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Hi, I'm starting 40k and picked up some forces for Eldar and Orks (wanted two so I could have one to lend out), but I'm at a bit of an impasse with sub-factions.

Setting-wise, I like Craftworld Saim-Hann*, but I HATE their rules,** because they force me to play the same type of army every game. While I like Shining Spears and Howling Banshees, I don't want to be limited to just those two aspects because I'd be sabotaging myself by selecting anything else. These things change with editions, but it'd be even worse if a couple years from now Saim-Hann got flanderized into "The Jetbike Army." By comparison, Biel-Tan doesn't appeal to me, but their attribute is incomparably better because it doesn't require certain troop choices. So I guess what I'm asking is... how much of an issue is this? Tournament play has no appeal to me, so I figure I could just swap attributes, but it's nice to have "official" consistency. I could also create my own Craftworld, but there's a convenience to having pre-made decals, plus it seems more considerate to my opponents to use something they recognize. Is this a common complaint? Do people often use alternate subfaction rules or just forgo them altogether?

Most of this also goes for Orks. I'm leaning to Bad Moonz, but it seems like that also narrows my choices, if not to the same extent.

I'd prefer if subfaction rules were just a single effect (not a wall of text***) that didn't dictate your army composition, or, if that's not possible, that they just didn't exist at all. It's a minor thing, and "paint your models however you like," but it's still enough to discourage me from getting started.

*even though I think they have the worst-looking official color scheme out of the five codex Craftworlds
**re-roll charges. units that fall back may charge in the same turn.
***Hello, Ulthwe

I always advise doing your own paint scheme. You'll get something uniquely yours, and retain the freedom of deciding how to play them.

If you're having trouble coming up with a scheme, I'd just poke about the internet until you find something close or inspiring, then just go from there!

I'm a big fan of just using the rules that best fit your army and theme. Especially if you're not big on tournaments where you might have to worry about someone being confused by a Saim-Hann paint scheme with Biel-Tan rules or whatever.

Saim-Hann's big "thing" is just lots of skimmers, be they jetbikes, tanks, or whatever. So you might consider looking at the Far Flung craftworld options. Maybe grab Mobile Fighters so you can use whatever infantry you like coming out of transports. And then grab whatever other trait you feel represents the aspect of Saim-Hann that calls to you.

EDIT: In 8th edition, the eldar subfaction rules encouraged Iyanden players to spam lots of warm bodies, rewarded Biel-Tan players for taking lots of guardians instead of aspect warriors, and gave Saim-Hann a special rule that only benefitted vypers and scatterlaser jetbikes. Fluffy casual play is best served by ignoring which faction happens to have been assigned to a given set of craftworld attributes by GW.

I would highly recommend just going for your own paint scheme. That gives you the freedom to use whichever rules you want without someone getting upset about your elves having the wrong colour or the like. And as others have said, subfaction rules change and they're a fairly recent thing too. It used to not really exist for quite a while so I would just go with whatever you feel like using.

Any paint scheme should allow full rules freedom, even the gw official ones.

Rules related to paint jobs are stupid. If you don't indend to do tournament just play without subfaction rules and enjoy the freedom. Or pick subfactions freely if you really like the added rules layers.

On the other hand; having a system where you can just pick whichever extra rules give your specific army the most buffs isn't great either.

Subfractions rules shouldn't exist. Theme should come from painting/modelling, army composition, and playstyle, not a bunch of often arbitrary extra rules.

Most reasonable opponents won't care what rules your red, white and black Eldar are using, as long as you're clear about which it is, or if you want to play as Saim-Hann but with a less garish palette.

You can use the decals on different colour schemes as you see fit. There are official Ultramarine successors that just flip their decals upside down and put them on a different colour scheme.

Hopefully the overly complex subfaction system goes away with 10th.

But omega warriors power armour is split coloured between white and black. Their armour looks nothing like the blue of ultramarines.

Subfactions weren't a bad idea. They were a simple way to give your army a tactical theme. Be that close combat, ranged or psychic or such. The problem was when we shifted from armies being one single faction/subfaction to being able to field multiples as standard.

