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Faction-Logic


Turgol

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So I'am in a rather obsessive mood which is not addressed by the lack of AoS rumours, and given that we have been discussing about factions on the rumour thread, I thought I would post a general theory of factions in order to make the whole thing understandable. :)

The question to be addressed is this: What is the systematic understanding underlying GW's faction idea in AoS?

I think you can understand it in the following way: AoS is right now a two tier system of factions.

Tier 1 factions are factions which can easily be played on their own as a whole army.

Tier 2 factions are factions which although theoretically independent are quite limited and serve rather as auxiliary factions in a GA.

Tier 1 factions include: Stormcast Eternals, Bloodbound, Rotbringers (missing BT), Sylvaneth, Ironjaws, Bonesplitterz (kinda), Beastclaw Raiders, Flesheater Courts, Dispossesed, Devoted of Sigmar, Free Guild, Fyreslayers.

Tier 2 factions include: Everchosen, Deathlords (so you want Nagash or Archaon; sure, you can have them along some powerful Vanguard or Morghasts, but you lose allegiance!), Ironweld Arsenal, Extremis Chamber, Swiftstriders, assassins faction, Troggoths, Gargants, etc. 

A two tier system forces you to choose to stay with a tier 1 faction and have some nice, really powerful buff, or combine tier 1 and tier 2 factions and lose those buffs, gaining some much less powerful buffs instead.

I think the system is in many respects really well designed, I would even say brilliant. It resolves most of the dilemmas you had on WHFB or 40k: fluffy army but no bonus because of that? Min/maxing? Sure, but you lose bonuses. 

It still could be perfected though. I'am thinking of three tier system. Right now, for instance, it is exactly the same if you combine Dispossessed or Sylvaneth with the Ironweld Arsenal: you lose allegiance. What about having intermediate allegiances instead of the two extremes "only GA" and "super specialized tier 1 faction"? In a keyword system, doing something like this is really easy. You can add intermediate allegiance by race ("Stormcast", making Eternals + Extremis better than Extremis + Free Guild; Duardin; Aelf; etc.) but also by some other keyword. This can of course also be handled through the inclusion of abilities which trigger with certain keyword (like have a king of duardin which affects all duardin units). But in order to make everything clear – and that is AoS: variety which is clear –, allegiance should be there.  

 

 

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I generally agree.

Just a minor clarification for Chaos and Death players.

Quote

Everchosen, Deathlords (so you want Nagash or Archaon; sure, you can have them along some powerful Vanguard or Morghasts, but you lose allegiance!)

You can keep Everchosen and Deathlords allegiance even if you take Varanguard/Morghasts respectively - they do have the relevant keywords. Both of these armies are very hard to play, but they are at least deployable.

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Yes, of course, what I mean is rather: both Everchosen and Deathlords are built upon the same logic: it is some big nasty special characters and pretty much only one very powerful unit (Varanguard/Morghasts). It is the same logic upon which Extremis is built: so you are an order players and want some nasty monsters and units? I have this expensive but really powerful Dracoth Knights or even Stardrake for you. The price? You can only have GA allegiance if you play with those, unless of course you want an army of only these. It is really the same logic that the Arsenal: sure, it is possible to make an army of only these and GW might even come up with some allegiance rules for them. But their real use is to serve as an auxiliary faction.

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This is all pretty neat. 

I absolutely love faction-based systems, sub-factions, etc... and Sigmar's embracing of that format is what made me finally make the plunge. That being said, I am a bit annoyed with their recent switch with the way GW does their battletomes. I currently have an Ironjawz army for instance, but no access to any faction-specific artifacts or command traits due to their book being from the year 1 series, and they've not made it known whether I should even expect to see something any time soon...

Secondly, my brother is looking to run Chaos - and he can't decide between Tzeentch Arcanites (a faction promised to drop in the fall, and most likely with a fresh battletome filled with new traits and artifact/other goodies) or Nurgle Rotbringers (Mortals). He prefers the Rotbringers, but again, who knows when (if ever) the faction will get their update? 

