them in his own image and into his perfect army. In a lot of ways, the Legion is the closest wargaming entity to Tolkien’s brand of orcs (being, essentially, tortured, twisted elves)
The Elves look more like goblins, their leader is a dragon-possessed ogre who grew wings (and promptly ate another dragon). They fight with primitive bows and swords but wield scary magic and breed dragon blood spawned monsters that are a cross between sharks-on-land and a dinosaur. They play by their own rules (ignore terrain, LOS etc), and hope to eat the souls of all the other dragon-gods. Lots of female characters ranging from weird deformed mutants to bow hunters to ninjas to sorceresses. Overall they're very fast and tend to be the most beast-heavy faction. definately a hit and run/glass cannon faction that focuses brilliantly on assassination and "killing the other guy" but has game for grabbing objectives and scenario wins. For the most part, their beasts are melee beatsticks, who are no slouches at range either. Their infantry ranges from various flavours of either claymore, or bow-armed elves, typically as skirmishers rather than “line” infantry, or halbard wielding ogryn berzerkers who act as shock troops from hell.
Circle of Orboros: Terrorist Druids meet up at Stonehenge for a tree spiking or a human sacrifice.
Forget tree hugging hippies. They are the wrath of the hurricane. Heck, one of their leaders is a carnivorous soul-eating tree! They are consummate manipulators, shrewd, and extremely sinister in nature. These guys embody purely the wild, powerful, untameable and incredibly destructive aspect of nature. Fires, floods, plagues, earthquakes and any other portents of disaster are their stock in trade. These nature manipulators believe that civilization, which has become too strong in the last few thousand years will bring about the destruction of mankind at the hand of the Devourer, an entity that represents the primal chaos of predation and nature’s fury. As such, they seek to destroy civilisation, and restore "balance" to the world, and placate the Devourer. Though they seek to deny its return, they draw their power from this very same diety that essentially represents the end times they seek to hold at bay. And they will do whatever it takes. They will steal babies, they will torture and kill, they will sacrifice, blight the harvest, spread plagues and make Faustian deals to advance their agenda. Their forces in the field are wild, savage and barbaric in appearance. It consists of druids, wildmen and hunters, werewolves, 8 foot tall beastmen from your worst nightmares, stone-golems, semi-sentient sacred stone markers, grizzly bear-sized goats, and anyone else they can manipulate to serve them. They source their magics from the very wilds themselves, and use this magic adeptly to manipulate terrain and nature itself(earth and stone, forests, wind, lightning etc), slay foes, teleport their troops, or makes their minions stronger. they're a fast, hard hitting, surprisingly resilient glass cannon/ guerrilla faction who can do ranged, attrition and denial as well though they primarily deal in melee. Essentially, they go in like an ICBM, wreck face, and disappear again, leaving their foes striking at shadows. They have a lots of dirty underhanded tricks and manipulations and a great ability to punish magic users.
The Farrow Minions (the mercenaries of hordes- they're a subfaction, like WMs pirates and dwarves) - the iron Kingdoms do not have ork. Instead, they have Pork! Farrow are scavenging Boars who walk on their hind legs and carry scavenged/looted rifles. Their society is chaotic and primal, where the strong rule the weak, and everyone is out for themselves. It's a real bacon eats bacon world! Speaking of bacon, they have the best named rule in the game - called bacon! - and apparently, even farrow think other farrow are tasty! They are led by a self styled, (if somewhat deluded) Conan the Boar-barian warlord called Lord carver (Lord carver esquire the third, bringer of most massive destruction to give him his proper title!), and he is allied with a human Mad Scientist called doctor Arcadius who has turned them into a force to be reckoned with,by creating Frankenstein cyborg-pigs sewn together from spare parts of bodies and robots to do their dirty work. AS a pact, there are fewer choices of models if played with one of their own generals, but all units and solos can be included in almost any Hordes Army. They're a movement/damage output faction. You have cyber roadhogs, warhogs, gun boars, cleaver armed infantry, meat wizards, rifle armed brigands and so on. And a pig called maximus. Generally speaking, they look and feel like a warband of brigands and scavengers on the edge of society with a very 'mad max' feel more than an “organised” army. But many a fool has underestimated their effectiveness. And whatever happens, you will always play with a smile on your face - whoever wins gets the bacon!