Suddenly players went from using a subfaction for a themed force - eg a close combat themed force. Toward using different subfactions for different parts of their army. The ranged would be in the ranged bonus subfaction, the close combat in the closecombat themed one.


Suddenly you had two or three different "armies" on the table at once and being able to tell them apart from each other was suddenly important.










Alongside that we've had Marines expand so that their subfactions are now unique models with their own codex (or now expansion codex). They are full armies in their own right with subfactions of their own; yet some would still try to field their single colour ultramarines with bloodangles where they'd all be the same colour.



Honestly the shift back toward mono-armies as standard should resolve the paint issue for most situations. It doesn't matter if your Hive Behemoth are in Tiamat colours because they are all Behemoth and all operate with the same subfaction rules and such.

Plus lets face it, even Marines people only konw the basic colour meanings - blue is Ultramarines etc.... Go past them and most people can't tell one subfaction paint scheme from another.

Some subfactions are very noticable, like space marines, chaos marines, eldar, etc. There are a lot that are not.

I haven't run in to issues playing my Saim-hann painted Eldar as different subfaction. Hell, most of the time when I tell people what weapons are on my Hornets or Wave Serpents, they don't know what they actually look like. A lot of eldar weapons being various assortments of vase-shapes. Or something else, for the slaanesh worshippers here.

 Lord Damocles wrote:


Subfractions rules shouldn't exist.

They don't, unless YOU choose to battle forge. Don't like' em? Don't battleforge. Problem solved... And solved without affecting people who DO like them. What do you know, an everyone wins scenario- awesome!

 Lord Damocles wrote:

Theme should come from painting/modelling, army composition, and playstyle, not a bunch of often arbitrary extra rules.

I think that people should be able to reflect their subfaction that way if they choose to, for sure. But a lot of people refer to that kind of approach as flanderization. OP doesn't want to have to represent Saim Hann by taking a disproportionate amount of bikes in every battle, even though that's how most of us would use army composition to demonstrate Saim Hann-ness.

 Lord Damocles wrote:
On the other hand; having a system where you can just pick whichever extra rules give your specific army the most buffs isn't great either.

Subfractions rules shouldn't exist. Theme should come from painting/modelling, army composition, and playstyle, not a bunch of often arbitrary extra rules.

I feel like we should have army theme rules that are divorced from subfaction and which focus more on creating an alternate playstyle than providing a raw power boost. So instead of having a shoot better rule and a stab better rule and a die slower rule, we should have roughly a page worth of rules that do things like substitute one army-wide mechanic for another or add wargear/squad options.

So instead of playing "Ulthwe," maybe I play a "Seer Support" army with benefits like:
* Lose Battle Focus, but gain Strands of Fate. (I'm picturing Strands of Fate and other doctrine-slot rules not being a thing in this hypothetical scenario.)
* Guardian defenders, storm guardians, and windrider squads may pay points to add a warlock to the unit. (Maybe a toned down warlock with fewer wounds and always-on powers like back in the day.)
* Farseers in the army may cast powers as though they were standing where an allied warlock or spirit seer is standing.
* Maybe convert the Eldritch Storm stratagem into an action they can do for free? Idk. Doesn't seem too unreasonable given how meh the various Orbital Bombardment type strats are.

^Compare those benefits to what Ulthwe gets now which are basically a combination killing things better, casting better, and dying slower. Lots of "do things more better" type rules that make Ulthwe more powerful but don't really change how the army plays or create interesting choices. Whereas the "seer support" rules suddenly adds pocket witchblades to units, gives you more opportunities to field psykers, and changes the way your psykers work by expanding the reach and angles of their powers. Plus, you're swapping out the Move-Shoot-Move evasiveness of Battle Focus for Strands of Fate.

And by not slapping the name of a craftworld on these "Seer Support" rules, players of any craftworld can feel more free to utilize them when they want to change up their playstyle for the day.

PenitentJake wrote:
They don't, unless YOU choose to battle forge. Don't like' em? Don't battleforge. Problem solved... And solved without affecting people who DO like them. What do you know, an everyone wins scenario- awesome!

