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Just wanted to provide a blank canvas to everyone on what they would create if given the opportunity to create a new faction/army/or model range.

I'll give an example:

Chaos Tyranids.

A Tyranid Fleet enters the warp and is changed by noshing on too many daemon worlds.

The aesthetic of the army will still be mostly bio-mechanical, but with less smooth tyranid features and more grotesque anomalies and weapons created out of warpstuff...
and yes, spikes and horns.

The hive-mind is no longer in control, as Daemons are feasting upon the psychic will of the Tyranids. Thus, the army will play differently from regular Tyranids.

You have smaller (think msu) units, with more individuality across the army, so you can customize your tyranids, and they don't all look the same... and Chaos Champion tyranids with different marks that make them and their units act and play differently.

I mean, who wouldn't want to play
with a rotting hive tyrant of nurgle?

The easy answer is Dark Mechanicum.

Men of Iron could be interesting, too. Or some kind of rogue A1* that Imperium forgot about or thought destroyed and has now come back with a vengeance.

*intentional

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
Just wanted to provide a blank canvas to everyone on what they would create if given the opportunity to create a new faction/army/or model range.

I'll give an example:

Chaos Tyranids.

A Tyranid Fleet enters the warp and is changed by noshing on too many daemon worlds.

The aesthetic of the army will still be mostly bio-mechanical, but with less smooth tyranid features and more grotesque anomalies and weapons created out of warpstuff...
and yes, spikes and horns.

The hive-mind is no longer in control, as Daemons are feasting upon the psychic will of the Tyranids. Thus, the army will play differently from regular Tyranids.

You have smaller (think msu) units, with more individuality across the army, so you can customize your tyranids, and they don't all look the same... and Chaos Champion tyranids with different marks that make them and their units act and play differently.

I mean, who wouldn't want to play
with a rotting hive tyrant of nurgle?

There was a very cool nurgle tyranid army on miniwargaming a couple of years ago. IiRC they made a bespoke narrative campaign about it. Look it up!

Since Dark Mechanicum has already been taken and other people will come up with cool ideas for Hrud and Enslavers as they usually do in these threads, I'll go for nurgle Orks as mentioned in the CSM Codizes of at least 4th and 6th edition (could also have been the Daemons Codex, not sure). I think it's called the Green War or sth. like that. It would feature suicide bombing Boyz that would explode and then release Nurgling swarms. Supporting units would be more of the Chaos Daemons or DG range, or some fun crossovers of Orks and CSM, like Burnas with Plague Spewers or what have you.

EXODITES

Eldar riding dinosaurs into battle and using laser based archaic inspired weapons. Darn if GW I want dinosaurs with lasers on their heads; eldar riding raptors with laser bows and powerswords and stuff!





Ahem and if GW can't do that then how about "MEN OF IRON". Sure we have Necrons but Necrons are the once living - Men of Iron would be fully machine based. No concern for the flesh at all; they are the most pure machines.

Ancients - More gothic Imperial style bodies representing perhaps original machines form the Age of Technology of the Imperium. Old, experienced, super powerful machines and likely the leader class.

Moderns - more modern but also spliced with technology of other races - because no Xenophobic Imperium to stop them. Sporting weapons clearly inspired by other factions and their own unique ones too. More pure utilitarian and most certainly not based off insect designs (because that's a Necron thing).
These would be machines that look and think like machines.

I've said this before to friends, but a proper non-humanoid army would be really nice. Tyranids aside.

I'm aware of the rumor around the old ones seeding life so that all sentient life looks somewhat similar, but it would be cool to get something truly alien to play and fight. I wouldn't even mind rolling it into the tau like vespids and the kroot.

I'd like some Chaos Xenos - the Rak Gol or the asymetrical ones from Xenos. Really lean into the lovecraftian feel and give us something freaky and unrelatable. Hell, make it an alliance of chaos worshipping Xenos and fold them all in!

Gonna keep my peepers on this thread.
Glean good ideas.

Saruthi, Rak Gol and Loxatl, and throw in some other weird Xenos like the Slaught too, why not. Chaos Worshipping or otherwise terrifying Xenos that are not humiform.

