10:05 - “I don’t know dude; the thing is - I don’t actually know enough about how the warp works…” - a casual conversation between a Chaplain and a Chaos Sorceror
When it comes to bugs for T'au, as Eric suggested you would not even need to invent a new species there is such a race in lore. The Thraxians, four-armed crabs/bugs known for serving the T'au as close quarters combat specialists (which would be nice for tabletop).
Other races would help their lore viability too. Some of the auxiliaries got access to FTL but the tau still spend several years traveling to farsight enclaves
In addition to having Auxiliaries and the T’au be separate armies, actually separate out the Farsight enclaves to be a wholly unique faction. Melee Battlesuits and focused infantry, different vehicles, fortifications and characters and make them able to pull from each other like Eldar/Drukhari do
i feel like you can have more than one "alien soup" faction. i always find it a bit silly when sci-fi goes "ok, there's one faction with a bunch of different species and then the rest are just blobs of only one species" like what star trek does with the federation. i guess the nids having different bioforms is a bit soupy. an all-new soup faction might cause some bloat, but there's room in existing factions to add a sprinkling of something else, like how sslyth are mercs for the drukhari... how about chaos getting some more xenos outside of just lore bits? it's not like only humans fall
I think it would be super cool if Tau added a third war philosophy to branch off from the existing "patient hunter versus rapid strike force" two options and only very slight variations on going about doing that. A third one specifically about strength through cross-species cooperation, and being all about wambo-combos between different alien species with different specialties. Give the psychic space bears models, give them horrible crab aliens, hell, give them a unit that's a bunch of abhuman races that the imperium just said "nah, to mutated." and kicked them out, would be a great way of introducing beastmen or skaven-looking models that aren't just K-Sons Zangors
It'd be funny if the skaven from fantasy just opened a portal and landed on a 40k world. Seeing how they would develop their technology and interact with the world would be interesting.
Considering the skaven have lore where a warlock saw the kharadron’s sky ships and said “I could do that but better.” He then came back a few years later (was extremely secretive because skaven like backstabbing) with the title of admiral and 11 flying skaven ships. It’d be interesting to see what they would make given the tech they’d discover in 40K.
100% agree that Elves need expanding with Ynarri as Imperial Agent equivalent and the expanded lore and (fractured) empire. From the lore - "Exodites are generally welcoming to other Eldar peoples. They have good relations with most Craftworld Eldar, particularly Alaitoc and are often visited and aided by Harlequin hosts." It is sensible and only right now to be able to put dinosaur-riding warriors fighting alongside the Clown Death Jester and Solitaire. Even Elf-dislikers like Brad can see the appeal of that imaginative story rather than yet another Primaris Marine model.
@@cp1cupcake That's fine, and probably makes more sense in the lore as an auxiliary unit. So long as they can work with any other Elves is the main thing.
Exodites can work as auxiliaries but I honestly really want them as a standalone faction. Exodites almost exclusively keep to themselves normally, but it wouldn't be hard to make up some new lore to give them an excuse to venture out from their planets en masse. My favourite scenario has always been a kind of Aeldari grand crusade to free Isha from captivity in Nurgle's garden, which the Exodites will be especially keen to do - it's obvious they would have the strongest connection with the goddess of life and fertility, being technologically primitive in all things but war. There's loads of different directions standalone Exodites can go in, as "primitivist space elves" can be taken in many different directions. The obvious one is to base them loosely off the wood elf archetype, maybe give them magical bows and stuff, but "low-tech elves" could also make them lean more towards fantasy high elves, especially given the presence of "dragon" riders (that is, dinosaur riders - I'll never understand why they made aeldari call dinosaurs "dragons") who could take up a niche as heavy shock cavalry.
@@sulphuric_glue4468 Exodites have access to the webway right? So they can turn up where they want anyways. That being said, I don't imagine them medieval, but technologically minimalist in a survivalist/guerilla kind of way. (Basically Rangers meet Dinosaurs).
The "Tau-ish" side could be more of the "up-and-coming species willing to collaborate to survive the big powerhouses." Votann would fit in as more of "nobody knows they're actually closer to the big ones than they let on."
