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for the last several editions, GW has been on a pretty big kick for adding new factions to the game. we've gotten AdMech, Custodes, a real SoB army, plus multiple new chaos armies, and even a new xenos faction. but that makes me think, everything we've gotten so far has been rooted in the lore; however, there's only so much established lore which easily lends will to factions that they can do this with. so what do you think is coming next in the future of 40 factions? any obscure niches you think might get explored? any new concepts you wish would get added? let's ignore all the factions that could use further updates and assume that GW will get to them in due time

for my part, I'd love to see an expansion of rogue traders and their entourages into a more full army, even if it just stays part of the Agents codex. we've got the one box, but it's all monopose, so a generic rogue trader kit with options (even if it's only a few) would be very welcome

Dark Mechanicum, Traitor Guard, Emperor's Children and Exodites come to my mind. Those are the more established factions big enough to make a distinct army out of them.

Exodites are a good shout.we've had a bit of traitor guard in the past from forge world, and EC seem to be coming soon, but Exodites really have not had any representation in the game over the last 30 years

a_typical_hero wrote:Dark Mechanicum, Traitor Guard, Emperor's Children and Exodites come to my mind. Those are the more established factions big enough to make a distinct army out of them.

Pretty much my thoughts exactly.

StudentOfEtherium wrote:Exodites are a good shout.we've had a bit of traitor guard in the past from forge world, and EC seem to be coming soon, but Exodites really have not had any representation in the game over the last 30 years

Exodites get name dropped not infrequently, and have been part of the lore for a long time. Sure, there have not been minis, but they are hardly forgotten. There is also enough design space with them that you could flesh out a decent sized model range.

There have been Exodite minis, just not in 40k. They had knights in Epic.

Arbites are another option that had an army list back in 2nd and 3rd. I can see them being rolled into an Agents book, but they do have enough units described in the lore to fill out a whole book if GW really wanted to:
Judge (HQ)
Boltgun squad, shotgun squad, shield and baton squad
Cyber mastiffs and handlers
Bikers
Support squads with heavy weapons
I'm pretty sure Arbites sniper units are a thing
Chimera, Rhino, Repressor (this can be a dual kit with Sisters, although GW is moving away from cross-faction kits), Valkyrie
Tarantula sentry guns.
That is without anything new, I'm sure GW would invent a few new characters and probably some vehicle or two if they went this route.

Fully bring back first/real/trueMarines obviously. Split them into their own codex and let the Primaris fumble about on their own.

 Insectum7 wrote:
Fully bring back first/real/trueMarines obviously. Split them into their own codex and let the Primaris fumble about on their own.

New armies.
Not expansions to the biggest army in the game.

I'll echo Dark Mech! There's a lot of cool potential there.

Most of the obvious ones have been said already, but there are a couple more minor ones that could get armies with some expansion to ideas and concepts.

Hrud:
They look like something out of a Lovecraftian nightmare and essentially fight by aging their enemies to dust. It's not their only recourse however as they are constantly scavenging technology to use since they by nature age anything that is not them into obsolesce even when not trying to.
I think that this could mechanically be a very interesting and different army, focusing on debuffs and time. Perhaps they start the game weak, but over time the enemy units are debuffed where the game starts to swing on turn 3. Most would have to be army wide so that it's easier to track, but characters could put out specific ones.
It would play kind of similar to Death Guard, but with more of a Kauyon stile gradient. It's hard to get right as a detachment in an army, but if you built an army around it, it would work well.

The Rangdan:
They were the largest threat to the Imperium during the Great Crusade and while we're told they were wiped out, they thought that two other times, only to find more of them. There could have been a small group that escaped and has been growing in power over the last 10,000 years.
We know very little about them, so mechanically they could work in whatever design space GW wants to put in, but the lore fans would go nuts over seeing them come to the table.

Subsets of the Greater Good:
I absolutely think that there is enough design space for Kroot to become their own faction with an ability to ally with Tau units. Having a Greater Good Supertype like Imperium, Chaos, ect would be a great way to expand armies.

On that topic you could have the Tau coalition Vespid, Nicusar, Demiurg, ect either be part of Tau proper or get their own league style army similar to Imperial Agents but for the Great Good faction.

 JNAProductions wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
Fully bring back first/real/trueMarines obviously. Split them into their own codex and let the Primaris fumble about on their own.

New armies.

OP mentioned SOBs. They're not new, rather "newly refurbished".

Release new Mk7 kits with updated scaling, and a new, separated codex for us players traditionale.