The Saruthi are described as being weird, eyeless things with absolutely no symmetry in their biology. I think that's a fascinating idea as symmetry is so backed in to almost all multicellular life that we totally expect it, so something genuinely non-symmetrical on all axes is really weird to us. You could do a few different versions of these guys, they had lesser and greater versions in the books.

Rak-Gol are again eyeless lizard centaurs with some insectile or tyranid like design cues. But they like to replace themselves with weird, chaositech bionics as they age and grow in status, so there's a potential for several different unit types with differing levels of chaositech augmentation. They're pretty big, so they're gonna be your heavy hitters in this Chaos Xenos alliance.

Loxatl are amphibian mercenaries that often fight alongside Chaos. They are quadrupeds and very low to the ground but I think about human sized. They are extremely agile and good at climbing and use guns which are underslung and strapped to their sinuous bodies. Probably a light or scouting unit for these guys.

Slaught are supposedly some sort of 40K take on the Worm That Walks idea, a mass of writhing worms that sometimes takes humanoid shape and has sinister motives. They're a bogeyman from the Fantasy Flight RPG I believe, though maybe they're in Rogue Trader and I forgot. Probably a single character type of deal with these guys, they seem to be masterminds and loners.

None of these are humiform, all exist in the background already (okay, 2 of them are just straight outta Dan Abnett books, but it's not the first time they've ported his stuff into 40K!)

I always thought that the "Men of Iron" would be a great way to do a xenos version of Imperial/Chaos Knights. You know, very few models but they are huge and terrifying... I think to fully differentiate them I'd have it be that none of them were remotely humanoid. Big tank treads, hover, spider legs, and what have you.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy knights and superheavy guard and all that... but a xenos version would be cool.

leerm02 wrote:
I always thought that the "Men of Iron" would be a great way to do a xenos version of Imperial/Chaos Knights. You know, very few models but they are huge and terrifying... I think to fully differentiate them I'd have it be that none of them were remotely humanoid. Big tank treads, hover, spider legs, and what have you.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy knights and superheavy guard and all that... but a xenos version would be cool.

Whilst I'd love the idea of Men of Iron being like Knights in few-superpowered units - I'd also prefer that if it were in Epic scale.

At 40K scale honestly I'd prefer a proper army - lots of units and variety to show off

Mercenaries
We have a whole unaligned keyword specifically to allow units that can slot into other factions and it's only ever been used a handful of times for some Blackstone Fortress units and buildings

No. Screw that, I want to go full Dogs of War. Generic units, named units, each unit specifying which armies can hire them, go hog wild:
Ork mercs (Freebootas or Blood Axes)
Mercenary Kin warbands
Soooo many Kroot
Rogue Traders and their warbands
Mindslaves (who says Tyranids can't get in on the action?)
Corsairs
Weird niche Xenos mercs
Renegade-but-not-Chaos marines maybe
Humans with customisable equipment to represent forces that have abandoned the Imperium. You want Diggas? Here's your cheap-but-better-than-grots force. Want Gue'vesa? Give them a better save and some Tau weaponry and off you go.

Want a whole merc army? Go for it! Want a couple of units to take a break from painting your main army? Absolutely!

Well, there's this little known faction called 'Dark Eldar' that I think would work well with some model support.

 vipoid wrote:
Well, there's this little known faction called 'Dark Eldar' that I think would work well with some model support.

Never heard of 'em, sounds like homebrew/fanon to me

Charax wrote:

 vipoid wrote:
Well, there's this little known faction called 'Dark Eldar' that I think would work well with some model support.

Never heard of 'em, sounds like homebrew/fanon to me

I heard of this homebrew for a while. I don't think there would be enough players to support a "dark eldar" army...

Maybe a more realistic army would be a "Lost and the Damned" army which would be a Chaos "Imperial Agents" army, which would allow Chaos forces to add all sorts of fun to their lists, like Traitor Guardsmen and Khorne Beserker Tau.

Honestly this thread just reminds me of the one thing 40K is missing for a sci-fi game - Aliens.

WAY back when I first started one of the big things that drew me to Tyranids was that they were proper aliens. These weren't bipedal humanoids; these weren't clearly inspired by fantasy races in space or some human culture in space.

They were really alien - biologiclaly, design and lore wise everything about them is alien.

40K needs another Alien race. Something that isn't humanoid; isn't based on Earth Cultures or concepts; something that is just Alien.