I'd go further and say the Imperium as a whole is very Skaven. An unwieldy empire of fast-breeding creatures living in squalor, whose many feuding subfactions are begrudgingly beholden to a council of bastards that claim to speak for their species's god. Throwing their people into the twin meat grinders of Industry and War, to perpetuate a deeply unjust and cruel hierarchy. Imperial Guard are Clans Verminus, the endless hordes of disposal chaff. Their elite Tempestus Scions/Kasrkin (also called "Storm Troopers") are Storm Vermin, who get the best training, the best food, and the best equipment. The Ecclesiarchy/Sisters of Battle are Clans Pestilens. Zealots given over to religious mania, who dive headfirst into war high on both unshakable faith and the fumes coming off their censer bearers. The Adeptus Mechanicus are Clans Skryr, scientists with no scruples and a conviction in their own brilliance. Bombarding their foes with the energy coming off glowing green rocks, while equipping their soldiers with heavy weapons they don't really understand. The Officio Assassinorum are Clans Eshin, a dark and secretive order of killers who loose modified murderers to remove threats to their empire's interests. Agile spies and skilled killers, who are as often stabbing their own people in the back as their enemies, for crimes real or perceived. The Space Marines are Clans Moulder, or rather the products of their debased bio-craft. What is a Space Marine than a glorified Rat Ogre, after all? They're just as brainwashed and just as unthinking of commands given to them from on high.
I think you're missing the "two birds, one stone" with Chaos. Introduce the Skaven AS the Chaos replacement for the Dark Mechanicus. Little greasy rats trading their labor in the eye of terror to CSM for shiny bits. Natural tinkerers and creators of weapons of absolute misery. Make them the primary worshippers of Vashtorr. His rise to Chaos God status is enough to drive the Skaven out from under the floor boards and begin scavenging for themselves, while also supporting various Chaos factions.
14:51 I think fundamentally the Votann (aka: Ancestor cores) themselves prevent them from joining with the Tau in any meaningful way. Because the Ancestor cores lead the LoV and would prevent the leagues from joining the greater good in any meaningful way. Also important side notes: 1: the LoV have ai called Ironkin, fully sentient ai that are treated as equals. 2: the LoV as a faction is larger than the Tau and aldari in lore. They mention that there actually a pretty big faction numbers wise.
I would love some more non-humanoid factions, the Rak Gol being a good example because they already have a lot of lore in the setting. Make them weird and grimdark and properly ALIEN to humanity. Alternatively, the Hrud would be amazing, they are creatures that literally affect time and could have some really interesting gameplay as a result - instead of guns, you can age units in front of you until they crumble to dust, or have machines break down because they're internal components rust and fall apart.
Yeah, I'd sell a kidney for Rak'Gol. I was really surprised neither of our two hosts on this poorhammer podcast didn't know about them. They're like the most commonly wanted xenos army that somehow still don't have models and that have a ton of existing lore. And their empire makes up a sizeable portion of space. And lore wise they're elite enough to where we could finally have a xenos army that is super elite. They'd probably be between Grey Knights and Adeptus Custodes in how elite they are, I'd imagine.
Dark Mechanicus is the big one I see that to me would be a broadening of the CSM range instead of a unique faction. They'd be sharing the Daemon Engines and probably Cultists, and likely would have the same Daemon and Chaos Knight ally rules as CSM armies. I'm totally down for an army that mixes Knights and Daemon Engines, but I kind of think the DarkMech desire could be fulfilled by just adding a few awesome sculpts and letting CSM take AdMech units that could be converted and kitbashed to your heart's desires.
I would combine dark mechanicus with chaos knights, and throw the skaven in there, I think they would make the most sense combines with dark mechanicus, maybe as foot soldiers (instead of skitarii) and some abominations, you can even have some AI shenanigans, since dark mechanicus would not care about the rules against AI, also, you can make an option and go into heretek, and you can combine them with necron tech, so you build a bridge between chaos and necron, going back to the time where necrons were actually chaos robots, I would love that, you basically have two dark admech factions, where you can choose
Hard disagree. I hate that if I want to play chaos guard I have to play Chaos Space Marines. What if I want to get away from the faction mascots and play with a faction that has nothing to do with them? I would have to play anything else which means no cultists, daemon whines, etc for me.
