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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!

The 'Dark Tau' idea is potentially halfway there with Commander Farsight, that's one way to flesh it out.
I like the Rogues idea (maybe steer away from calling them Renegades as that already has Chaos connotations). Reminds me of the mercenaries 'faction' that Fantasy had back in... I want to say its 8th edition?
On the other hand this kind of exists if you count the 40k rules for the Blackstone Fortress models, there's some fun stuff in there that just doesn't exist in existing armies like Rogue Traders and Astropaths.

Personally I'd like to see Squats return but with a complete faction overhaul much like Kharadron had, not simply just "engineer dwarves in spaaaaaaace!".

I think a mercenaries codex would allow a lot of fun to be added to the game. I think anyone can take zoats. I don’t there’s a major benefit but it might be fun. I see a lot of talk on here about rules and balanced all focused around competitive play but I’d rather make an army that’s really fun to use and be done with it.

You could have a mercenary army with a rogue trader as the warlord and then have the option to add mercenaries to other armies purchased with CP as well as the usual points cost.

I’d also like to see an evolution of the nids with the hive mind creating sub minds so that you can have different factions with different benefits for nids. Assuming that’s not a thing already, I don’t know but I’d like to make a bid army at some point.

I’d like to see Fabius biles faction become more of a thing with this new men etc.

I don’t think I would like to o see dark tau. I think the whole creating a chaos version of a faction rather than coming up with something new has been done to death. Although saying that I really want a dark Mechanicus codex and a cultists/chaos guard codex haha

mrFickle wrote:

I don’t think I would like to o see dark tau. I think the whole creating a chaos version of a faction rather than coming up with something new has been done to death. Although saying that I really want a dark Mechanicus codex and a cultists/chaos guard codex haha

I was suggesting a different style of "dark", where it's due to their belief tha te Tau should rule the galaxy and not because they have succumbed to chaos. So they are the bad guys, but there's no chaos god taking the credit.

Space Pirates! A mix between something from orks and gen cult basically with some touch of Star Wars rebels.

A human faction that isn't part of the imperium or chaos, it would be really cool IMHO.

 some bloke wrote:

mrFickle wrote:

I don’t think I would like to o see dark tau. I think the whole creating a chaos version of a faction rather than coming up with something new has been done to death. Although saying that I really want a dark Mechanicus codex and a cultists/chaos guard codex haha

I was suggesting a different style of "dark", where it's due to their belief tha te Tau should rule the galaxy and not because they have succumbed to chaos. So they are the bad guys, but there's no chaos god taking the credit.

That’s a nice idea, as all empires expand this kind of thing happens. However is it possible in 40K for someone to go “dark” and not be at the mercy of the ruinous forces.

mrFickle wrote:

 some bloke wrote:

mrFickle wrote:

I don’t think I would like to o see dark tau. I think the whole creating a chaos version of a faction rather than coming up with something new has been done to death. Although saying that I really want a dark Mechanicus codex and a cultists/chaos guard codex haha

I was suggesting a different style of "dark", where it's due to their belief tha te Tau should rule the galaxy and not because they have succumbed to chaos. So they are the bad guys, but there's no chaos god taking the credit.

That’s a nice idea, as all empires expand this kind of thing happens. However is it possible in 40K for someone to go “dark” and not be at the mercy of the ruinous forces.

Yeah, I thought it seemed like a cool way to split Tau into a pair of armies akin to the Eldar/ Dark Eldar, so you have the "for the greater good" tau and then you have the "crush the infidels" type ones backed up with illegal AI, who are utterly baffled as to why the Tau have renounced them when all they want to do is expand the tau empire.

What I sometimes thought would be interesting (but I'm reeaaaaly unsure how you could organize that from a rules point of view) would be a loose coalition of smaller Xenos just fighting for survival in between the major powers. It touches a bit on the T'au idea of integrating smaller alien species into their empire and the "Mercenary faction" idea of miscallenous units. The difference would basically be that they neither fight for money nor have to be close by to the T'au Empire or share their views. They could be potential allies for T'au, but also allies of opportunity for most other factions.