I mean, do the other stuff too. Dark Mechanicus, etc. But I bet there are a number of people who would buy updated Mk VIIs and would like to ignore Primaris units.

Rangdan are possibly active in 40k- they may be the same species as the Slaught. They would be a pretty cool addition.

Demiurg have already been fleshed out, they are an aspect of the Leagues of Votann.

I want to see firstborn return as well. even if they have to re-emerge as Blackshields

What else? Ive always wanted to see Slann make a reappearance. Also, I'd like to see some sort of human faction which is not a part of the IoM. Such models would add much kitbash potential to existing factions as well. Call them "Credo" or whatever hehehe!

Blood Pact come to mind

None. The field is too crowded as is.

 Kanluwen wrote:
None. The field is too crowded as is.

if you don't have an answer, you don't need to say anything

 Tawnis wrote:
Most of the obvious ones have been said already, but there are a couple more minor ones that could get armies with some expansion to ideas and concepts.

Hrud:
They look like something out of a Lovecraftian nightmare and essentially fight by aging their enemies to dust. It's not their only recourse however as they are constantly scavenging technology to use since they by nature age anything that is not them into obsolesce even when not trying to.
I think that this could mechanically be a very interesting and different army, focusing on debuffs and time. Perhaps they start the game weak, but over time the enemy units are debuffed where the game starts to swing on turn 3. Most would have to be army wide so that it's easier to track, but characters could put out specific ones.
It would play kind of similar to Death Guard, but with more of a Kauyon stile gradient. It's hard to get right as a detachment in an army, but if you built an army around it, it would work well.

The Rangdan:
They were the largest threat to the Imperium during the Great Crusade and while we're told they were wiped out, they thought that two other times, only to find more of them. There could have been a small group that escaped and has been growing in power over the last 10,000 years.
We know very little about them, so mechanically they could work in whatever design space GW wants to put in, but the lore fans would go nuts over seeing them come to the table.

Subsets of the Greater Good:
I absolutely think that there is enough design space for Kroot to become their own faction with an ability to ally with Tau units. Having a Greater Good Supertype like Imperium, Chaos, ect would be a great way to expand armies.

On that topic you could have the Tau coalition Vespid, Nicusar, Demiurg, ect either be part of Tau proper or get their own league style army similar to Imperial Agents but for the Great Good faction.

all of these would be great. Nicusar in particular is something i hope to see in model form one of these days

Dark Mech and Exodites would probably be my big two, with Traitor Guard/LatD in third spot.

Bonus points if we can trade in the Tau to get those.

 StudentOfEtherium wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:
None. The field is too crowded as is.

if you don't have an answer, you don't need to say anything

It is an answer and a fairly valid one, balance and release cycles are a nightmare as-is, so I can see "none please" as a valid response to adding more.

Dudeface wrote:

 StudentOfEtherium wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:
None. The field is too crowded as is.

if you don't have an answer, you don't need to say anything

It is an answer and a fairly valid one, balance and release cycles are a nightmare as-is, so I can see "none please" as a valid response to adding more.

I agree that we have too many factions, but would also like to see some new ones.

We do sometimes see consolidation. Black Templar and Harlequins were rolled back into their main books. Special marine chapters are down to supplements instead of full codexes. Skitarri/AdMech merged. There are a few ways they could wrap a few more together to give us some space for more armies.

Exodites could join the harlequins in the craftworld codex.
I think traitor guard has enough different from loyalists to need a seperate book, but they might be able to do it as a supplement. But they have a lot more then “spiky guard” going on.
Dark Mech might be able to be a subset of the main chaos army? There are already a lot of demon engines there? But with Vashtor a big player in the latest lore, and enough things to differentiate them, they probably could use their own book
EC need their own book to join the other 3 god legions. Once established, I could see GW cutting the straight demon codex and switching to a system similar to AoS.

If GW punches the reset button again for codexs they could include all the new armies suggested, and keep the book count the same. But changing horses mid-stream is probably not a good idea.

 Nevelon wrote:

I agree that we have too many factions, but would also like to see some new ones.

We do sometimes see consolidation. Black Templar and Harlequins were rolled back into their main books. Special marine chapters are down to supplements instead of full codexes. Skitarri/AdMech merged. There are a few ways they could wrap a few more together to give us some space for more armies.

Black Templars are getting a codex supplement...and I'm not sure why we're pretending like the "return to supplements" is a good thing? It's given us the nonsense of supplement books that get to pull from the main book and their own book when it comes to detachments.

Skitarii/AdMech got merged at the start of 8th. Not sure why we're treating it like that's some recent development...especially given the headaches it's caused each edition.