@@IcoOst That could work, but honestly in the lore the DarkMech aren't really as martially active as the AdMech. They're more of the Fabius Bile Mad Scientist types, and their armies are basically already represented in Chaos Knights and the Daemon Engines. That's why I think just a couple of sculpts for an HQ or two and an Elite option would go a long way to fulfilling what a lot of people want. I'm all for a total body horror DarkMech range but I think GW could honestly go lowish effort for a big win.
@@Unknown-qj9sm There's no reason to take Traitor Guard out of CSM, the CSM army rule is perfect for traitor guard. All they have to do is let you build with X Points Imperial Guard units. If you want 0 other flavors of Chaos at all, you can literally just play Imperial Guard and put spikes on them.
@@Xynth25 well, remember how the admech started, as part of the imperial army, I would basically make it like agents of the imperium but with solid army options maybe in combination with xenerites
do they starve to death if they dont have an endless supply of bamboo because they've evolved to exclusively eat one of the most nutritionally lacking and inefficient plants in existence?
@@thepinkplushiethey are polar bears and not pandas so it would be easier to feed them considering that there is a nearly infinite amount of meat instead of a potentially exinct plant from terra
Pandas don't just eat bamboo. It's just they prefer to because there's so much of it where they live and it grows faster than they can eat it, so it's almost zero-effort food. That's why it doesn't matter that it's so low in calories and nutrients. Pandas barely have to get out of bed in the morning 🤣
I want saurus in space, ideally in awesome space armor with awesome space weapons. I kind of hope that whatever faction we get next, they find some way to include zoats in it.
@@captain_torket3254 That would be awesome. A reptilian race with a strong warrior culture with more of an emphasis on honor. In the first horus heresy, they mention coming across a strong reptilian that had banned war on most of their planet. Maybe after being wiped out by the astartes, their numbers have recovered and their culture evolved over the last ten thousand years.
I think that one of the cooler parts of 40k that is often forgotten about is that it is a galactic-scale Post-Apocalypse setting. It is also a galactic-scale PRE-Apocalypse setting.
When I first got into the game at the beginning of 9E, I almost started with Tau after hearing about all of the auxiliary species that they recruited. The idea of playing “the Covenant” in Warhammer is amazing. The whole mecha battle-suit thing doesn’t appeal to me though, so I passed and decided on 1k Sons instead. Now I have custom 3D-printed chaos spawn and a Mutalith vortex beast with dusty marines and bird goats with the ability to soup in lovecraftian daemons. Diverse enough for me.
Tyranids could really use Zoats as a genuine third faction. Like a Custodes-levek faction of biotech slaves that follow the swarms to cultivate the planets left behind to be eaten again. Imagine how sick that would be
@@jeffreymonsell659yeah their 40K lore is unrecognizable. That said its also highly limited and almost all of it comes from the '80s. The Zoats were enslaved outside the galaxy and brutally bioengineered. They served as essentially the Tyranid "diplomats", scouting out high value worlds, spreading misinformation and discord, and it's even implied they would be the origin point of some Genestealer cult rebellions. Their lore would need to be reworked somewhat but there's very little of it so that would be easy. Unfortunately they're canon again with the Blackstone Fortress stuff and completely unrelated to the Nids as far as we currently know so, it's unlikely they'll come back as Nids auxiliaries
What if GW just gave troops to Knights? Like in lore the Knight houses have their household militias/planetary defense forces, so what if the knights just got those as models, and then operated as a kind of “big mechs with infantry support” army?
They'd need to be on par with Secutarii in terms of effectiveness, probably even stronger and more intelligent to make them distinct. I was thinking lancers or men-at-arms with old Empire-style plate armor and pike-and-shot formations, except that they are also cyborgs linked into the Throne Mech of their lord and can use the Knight's targeting systems to scout out and eliminate key targets like what Tau have with the markerlights. That way you still need a knight to have a functioning army while also giving Knight World forces more depth rather than just a generic PDF that happens to randomly have access to this one super rare tech.
To be fair I don't think most Alien Allies are numerous enough to make sense as independent factions, so I'd more see them being one big menagerie faction that plays the more infantry focused role to the Tau mech/battlesuit focus.
I could see the Dark Mechanicus as the stand-in for Skaven. Have their tech be really strong but with a chance of going haywire and hurt your units or have a bunch of cheap and ueseless techthralls to hold the enemy down while some crazy techpriest throws phosphex on them. Just anything other than "admech but with spikes" that we tend to get.