I personally would find it interesting to have a faction that does not fight for (long term) galaxy dominance (Imperium, Chaos, eventually the T'au), the restoration of a glorious past (Necrons, Eldar), the lolz (Orks) or nomnom (Nidz) but just try to not get crushed in between all those other guys. It would also be a pretty wild Codex.

I've got a side project going with a zoat and his pet jokaero leading a small force of guardian and spindle drones.
I had considered throwing an ambull in as well but GW has killed that idea dead.

A variation on the [unaligned] mercenary faction, one guy and his personal retinue.

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

An idea that hasn't really been done would be the concept of nomads IN SPACE!

Basically a species of xenos that don't try to control any world (there's too much competition anyways) but simply travel from system to system in a big fleet of ramshackle ships, grab some ressources and let their herds graze from uninhabited planets, loot and scavenge when they can get away with it, do some trading when they run into civilized people, try not to get killed when they run into bloodthirsty nutjobs like the Imperium...

You barely even need to retcon anything to add them into the lore. Just pretend they've always been there but no one really paid attention to them until some charismatic leader united their tribes and pushed them to be more active in the galaxy. Less flight and more fight.

Another chaos faction.
I'm thinking Lost and the Damned.

There's actually a dirth of chaos factions.

You have something like 7 xenos factions, at least 8 Imperial factions but only something like 2 chaos factions. You do have Chaos Space Marine sub factions, but if we were to count those that would mean Imperials have even more factions.

So what I would like to see is another Chaos faction that serves as a analogue to Genestealer Cults or Imperial Guard, which is the past were the Lost and the Damned.

Other ideas are Crone World Eldar, Corrupted Tau, Dark Mechanicus, and Chaos worshipping xenos (maybe a Fimir equivalent?)

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

You have something like 7 xenos factions, at least 8 Imperial factions but only something like 2 chaos factions.

I think that's a pretty poor way of accounting it. You actually have 1 Orks faction, 2 Eldar factions, 1 Necrons faction - grouping them all into the bundle of "filthy xenos" is just imperial thinking!

You wouldn't look at Orks, Necrons and Tyranids and say "that army has more factions than chaos", would you? they are different armies!

Yes, the Imperium is heavily bloated faction-wise, and thinking of it as "Imperium, Chaos and Other" is a bad way to go when the "Other" section has all the variety!

That aside, It would be quite cool for there to be a Chaos faction which doesn't stem from corrupted imperium - maybe an "Anti-Tau" kind of theme in so far as fluff is concerned, not army style. An empire which gave itself to chaos for power and now launches a fresh assault on the enemies of chaos.

There have been many good factions before that have disapeared. One of those would be a good place to start. Mutants & Heretics, Kroot, Eldar Pirates Corsairs, Eldar Exodites, 13th company of the space wolves, etc. They brought back GSC and it was and stil is wonderfull! I actually miss the old Necrons where the wriaghts looked like actual metal ghostst.

Adaptions of current armies could be cool and not that hard to implement. Some necrons rules by rogue C'tan comes to mind.

If you want a completly new factions from GW then the Hruud are a good canidate. We know little about them, except they mess with time. You could say that Hruud migrations have increased and that is why they appear. You could explain it that they have traveled forwards in time, either from the past or from the future and they is how they suddenly apear in the galaxy.

Or you could do like a small inqisitorial band like 4th/5th edition. But instead lead by the all time favoret maggot men: Slaugth. They could be used with some special units, and then have converison kits for existing models, either xenos or human.

Regarding number of chaos factions there are several, are there not? Nurgle, Tzeench, the four demons, and vanilla chaos marines, so 7 chaos factions.

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

Having just built one () I agree. Can use it as more than a display piece. You could easily integrate them into any force like with the rules they had in the 3rd ed Creature Feature, though I feel in today's 40k they would need to be toned down considerably. Lil' Timmy don't want his knight took over mid game by his opponent. Can't be having that!