The Alligator Minions. Hordes doesnt do lizardmen. they do Gatormen. With Bayou, Voodoo, and sinister undead undertones these Gatormen are leather hide tough, but fight with only simple spears and possess no technology not even bows and arrows. They are joined by other swamp creatures such as poison tree frogs, giant snapping turtles who spit acid, and fishmen who like to sneak up behind you. Another new addition to the game, there are fewer choices of models if played with one of their own generals, but all units and solos can be included in almost any Hordes Army.Their strengths generally lie in their resilience and disruptive magic.
Khador are angry russian imperialists. The thing to remember is that in Khador, the word for "bigger" is the same as the word for "better". And also, in Khador, there is no such thing as "excessive force". Khador mix devastating short range firepower, excellent melee abilities, great artillery and long range fire support elements, and extremely heavy armour. Khador are the faction most reliably seen as "tough" or “hard”. They're primarily a faction geared around attrition, stsying power, and massive damage output. Though they're often seen as the beatstick faction (listen to the battlecries of "axe to face", and you'll get the mentality of your average khador player quickly enough!) they're surpringly an all-rounder faction, boasting the widest diversity of troop types in the game. Khador options range from power armoured Men O War super-heavy infantry, to other heavy infantry like Iron Fangs, heavy and light cavalry options, regular "line" infantry like winter guard and assault commando stormtroopers, irregular guerrilla type infantry like kossites, manhunters and kayazy assassins as well as ice and blizzard wielding mages types. As mentioned, though they're seen as a beatstick faction, through various warcasters, khador can do a blitzkrieg game as well as having some surprisingly excellent ranged options. as you’d expect from the "excessive force" faction, khador don’t so much go in for long range rifles and chainguns like their southern neighbours in cygnar (although the Winter Guard Rifle Korps and the Widowmakers are beyond excellent) as much as they do for big massive artillery pieces that put huge holes in the ground, or are simply quite devastating and over the top - flamethrowers, rockets, mortars etc come as standard. Khador tend to be a "raw stat" faction. They don’t have a lot of indirect support pieces - pretty much, warcasters are the support options for a khador army, as opposed to the choir, book, vassals etc of menoth. However, Khador units tend to be remarkably self-sufficient, and are quite happy, and fully capable of standing on their own without the need for someone else to buff them. In terms of jacks, khador tend to go more jack light. In the fluff, the materials used to build the cortexes (ie the brains) of the warjacks are in remote and inaccessible places, and as a result, Khador lacks the sheer numbers of jacks as other factions. And so, they do things properly. They laugh at even the idea of “light” warjacks as a waste of time and resources. Instead, they make fewer, but bigger, tougher and stompier jacks than their neighbours. They make up for the lack of jacks with their aforementioned hard hitting infantry options like men o war, iron fangs and other options like horse-drawn tanks. khador jacks are big, relatively slow, and not that bright. They're solid beatsticks, and a few have excellent abilities. Their warcasters range from infantry centric support casters like irusk, denial masters like the Old Witch, to monstrous beatsticks like the Butcher, and light, flighty, assassins like Strakhov and Sorscha. They tend to be “harder” individually, and as a general rule, like to lead from the front, more so than other factions.
Cryx. they're best described as dragon worshipping undead necromancers, with a pirate fleet, ghost fleet, summoned "demons" (ie bane-nouns), stitched-together-from-machinery-and-body-parts necromantic constructs (thralls), zombies, blighted amazon warrior women, blighted trollkin, and a general assorted thieves, murderers, cut throats and scum of the earth. They're quite fast, extremely hard hitting, but quite squishy behind it all. Cryx are the gutter fighters of the iron kingdoms. A Cryx player who plays fair is doing it wrong. Cryx armies play by every low down, dirty underhanded, mean and nasty trick you can think of. Plenty times their assassination runs come out of nowhere, followed by cries of "they can do WHAT now???" Overall, they're an offensive debuffing/ buffing faction. They'll cripple your armour, stats, and other abilities via spells, feats and other necromantic lore so your defensive measures are far less effective, then they'll buff their own guys up to crazy levels, wade in, and then when it comes to crunch time, and your armour is like paper, they tear through it whilst your guys are rooted in place. That’s how they play. They're fast, vicious, extremely mean and will generally be the ones striking first. Cryx has very limited options for a ranged game, but makes up for this with excellent spell slinging abilities via cheap arcnodes and speed. Though generally not individually tough, they can however play an immensely strong attrition game by recycling their troops (and their opponents!) by bring things back from the dead, and swamp the board in an unending tide of undeath. They can suicide their troops for massive area damage, and are just about capable of getting anywhere on the board through ghostly shenanigans, or sheer, blinding speed. in terms of jacks, Cryx jacks either come in the "chicken" variety, which are spell relay nodes with legs and bitey things, and meaner and bigger helljacks that want to hamstring you, torture you, rend you limb from limb and eat your soul(and if you’re lucky, in that order!). Depending on caster, Cryx generally plays light in terms of numbers of jacks fielded, but make no mistake- their options are solid. Cryx are generally regarded as having a lot of excellent choices, and fantastic warcasters that can really control a game.