I'd like to see Exodites (love to see space dinosaurs), Dark Admech and new giants factions to be a kind of xenos knights but just a race of giants would be interesting.
I really like your guys' content, your chemistry and your shared love of 40k is fantastic. I liked the inclusion of Erik's Jazz Tangent. I'm mostly commenting to boost your engagement metrics. Good work, boys.
Saim Hann could easily be their own Blood Angels-tier sub-faction. they have a distinct playstyle and a separate culture to the other craftworlds in-lore. they have massive potential and GW sleeps on them
Maybe you already know this, but in 3rd edition, there was a (thin) Codex: Craftworlds with special rules (and special characters) for each of the Eldar Craftworlds. They ranged from "meh" to "OP as fu*k!"
I don’t think a whole faction for human Tau would be necessary or even that good (humans have so many armies already) - but I 100% agree that a Gue’Vasa unit would be huge on tabletop (I say that with a Gue’Vasa kitbash in the works)
Frankly I just want an auxiliary subfaction with rules for a dozen or more species and weird things. Models or not tbh. Gue'vesa are trivially easy to kitbash anyways and I think encouraging that side of the hobby like they do for Orks would be good (but please dear god make it economically viable without having to search for lots of random parts online). I think people get too tunnel-visioned here, but considering the Tau are pretty undeniably the most diverse faction in 40K we need a way to represent that on the tabletop (which currently is the opposite of the case given how out of meta and interest Kroot are)
I think a decent option for votann would be to allow soup of either tau or imperium. Allow maybe 1/4 of your army to be that but make it so you can only take one or other faction. That way no guard working with battlesuits.
They tried to do skaven with the Hrud, but didnt think it really qualified for a full army if I remember correctly. Of course now hrud have drifted far enough from those origins that I think they'd be a neat addition.
Regarding Chaos, I like how the factions are divided in Total War Warhammer 3. You have each monogod faction with a combo of daemons and mortals, there's a mortal Chaos undivided, and then there's a daemon Chaos undivided. I'd love to see Beastmen added as another Chaos faction, or at least have their models within CSM expanded. You just gotta add some upgrade sprues for those fantasy goats.
The first two are musts, but given how complicated the game is, the rest are very optional: 1. Renegades and Heretics...Forge World even still has a section for it. Although I'd be ok with them being some kind of subfaction in CSM as long as they were fleshed out and had their own Stegs, AT 70 and 83 tanks from the Sabbat World books. Folks who had converted their Leman Russes and such could proxy them as AT70 and 83 variants. 2. Dark Mecanicum, although again, I'd be ok if they came out as part of Renegades and Heretics (Negavolt Cultists!) 3. Barghesi or Rak'Gol. 4. Whatever the heck is in the Ghoul Stars. 5. Heavily fleshed out Sslyth within Drukari. 6. Men of Iron remanent mixed with Rouge Tau AI 7. Space Rats 8. Slann Remenant
My plan for importing Skaven into 40k is just to kitbash and play them as GSC. They already have exactly the right kind of army rules and units that it's just a cast of reflavouring. Neophytes? Clan Rats. Acolytes/Metamorphs? Stormvermin. Aberrants? Rat Ogres. Jackals? Clanrats on Motorcycles. Characters can all interchangeably be thought of as Grey Seers, Warlock Engineers or Warlords. Vehicles can just stay the same but with visual alterations. In fact I think the existence of GSC and their flavour makes Skaven quite unlikely as a new faction, because they'd have the same gameplay identity.
Cheesestealer Cults! It was one of my earlier 3D printing ideas that got lost to other projects. I'm going a different way with my GSC army I'll be making, but I love the Skaven route, they have so many 1 for 1 equivalents between their range and GSC.
@@thepoorhammerpodcast It's something I'm looking to start at the back end of this year probably. Pick up a GSC Combat Patrol, some Stormvermin, some characters and then just play around and see what sticks. Though I have a gut feeling that with the Seraphon range refresh, Skaven might soon follow. The current Clanrat kit is useless for kitbash purposes and your options for characters on foot are very limited, so that would be a game-changer for my plans if it happens.
I was *this* close to making a Rak'Gol kill team. I really love their design, 40k could really use a larger variety of less humanoidal aliens. Lore-wise, they're basically a violent piratical race less advanced than humanity (they basically barely discovered warp drives), it's either said or strongly implied they are kinda like ants with queens and castes (but no hive mind) and they love them some radiation and crude bionics. Definitely not tau empire material, I'd say their faction pitch would be "orks if 40k was an amnesia-style horror game".
