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The is currently 24 Factions / Codex's (not including supplements) as shown below:

Assassins
Inquisition
Grey Knights
Sisters of Battle

Imperial Guard
Storm Troopers

Skitarri
Cult Mechanicus
Imperial Knights

Space Marines
Dark Angels
Space Wolves
Blood Angels
Legion of the Damned

Chaos Space Marines
Chaos Daemons
Khorne Daemonkin

Eldar
Dark Eldar
Harlequins

Orks
Necrons
Tau Empire
Tyranids

The most i would Combine them into the following would be the 16 following Factions / Codex's as shown below:

Inquisition
- Grey Knights
- Inquisition
- Assassins
Sisters of Battle
- Sisters of Battle
- Storm Troopers

Imperial Guard
- Imperial Guard
- Storm Troopers

Mechanicus
- Skitarri
- Cult Mechanicus
- Imperial Knights

Space Marines
- Space Marines
- Legion of the Damned
Space Wolves
Dark Angels
Blood Angels

Chaos Space Marines
- Chaos Space Marines
- Khorne Daemonkin
Chaos Daemons
- Chaos Daemons
- Khorne Daemonkin

Eldar
- Craftworld Eldar
- Harlequins
Dark Eldar
- Dark Eldar
- Harlequins

Orks
Necrons
Tau Empire
Tyranids

For those who believe rules can't be condensed have a look at the 2nd Ed BatleBible pdf.

Yes it's cut out all of the pictures and fluff but they've managed to condense all of 2nd Ed 40k into 275 pages.

Thats every army list for every codex, including WD stuff like the Legion of the Damned army list; Falcon, Fire Prism and Harlequins for the Eldar and even the Squat army list! With seperate wargear lists for each, seperate entries for each unit and all of the race specific rules (of which there were a fair few).

And all the game rules and Psychic rules to boot.

I think it's the drop in general quality of the writing over the last 15+ years that's made the game and factions suffer so much. Even reading the fluff sections of codexes like Codex Chaos made you get p*ssed at the cowardly Imperium or Codex Eldar when it used to read almost like a Sci-Fi apocalyptic Silmirillion and would always tug my heartstrings for them when they birthed Slaanesh and created the Eye of Terror accidentally.

That was fluff-writing at it's finest and they now they just can't get writers anywhere near as good unfortunately, in my opinion. Good fluff makes for a good faction to me

Orks

Space Marine sub-factions... roll them all up into one Codex. Then spend the money saved from making Blood Angels, Grey Knight, Space Wolves and spend it on.....

Sisters of Battle. Ditch the fleur-de-lis and redesign the models as something that you can copyright.

To those who doubt that sisters would sell, I would buy a GW Sisters army in a heartbeat if there was a plastic model release. I know that there are a lot of closet sisters players out there... they just want to spend less than $10 a model.

Necrons can go feth themselves. Really. Hate those guys. Their models look like metal gaks and generally UGGHHH.

I would put the money back into regular CSM and give them much needed points drops. Also a big LOW that's like a combined megadaemon.

 WarbossDakka wrote:
Necrons can go feth themselves. Really. Hate those guys. Their models look like metal gaks and generally UGGHHH.

I would put the money back into regular CSM and give them much needed points drops. Also a big LOW that's like a combined megadaemon.

If it can drop a big template ranged attack, and do Str D in melee, count me in.

Although, I do like the Necron models. Just not the Necrons.

My .02:

Create 3 individual "pools" of which to start with: Sphere of Mankind, Syndicate of Destruction, Outsiders.

Place all the humies into pool #1. They'll represent the classic "good" side.

Place Chaos, Dark Elves, Necron and Orkz into Syndicate of Destruction. These represent the "bad" guys.

Place Tau, Eldar, and Tyranid into the Outsiders. These are pretty much neutral in my mind, with Tyranid simply being a force of nature.


The pools themselves don't mean anything, but they just help people quickly identify "what side" they want to play.

Culling the herd down...

Collapse the SM spanning tree into a single namespace - Space Marines. Really, does there need to be so_many_different_factions available for humans? Not saying remove them -- rather streamline. You can reduce model count by making models a generic construct, and selling "upgrade" kits that add heraldry/bits for a specific subfaction outlined in the Codex. Some of the fluff can be culled down too (space wolves).