As for other factions, I'll give my usual answer for this. (In no particular order), you can have the Rak'Gol. They are fleshed out somewhat in the FFG RPG and tickle a niche that GW proper don't seem to touch on that much. Chaos worshipping Xenos. Here's my Kill Team of them to give a nice visual aide

Tau auxiliaries. Just a whole codex of them, throw in whatever. GW are already doing this to an extent with the BSF stuff, which now does not break your Battleforged status if you include Unaligned units in your army, unlike before. That way you can do a whole merc book, just not necessarily just for Tau and everyone (to an extent) can use them.

As the OP hinted at, why are there not more pocket fiefdoms etc. that have took advantage of the fustercluck that occurred when The Rift opened? If GW wants to have a progressing "story" over a setting, then they need to take advantage of that (much like they do in AoS). Races like the Barghesi, which were kept in check by several SM chapters that were specifically stationed there to keep them contained? Who's to say in the opening of The Rift they took advantage of the Imperium being distracted and broke free?

Then you can have other minor races like the Slaugth, the K'nib (give us more non humanoid factions!) and the Stryxis. I know most, if not any of these won't happen but I can hope.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Tiennos wrote:
An idea that hasn't really been done would be the concept of nomads IN SPACE!

Basically a species of xenos that don't try to control any world (there's too much competition anyways) but simply travel from system to system in a big fleet of ramshackle ships, grab some ressources and let their herds graze from uninhabited planets, loot and scavenge when they can get away with it, do some trading when they run into civilized people, try not to get killed when they run into bloodthirsty nutjobs like the Imperium...

You barely even need to retcon anything to add them into the lore. Just pretend they've always been there but no one really paid attention to them until some charismatic leader united their tribes and pushed them to be more active in the galaxy. Less flight and more fight.

You've just described the Stryxis there, which I name dropped in my post.

 Grimtuff wrote:

 Tiennos wrote:
An idea that hasn't really been done would be the concept of nomads IN SPACE!

Basically a species of xenos that don't try to control any world (there's too much competition anyways) but simply travel from system to system in a big fleet of ramshackle ships, grab some ressources and let their herds graze from uninhabited planets, loot and scavenge when they can get away with it, do some trading when they run into civilized people, try not to get killed when they run into bloodthirsty nutjobs like the Imperium...

You barely even need to retcon anything to add them into the lore. Just pretend they've always been there but no one really paid attention to them until some charismatic leader united their tribes and pushed them to be more active in the galaxy. Less flight and more fight.

You've just described the Stryxis there, which I name dropped in my post.

Huh... Didn't know about these guys. That's a pretty obscure race, but they seem interesting.

 some bloke wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

You have something like 7 xenos factions, at least 8 Imperial factions but only something like 2 chaos factions.

I think that's a pretty poor way of accounting it. You actually have 1 Orks faction, 2 Eldar factions, 1 Necrons faction - grouping them all into the bundle of "filthy xenos" is just imperial thinking!

You wouldn't look at Orks, Necrons and Tyranids and say "that army has more factions than chaos", would you? they are different armies!

Yes, the Imperium is heavily bloated faction-wise, and thinking of it as "Imperium, Chaos and Other" is a bad way to go when the "Other" section has all the variety!

That aside, It would be quite cool for there to be a Chaos faction which doesn't stem from corrupted imperium - maybe an "Anti-Tau" kind of theme in so far as fluff is concerned, not army style. An empire which gave itself to chaos for power and now launches a fresh assault on the enemies of chaos.

Pretty sure that's how GW categorized it. Its either Xeno, Chaos or Imperial. Xeno really is just an other category.

If you really want to break it down, we have
4 Eldar Factions (Craftworld, Dark, Ynnari, Harlequin, the latter two are barely developed),
1 Ork faction (Grot rebels would be nice),
1 Tau faction (should really be a second one to account for the auxiliaries, which more or less got forgotten in favor of big dumb suits),
1 Necron faction (Could be divided further to account for oddities like the Severed and possible C'tan loyalists. Going to need a lot more development though, or else you get a half-baked army like Ynnari. You can probably do that anyway with the rules in the book),
2 Tyranid factions (Tyranid proper and Genestealer Cults)