They could potentially do an alliance of races the imperium thought they had wiped out during 30k that have had time to recover becoming auxiliary for the tau, I like the idea of the arachnids from murder being on the tabletop.
I feel like Genestealers are the 40k version of Skaven. I know thematically they don't seem so. They don't have the clans and the history. But mechanically, I feel like they are similar, and could be fleshed out more to be like Skaven. The creeping enemy that rises from the sewers. The backstabbing betrayers. But also a horde that comes from nowhere.
Something I like about the old art for aeldari is they look like fae and fair folk, appearing from space and doing there thing. Aeldari also dips into samurai aspects with war banners and hyper specialized soldiers with a culture based on learning as much as you can for every job as a warriors. Going in either direction for aeldari would hard solidify themselves fully as a different culture to the imperium entirely along with establish them as a fully fleshed out faction
GW has never done dragons well, in my opinion. They always dilute them, by making them adjunct units to some other army. Whether it's mounts in High Elves or Stormcast Eternals, or in the Helldrake in CSM. Dragons should be their own faction. Glorious and terrible and inexorable as the tide. Intelligent and magical in their own right. If they work with other creatures, it's as masters to armies of slaves. Dragons should be no one's servants.
@@Bluecho4 Cathay in TWW3. Also, as a conspiracy theory to consider: who is REALLY in charge in Azyr? Most mortals think it's Sigmar, but maybe Dracothian rescued him (and the Seraphon) because the godbeast of the magic of prophecy was picking out his instruments. There's also a degree to which some Tyranid bioforms look and can be made to feel a bit dragonish.
Space Dragons And Minions are probably #1 on my list of factions that would fit into 40k. They cover a clear fantasy trope that can be easily placed into a scifi context, they’re ripe for the hyper-gothic aesthetic a lot of 40k has going on, they’re intuitive to make rules for… I’d fuckin kill for some dragons.
I Imagine you could combine all of the chaos ideas together. chaos sororitas: Could be the trader sisters forcing the other unaligned warp entities into one religious slave faction. Dark mechanicus: This could be the faction for chaos alien races combining their biology and technology. Chaos guard: I imagine them like space pirates having different flags using what they Steel & heretical resources.
The Jazz Tangent with Eric was a great new segment for the show. I've been very very curious about that dynamic after you lifted the curtain a bit last week. Brad's frustration was palpable! 😂
Mantic games as the Verr-Myn, who are skaven in space for their Firefight game. They're pretty fun, with kits that work for both their sci-fi and fantasy range.
Quick note on Rak'Gol, they actually have a small reference in Black Stone Fortress. There's a pistol equipment named after them. Personally, I'd be fine with them added onto chaos as another force to add some xeno elements to them. After we get chaos guard and dark mech, I'd love to see the chaos auxiliary units, including the chaos striking scorpions that fell to the dark powers long ago.
Me too, but unfortunately they kinda kneecapped them in the lore. They used to be abhumans that were notably poorly treated and hated by humans to the point they often fled to become mercenaries or fell to chaos. Now they're just a generic chaos mutation which is way less interesting imo. Then again they kinda kneecapped them in Fantasy lore too, they used to have a lot more freewill and more of a tribal and nomadic culture and then GW just made them, again, generic chaos mobs of mindless barbarians
I really liked them being part of the imperium, I just wish they were cooler, like let them help bridge the gap between sm and guard and lore wise letting everyone hate it
Each time I think about how to insert Skavens inton 40k I reflec on what makes the Skavens cool in the first place. The fact is, Skavens are cool -amongs other things - because of the warp infuse tech they got. If you want to do that in 40k, the rats mens must be fucking advanced... I think that core element of "OP tech compare to everyone else" is already covered by the Necron. If you put the Skavens like they are in Old World with fucked up tech and messy aesthetic, you just got Orks with Rats... That's a pickle..
Also, the secret underground society thing is already covered by Genestealer Cults and Chaos cults. But I'd still really like them to find a niche for space Skaven.