Exodites could join the harlequins in the craftworld codex.

Counterpoint:
Harlequins should be removed from the Craftworld book, as should Corsairs. Harlequins and Corsairs are the "bridge the gap" factions of the Aeldari family. Harlequin, Corsairs, and Ynnari would benefit from being done up in "Agents of the Imperium" style.

Exodites are traditionally hostile towards Drukhari. They'd make sense in that Craftworld spot.

I think traitor guard has enough different from loyalists to need a seperate book, but they might be able to do it as a supplement. But they have a lot more then “spiky guard” going on.

They really don't. Traitor Guard are Traitor Guard. You're conflating the concept of "The Lost and the Damned", which was the grouping of all of the non-Astartes stuff, with Traitor Guard.

Traitor Guard stuff is in the CSM book right now. It's not enough to build an entire army certainly, but why do we need to let another "Guard but Not Guard" faction exist?

Dark Mech might be able to be a subset of the main chaos army? There are already a lot of demon engines there? But with Vashtor a big player in the latest lore, and enough things to differentiate them, they probably could use their own book

Again: These elements we have are part of CSM now, and belong to the overall concept of "The Lost and the Damned". The stuff one would expect for Dark Mechanicus wouldn't fit in a single spot. It would have to be split amongst the various books, because you've got all quite a few different concepts going on in that vein.

EC need their own book to join the other 3 god legions. Once established, I could see GW cutting the straight demon codex and switching to a system similar to AoS.

Frankly, you could see the writing on the wall back with Khorne Daemonkin.

Why the rollout is seemingly taking so long is anyone's guess.

If GW punches the reset button again for codexs they could include all the new armies suggested, and keep the book count the same. But changing horses mid-stream is probably not a good idea.

Who cares about the book count? Some things just don't need to be dedicated armies.

We don't get a Codex: Planetary Defence Force or Tempestus Scions, but we're supposed to get a Codex: Arbites? Codex: Traitor Guard? Can't get a C: Skitarii, but we're supposed to have a C: Dark Mechanicus?

There's an argument to be made for more "<Insert Thematic Name Here>" superbooks, akin to the concept of Agents of the Imperium, aimed at Aeldari and Chaos.

There really isn't a valid one to be made for dumping out more codices or doing more cross-faction silliness. GSC+Brood Brothers is a mess and showcases just how horribly bad this current crop of designers are at balance and creativity.

I prefer supplements to standalone codexes because it helps keeps shared units uniform. I’d honestly prefer marines just to be paintjobs, and let army selection show what chapter you have, but decades of flanderization have made that pretty impossible to get back into pandora’s box.

I love the concept of “agents of xx” books. There are a lot of little units out there that don’t need a whole book. Obviously the Imperium has the lion’s share, but as you point out Eldar Could be done. Light/dark/grey. And there are enough random chaos things to fill a tome. Lost and the Damned would be a good umbrella to collect them all under.

In my ideal world the guard codex would have a lengthy appendix for auxiliary human forces fighting for other non-imperial factions. So traitor guard, local PDFs, gu’vessa, brood brothers. Add units/rules to let them hook onto other factions. Probably end up with something like the 30k militia list. That kind of flexability goes against the modern GW NMNR philosophy in 40k, so unlikely to happen.

 Nevelon wrote:
I prefer supplements to standalone codexes because it helps keeps shared units uniform. I’d honestly prefer marines just to be paintjobs, and let army selection show what chapter you have, but decades of flanderization have made that pretty impossible to get back into pandora’s box.

Flanderization gets thrown around a lot, but bluntly that has not been the issue. The issue has been that they chose to emphasize the skew of a few of those Chapters instead of the 'day to day' bits. Dark Angels could easily be in the Codex, as could Blood Angels. Wolves could stand to keep a full, standalone Codex to bring them back to what they were. Black Templars and Imperial Fists+ Successors could easily be broken off into their own setup as well since the Crusader Squads are supposed to be not uncommon in that family tree.

In an ideal world, Marines would be treated like Chaos Marines: A 'primary' book encompassing the basic treatments of the Big Founders, then 4 books tops situated around the idea of different elements. Wolves as the pairing to World Eaters, Dark Angels paired to Thousand Sons, Blood Angels to Emperor's Children, and BT+IF to Death Guard.

I love the concept of “agents of xx” books. There are a lot of little units out there that don’t need a whole book. Obviously the Imperium has the lion’s share, but as you point out Eldar Could be done. Light/dark/grey. And there are enough random chaos things to fill a tome. Lost and the Damned would be a good umbrella to collect them all under.