A Norsca analogue would be cool. Could be a bunch of forgotten fringe worlds outside of Imperial influence that fell under Chaos influence, that finally got unified into a cohesive force and begin raiding Imperial space. Think the United Federation of Planets, except they worship Space-Satan(s). Extra points if they look completely normal at first, until you see the blood stained altar carved with demonic runes on the city plaza.
I never really liked how Chaos was openly evil. Kind of an odd recruitment policy, really.
"Hey, join us, we have cookies"
"Um, that guy has his own face stapled to his crotch and is on fire"
"Yeah, but cookies tho"

The evil stuff should be more subtle, imo. Just a few touches here and there instead of going full Cannibal Corpse album cover.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Niiai wrote:
There have been many good factions before that have disapeared. One of those would be a good place to start. Mutants & Heretics, Kroot, Eldar Pirates Corsairs, Eldar Exodites, 13th company of the space wolves, etc. They brought back GSC and it was and stil is wonderfull! I actually miss the old Necrons where the wriaghts looked like actual metal ghostst.

Adaptions of current armies could be cool and not that hard to implement. Some necrons rules by rogue C'tan comes to mind.

If you want a completly new factions from GW then the Hruud are a good canidate. We know little about them, except they mess with time. You could say that Hruud migrations have increased and that is why they appear. You could explain it that they have traveled forwards in time, either from the past or from the future and they is how they suddenly apear in the galaxy.

Or you could do like a small inqisitorial band like 4th/5th edition. But instead lead by the all time favoret maggot men: Slaugth. They could be used with some special units, and then have converison kits for existing models, either xenos or human.

Regarding number of chaos factions there are several, are there not? Nurgle, Tzeench, the four demons, and vanilla chaos marines, so 7 chaos factions.

Demons are all in their own book, aren't they? Death Guard and Thousand Sons are just Chaos Space Marine sub-factions. If we include them we have to include all of the Space Marine sub-faction codices too, and that's just silly.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Another chaos faction.
I'm thinking Lost and the Damned.

There's actually a dirth of chaos factions.

You have something like 7 xenos factions, at least 8 Imperial factions but only something like 2 chaos factions. You do have Chaos Space Marine sub factions, but if we were to count those that would mean Imperials have even more factions.

So what I would like to see is another Chaos faction that serves as a analogue to Genestealer Cults or Imperial Guard, which is the past were the Lost and the Damned.

Other ideas are Crone World Eldar, Corrupted Tau, Dark Mechanicus, and Chaos worshipping xenos (maybe a Fimir equivalent?)

I think it shouldn't be difficult create at least 5 Chaos codexes: the "Imperial Renegades" codex, with all the Chaos Space Marine legions and the Imperial Guard regiments which don't worship any particular Chaos God (whit the possibility to create a different codex for each Chaos Space Marine Legion and a codex for the Chaos Imperial Guard in a second time), the "Cult of Nurgle", the "Cult of Khorne", the "Cult of Slaneesh" and the "Cult of Tzeentch" codexes, focused on the demons and the cultists (both humans than xenos) of a particular God. Obviously it would be good to have also a codex for xenos who worship the Chaos undivided, but I don't love the idea to have a codex for the corrupted Adeptus Mechanicus: I prefer see them like an order only apparently loyal to the Emperor of Mankind, but that actually it pursues its own secret agenda, so there are also some (only officially corrupted) Mechanicus among the Chaos forces.

I agree that chaos are totally unrepresented on the Table top. There are som many demon worlds and crime world with big populations of humans and other xenos etc out there but chaos is really on represented by the black legion and denons

Uuuuummm... Thousand Sons and Death Guard say hi. Although I will admit that Daemons could use a little love.

Mercenaries/Pirates would be cool.

Between Ork Freebootas, Kroot Mercenaries, Rogue Traders, Chaos Reavers and Eldar Corsairs there's a slightly buccaneering version of every 'superfaction' except Tyranids and Necrons.

A combined force would be cool, and quite interesting.

 Super Ready wrote:
Uuuuummm... Thousand Sons and Death Guard say hi. Although I will admit that Daemons could use a little love.

Both of which are a variation of Marine.
When it comes to Chaos you have a choice of marines with a cannon fodder option (cultists in CSM, zombies in DG, Tzaangors in TS) and demons. Compare this to every other faction and that seems a little limited.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Demons are all in their own book, aren't they? Death Guard and Thousand Sons are just Chaos Space Marine sub-factions. If we include them we have to include all of the Space Marine sub-faction codices too, and that's just silly.