Personally, I have a suspicion that's why skaven didn't make the transition - Orks already have the 'crazy, unreliable tech' angle, the Aeldari have reliable warp-based weapons, the Drukhari Haemonculi make monstrosities, and so on. One of the things in my mental map for skaven, however, is "Bond villain" - that might be something that could be played up, and having some bits and pieces that are stolen from other races would fit that as long as the final product has its own identity.
I really share your opinions, especially on the Tau. But I would ad for a little bit of Lovecravetian spa e horror the Slaught ( Wormpeople) maybe as a side faction one the Drukhari
The tau have an auxilarry named "tarelians" that are basically lizardmen. So if you do another votann you could use tbat to bring lizard people into 40k. Also on the rak'gol even if we can't get a full army for them i would love to see minis for them via kill team or some boxed game.
Orks could easily be expanded on more than "just" more Grot varieties and more Beastsnagga stuff. There is a whole bunch of Ork Clans that all could be given either upgrade sprue(s) and/or even dedicated kits. As a mainline range, Orks feel pretty complete already, so branching out into different subthemes would be a logical way to go.
Although you mentioned mechanicus and knights co-operation. But as well the militias and house hold gaurd who fight along knights. A mix of gaurd and scions maybe heavy/lighter infantry options with limited vehicles above transports but maily focussed on support roles for knights.
For Adding Chaos to Chaos, I feel like a lot of races like the Rak’gol or the Enslavers feel too much like one-off monsters like the Ambulls. Maybe if GW made game mechanics to incorporate a PvPvE where monsters like this occupy the mid-field, then we’d see em
T'au and Votann can be mixed through the Demiurgs (those are the auxiliaries Brad mentioned) and have something like CSM and the dedicated Chaos legions where each have their own exclusive models but both can use the more basic/generic/whatever units and such.
On balancing Knights as a stand-alone faction. The appeal is obviously big robot leading smaller robots. So, what if even smaller robots that function as infantry equivalents. They could be some mechanical thing that's an obvious stand-in for knights on horses maybe around the size of a dreadnought.
What I think we need is non-Space Marine Chaos. I love Chaos and I love Space Marines, don't get me wrong here. But having Human, Eldar, Beastman or Skaven Chaos _characters_ - especially psykers - seems so obvious to me. I also think that xeno mercenaries should be more common overall. Add a bunch of interspecies diplomacy to the lore, make mercenaries "their own thing" of which everyone may take some but the Tau are more efficient at it, e.g. giving their battleforged buffs to the mercenaries as well. Flavor kept, horizon broadened
I agree, it’s so weird chaos Xenos don’t exist on tabletop. For Eldar, the path book has some Drukhari who worships Nurgle, Khorne, and Tzeentch respectively. There a whole bunch of independent Xenos that do. Chaos dwarves feels like a matter of time. Tyranids have been corrupted in lore by Nurgle once in the middle of space to my knowledge after some Tyranids were somehow cutoff from the hive mind. Farsight is one step away from turning Khorne every other Sunday. Etc, etc.
@@peenwienerstein2 Undivided daemon are great, but what we really need in 40k more minor chaos gods. Minor aspects of Vashtor if he ascends, Malal does exist I cannot be silenced. Maybe Hashut?
100% agree about Elves and Tau having to be fleshed out for the setting to be more balanced. Not because they are non-human, necessarily, but because they are all actually very human, just in different ways The Elves represent a humanoid species after their fall, the Imperium represents one in the process of falling, and the Tau represent a new, naive race trying to survive and hopefully someday thrive. They also represent the three different genres that 40K exists in. The Elves and they're enemies are the ancient and magical, the Imperium and Chaos are the space-medieval knights vs demons thing, and the Tau and their allies are the new and technologically advanced. Yeah, I really think 40K should officially be set up like that.
The T'au'vesa Coalition ("T'au Helpers" for a more distinct name than T'au Empire) is probably GW's biggest missed opportunity so far. They really turned in their homework half finished with the T'au auxiliaries. Kroot has the most work done in them, but even with Forge World, they lack the AP to get a functional army at the moment. The Vespid are the chitinous, bug people that aren't Tyranid... and they got one unit and have been basically forgotten ever since. The Gue'vesa human auxiliaries got an obscure footnote rule to add some guardsmen to your army. I'd still love some rules/model support for a drone-centric army, and they could develop more of the "maybe the T'au are in the early stages of AI sentience and revolt that the Imperium experienced," but that requires thinking about lore with more maturity than the bulk of their writing team can handle. Way to go, GW. Just focus on the literal most boring Space Marines and Chaos forever instead of the hint of something interesting. Eldar have potential to be more than one-note like they are right now. I agree they are the other strongest candidate for major empire, especially if they push into Fae territory. Lots of material to pull from. Anyways, great video and I agree with basically everything you guys brought up. I'll just have to make my own fan-codex in the meantime, because I won't hold my breath that GW will make actually bold decisions with their lore 😢.
