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 some bloke wrote:
With 40k having a plot that progresses now (after enjoying so many years of being stuck in time), I wonder if anyone has any ideas for new factions, either spinoffs or wholly new.

I was reading a thread on here about Tau AI, and it struck me that they could make a "dark tau" codex based around a rogue tau sept which made AI (Against the will of the ethereals) and who believe that the Tau empire should be focused on eradicating the opposition and not on trying to assimilate them, so use loads of AI to bolster their army. Effectively a bond-villain of the Tau world. That's one idea.

I wonder if, perhaps, they could bring out a "Rogues and Renegades" type codex which would feature a variety of different units which could be added into any army. The codex could have units from every alignment - EG Tau radicals, ork freebootas, Chaos pirates, etc.. Then the codex could feature a pre-game stratagem to remove the Faction keyword on units and replace then with "Unaligned".

So, for example, you could run a whole army of Rogues & Renegades, as a band of various different units. Or, you could run a Chaos army with a detachment of rogues featuring only Chaos units, and remain battleforged. Or, you could run an Ork army with a detachment of Freebootas and Chaos Pirates, but then pay 1CP per unit of Chaos to make them unaligned - hired mercenaries - and so remain battleforged.

I'd like to see some interesting rules for bands of mercenaries being in competition with one another. Things like "Hands off that Plunder! - any unit attempting a charge can add +1" to their roll if charging at a unit which has already been charged this turn" or something.

Does anyone else have any cool ideas for new factions which would add to the game? It seems Imperials have so many, it would be nice if the Xenos got a few more!

deja vu

honestly, Rogue traders /pirats and mercs should be separate from a Chaos Renegades and heretics list.

Great to see a lot of responses to this! some great ideas coming up!

mrFickle wrote:
The enslavers are talked about as an almost galaxy consuming force in the law, something very different like that would be welcome

They did have rules back somewhere around 3rd/4th edition, albeit vaguely written on whether or not you needed to allocate control dice to your own units (which was the difference between a very strong faction and a very weak faction).

Just a single unit type though, everything else was enslaved.

An opportunity to brag about my new project!? I give to you the space trolls!






And their ride:



Edit: I'm running them as ork nobz. Making an ork list that includes no orks (grietchins are ok though, would have preferred to convert gnoblars but it's a pain). The idea is that they are a minor alien species that's been at war with the orks for some time and therefore is stealing and using their tech (which of course is usually looted in the first place).

Lost and the Damned.

Seriously. Renegades getting squatted, when their 7th ed list was probably the best thing about that entire edition, is asinine.

 Nerak wrote:
An opportunity to brag about my new project!? I give to you the space trolls!

Spoiler:

Spoiler:

And their ride:

Spoiler:

Edit: I'm running them as ork nobz. Making an ork list that includes no orks (grietchins are ok though, would have preferred to convert gnoblars but it's a pain). The idea is that they are a minor alien species that's been at war with the orks for some time and therefore is stealing and using their tech (which of course is usually looted in the first place).

That's a pretty darn neet work you have done their and it's a potentially cool concept too for a xenos army centered around space trolls.

I really liked the idea of the Tau Dark AI.

So I did a bit of writing, a bit of thinking, and started on a thing. Find a thread about it here.

For xenos I figured that if space skaven could be more original, that could have a lot of potential. Also, grimdark space mermaids (sirens) that feth with the warp could be cool. Like, the fluff is that they sing siren songs into the warp that gets detected by astropaths, who are manipulated into steering the ship off course into unstable warp anomalies to feast on the anguish and what not of the crew.

I was also thinking that the Imperium could take a great schism from the Cawl/Gulliman heresy of creating primaris marines, and could be started by Gulliman attempting to put things back to how he thought his father wanted them. Also, chaos always has potential like the aforementioned dark mechanicum and re-releasing the lost and the damned. Chaos squats following regular squats could be interesting as well. Xenos in general though, is difficult for me because I don't have that much of an imagination.

macluvin wrote:
Also, grimdark space mermaids (sirens) that feth with the warp could be cool. Like, the fluff is that they sing siren songs into the warp that gets detected by astropaths, who are manipulated into steering the ship off course into unstable warp anomalies to feast on the anguish and what not of the crew.