"Don't play the game the way the vast majority of people expect it to be played" isn't really a viable solution. You might as well advocate playing the game with W3 tactical marines because you think your marines are too fragile.

I think that people should be able to reflect their subfaction that way if they choose to, for sure. But a lot of people refer to that kind of approach as flanderization. OP doesn't want to have to represent Saim Hann by taking a disproportionate amount of bikes in every battle, even though that's how most of us would use army composition to demonstrate Saim Hann-ness.

I get that some people love rules bloat but that doesn't mean it needs to be included in the game. Some things are just not healthy even if a few people desire them.

There's a tension between wanting to be true to the lore in your modeling and being competative. Hope you work it out. I know I'm still struggling.
Best advice I can give is if don't feel right then don't do it and to hell with the rules. Eg. don't paint your orks purple so you can choose which clan to be in any given game - if you don't really want to. Paint them as Bad Moons and if the Deathskulls rules will be the best thing for your army - but you can't bring yourself to pretend they are blue - it doesn't matter, either way.
This is also worth re-stating: you can make up your own rules if you want, and encourage others to do the same.

PenitentJake wrote:

 Lord Damocles wrote:


Subfractions rules shouldn't exist.

They don't, unless YOU choose to battle forge. Don't like' em? Don't battleforge. Problem solved... And solved without affecting people who DO like them. What do you know, an everyone wins scenario- awesome!
.

Ah yes. No cp for you either. And you autolose thus every game. Good solution.

The subfaction rules just break game balance and lead to non-fluffy armies(like all bike white scars and all melee ba's which is not how those fight. White scars core unit is guess what? Infantry in transport). Lose-lose all

Subfaction bonuses flander to min-maxers who want to crack most op free bonus rules to make most op army to reduce player skill from affecting game result.

 Lord Damocles wrote:
On the other hand; having a system where you can just pick whichever extra rules give your specific army the most buffs isn't great either.

Subfractions rules shouldn't exist. Theme should come from painting/modelling, army composition, and playstyle, not a bunch of often arbitrary extra rules.

Yeah but space wolves and blood angels are sub factions and it becomes blatant favouritism when they get to stay as their own factions but everyone else loses their equivalents.

 Hellebore wrote:
Yeah but space wolves and blood angels are sub factions and it becomes blatant favouritism when they get to stay as their own factions but everyone else loses their equivalents.

They shouldn't. There should be two marine books: one for all loyalist marines, one for all chaos marines + demons.

Aecus Decimus wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:
Yeah but space wolves and blood angels are sub factions and it becomes blatant favouritism when they get to stay as their own factions but everyone else loses their equivalents.

They shouldn't. There should be two marine books: one for all loyalist marines, one for all chaos marines + demons.

So like 30k/HH.
Hey, guess what though? In HH? Every legion still has it's own special rules. And that's to represent a time when the legions were more similar to each other than not.
Flash forward 10k years & everyone's drifted further apart. Some are following Guillimans "Codex", some are doing their own thing to various degrees, the traitors have spent 10k years mutating....

Meanwhile? Here in the real world? GW has learned a valuable lesson since releasing the original RT edition (where every one in a faction was the same to start with barring paint jobs): variation sell$. Different SM chapters, different Craftworlds, different Guard regiments, different Ork clans, etc etc etc.....

But if you really want everyone to be the same? Well then hop in your time machine, or (more likely) go pirate a copy of the RT books, & then convince your friends to play some retro 40k with you. Hope none of them plays any faction not dreamed up back then....
Oh yeah, and it ain't at all balanced.

PenitentJake wrote:
They don't, unless YOU choose to battle forge.

But most people do play battle forged games. Can we, for once, just admit that playing Battle Forged armies using points is the way the overwhelming majority of people play the game, and that "But if you don't battleforge it isn't a problem" isn't a helpful or even useful statement, about on par with "You can just ignore stratagems!" or "You can use Power Level instead!" or "Just use open play!".

It just comes across as intellectually dishonest - like you know full well what people are talking about, but are choosing to shove your head in the sand and not engage with the topic at hand at all.