Enslavers were still their own warp-thing in the 40k era in the lore up until... 5th ed(? I think). Don't know if they've been explicitly written out of cannon as of yet. They were one of the big reasons for the Black Ships, as an Enslaver incursion one of the very common nasty ends untrained psykers could cause (by being turned *physically* into a gate the Enslavers use to enter real-space).
Enslavers are still in lore but would really not work as an army - they're meant to be a singular type of entity that represents an existential threat to psychic races (and would probably not have a good time against Tau or Necrons), not an actual civilisation or society that has armies.
@@philipbowles5397 true, but I wasn't referring to them being an army, just them being called out as proto-demons; they're more than just that. As for Tau and Necrons having an easy time against them, they were the reason the Necrons took a long nap, because their constant incursions into real-space (thanks to the Slann's numerous cheaply knocked out and barely trained psychic warrior races) were tearing down the barrier between warp- and real-space. A proper Enslaver incursion is a threat to anyone, and the current timeline has *lots* of parallels to the last time they almost overran the galaxy.
A thought to expand on the Necron / Ork standalone; I think those two together could be their own tier. Call it Order & Chaos. Two factions ever vying for position over one another. One numerous and plentiful beyond belief with a love for violence. The other immortal, undying with a pacing the eschews mortal lifetimes. Each places the other in 'check', there's tons of Necron based lore about the Orks constantly ruining and disrupting their plans, while other races seem to be simply swept to the side by the Necrons.
I’m all for fleshing out the flavors of Eldar but it has always been inconsistent on how many there actually are. There are only so many literal craft worlds and admittedly I’m not a lore master but they are always referred to as a dying race. They make it sound like the loss of a single aspect warrior to be a crippling blow. Brad mentioned they are the same size as Necrons but I never got that from what little lore I’ve read. Basically because any planet could secretly be a tomb world you can have a couple billion more Necrons.
Idea: you have 3 armies in T'au, an offensive one, defensive one and kind of a middle-ground where they focus more on specific characters or units a quasi special forces. Think of it from the standpoint of military branches... you got the offensive or expeditionary forces which move fast, carry big-ish guns and are much more attack/reduce enemy numbers oriented then you have the defensive which move slow carry VERY big guns and are tough and then a special-forces with varying degrees of support and smaller squads of fast-moving infantry/transports that are meant to move fast, take locations and then hold them while support blunts enemy counter-attacks.
I read a bit about the Rak'Gol, and they would never fit into Tau. They have worse tech then the humans, but are described to be much more brutal. Also noone ever found out were they came from, and noone managed to translate their language. So all in all melle focused like Nyds but not nyds cuz they use actual ships and weapons. I got the idea that one could kinda spin the narrative that some ald enemies of mankind, maybe some surving Man of Iron, decided to be like the old ones and bioengineer a race to fight the humans or something and that that would be their origin story.
You could do just about anything with a deep void human faction, maybe driven back towards imperial space by the tyranids? There's a lot of xeno races driven to near extinction by the imperium, many become mercs, if the tau keep being so limited on the tabletop with their auxiliary options then maybe an actual standalone alien mercenary faction would be cool?
I think T'au needs a 2nd army. Something like Auxilla legions. There's 11 canon auxillary species in the T'au empire and 2 got models. 6:57 Always thought it'd make sense that various 'pirate subfactions' should be allowed to ally each other on the tabletop. It's iffy in the lore, but it just seems fun to think some Freebotaz, Corssairs and human prirates meet up and decide to raid some massive trasport together because then they can pull it off.
I like your pirate force, and it is maybe lore-doable. Get a Rogue Trader set, that Elucidian Starstrider box. This is the Rogue Trader command and they have gone completely off-piste, very freestyle. We already have precedent for Eldar Rangers joining up, as in Blackstone Fortress, and it isn't so odd anyway, so that brings the Corsairs in. Freebootaz are there for a laugh and the cash. Not all of it will mesh, but there is a coherent story and narrative army there.
