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If you could take a faction from another sci fi setting and incorporate it into 40ks universe, who would you pick and why?
What power level would you give them?
Who would be their main opponent?

I think I'd pick Species 8472 (Star Trek).
I'd like to see another "organic" race in 40k and I'd have them battling against the Nids for dominance - kinda like two super predators fighting it out.
I'd give them power level probably just below the Nids as they are new to the Galaxy but adapting quickly as they get more involved.

Species 8472 are a great shout. I think the setting has a real variety of enemies and what they represent. I'm having a hard time picking a race that would be distinctive enough from the current pack.

Maybe the Asari from Mass Effect?

I would suggest the bugs from Starship Troopers, but they are already very tyranid-y!

Transformers could be awesome if converted to the grimdark lifestyle... Every unit has 2 profiles and has to pick one for each turn - either aggressive or defensive. They would definitely be elite.

The Flood from Halo would fill a missing gap. Infect enemy models as you kill them, morale losses in CC are added to your unit. kamikaze fat-boy-not-slims, hordes of the little ones trying to infect other units. there's even prescience for flood driving vehicles, so you could literally start with a massed horde of the little ones and then create an army from your enemy.

 Ishagu wrote:
Species 8472 are a great shout. I think the setting has a real variety of enemies and what they represent. I'm having a hard time picking a race that would be distinctive enough from the current pack.

Maybe the Asari from Mass Effect?

Krogans.

Pan-fo.

The aliens from Edge of Tomorrow.

The Borg have potential for interesting mechanics about adaptation and assimilation. Weak at the start of the game but if you only spam the same weapons they'll adapt to them and won't take further damage from them. In CC they can assimilate your faction trait (and your units ).

The Goa'uld from Stargate would fit well into a grim-dark setting and their infestation approach is different to the Genestealer style of infestation. With a bit of a technology jump they'd be an ideal, likely elite style army with a heavy Egyptian theme - which would fit as whilst Necrons sort of carried that feel early they've mostly lost it now save for the scarabs and a few of the lord poses.




Of course the natural bed fellows would be to see the stomping power armour of the Terrans, the ethereal magic of the Protoss and the brutal evolved efficiency of the Zerg

Yuzhan Vong from Star Wars; make em immune to all psyker shenanigans plus living weapons! *ducks incoming fire from a lot of SW fans*

Xenomorphs from Aliens? Oh wait, Genestealers exist
Bugs from Starship Troopers? No, nevermind Tyranids exist
Vulcans and Romluans from Star Trek? Eldar and Dark Eldar, although DE have a bit more Hellraiser than Romulans
Borg? Necrons

Man, 40K really "borrows" from a bunch of other Sci-Fi already

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 Galef wrote:
Xenomorphs from Aliens? Oh wait, Genestealers exist
Bugs from Starship Troopers? No, nevermind Tyranids exist
Vulcans and Romluans from Star Trek? Eldar and Dark Eldar, although DE have a bit more Hellraiser than Romulans
Borg? Necrons

Man, 40K really "borrows" from a bunch of other Sci-Fi already

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Everybody borrows from everyone. Even Star Trek is not above being inspired by our own mythology.

Vulcans - Space Elves
Romulans - Space Dark Elves
Ferengi - Space Goblins
Klingons - Space Orcs
Dwarf - Space Scotsman

 Eldarsif wrote:

 Galef wrote:
Xenomorphs from Aliens? Oh wait, Genestealers exist
Bugs from Starship Troopers? No, nevermind Tyranids exist
Vulcans and Romluans from Star Trek? Eldar and Dark Eldar, although DE have a bit more Hellraiser than Romulans
Borg? Necrons

Man, 40K really "borrows" from a bunch of other Sci-Fi already

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Everybody borrows from everyone. Even Star Trek is not above being inspired by our own mythology.

Vulcans - Space Elves
Romulans - Space Dark Elves
Ferengi - Space Goblins
Klingons - Space Orcs
Dwarf - Space Scotsman

Oh, of course. I just found it funny that everything I could think of already had a 40K equivalent. Once that popped into my head, my brain could think of any other race that wasn't somehow represented by some aspect of an existing 40K faction.

Space Lizardmen would be cool, but you'd have to give them a theme that sets them apart from their AoS counterparts and also sets them apart from T'au (so no high tech), Nids (need some tech), Orks (can't be just brutes), Necrons (can't be "ancient" or Egyptian/Aztec themed), etc
But a cold reptilian race that isn't just a duplicate of the other Xenos could be cool.

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I think that if you were to pick a new faction from existing source material to enter into 40k, you'll want one that hits a few notes;

#1 - Rich variety of unit types: Species 8472 and the Borg kind of fail here, because how imposing they are more has to do with the idea of them, but each unit is extremely similar to each other unit. Doesn't leave a lot of room for uniqueness. The Necrons had a huge problem with this in their early small range, and people complained that all their armies looked the same. It took a long time for things to change.

#2 - "Grimdark Accessible": The Asari kind of fail here, because their aesthetic is so much more hopeful and aspiring. The Krogan definitely work though. It's a testament to the Mass Effect universe that such different themes can exist at the same time. The T'au had an issue with this at first too, and some complain that they aren't grim-dark enough even to this day.

#3 - Fill a new slot, not an existing one: The aliens from Edge of Tomorrow, and the Flood, really fail here. They are all-organic races with hive minds, but we already have one - the Tyranids. The Yuzhan Vong side-step this by not having a hive mind, and using their organic technology the same way we would use regular technology, so it just becomes a motif rather than a central plot point.