Tau has potentially added a couple, but they are all minor races and for the most part core Tau is "humanoids in mech suits which are also humanoid in design".
Necrons are "humanoid robots with heavy Egyptian elements" and are basically "tombkings in space".
Every other race is 100% a fantasy space race. Elves, Dwarves, Chaos, Orks.



So as much as "Rats in Space" and "Lizardmen of the Stars"; or races that are derived from current ones (Exodites, Men of Iron, Lost and Damned etc...). Honestly I'd really welcome something Alien.

"Nightmares"

In the old White Dwarf (issue introducing 3rd edition Eldar codex) there was a short story by Gav Thorpe called Rebirth, about an Eldar finding and being absorbed by an Exarch suit of armour - couldn't find a scan online, unfortunately. This story mentions a powerful species only referred to as Nightmares in just a single sentence, but this sentence was enough to fire my imagination at that time

I imagined these Nightmares as some amorphous dark matter entities, floating around like ever-changing 3-D shadows of immaculate blackness, blasting grav-tanks from the sky with beams of light-devouring energy. Some proper cosmic horror in WH40K for me, a few years before I even read about the first incarnation of C'Tan in the first Necron codex (the one where Necrons were solid incomprehensible Lovecraftian space terror, not dudes like you or me, just metal).

Cyel wrote:
"Nightmares"

In the old White Dwarf (issue introducing 3rd edition Eldar codex) there was a short story by Gav Thorpe called Rebirth, about an Eldar finding and being absorbed by an Exarch suit of armour - couldn't find a scan online, unfortunately. This story mentions a powerful species only referred to as Nightmares in just a single sentence, but this sentence was enough to fire my imagination at that time

I imagined these Nightmares as some amorphous dark matter entities, floating around like ever-changing 3-D shadows of immaculate blackness, blasting grav-tanks from the sky with beams of light-devouring energy. Some proper cosmic horror in WH40K for me, a few years before I even read about the first incarnation of C'Tan in the first Necron codex (the one where Necrons were solid incomprehensible Lovecraftian space terror, not dudes like you or me, just metal).

Yeah, 40k has a lot of "cosmic horror adjacent" stuff but nothing that ever scratched the itch for me personally. I also think that you could get away with something like this as one of the "non four major chaos gods" evil entities in the warp. Maybe cosmic-horror-nightmares are just warp entities from whatever other galaxy the Tyranids came from? Hitched a ride with the bugs? Maybe we just don't know!

There are quite a few things I'd like to see, many of which have been mentioned- Exodites, Dark Mech, Corsairs.

I'd like to see some bespoke Ynarri generic units too. Ynarri need a generic HQ that can lead armies that Yvraine, the Visarch and the Yncarne are not available to lead. I'd also like them to have their own battleline unit which a core aesthetic. They don't need vehicles- they can keep using the vehicles of other Eldar, but they need some bespoke Ynarri units. Allying to the Cult of Ynnead is not the same as BECOMING A MEMBER of the Cult of Ynnead.

But in terms of designing a faction? I'd do a Xenos Maercenary dex. This is a bit of a cop-out, but I think it is the best option.

The book would include 5-10 species with 1-3 units each. Some of these factions/units may be able to ally with existing armies (some would be Eldar Aligned, some chaos aligned, some Tau aligned, and some would have alliances with each other).

I'd run it in combination with a new Warhammer Quest game (like BSF) and a crresponding Kill Team campaign. This allows you to use multiple games to expand ranges. This helps GW in SEVERAL ways:

1) Sales data and tourney lists will tell GW which (if any) provoke an interest for future expansion.

2) Improving existing ranges by providing possible allies. Some unit starved factions could benefit from mercenary allies.

3) Nostalgia: These would all by aliens we've heard of- this is how I'd release Hrud, Demiurg, expand Zoats... etc.

 Overread wrote:

So as much as "Rats in Space" and "Lizardmen of the Stars"; or races that are derived from current ones (Exodites, Men of Iron, Lost and Damned etc...). Honestly I'd really welcome something Alien.