Example: You buy a box of 10 marines. They're Std. issue, paint them up how ever you want. You decide to roll Templars, so in order to complete the look (100% optional beyond color schema) is to buy a templar upgrade box. Inside are enough bits and whatnot to do say 30 marines total in various ways. That way, you've eliminated the need to have multiple copies of a figure that are essentially the same core, multiple box art prints, etc. etc. Far more agile, and cuts cost down. It allows those who want to kitbash the ability to do so, making their army unique -- but it isn't required in order to play or chose a specific faction. I love the look of model X, but since I don't play army Y I can't use them -- this would eliminate a lot of that.

Space Marine's are comprised of SM(+sub fluff) and GK.
Inquistion returns to take over SoB, Assassins, Skittari and special forces units. Maybe IK should fall under here? They're kinda the oddball.
IG as stand alone.

For the love of Sigmar, give SoB some love and new models -- make them unique, revamp the IP, borrow same concept from Marines above. Use add-on kits to allow customization for sub-factions within the SoB/AS range.

Get rid of Knights as a faction, keep them around as a 1 per army Lord of War for imperial armies.

Money into Sisters.

I'd combined multiple things

Eldar into one because they don't need three different books, they could have a chapter tactics thing like SM.

SM into one book, possibly under Adeptus because we need to include Sisters somehow for they will save GW from ruin.

Necrons and Skitarii because forge the narrative that's why.

The main things that should be combined are Skitarri and Admech. They're each less than half a codex. No reason to separate them beyond GW greed. Throw in Imperial Knights while you're at it.

Militarum Tempestus should just be part of AM, although they won't get another codex release anyway, so it's not an issue.

Space Marines should be one codex, with Chapter Tactics, and Chaos something similar.

I disagree about Eldar. DE and CE are very different.

Give all the resources to Sisters.

Meh should be 3 books

Imperium

Chaos

Xeno

No allying But near Free list building within faction books (so IG with SM will still be a thing.

but Nid pals sorry.

Whoever you get rid of, use the money to update the Ork warbuggy and wartrakk models. Why are they still using those second edition kits? Do any other armies still have second edition kits from 20 years ago for some of their common units?

 The Riddle of Steel wrote:
Whoever you get rid of, use the money to update the Ork warbuggy and wartrakk models. Why are they still using those second edition kits? Do any other armies still have second edition kits from 20 years ago for some of their common units?

Almost my entire range, actually...

We get it, you play sisters.

 The Riddle of Steel wrote:
Do any other armies still have second edition kits from 20 years ago for some of their common units?

Sisters of Battle use 2nd edition kits for almost everything.

 Melissia wrote:

 The Riddle of Steel wrote:
Do any other armies still have second edition kits from 20 years ago for some of their common units?

Sisters of Battle use 2nd edition kits for almost everything.

And (apart from one or two exceptions) their models don't even look bad, in my opinion. They could stay mostly the same, just be in plastic with more poseability and a decent set of gear options and they'd be good to go. Agreed on the Ork warbuggy and halftrak, though.

 Desubot wrote:
Meh should be 3 books

Imperium

Chaos

Xeno

No allying But near Free list building within faction books (so IG with SM will still be a thing.

but Nid pals sorry.

Streamlining is one thing, but this is simplifying to the point of stifling. Emperor knows we don't want another AoS debacle on our hands.

Besides, having the game reduced to what is basically "Marines plus some other stuff vs marines plus some other stuff, oh and there's also aliens too I guess if you really want to play them" is kind of obnoxious.

Can't stand these fething threads. There's no point to them, just another excuse for people to bash Tau, really. Trolling is what it is.

 Lord Corellia wrote:

 Ashiraya wrote:

 FakeBritishPerson wrote:
I think most people would pick up Sisters if they just had the plastic kits already, and a new codex

I VERY strongly doubt this.

Well ok, probably not MOST people but I bet they'd be popular. If I had the cash and/ or they weren't so expensive I'd start them up.

More people would buy them than the amount that bought a Militarum Tempestus army, that's for damn well sure.