That's all I'm saying.

 Hellebore wrote:

Yeah but space wolves and blood angels are sub factions and it becomes blatant favouritism when they get to stay as their own factions but everyone else loses their equivalents.

This starts to sound like politics from my part of the world. SW and BA have been a separate faction since 2ed. That is what 30+ years. I think that if something is something for majority of a things existances, then it probably is what it is, and isn't something else. And just because GW decided that the way to go is to make all marines buy two books instead of one to play their armies doesn't change that.

I was one of the people asking for the same support for ork clans as marines got for their chapters in the past.

After two editions with clan cultures, I must admit, I was wrong.

They add little to nothing to an army, create issues with linking paint to rules, and the vast majority actually fails at promoting armies that match a clan's fluff. On top of that, one or two cultures always eclipse the others and you kind of need to pick one of them to have a fighting chance in any sort of semi-competitive environment.
I'm fairly sure this is also true for many other pre-existing sub-factions like craftworlds or regiments, and GW making a up a bunch of subfactions for every army just to have a container for army-wide buffs was not a good thing either.

Chapter Tactics/Legion rules should be the marine's special rules, as they are heavily defined by having their primarch's strengths and flaws, just like the Waaagh!, Power from Pain or Orders were the defining rules rules for their respective armies

Giving chapter tactics to everyone also has forced GW to create combat doctrines for marines so they would have a "special thing" again, and I don't think there is anyone left arguing that those were a great idea either.

TL;DR: Sub-culture rules were a mistake should go away, chapters and legions should keep their traits as their one army special rule.

Ork Klanz having bad rules doesn't mean giving Klanz their own rules is a bad idea.

If you can't be bothered to read my posts, please stop responding to them.

 Hellebore wrote:

 Lord Damocles wrote:
On the other hand; having a system where you can just pick whichever extra rules give your specific army the most buffs isn't great either.

Subfractions rules shouldn't exist. Theme should come from painting/modelling, army composition, and playstyle, not a bunch of often arbitrary extra rules.

Yeah but space wolves and blood angels are sub factions and it becomes blatant favouritism when they get to stay as their own factions but everyone else loses their equivalents.

...? Space Wolves and Blood Angels (and Thousand Sons and Death Guard and World Eaters...) shouldn't get to stay as factions with arbitrarily different rules.

Karol wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:

Yeah but space wolves and blood angels are sub factions and it becomes blatant favouritism when they get to stay as their own factions but everyone else loses their equivalents.

This starts to sound like politics from my part of the world. SW and BA have been a separate faction since 2ed. That is what 30+ years. I think that if something is something for majority of a things existances, then it probably is what it is, and isn't something else. And just because GW decided that the way to go is to make all marines buy two books instead of one to play their armies doesn't change that.

The ork klans have been distinct factions since 1st edition.

Lord Damocles wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:

 Lord Damocles wrote:
On the other hand; having a system where you can just pick whichever extra rules give your specific army the most buffs isn't great either.

Subfractions rules shouldn't exist. Theme should come from painting/modelling, army composition, and playstyle, not a bunch of often arbitrary extra rules.

Yeah but space wolves and blood angels are sub factions and it becomes blatant favouritism when they get to stay as their own factions but everyone else loses their equivalents.

...? Space Wolves and Blood Angels (and Thousand Sons and Death Guard and World Eaters...) shouldn't get to stay as factions with arbitrarily different rules.

I mean I agree, but it's clear that there are many people who consider marines to get special exceptionalist treatment so never get included in this discussion. My point is to highlight that to those people who think no one else should get factions but it's ok for BA and SW to stay separate.

Removing sub-factions is treating the symptom. It would resolve none of the game's core problems and only make game more boring as a result.

 Hellebore wrote:
The ork klans have been distinct factions since 1st edition..

As have CSM Legions.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Removing sub-factions is treating the symptom. It would resolve none of the game's core problems and only make game more boring as a result.

It would absolutely resolve some of the core problems. 40k's biggest problem is rules bloat and a big part of that bloat is the need to give every sub-faction its own special rules. Get rid of that entire layer of rules and you make a good start on fixing the bloat.

