Fifth grand alliance

[Kyriakin]

Grand Alliance: Black Coach

[MrCharisma]

Grand Alliance: Compendium 

I'm confident our range will continue to grow over the years 

[Guest]

As with the current Grand Alliances, any future Grand Alliance would need to be based around a concept or philosophy rather than a race or sub-faction, for various reasons both practical and thematic. Simply splitting out one of the existing sub-factions such as Skaven or Troggoths into a new Grand Alliance would make absolutely no sense in terms of the thematic nature of the alliances, and would be extremely limiting in numerous ways - if you think Death, with all of its infinite possibilities doesn't get enough love in terms of new sub-factions and new releases, get ready to be especially disappointed at the release schedule of the vastly more limiting Grand Alliance: Skaven.

We currently have Order, Chaos, Death and Destruction. A new Grand Alliance would need to be similarly thematic rather than faction based - think Life, Justice, Creation, Hatred, Deception, etc. However, as you may have noticed, the vast majority of these metaphysical concepts can already sit comfortably within the broader themes represented by the existing Grand Alliances. Just as an intellectual exercise, I challenge anyone to come up with a concept that wouldn't fit comfortably within the existing structure, and which would need its own Grand Alliance in order to sensibly exist.

I really don't see this happening unless one of the existing Grand Alliances becomes so vast, unwieldy and incoherent that it needs to be split for the sake of game balance (remember, the Grand Alliances are essentially game mechanics and aren't really recognised in-universe). You could argue that this is already the case with Order, and I'd probably agree. The problem is, what thematic concept can be separated out from Order that would cause a significant reduction in the number, size and scope of the factions that it current includes? Life might seem like the most obvious candidate, but what impact would this really have? You'd be removing Sylvaneth, Wanderers and very little else, if anything. The size, structural issues and thematic issues of Order would be left largely untouched.

It's really not as straightforward as some people may think. If pushed however, I'd opt for creating a new Grand Alliance: Wisdom, and put all of the Elves in this category, possibly along with Seraphon. Elves and Seraphon share certain traits in terms of being extremely long-lived, having a special interest in the long-term fate of reality that humans just don't get, and in their general thematic connection to the stars, prophecy, fate, etc. That would split the Order faction straight down the middle, bringing it much closer to the other factions in terms of size, and make a reasonable amount of thematic sense. Order is concerned with the detail of building viable civilizations in the here and now, Wisdom is concerned with bigger cosmic ideas and plays the long game.

 

Actually, now that I think about it, I'm quite pleased with this and it is definitely what GW should do. Questions? 

[Squirrelmaster]

I thought the idea was more about adding new races, rather than re-categorising the existing ones.

Conceptually, I'd argue that Chaos and Destruction are essentially the same, and could be merged.

As for possible new concepts that don't fit in with the existing ones: "Nature" or "Elemental", maybe including "Life". Not exactly "Order" since it would be free from the laws of civilisation, but not necessarily chaos-worshipping, destructive, or death-centric either.