I love this... I also see it as a very Eldar thing to do. So I'd quite like to see either Dark Eldar or Ynnari head in this direction.

 Super Ready wrote:

macluvin wrote:
Also, grimdark space mermaids (sirens) that feth with the warp could be cool. Like, the fluff is that they sing siren songs into the warp that gets detected by astropaths, who are manipulated into steering the ship off course into unstable warp anomalies to feast on the anguish and what not of the crew.

I love this... I also see it as a very Eldar thing to do. So I'd quite like to see either Dark Eldar or Ynnari head in this direction.

Sounds a lot like Enslavers, who are quite literally known as Psyrens (amongst other names).

I'm wondering if there's scope for a "flood" like faction (from Halo) which would be members of various races corrupted and possessed by >insert the faction here< to create this mishmash of lost souls.

You could even have it be a warp entity who offers souls lost in the warp a chance at redemption - Like Davy Jones from the pirates of the Caribbean trilogy (yes, it was just a trilogy. there were 3 films, period.) So you get everyone who has been lost in the warp amalgamated into a hive-mind kind of thing.

Perhaps a tyranid hive mind was lost when the great rift opened, but survived (it can survive in space, so perhaps the warp is survivable too) and became a warp-bound entity, who only knows how to control minions. So you end up with a tyranids-esque army but with the random dross of the other races - guardsmen who have been lost in the warp for so long that they lost their minds, to have them replaced by the hive mind, that sort of thing. Not Chaos, but something else.

There must be some stories of entire fleets lost in the warp, and imagine them returning, their factions delight at hearing that they are back, to have them mow them down in blank-faced obedience to the hive mind.

Again, you’ve just described the Enslavers there. Okay, not the second paragraph, but you get my drift.

The empire of the gelatinous cubes

 Grimtuff wrote:
Again, you’ve just described the Enslavers there. Okay, not the second paragraph, but you get my drift.

awesome, so there's already lore out there for such an amalgamation of slave-minds. The aesthetic would be pretty cool - you could have ancient tech from the pre-heresy era, lost in the warp until now (limited per army so it doesn't suddenly get spammed!), and other lost things. I wonder, are there any races out there which suddenly and t ogreat dismay just disappeared, which could be brought back in such a way...

 some bloke wrote:
I wonder, are there any races out there which suddenly and t ogreat dismay just disappeared, which could be brought back in such a way...

You're talking about the Hrud, right? That's SQUAT to be what you're getting at, has to be.

 Super Ready wrote:

 some bloke wrote:
I wonder, are there any races out there which suddenly and t ogreat dismay just disappeared, which could be brought back in such a way...

You're talking about the Hrud, right? That's SQUAT to be what you're getting at, has to be.

Slann I correct in saying he might be referring to something Zoatally different?

"Renegades and Heretics” is my number 1. I think there’s room for them to be played a few different, interesting ways:

1. As mercenaries and rogue traders.
2. As a full-fledged Chaos cultist army.
3. As unaligned forces that are rebelling against the Imperium.

They’d naturally have some overlap with Astra Militarum but could have vehicles that are more ramshackle, or even incorporate some Xenos tech that they’ve looted or traded for.

I’d like to see Chaos Marines broken out a little more, with a codex for each of the aligned factions. Nurgle/Death Guard (coming), Tzeentch/Thousand Sons, Slaanesh/Emperor’s Children, Knorne/World Eaters.

There are still a few of the key fantasy races that aren’t represented in 40K:

* A Space Dwarf that’s a complete rethink of Squats.
* A creature race. Lizardmen with big dragon Lords of War, maybe.

davextreme wrote:
I’d like to see Chaos Marines broken out a little more, with a codex for each of the aligned factions. Nurgle/Death Guard (coming), Tzeentch/Thousand Sons, Slaanesh/Emperor’s Children, Knorne/World Eaters.

In case you're not aware, Death Guard were spun out into their own faction in 8th ed, with Thousand Sons managing the same in either late 7th or during 8th.

The big question is if/when we'll see the same for the other two.

So instead of an idea for a FACTION lore, I have an idea for a game mechanic that a new faction could have, ie, their "schtick". We all know eldar's is trickery, orks is buggery, gaurds' is rolling all the dice, marines is rolling half the dice twice and hitting somehow more, and sisters is "I am surprisingly tough for a human T3, and if you don't respect, I am going to send repentia at you now."
Genestealers pop up from the cracks of the hiveworld and ambush. (And necrons can regenerate, and tau can superoverwatch.)