IMO, the rules bloat doesn't come from subfaction rules per se, but the fact that they often get dispersed over a handful of books and publications over a period of several years. For example, all of the stuff for Chaos Space Marines in Vigilus Ablaze, Faith and Fury and War of the Spider was great, but it should all have been in the CSM codex from the very beginning. The small booklet featuring the rules for the models that came during the Shadowspear period should have been published separately and that's it, not a brand-new edition of the codex printed. Same with this edition and the Terminus Est rules, which should have been in the Death Guard codex at the beginning. Putting all of these rules in the respective codices at the beginning of an edition I think would make them seem a lot less like bloat.

Aecus Decimus wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Removing sub-factions is treating the symptom. It would resolve none of the game's core problems and only make game more boring as a result.

It would absolutely resolve some of the core problems. 40k's biggest problem is rules bloat and a big part of that bloat is the need to give every sub-faction its own special rules. Get rid of that entire layer of rules and you make a good start on fixing the bloat.

You're not wrong, but you would lose a fair bit of army customization, and there are other rules layers that I'd rather put on the chopping block first. I'm fine with ditching/overhauling the subfaction rules (see above), but I think the game would be better served by ditching doctrines and most (or even all) stratagems. I feel like there's way more complexity and wonky side-effects to be found there than in the subfaction traits. Especially for marines who add an extra layer on with their chapter-specific supplements.

I like the idea of being able to choose special rules to personalize my army on a level below the codex, but I don't love how subfactions have been handled so far.

Thanks for the replies to everyone here. It seems that it's pretty common to disregard the OFFICIAL rules for subfactions, then? I agree with all the sentiment about "Duh, just paint it however you like!" but the narrative element is important to me, and have to admit I'd be at least a little annoyed facing someone with a Death Korps army but claiming "Actually, these are [insert different subfaction], even though I said they were [insert other different subfaction] last week." At that point it's better to just forgo subfac rules altogether.

Wyldhunt wrote:Saim-Hann's big "thing" is just lots of skimmers, be they jetbikes, tanks, or whatever. So you might consider looking at the Far Flung craftworld options. Maybe grab Mobile Fighters so you can use whatever infantry you like coming out of transports. And then grab whatever other trait you feel represents the aspect of Saim-Hann that calls to you.

EDIT: In 8th edition, the eldar subfaction rules encouraged Iyanden players to spam lots of warm bodies, rewarded Biel-Tan players for taking lots of guardians instead of aspect warriors, and gave Saim-Hann a special rule that only benefitted vypers and scatterlaser jetbikes. Fluffy casual play is best served by ignoring which faction happens to have been assigned to a given set of craftworld attributes by GW.

Good to know. The appeal of Saim-Hann for me is being tied in with the whole Wild Hunt mythological theme, and being more barbarous, less attached to the path system than the other Craftworlds. I was coming up with an idea for my own Craftworld, but so much of it already matched with Saim-Hann, that it'd be sorta redundant. The existing CW-attribute matches this, but is just too restrictive. I like fast-moving, hard-hitting melee, but not so much that anything that doesn't have a built-in charge bonus becomes the "wrong" choice.

Gitdakka wrote:Rules related to paint jobs are stupid. If you don't indend to do tournament just play without subfaction rules and enjoy the freedom. Or pick subfactions freely if you really like the added rules layers.

I agree, but the problem with using whatever subfac rules you feel like is that it facilitates powergaming and completely contradicts the intention of including them in the first place. (as Damocles pointed out)

Asmodai wrote:Most reasonable opponents won't care what rules your red, white and black Eldar are using, as long as you're clear about which it is, or if you want to play as Saim-Hann but with a less garish palette.

Nah, Saim-Hann's official scheme isn't too garish (the 2nd edition Eldar Codex cover is what drew me in the first place); it's too monochrome. Also, Biel-Tan gets the thorns motif, Ulthwe gets cool lightning, Saim-Hann gets... black lines? chevrons? I'm thinking of decorating vehicles with asymmetrical Celtic knotwork, if I can pull it off.