Future Faction Speculation

[Crablezworth]

On 12/12/2023 at 5:55 AM, Captain Idaho said:

Good thread!

 

Hmm. Did anyone see the Thunderhawk rules has heavy bolters with skyfire, despite all flyers being vehicles and thus immune to "light"?

 

This implies something is coming. Things that fly but aren't vehicles and thus require skyfire to hit them easily. 

 

That leads me to feel it's Daemons, perhaps in a joint boxed set for Adeptus Custodes? Jetbikes also could have a rule we haven't forseen that requires skyfire, which means Astartes but they're not a full army so don't count!

 

I think that's just a mistake and can support it with two examples, first, the solar aux heavy bolters have light at and skyfire and can shoot other flyers, this is also true in aironautica in that both sides bolters were meant to engage other flyers. Another example, the thunderhawks bolter mountings on the wings are clearly 360/turrets but ruleswise are forward facing only and only 3 shots when it has like 4 twin linked bolters, very odd. Really should have split the forward facing ones from the wing bolters.  

 

 

For new factions, safest would be mechanicum, we can be confident the drill is coming and that's an example of a transport that likely would be available in some capacity to all 3 factions. Theres a picture of it in the rulebook with the same art style as the box art so it's fairly certain. 

 

Mechanicum fits the mold of how they've handled infantry and walker sprues so far. Could easily see thallax/castellax and baseline infantry on one sprue. Tank wise the main transport would be a fairly obvious combo kit, the other tank as well. Vulterax for flyer. I feel like overall its the easiest new faction to fit into the schema of marines and aux, as well as the 30% allies. 

 

 

I can see custodes eventually but I don't love them as their own faction, if its them and sisters and other stuff rolled into talons that'd be better I think. Not a big fan of their flyers. The models are great but never liked the faction's implementation into 30k, felt the same as with grey knights, just too elite, really cool as an allie or small edition to an army but as their own faction, I dunno, certainly more difficult to implement and have it feel "right", mechanicum just seems like an easier target to hit. 

 

Daemons, similar thoughts to custodes. Would look cool, then again a lot of the smaller daemons, at the distance you tend to see infantry on board, might lose a lot of what makes them cool to scale. Still an excuse for bright colours and fx paints so I'd love to see it. Daemons of the ruinstorm were sorta janky in 30k, the portal thing was cool but certain builds could just get these run away victories because any agressive player would just end up buffing the army by feeding them units. If they could implement them better than they did with 1st ed 30k deamons I'd be happy.  

Edited January 7 by Crablezworth

[Assessor_of_Maat]

On 1/8/2024 at 1:25 AM, Crablezworth said:

Daemons, similar thoughts to custodes. Would look cool, then again a lot of the smaller daemons, at the distance you tend to see infantry on board, might lose a lot of what makes them cool to scale. Still an excuse for bright colours and fx paints so I'd love to see it. Daemons of the ruinstorm were sorta janky in 30k, the portal thing was cool but certain builds could just get these run away victories because any agressive player would just end up buffing the army by feeding them units. If they could implement them better than they did with 1st ed 30k deamons I'd be happy.  

 

For daemons I figure the most likely option is they'll elaborate on the brutes and do up a set of undivided lesser daemons, beasts, herald/prince etc. in that sort of style. Could probably get enough unit variety for an additional strategic asset type out of just one infantry sprue, and leaves the door open to then do more later for daemon engines, god specific sprues and so on to flesh it out into a full army.

 

There's also the possibility of a mixed sprue with a handful of each but I'd hope even GW would realise that'd be really awkward, and annoying for a lot of the target audience.

[Pacific81]

Daemon Engines would be awesome. I really hope they plunder the archives and bring back some of the Chaos stuff from SM2 - there is a lot of space on a sprue to make different daemon types and to do some releases above and beyond 28mm scale.

I also hope whoever is writing the rules has played the faction in the previous game and knows how much fun they were. But of course we don't know who is actually making this game, it could be Rick Priestley writing them in under a pseudonym (Mick Saintly), for all we know.

[Noserenda]

Oooh Daemon engines might well be a good call to fill out a Daemon sprue, they definitely will not do god specific ones and I'd be surprised by lesser daemons too tbh but pleasantly! :D