The Protectorate.
The protectorate is a nation of fanatical religious extremists. They're unrepentant, extremely dangerous fanatical warriors, who despise sorcery, have issues with technology, free speech, free thinking, and are quite happy to brainwash their own citizens into their extremist cause. They follow the teachings of a god called Menoth. Menoth is a deity who is basically an even more nasty, angry, ruthless, spiteful and vengeful version of the fire and brimstone god of the old testament. In the fluff, worship of Menoth has been on the decline for centuries-(for very obvious reasons!), and they’ve had enough. They’ve stoked their anger for these centuries, and have finally released it, and have started a great crusade, to sweep aside all the newer imposter religions that have sprung up, and re-impose the absolute worship of menoth as the prime (and only!) god in immoren. Fire. Torture. Burning stuff. Crucifixions. Typical "death to heretics, and blasphemers" stuff are the hallmarks for the Protectorate.
In game, they’re generally regarded as a denial faction. In a nutshell, they stop the other guy doing what they want to do (eg no charges, immune to shooting, immune to magic, spreading out damage amongst themselves etc) and then following up with a brutal counter punch. Their jacks tend to have lower stats than the rest of the factions, but this is more than compensated by their aforementioned excellent support units. Those units are the key to the functioning of the protectorate - they're a very synergistic army, and are all about overlapping layers of protective, and vengeful buffing. it ends up being a "denial loop" with no end. They are a more technologically regressed faction, but take great strength from divine prayer and faith. Though their ranged game is more limited, they have a very diverse access to extremely high damage melee infantry (exemplars) and are perfectly viable in a brawl. In terms of units, they don’t have an “army” in the modern sense of the word. Their military forces tend to be divided along the lines of the militant orders of extremely zealous crusading templar knights-exemplars (heavy cavalry, heavy infantry, and super-heavy infantry types) armed with a variety of weapons such as crosshows, halberds and magical swords, Next you have the “armed militia” element of the protectorate, with fire-spear armed temple guardians, firebomb and rocket armed zealots, priests, shaolin monks and inquisitors. A third aspect are the native idrian tribesmen who act as scouts, and skirmishers for the larger armies. This is backed up with their excellent priestly support units (choir, vassals etc) that are used to support their jacks. Menoth is regarded as a premier “jack faction” in that, unlike, say Khador, they are able to run a lot of jacks easily and efficiently, thanks to their excellent ancilliary support. Their jacks, on their own, are rather lacklustre, and their stats are lower than other factions. With the support elements in play, their stats and abilities skyrocket. Very much a “sum of their parts” aspect of the faction. Their warcasters are a diverse bunch representing everything from crusading knights (kreoss), witchhunters (reznik), high priests (severius), martial artists (amon), prophets (haringer) and pyromaniacs (feora). There is an equal mix of piousness, nobility of spirit, purity of purpose, intolerance and outright fanaticism in the faction.
Cygnar.
Fluffwise, they're america (kind of) in that they're the richest, most technologically advanced country in Immoren, but are surrounded by enemies and constantly under attack. They're liberal in the sense that 19th century america, or UK was liberal. In some ways, they’re far more liberal and forward thinking than people today! Cygnar are generally just trying to make do, trying to survive, and fend off all their adversaries. Also, they have lots of lightning themed units. Essentially, they're regarded as the "good guys" of the setting.