That all said, from the list so far that people have put up, I think the Krogan, the Goa'uld, and the Yuzhan Vong could all make a showing. Especially the Krogan, as they bring a lot of new concept stuff to the table. They bring plentiful but tough infantry (give them high toughness/wounds, but low armour), a love of shotguns (many factions have shotguns, but none have a special affinity for them), and a clunky design aesthetic to their vehicles that still avoids looking like an Ork built it. I tried to think of someone I'd like to see in the 40k universe more than the Krogan, and I just can't.

I might be about the only person who still remembers Animorphs, so I'm gonna put forward the Yeerk. These brain slugs take over the bodies of other species to use, giving them a unique aesthetic in the 40k universe. They also tend to steal the tech of others as well. Basically, a Yeerk Army could have Ork Boyz, a Hive Tyrant, some Tau Pathfinders, and all sorts of other mix-matched craziness. Only the Necron would really be "off limits" for army building, since they don't have brains.

It'd be stupid unbalanced (like Soup without restrictions), of course, but I DO feel they'd be the most unique race to add.

https://animorphs.fandom.com/wiki/Yeerk

Wookies!

Skrulls. Do we have a shape-shifting faction in 40K? Would it even matter since you could just field any existing faction and say they are the shape-shifters?

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Space Skaven.

 deviantduck wrote:
Space Skaven.

For some reason I would love this.

Gundams - There are so many factions to choose from within this series, but I'd like to see one of the larger federations added with the mass production suits. I know this would be a lot like Tau, but it would be humans in suits backed up by humans in Ultra suits.

Dragons - Intelligent, space travelling dragons that can use magic. from the DragonStar rpg setting.

The Engineers from Alien/Prometheus

people have mentioned a number of star trek races, but so far no one's mentioned the one that proably would actually convert the best into 40k. The Dominion.

You have a empire based around a mix of species, ruled by parinoid shapeshifters who geneticly engineer their servator secies those species BTW worship their rulers as gods. is militarily aggressive. they could very easily be set up as sort of a dark alien mirror of the Imperium.

BrianDavion wrote:
people have mentioned a number of star trek races, but so far no one's mentioned the one that proably would actually convert the best into 40k. The Dominion.

You have a empire based around a mix of species, ruled by parinoid shapeshifters who geneticly engineer their servator secies those species BTW worship their rulers as gods. is militarily aggressive. they could very easily be set up as sort of a dark alien mirror of the Imperium.

The Dominion are kind of like the Tau, if the Ethereals were more evil.

 Horst wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:
people have mentioned a number of star trek races, but so far no one's mentioned the one that proably would actually convert the best into 40k. The Dominion.

You have a empire based around a mix of species, ruled by parinoid shapeshifters who geneticly engineer their servator secies those species BTW worship their rulers as gods. is militarily aggressive. they could very easily be set up as sort of a dark alien mirror of the Imperium.

The Dominion are kind of like the Tau, if the Ethereals were more evil.

yeah it occured to me only after writing it. I think mind you you could keep it seperate, if you played up the "ohh they geneticly engieer their subject races to be of more use in their intended role!" angle.

I like that Space Skaven and Space Lizardmen already came up, GW already owns all the rights they would need for them and there's even fluff implying that they're connected to the 40k universe already. The one that I actually want to see make the jump though is Ogors, if I were even remotely considering AoS they're the army I'd be looking at first due to the low model count.

Squats, from an old game universe called Rogue Trader.

What is the Dominion ? I mean, in what series / setting ?

 flandarz wrote:
I might be about the only person who still remembers Animorphs, so I'm gonna put forward the Yeerk. These brain slugs take over the bodies of other species to use, giving them a unique aesthetic in the 40k universe. They also tend to steal the tech of others as well. Basically, a Yeerk Army could have Ork Boyz, a Hive Tyrant, some Tau Pathfinders, and all sorts of other mix-matched craziness. Only the Necron would really be "off limits" for army building, since they don't have brains.

It'd be stupid unbalanced (like Soup without restrictions), of course, but I DO feel they'd be the most unique race to add.

https://animorphs.fandom.com/wiki/Yeerk

Tyranids have that. Called mind slavers in the old material Lex says they are currently referred to as cortex leeches

 godardc wrote:
What is the Dominion ? I mean, in what series / setting ?

they where the villians in star trek deep space 9.

they fought a war that nearly brought the federation to it's knees. https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Dominion

 Horst wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:
people have mentioned a number of star trek races, but so far no one's mentioned the one that proably would actually convert the best into 40k. The Dominion.

You have a empire based around a mix of species, ruled by parinoid shapeshifters who geneticly engineer their servator secies those species BTW worship their rulers as gods. is militarily aggressive. they could very easily be set up as sort of a dark alien mirror of the Imperium.

The Dominion are kind of like the Tau, if the Ethereals were more evil.

They already mind control other Tau into committing suicide if they fail them, how much more evil do they need to be?

Horst wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:
people have mentioned a number of star trek races, but so far no one's mentioned the one that proably would actually convert the best into 40k. The Dominion.

You have a empire based around a mix of species, ruled by parinoid shapeshifters who geneticly engineer their servator secies those species BTW worship their rulers as gods. is militarily aggressive. they could very easily be set up as sort of a dark alien mirror of the Imperium.

The Dominion are kind of like the Tau, if the Ethereals were more evil.

I think you've got this backwards, the Dominion are the lighter version, the diet coke of evil if you will. The Tau are the most nefarious disease in the galaxy since DAOT.

jeff white wrote:Squats, from an old game universe called Rogue Trader.

that was a cool universe, kinda wish there was more insanity sprinkled in to the "modern" version.