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Death is in an odd place with the factions right now. Death mages are too small to be made into a faction and dead walkers their fluff is pretty much stated to be their only use is for foot soldiers for vampires. So they can't be their own faction either beasts of the grave were in the same position so they folded into flesh eater courts. 

I honestly suspect Deathlords are going to have the nighthaunts fold into them. Just look at the nagash bundle full of nighthaunt units and of course the Mortarch's will be in there also. 

I also suspect Soulblight will get the dead walkers and necromancers(of course with vampire mortarch's and lore wise necromancers have always been the vampires igor's) with perhaps a new vampire infantry unit and new zombies PLEASE. Death rattle will be it's own thing with Arkhan in it with perhaps a few new models. 

Plus maybe at some point in the future a revival of the tomb kings in a different form. 

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What do you mean by "can easily" be played on their own as a whole army?  I've never considered Rotbringers as a tier 1 faction in that sense. All but 1 of their units are characters, so you're either taking a ridiculous amount of characters, or a ridiculous amount of Blightkings. Also, one of their characters specifically synergises with a unit from another faction.

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I think it's form following function in a business sense. I think they're really working to please the customer base with this, which is neat.

They've seen the problems with 40k and WHFB with codexes and tomes being super outdated. They then need to redo entire races/lines and that's lots of work.  Cycling through the content at that scale takes an age!

Their new system is perfectly built to match a more scattershot release schedule. Work on one subfaction goes on all at once and it's tidied up an then released. Then on to the next subfaction (from a different superfaction - satisfying customers of more than 1 'race' much more quickly).

It's easier to have piece by piece updates to some content but all factions over a 2 year period than, say update 2 entire races over that same time period and leave [insert race here] upset as they're at the middle or end of the queue.

On a gameplay level I love this idea of a tier 3 system and I think combining factions like this will happen as it is super easy using keywords (so little work from GW) so long as they can release a little book to sell that includes battalions and bonuses for the combo.

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I'd tier them like this:

Tier 1.0: Full Fledged Army (Offers more than one Battleline when taken as part of an Order/Chaos/Death/Destruction Allegiance)

Tier 1.5: Fleshed Out Army (Offers more than one Battleline, but additional Battleline choices are restricted to that Allegiance)

Tier 2: Possible Force: Offers a single Battleline choice (More than likely a single unit that is only Battleline in those instances)

Tier 3: Supporting Force: Offers no Battleline Choices

Even with this though, there are some armies that match one tier but feel like they're perfect for another tier. Free Peoples and the other Legacy Order Forces would fit into Tier 1 but don't feel like they're as fleshed out as Stormcast or Seraphon. Likewise Fyreslayers are T1.5 but feel rather T2. Nurgle Rotbringers may be T1 in the future (Like Bloodbound) but are in a definite T2. And nothing in Death except Flesh Eater Courts fit into anything besides 2 or 3 despite the very strong intent to use the faction with Deathlords as King and take whatever else you'd like.

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I think the factions are about more dynamic than some prediction would have you believe.

 

Death mages would make the weirdest thing go have its own full fledged faction but and easy fix could change this with out adding or changing anything about existing models. 

Just make a battalion that is faction necromancer's; that says 3 necromancer's and 3 zombie units. Bam now you have your battle line. Give them some cool spells, artifact to help them summon a bigger army, and an alliegence ability that lets them revive fallen models. Now, you have a quick easy faction that has tons of options and flavor. 

 

 

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3 hours ago, Screwface said:

What do you mean by "can easily" be played on their own as a whole army?  I've never considered Rotbringers as a tier 1 faction in that sense. All but 1 of their units are characters, so you're either taking a ridiculous amount of characters, or a ridiculous amount of Blightkings. Also, one of their characters specifically synergises with a unit from another faction.

Such a missed opportunity for a fun bit of fluff imho, taking Morbidex should make Nurglings battleline for Rotbringers. Would have been super cool.

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I'm not sure it's quite so clear cut in to tiers, maybe it will eventually be that way. But at the moment as a few people have said there are anomalies where a unit in one faction is clearly designed to work with a unit for another factions.

And then you have non-faction factions like "Mortal Nurgle" for example. Where Rotbringers and Slaves to Darkness can combine.