I think the tricky thing here is that part of the fun of warhammer is seeing the characters have sword fights or hug cover and take rifle stances. A lot of that is hard to do with starfish aliens. And if you can't have your aliens swinging swords, you probably want them to be moving in animalistic ways so that people can still get a sense of how they move from the models or understand what's happening during a fight scene in the books. And at that point, it's easy to end up with like, wolves-but-make-them-slimy-in-spaaaaaace. Which is all well and good, but arguably not super alien, you know?

Best bet in that regard might be to just have like, animalistic aliens that use tech in some way? Here's the species of giant crabs that have built sonic projectors into their claws. Here's a race of sky sharks with frickin' lazerbeams on their heads.

EDIT:
As for a new faction, exodites are probably my first choice. Lots of mounted units, monsters that are also transports (riding atop big dinos), lots of little xenofauna along for the ride (similar to drukhari beast packs). Give them rules and psychic powers that tie into the terrain features on the board to reinforce the idea that they're using the terrain to their advantage or that they're psychically manipulating the weather and working on a macro scale. Your librarian shoots lightning at one squad? My world singer conjures a storm that lashes out at your half of the table.

Part of me wants a faction of dedicated human rebels/guerilla fighters to represent Alpha Legion-aligned mortals, possibly with the occassional astartes champion to hold them together. But honestly, the GSC rules do that pretty well.

Kind of don't want Men of Iron to be more of a thing. They feel a bit overhyped. I worry that they'd actually get less interesting the more we know about them. Plus, we already have admech, necrons, and Votan all kind of circling the "robot army" territory. I think you'd struggle to give them a niche.

I agree, that is the problem with really weird aliens, it becomes hard to "read" them at tabletop scale and figure out what they're supposed to be doing. I think really good design can overcome some of that but it's generally going to work on big centrepieces and be lost in a whole unit of weird creatures.

But I think you can do a lot within the "readable" area. Combining animal archetypes is one easy route - a serpentine creature that is also a centaur is fairly non-human but we can imagine how it might move and make sense of it.

Thing is Tyranids already include lots of animal bits and things to them but they aren't clearly "a thing in space". Like you can see dinosaur bits; horse bits; insect bits; humanoid bits and other stuff like living guns.


So you can still tell what everything is, which I agree is VERY important; but at the same time they are very clearly alien. They aren't an anthro or a fantasy race.

 Overread wrote:
Thing is Tyranids already include lots of animal bits and things to them but they aren't clearly "a thing in space". Like you can see dinosaur bits; horse bits; insect bits; humanoid bits and other stuff like living guns.


So you can still tell what everything is, which I agree is VERY important; but at the same time they are very clearly alien. They aren't an anthro or a fantasy race.

Mostly true, but that's sooorta a matter of how much slack you choose to give them. A reasonable person could argue that a termagaunt is kind of just a bug man holding a gun made of chitin. Like, you'd probably agree that D&D kobolds are basically lizard/dragon anthros, and a termagaunt has kind of a similar body plan to a kobold. A tyranid warrior is arguably just a chitinous human with guns or whips/swords. i.e. a bug anthro.

But I agree that tyranids are a step more unique/alien than like, seraphim from Sigmar/Fantasy. Mixing a couple of things together ala the serpentine centaur example can make a model's anatomy a little stranger/harder to figure out, but ultimately it's probably kind of either a centaur or a snake man (depending on what exactly these things look like.)

I'd design a range of xenos and renegade human factions that would have been fought during the great crusade.

The Behemecysts!

“From the rifts they came—colossal, primal, wrath incarnate. We brought our Knights to bear. They brought extinction.” – Palatine-Vigilant Erros Varn, last transmission from Juna Theta-5

A new horror stalks the stars—beasts of impossible scale and rage known only as the Behemecysts. These titanic kaiju emerge from warp-tainted rifts upon worlds thick with life, drawn like predators to the pulse of civilization. They are not xenos, nor daemons, nor abominations of man’s science. They are something older. Hungrier.

Standing taller than even the mightiest of Imperial Knights, the Behemecysts level hive cities with a single thunderous step, their roars shattering vox relays and psyker minds alike. Imperial strategos theorize these monstrosities are attracted to psychic resonance or sheer biomass—but none have lived long enough to be certain.

For every fallen beast, another tears through reality’s veil. And as the Knight Houses rally in defiance, only one truth becomes clear: this is not a war of conquest. This is a planetary culling!




Giant Kaiju for Knights and Titans to fight! What's not to love?