The ideal thing with this concept of "Agents of <thing here>" is to recognize that they shouldn't be able to be fielded as a full army, or if they're being fielded as so that you KNOW you're going in with a disadvantage.

In my ideal world the guard codex would have a lengthy appendix for auxiliary human forces fighting for other non-imperial factions. So traitor guard, local PDFs, gu’vessa, brood brothers. Add units/rules to let them hook onto other factions.

Counterpoint:
Let Guard be Guard. Brood Brothers should have been a unit in the GSC book, like how Traitor Guard were in CSM.

In my ideal world? CSM, GSC, and Tau would have had their PDF/Guard equivalent units baked in. They don't even have to actually be in the codex! You could just put the datacards into the pack, and give them a datasheet card in there explaining why those items, or what you the player can do to make things look different.

Probably end up with something like the 30k militia list. That kind of flexability goes against the modern GW NMNR philosophy in 40k, so unlikely to happen.

Except the flexibility happened with Brood Brothers, but not Traitor Guard? And they didn't even bother with Gue'vesa?

It's not that it goes against "NMNR". It's that the design team is wildly inconsistent.

Since you mention the 30k militia list, I'd point you towards Liber Imperium as the "best way" to go for Guard. There are certain items in Liber Imperium that are "Loyalist", meaning that they can't be fielded by a Traitor force. Adding a "Loyalist" keyword to certain Guard items would certainly ease my saltiness towards how pants on head messed up the Brood Brothers rules have been for the past two editions.


Additionally, in an ideal world we would see the Guard Codex expanded to include Planetary Defence Forces and stuff tied to them allowing for there to be an actual, meaningful distinction between the "Guard" and "Not-Guard" elements...opening up another avenue for things like Brood Brothers, Traitor Guard, and Gue'vesa to get more 'localized' variants. Things like the AT-70 "Reaver" pattern light tanks of Blood Pact fame and Tauros Venators & Tauros buggies for Traitor Guard & Brood Brothers.

Gue'vesa have had way too much flux in their lore to pin down a 'special' thing to go with them.

 Nevelon wrote:
I prefer supplements to standalone codexes because it helps keeps shared units uniform. I’d honestly prefer marines just to be paintjobs, and let army selection show what chapter you have, but decades of flanderization have made that pretty impossible to get back into pandora’s box.

I love the concept of “agents of xx” books. There are a lot of little units out there that don’t need a whole book. Obviously the Imperium has the lion’s share, but as you point out Eldar Could be done. Light/dark/grey. And there are enough random chaos things to fill a tome. Lost and the Damned would be a good umbrella to collect them all under.

In my ideal world the guard codex would have a lengthy appendix for auxiliary human forces fighting for other non-imperial factions. So traitor guard, local PDFs, gu’vessa, brood brothers. Add units/rules to let them hook onto other factions. Probably end up with something like the 30k militia list. That kind of flexability goes against the modern GW NMNR philosophy in 40k, so unlikely to happen.

I'm a big fan of more agents books. like you say, eldar and chaos both have a lot of great chances for that, but my pie-in-the-sky dream is for an Agents of the T'au book which includes all sorts of random xenos stuff that you can play in any non-Tyranid/GSC xenos army. some squat mercenaries, the kroot stuff, vespids, plus weirder stuff like the psychic bears that exist in T'au lore. maybe even make it out to be like the old Dogs of War books from fantasy, where you have unique mercenary regiments from various xenos species offering their services

A big book of unaligned stuff could be fun. Some of the old blackstone fortress things, kroot mercenaries and the like. The Tau have a bunch in their empire, but there are more out there.

There is a lot of space in the universe for non imperial/chaos stuff to hang out and have fun

Maybe for Kill Team, Newcromunda, or side games.

Not in 40k proper.

Before more armies turn up to push current stuff off the shelves, we could do with more ways to use what we have. Ork Freebooters in other armies. Guard conversion kits for Chaos to use more of them (like Genestealer Cult have). LoV could do with a few more models, currently coming out as Kill Team boxes.

For every new army, an existing one gets its updates pushed back. Look around for how many existing armies are begging for new models. So many kits have been missing from stock, such as Eldar Falcons (now back in, but for how long?)

I'm another who would not mind seeing new 40k armies for a while.