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Of course. Although in my list I considered a lot of factions with no BT treatment as of yet, the argument applies to those who have. For the rest, it applies only as an hypothesis for when they have one. 

The key to two tier system is allegiance. That is also the problem with units who are designed to work with other factions: they break allegiance. Part of the aim of the OP is to show this problem and offer one possible solution: have allegiance rules that are between pure faction and only GA allegiance (like: Duardin; Stormcast, Nurgle, and so on). So your fluffy army with Rotbringers, Slaves to Darkness Nurgle and Daemon Nurgle will have better buff than pure Destruction, but not as good as pure Rotbringers. It is a genius system! 

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On 8/3/2016 at 3:14 AM, shinros said:

Death is in an odd place with the factions right now. Death mages are too small to be made into a faction.

Agreed. Similarly with some of those other 'leader only' subfactions (eg. Skaven Masterclan, which would be nice to combine with Verminus to make a 5th well rounded 'vanilla' clan, though the grey seers don't share verminus' warrior caste styling).

Death in particular shouldn't stay the way it is now. Neither of the two original Start Collecting boxes (Skeleton horde and Malignants) use the faction titles (Deathrattle and Nighthaunt), I assume because they don't even stay within the one faction currently; mortarchs are death lord faction and mortis is deathmages...

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18 minutes ago, BrAiKo said:

Agreed. Similarly with some of those other 'leader only' subfactions (eg. Skaven Masterclan, which would be nice to combine with Verminus to make a 5th well rounded 'vanilla' clan, though the grey seers don't share verminus' warrior caste styling).

Death in particular shouldn't stay the way it is now. Neither of the two original Start Collecting boxes (Skeleton horde and Malignants) use the faction titles (Deathrattle and Nighthaunt), I assume because they don't even stay within the one faction currently; mortarchs are death lord faction and mortis is deathmages...

As I said in my post they could easily give death mages and deathlike thier own factions. With out adding new model, by making battalions ith deathlike or death mage faction keyword  with battle line units in them 

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4 hours ago, mmimzie said:

As I said in my post they could easily give death mages and deathlike thier own factions. With out adding new model, by making battalions ith deathlike or death mage faction keyword  with battle line units in them 

Yeah I suspect Death will have a lot of mixed battalions in their books, which is not a bad thing considering you can still take the bonuses from the battletome. Since in all their fluff they are always in a mixed force majority of the time. Even in the soulblight blurb they make the point they use hounds and other undead. 

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1 hour ago, Deranged Hermit said:

Didn't the Slyvaneth book include formations with wanderers.

Sure you lose the Sylvaneth buffs but you gain formation bonuses so its like a tier 1.5

You don't lose the buffs, but there is no sylvaneth + wanderers battalion - just stormcast.

 

I think what we're actually seeing is GW's ideas about how to organize the armies.  There are going to be a lot of changes to these lists and we shouldn't count on all of them sticking around or getting pandered to.

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53 minutes ago, daedalus81 said:

You don't lose the buffs, but there is no sylvaneth + wanderers battalion - just stormcast.

 

I think what we're actually seeing is GW's ideas about how to organize the armies.  There are going to be a lot of changes to these lists and we shouldn't count on all of them sticking around or getting pandered to.

Yeah you can still take sylvaneth bonuses but the stormcast get nothing if I recall. You can only do this for mixed battelions in your battle tome. 

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35 minutes ago, shinros said:

Yeah you can still take sylvaneth bonuses but the stormcast get nothing if I recall. You can only do this for mixed battelions in your battle tome. 

Right they get whatever is in the battalion rules, but you can still have a "Sylvaneth" army with SCE models added in.  I expect we'll eventually see Sylvaneth and Wanderers in a battalion when Wanderers gets a book.

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It's because the battlion is a sylvaneth battalion.  WHich is why i think they could easily do this with a deathmage faction. Making the mages awesome casters with minions or something.

 

I say this becuase i don't know how adding new models will work with the generals hand books points. Will the new books come with points?? Will the full roster ever get an update. As it seems from the releases thus far the new battle tomes don't have new units that aren't already in the generals hand book?? Though i could be wrong. 

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