Depends a lot on how you break things down. For example:

Major faction - marines, chaos marines, eldar, orks, etc etc. Lots of models and units.
Minor faction - thousand sons, sisters, genestealers, harlies, GK, etc. More limited range due to either being new or long neglected.
Kind of a faction - deathwatch, inquisition, salamanders, ynnari, etc. A handful of models either bolted onto another line or allied to one.
Paint and shoulderpads - goff orks, night lords, and so on. Just a chapter tactic and relic, if that.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
When it comes to Chaos you have a choice of marines with a cannon fodder option (cultists in CSM, zombies in DG, Tzaangors in TS) and demons. Compare this to every other faction and that seems a little limited.

Quite a few factions you can compare that to favourably. The 'newest' on the block for instance - sisters - are still rocking their single troops choice after seven editions in the game. And model wise you have factions like deathwatch that consist of one squad, one vehicle, and two character models.

 Grimtuff wrote:


Tau auxiliaries. Just a whole codex of them, throw in whatever. GW are already doing this to an extent with the BSF stuff, which now does not break your Battleforged status if you include Unaligned units in your army, unlike before. That way you can do a whole merc book, just not necessarily just for Tau and everyone (to an extent) can use them.

This is how the Tau should have progressed. I hate the battlesuit mecha gundam armies that they have now.

The numerous Tau auxiliaries would have been an awesome way for GW to add different or out there xenos. I would have loved an army codex that gives you unlimited choice for different auxiliaries. The conversion options would be terrific. The lore would be enjoyable and the ability to totally change your armies play style based on that would be great.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

 Super Ready wrote:
Uuuuummm... Thousand Sons and Death Guard say hi. Although I will admit that Daemons could use a little love.

Both of which are a variation of Marine.
When it comes to Chaos you have a choice of marines with a cannon fodder option (cultists in CSM, zombies in DG, Tzaangors in TS) and demons. Compare this to every other faction and that seems a little limited.

You're determined to block Chaos Knights from your memory, aren't you?

To be fair, I forgot about Knights too. Good point, though.
And yeah, I can accept that Chaos Marines in different flavours might not feel all that unique. Still, I can't justify the notion that Chaos is "under-served" next to anyone except the Imperium.

*However*. Getting back to the topic - if we were to add a new Chaos faction? I would rather see something that isn't a dark or evil version of another army that's already there. We've got Chaos Marines, Dark Eldar, Chaos Knights, and bringing back Heretics and Renegades would have to be a heck of a write-up to come across as anything other than just Guard-gone-bad.

...instead, I reckon a new Chaos God oughta do it. Maybe retcon the Cicatrix Maledictum into the birth of a new one? It's not like that's not how the Eye of Terror came about after all. Seeing as it was Abaddon's crusades that brought it about, maybe a God of Vengeance? While that might sound like it's overlapping into Khorne and perhaps Tzeentch's territory, part of Chaos fluff is that the Gods will often try to claim many things for themselves that the others might have claim over too.

locarno24 wrote:
Mercenaries/Pirates would be cool.

Between Ork Freebootas, Kroot Mercenaries, Rogue Traders, Chaos Reavers and Eldar Corsairs there's a slightly buccaneering version of every 'superfaction' except Tyranids and Necrons.

A combined force would be cool, and quite interesting.

There was a pirate army sheet published in a white dwarf during 2nd Ed. Someone will have a copy

Hrud would be an option.

Like space marines that are twice as large as a space marine and are twice as space mariney as your average space marine... Just think of that sweet sweet $$$$ GW!

I would be all in for a Kroot faction and a Renegade and Heretic faction. I have developped also personnaly developped three fandex for new xenos species: one being basically evil space dwarves, the other being a "humanist, democratic and universalist" species of plant-like people and the last ones being a vampiric, sometime Chaos worship squid-like alien.

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/745885.page

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/747150.page

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/746129.page

PS: got to uptade them for 9th at some point. They are still stuck in 7th.