A Lost and the Damned book makes a lot of sense at this point and is low-hanging fruit. They are the most numerous followers of Chaos in real space by a large margin and feature in loads of the lore. They also have more official (GW, not FW) models than ever before, if the various cultists are rolled in (which they should be). Just from existing models, there are:
Cultists
Accursed cultists (mutants)
Chaos beastmen
Traitor guardsmen
The HQ cultist conclave thingy
Gellerpox
The flamer cultist character
The shooty BSF cultists

It is missing some big units, for which existing daemon engines are the only low-hanging fruit (defilers were in the LatD list back in the day). I doubt GW would release Chaos versions of Chimeras and Russes but could release a conversion kit.

Personally I think it would also be good to add the God-specific chaff too (poxwalkers, tzaangors, jakhals) but GW is moving away from that direction and it almost certainly won't happen.

PDF is reasonable from a lore perspective... but is largely just Guard but with less access to toys and the odd local alternative to a Guard unit. Exceptions exist but are uncommon. The only PDF army list GW has published (to my knowledge) was for the Armageddon PDF, and it was basically the standard Guard list with restricted Leman Russ variants, a requirement to take enclosed crew compartments, no abhumans or rough riders, and gained the gang militia unit as a troops choice (which is a local option that is common to hive worlds). Technically we also got the Cadian Defence Force list, but they really are indistinguishable from their Imperial Guard counterparts. I suppose you could have several PDF archetypes featuring different local units (gang militia for hive worlds, repurposed land crawlers on agri worlds etc.) but it is essentially the same list as Imperial Guard with a few extra militia-type units. Things like the AT-70 are very regional (wasn't that an Urdeshi vehicle only produced on that specific forge world?).

R&H/Traitor Guard would work in a similar vein to Brood Brothers IMO.

As has been mentioned there is already a fair whack of mortal Chaos units in the CSM Codex, the difficulty would be making it distinct from Brood Brothers because they are very similar.

 Gert wrote:
R&H/Traitor Guard would work in a similar vein to Brood Brothers IMO.

As has been mentioned there is already a fair whack of mortal Chaos units in the CSM Codex, the difficulty would be making it distinct from Brood Brothers because they are very similar.

Exactly how much difference are you expecting between a Guardsman in service to an overgrown Genestealer and a Guardsman sworn to Chaos?

I'm wondering if GW is slow-rolling out elements for a "Lost and the Damned" army at a future date? There are lots of units they can pull out of Chaos codexes and from Kill Team to form the backbone of the army and add yet another Chaos ally block along with Daemons and Chaos Knights:

Accursed Cultist
Cultist
Fellgor Ravagners (Kill Team)
Gellerpox Infected (Kill Team)
Pox Walkers
Traitor Guardsmen
Tzzangors

I was more meaning the rules-wise. The examples from the WarCom article for the Brood Brothers detachment would all fit a R&H/Traitor Guard force really well and the roles of the Brood Brothers are very similar to that of the Traitor Guard.
Both bring extra firepower and specialised units to a Cult roster such as tanks or artillery and both are more valuable than lowly Cultists.
I don't think it couldn't be done, I just think there would need to be steps to make them different enough for it to not just be a copy/paste job even if that would largely work out well.

Personally I'd welcome something like Eldar Exodites as something that just adds a new visual element to the game.

Yes its another Eldar force, but dinosaurs and such as war engines and replacements for vehicles is a huge change from anything else they do. I feel like it gives them a big new direction to take the design work for the faction in

Various demon or Imperial sub-armies are all very neat ideas and I can agree there are elements of "this could become its own army" setup. I could even see GW doing a Warpsmith themed army and then perhaps using that as an excuse to roll knights back into that instead of being their own army (though functionally they'd likely keep a knight-only option in the sub-armies of the codex; at least for one or two editions)



After that I'd honestly welcome GW doing what they did with the Squats - broaden the game. Something I feel with 40K is that the designers do fantastic work; but you can kind of see that the creative edge isn't quite there as it is with AoS, where the designers are much more free to get creative (at least I'd say until this recent Old World release where it feels like management threw a wrench into things by doubling down on "no duel armies across games" angle).


I've long hoped that a Tau Auxiliaries army, perhaps themed around a Kroot core, would be one way to add a lot of different minor xenos factions and races into the game under the alliance of being within the Tau empire. Whilst making them their own army gives them a lot more tactical room to add options without tripping over core Tau models that already do those roles. Let Tau be the mecha-focused army and Auxiliaries be the everything else for them.


Codex ZOATS - because you can't tease us for 2 Christmases and not give it to us! Then again GW has teased Exodites lore for decades and so far never released a single 40K scale model (perhaps barring one or two in the Rogue Trader days - even the Bright Stallion in Epic is utterly ancient

Heck even the Warhammer+ animation named Exodites was basically focused on the Tau and the only major Eldar element was titans not dinosaurs!