Anyway OP, this should be obvious. Recently there has been several factions split off from the main faction in a bid to sell more books. Much like most others I think they should put all the marine books back into one and same with putting tempestus back into guard. Ignoring that cop-out though, I wouldn't care much to see craftworld Eldar go. There's little fluff behind them besides "Oooh we're mysterious, that's why we'll have no BL books about us." and their one universal character trait is "Well aren't we a bunch of sly, cocky pr*cks!" It's not that I don't like space elves, Dark Eldar are my second favorite faction, but craftworld eldar are just so uninteresting.

We all know sisters need the moniez right now. Invest the money into giving them flat chest armor and proper boots.

 Signet-Powers wrote:
More people would buy them than the amount that bought a Militarum Tempestus army, that's for damn well sure.

Well, to do that there just has to be like, 5 people

 Sidstyler wrote:
Can't stand these fething threads. There's no point to them, just another excuse for people to bash Tau, really. Trolling is what it is.

Most of the posts have been bashing IOM spam, rather than Tau. Though, admittedly, I did bash Tau.

...They know what they did...

 Selym wrote:

 Sidstyler wrote:
Can't stand these fething threads. There's no point to them, just another excuse for people to bash Tau, really. Trolling is what it is.

Most of the posts have been bashing IOM spam, rather than Tau. Though, admittedly, I did bash Tau.

...They know what they did...

I was going to say something similar. While I do know what Sidstyler is talking about as I've seen it many times, they got off extremely light in this thread. Although, "don't speak too soon" and all that...

Burn away SoB. Lame boring models. Just add some Female Guardsmen or something else.

Burn the extra SM chapter codexes too.Put that money into something like Tau, or Orks, or Chaos.

The fact that GW hasn't updated Sisters of Battle models in five editions doesn't mean that the faction can't have promising models instead if GW actually does grow a few brain cells and update them

My views:

Merge Space Marines, Blood Angels, Space Wolves, Dark Angels into one big codex. Sorted. Use Chapter Tactics to get across special traits and stuff and Chapter Tactic specific units (ie. only Space Wolves get TWC and only Blood Angels get Sanguinary Priests + Death Company)
Try and merge as many things as possible in the new SM Dex, so everyone gets grav, Centurions, Stormtalons/Stormravens, Librarian Dreadnoughts, infernus pistols, etc.
Also, I wouldn't mind a Renegade Chapter option, where the army gets Marks and Chaosy stuff, but restricted access to 1st Company units and Relics, perhaps including a distrust mechanic where squads might be wary of eachother (perceiving eachother as traitors to them)?

Combine Knights, Skitarii and Mechanicus into one Codex: Mechanicus. Allow a Knight Detachment in that, which is a copy paste of the current one.

Roll Grey Knights, Inquisition, Assassins into one Codex: Inquisition.

Update Sisters, for the love of the God-Emperor!

Merge Astra Militarum and Tempestus Militarum into Codex: Astra Militarum. Allow a Tempestor Prime to be taken as an HQ, which unlocks Tempestus as Troops, but removes Infantry Squads and Veteran Squads from choices.

-----------------------------------------------------------

Chaos Daemons and Chaos Space Marines could be rolled into one Codex, Codex: Chaos, or left. I don't know.
On from this, I wouldn't mind putting a note in all Imperial codexes, except the new Codex: Inquisition, that they can dedicate their force to Chaos, allowing for Daemons to be taken as Battle Brother allies, Marks to be taken, Daemonic Possession on vehicles, etc...

----------------------------------------------------------

Put Harlequin rules into both Eldar and Dark Eldar codexes.

Necrons, Orks, Tyranids and Tau are left unchanged.



Sorted. None removed. Just merged for simplicity.

We need more SM codices. BT lost their unique stuff and many of the main chapters have little more than a single special character.

One full codex for each. Give CSM Legions the same treatment. Then squat SoB, Orks, and IG. Waste of space.

 Ashiraya wrote:
I am not actually serious. Legions sure could use some love though.

Oh, yeah, of course! I would very much like to see Legion/Warband/Regiment traits implemented for every army.

MarsNZ wrote:We get it, you play sisters.

He asked. I answered. Problem, Heretic?

 Furyou Miko wrote:
Problem, Heretic?

Yes.