So what would a NEW mechanism be?
It would have to be something the marines don't do, because they do almost everything.

And I figured out one that might exist.
Group charges.
Basically, the army can join two of its units into an ad hoc larger unit with a strategem that allows the larger, now almost deathwatch like unit to charge into overwatch. Result is, you can have a single unit with an overbloom (in my head, they are a race of alien, motile plants or fungi) which would be like their transport / tank unit, and a dozen spratlings (which are their version of light skirmish infantry). The spratlings do wicked damage if they get in, and the overbloom soaks the overwatch as part of the SAME charge. So nope, only on a charge. They would have various mechanisms to get into charge range like underground plants growing that suddenly burst from the soil, a bit like a genestealer deploy spot.

Other strategems they would have include Sporeburst (-1 to be hit during enemy shooting phase), petalswarm (double shooting from troop choice), and acidity (-2 ap on melee strikes by that unit for the phase), and dig in (+2 to armor saves this turn, and next turn, the dug in unit can come out anywhere that is 9 inch or more from an enemy). And slowgrow, a strategem that slows the movement of the plant but gives it advanced (up to full health if not killed) regeneration at the end (specifically) of the melee phases (either yours or its). A final strategem to split any larger group of them into 2 smaller halves (or as close as can be divided model by model) would exist, allowing you to unjoin the joined ones. Somewhere between hivemind and individual, the plants just .. grow.

Unlike necrons, they would grow their army when it was not yet injured -- any completely uninjured unit rolls d6 and on a 5+, it gains an extra 1W model or an extra 1W. Some plants would specialize in repair/replenishment, as well.
So there would be a motive not to join together all the units -- cause you are growing free little ones all over the place while they are still separated -- and then you bring them together with the charge strategem to make a big charge into overwatch.

I dunno. Its a thought though. The plant creatures would have "tanks" that come up out of the ground very much like genestealers called "Gourdia" .. and the gourdia would be light transports that then act a lot like drop pods, and are afterwards rooted in place and unable to reposition.

An army wide strategem exists called "the bloom of death" ... where every single unit rolls 3 times for growth or regeneration. That bloom, however, would exhaust the command points pool entirely -- 6cp spent, and no future CP regeneration.

That's all I got offhand. I think the plantfolk would have some very slow flyers (like gas bag dirigible plants) with some fairly heavy weapons and fairly light defenses on them, and a few very, very big plant walkers with a lot of toughness and wounds, that were not, however, particullary expensive and not particularly strong for their size. A bit like crossing the firepower of a dreadnaught with the wound profile of a titan, but you would want to avoid the hell out of them in melee.

The plantfungi folk wouldn't necessarily have a fluff explanation other than that the necrons would have a couple artifacts specifically designed to kill them, which hints that they maybe were a scourge of the galaxy long ago. The warp infested "dark admech" version of the plantfolk would be very twisted seeds indeed, and the result would make even nerglings run for cleaner pastures. Ew.

Is a just a stray thought. But lumbering elephant like plants with dozens of sporelings pouring off them, blossoming gourdia bursting out of the midfield, while sac-flyers pepper the terrified gaurd with acidic, explosive, and infective and poisonous spores ... while a few huge plants glow with twisted energies and lob chunks of their own offspring (that explode horrifically, a bit like a plant deathstrike). Would give maybe enough stuff to make a faction?

I'd like to see something 'good'come out of the warp - like a custodes type faction/adjunct of buff highpoint 'angels' (perhaps led by the G-E?)

They could represent the warp based manifestation of the higest of humanities ideals and hope (given the warp is ment to be reflective of the universal gestalt).

They could suffer highly from morale/faith tests of those that summon them - like anti-demons in effect.

Could be field alones, or as soup with SOB

Brand new ideas? Hrm. How about an interstellar republic of bug people? A nice hive mind. That'd be something.


As far as fleshing out existing concepts, I'd like it if the squats/demiurge were viewed through the lens of being the true inheritors of humanity. Skip the dwarf biker stuff and go all in on them being a standard sci-fi space civilisation that just happens to be short and have a lot to deal with.