Squats. In the style of actual Squats.

I appreciate that GW tried with the League-of-Who-Cares and they're an interesting-enough faction, but they aren't SQUATS.

I think it would be fun for them to release a single DAOT human soilder model in real power armour a personal void sheild and a black hole pistol that comes in at a 1000 points as an april the first joke

I love alien races that feel really alien, so an army that I would love to see rules and models for is the Hrud. Not every faction in the game needs to be a grand mover/shaker in the galaxy and I'd love to see more rules for the smaller races that could never conquer the galaxy but could still contest systems against the divided major powers.

For an army rule, I'd go with "Entropic Radiation": At the start of each battle round, select WS, BS, S, T, or Sv. Reduce the value of non-Hrud units within 12" of a Hrud unit by 1 for the remainder of the game. The same selection cannot be made more than once.

Other key Hrud thoughts / abilities:
- Army wide Stealth. (Yes this stacks with their army rule if you choose BS.)
- Generally weak defensive profiles. Likely T3 5+ Sv, but a lot more points intensive than Guardsmen.
- Generally smaller model count army.
- More shooting focus with powerful Hrud Fusil, psychic attacks, and scavenged weaponry. Some token melee units though.
- Subtheme of scavenged stuff from other races to reduce new kit reliance and because GW seems to not want Orks to have that anymore. As a drawback, your scavenged vehicles would be negatively effected by the Hrud army rule as well.

General Detachment Ideas:
- A generalist one that enhances the army rule in some way. Maybe lets you pick something twice, but not two rounds in a row, or a duplicate on the 4th battle round or later?
- A scavenger detachment buffing things you can take from other races. Possibly reducing or negating the drawback.
- A psyker based detachment.
- A stealth, maneuverability, and sabotage based detachment.

General army composition:
- Psyker character.
- Buffing / aura character.
- Tech based tinkering/vehicle character.
- Lone op Assassin character.
- Herald of Qah (kind of like an entropic Aeldari Avatar as the centerpiece unit.)

- Basic Battleline infantry unit that has some scavenged weapons from other factions.

- Elite Psyker infantry unit
- Sneaky Melee infantry unit
- Larger bulkier melee unit, could be considered cavalry?
- Anti elite ranged infantry unit.
- Some kind of ramshackle vehicle unique to the Hrud. (Lore wise made of things resistant to their decay.)
- Ability to use vehicles from other factions with previously stated drawbacks. Since they are piloted by Hrud, they still produce the aura that weakens their scavenged vehicles.

 Eilif wrote:
Squats. In the style of actual Squats.

I appreciate that GW tried with the League-of-Who-Cares and they're an interesting-enough faction, but they aren't SQUATS.

Old school Squats, Necromunda Squats, or some mix would be fine.

 Eilif wrote:
Squats. In the style of actual Squats.

I appreciate that GW tried with the League-of-Who-Cares and they're an interesting-enough faction, but they aren't SQUATS.

I like the Leagues of Votann quite a lot. I think the whole DAOT mining drones with ancient AI overseers is a very interesting take on Space Dwarfs. I also like their classic sci-fi inspired aesthetics, the DAOT looking like something from a 70s sci-fi is a great idea...


....but at the same time, the lack of "Dwarf" in 40ks Space Dwarfs (aesthetically, at least - it's in their lore to a good extent) is just odd. Especially what the designers said about it and how they didn't want them to be "Dwarfs in space" which they literally are regardless.

Still, I think there's room for some of that direction to be added into them still. After all, these guys are part of them in some way:

The Gol Cathak Spread

An amoeboid species, the Gol Cathak extrude manipulators to build their technology, advanced field based tech rings that they wrap their forms in, providing a shape field that allows them to take on a range of shapes and forms to prosecute their wars.

They are able to form gestalt lattices, temporarily connecting to bonded members via extruded tendrils and occupying different locations within their Mech Rings, forming massive fighting machines capable of highly destructive action.


Visually they look like pieces of technology, rings and shapes connected internally by amorphous blobs stretched out. all their technology relies on repulsor fields, so it doesn't use locomotory wheels or tracks.

Their largest weapons of war are colonies of bonded warriors occupying different parts of huge mechs with only vaguely humanoid appearance, but usually no legs.