Cygnar is regarded as one of the premier ranged factions in the game. But this falls short of the mark. Cygnar are more than just guns. Cygnar have fantastic (and in some areas, the best) ranged options, but it’s not all they do -they're not tau! Cygnar is about well trained, professional infantry, wielding chainguns and rifles, backed up by counter charging melee units and jacks. Add in a lot of units that wield powerful, electric and voltaic “lightning weapons”, and the “electric chicken” becomes a bird with a nasty kick! Cygnar tend to be a bit standoffish in how they play. Cygnar are about ranged supremacy and area control, all backed up with pointy swords. Their magic is generally geared towards buffing their defensive abilities against ranged attacks, buffing their own ranged abilities, and general toolboxiness/utility (like haley). Cygnar is the most technologically advanced human faction, and have the coolest toys and gadgets. Though they’re not a “jack-faction”, cygnar have a lot of ways to put multiple jacks on the field and run them well. Their jacks are an almost perfect mix of armour, speed, utility and skill. They’re well- armed, well armoured and extremely well crafted. Their forces tend to look like a modern, or pre-modern army, and are well armed, and well equipped, divided along the lines of long gunners (US army), trenchers (US marines), gun mages (who get all the girls!) affiliated knightly orders (sword knights, precursor knights), the stormnoun units (stormblade and stomguard,heavy infantry, storm lance heavy cavalry, stormsmiths, stormtowers etc do you see an electricity theme here?) and as a faction, since they pay the best, they make the most use out of mercenaries. again, they have a diverse bunch of warcasters (ranging from plucky underdogs (stryker), spellslingers (haley), mentor/genius inventor (Nemo), genius mechanic (Darius), scouts (kraye), duellists/anti-heros (Caine) and so on.
Retribution.
Retribution of Scyrah are like a sci-fi cygnar. in a way that only genocidal, xenophobic elves can be! the elves are in a bad place. all their gods bar 1 - scyrah - their goddess of spring have disappeared. Their empire is crumbling away. Thanks to this, their civilization and race are dying, and the number of soulless births are increasing. They have maybe a century left. They decided that the disappearance of their gods happened at about the same time as the birth of magic in humans, that its humans fault for it. and they're out to get them. You know - when life gives you lemons, kill all humans. The elves are probably the most advanced faction in Immoren. Their “lines” are clean, sleek, sci-fi and very futuristic. They’re more like Protoss than Industrial Age elves! A lot of their weapons make use of technologies and magics unknown to the rest of Immoren. Their warjacks (called Myrmidons) do not burn coal, but are instead are powered by the latent energy of Caen (they’re very “green”!) In ways they're similar to cygnar in terms of gameplay, but along a slightly parallel path, and one where they punish magic users above all else, and while in ways they lack the raw stats of factions like khador, they get around the issue as they tend to ignore their opponents magical defences and tricks, (so all your buffing is effectively pointless) whilst also supporting their own abilities. Their jacks are like the Protoss from Starcraft in that most tend to have a forcefield that protects them. They’re quite a combined arms faction. Their jacks tend to be well made, skilled and relatively fast. They’re great on utility (they can all generally shoot and perform in melee), but tend to be a bit lower on the scale in terms of raw damage output and, despite the powerfield, resilience than other factions. Their infantry comes in a variety of styles. You have the infamous skirmishers of the Mage Hunters warbands, which have infiltrated human lands for centuries with a policy of targeted strikes and assassinations of human mages, and more recently, the military forces of the elven Great Houses, with rank upon rank of well trained, well-armed halberdiers and riflemen, along with the knightly orders of the elves – the Invictors and the famous Dawnguard. Their infantry, as a whole tends to perform well at range, and melee. Units are very powerful, and self-sufficient. Their warcasters similarly come in a variety of styles from support casters to assassination. Generally though, they lack the raw stats of other factions’ warcasters, and though most support a ranged game, they tend to act more as utility/support than frontline beatsticks
Convergence of cyriss. Lovecraftian watching worshipping cultists who want to turn the world into a giant machine to bring about their clockwork goddess. A relatively new faction, they are more limited in what they can field. Coc armies are like the clockwork goddess they worship, with every part being a cog that is a part of a greater whole. When thry die, they like to stick their souls in clockwork shells and carry on the great business. Weapon ranges are all prime numbers. Unlike other armies, their troops can switch weapon modes depending on the situation. They also wield a unique type of warjack called a vector. Vectors use the melee and ballistic skills of their warcasters, and can pass on spent focus to other vectors, making them extremely efficient at focus use. Similarly, all convergence warcasters have field Marshall abilities that affect their entire battlegroup which further reinforces the theme of interlocking parts. Due to the technical nature of their rules, they might take a bit longer to get used to. Play styles range from attrition and recursion (they can keep recycling dead troops like cryx), with a very interesting ranged game and some ability to assassinate. Generally they will play as a very 'jack heavy' faction, so if a big efficient and interesting battlegrovis your thing, look at these guys.
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