As a T'au player let me tell you: DO NOT do what you suggested with splitting the army into two branches. That would kill any hype I have for the entire army. That sounds like the absolute worst thing you could do to them.
Second Tau player here to say that I absolutely agree. The whole gimmick of the Tau is that they are united (ignore Farsight for a second). What would really make Tau feel larger is actually adding the vast amount of Auxilerly units that are in the lore
The whole idea that the imperium is more fleshed out because it has more armies is a stupid idea, making that into the tau is worse, to get the tau as fleshed out as the imperium is they just have to release lore for them, from the Tau's history to be anything beyond war world peace then interstellar conquest, however I do think there is a way to split the tau into different armies and make it work, the farsight enclaves should get a codex that starts identical to the main empire besides named characters and the ethereal, then as editions go passed the farsight enclaves and the tau empire have 2 different evolving points, the enclaves can be forced to make adaptations to there existing stuff while the empire is able to make deadicated new desighns for war machines, on a desighn level this would mean that enclaves could get upgrade sprues to older models to give them a way to make it seem they ate progressing just like the tau area but because the deadicated equips is there, you can have the enclaves take the army into a more infantry focused faction with auxiliaries as support units while the ethereal could be made more progressive and all about advancing there battle suits and aircraft to the point there infantry is lagging behind the enclaves
Not really connected to the episode but I cannot say how thankful I am for this content! Just got into the hobby and your content has been a great way to learn more about the game!
I was never fond of DarkMech, tbh. Regular Mechanicus already has such an intense body-horror theme that introducing a faction of "Those guys, but somehow worse" seems like it would mostly just cannibalize from the existing faction.
They aren’t just Admech but more body horror, they have a completely different philosophy. For example Xana 2 are a forge world and that went rogue during the Horus Heresy because they despised the imperiums resections on innovations. The dark mech love innovation and creativity, they look upon a galaxy that refuses to invent anything and laugh, and by their nature take it to far and tamper with forces they shouldn’t of. DarkMech are often trapped in contracts they fear and loath to the dark gods like Csm, they have body’s of metal which create spider like or centipede like form of horror. It isn’t just body horror, they’re become actual monsters with enough tampering. They also have no care for the imperiums rules on Ai and will happily track them down to use them as weapons. Also they might not actually have that many Skitarii since most of their forces comes from 30k where Skitarii didn’t exist. The contrast mechanically would be Admech revolve around Skitarii and dark mech don’t.
This has to be the most they’ve talked about votann, and I’m here for it! Also, correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe in lore votann taught tau to use ion weaponry.
We really don’t need 40K skaven. Just saying that they should have an equivalent in the setting isn’t a good argument. I don’t see people asking for Tau to get an AoS analogue. Or Tyranids.
I'll agree only if the lore says the emperor was smart enough to make space marine deal with even AI, mainly because the emperor is already beat by cawl.
Give me more Blackstone Constructs like the Spindle Drones, GW. It is incredible, mind-boggling, that elves on dinosaurs still aren't a thing in-game when they're so very cool in-lore. I would buy that army so fast.
The Rok'Gol could make for a really imterseting counterbalance to the Tyrannids. Like maybe they arrived in the Milky Way from another galaxy that had been devoured by the swarm and were forced to sacrifice their "humanity" to survive against the tyranids. They would be generally hostile, but drop everything to fight tyranids. Kind of like the Seraphon in AoS do against the forces of chaos.
As a Necron player I would love to see some love for dinasties outside of the sautehk one (and I guess the szarekhan one although it’s only the silent king), kinda like space marines chapters, although then you’d have to do that for different cults of the T’au or something as well
This would be an obscure one but I’d love to see the rangdan return. They were a 30k race that could mind control other races and gave the imperium a run for their money so it would be cool if they returned in full force or if it turned out they were the puppet masters of a faction like the tau
I will say this every time Skaven get brought up, they should be incorporated AESTHETICALLY to the Dark Mechanicum, they already pretty similar Imagine the dark Mechanicum skittari equivalent have metal rat skulls for helmets!
Thing about the Cthulu esque faction idea. Theres technically one that exist in lore. I've always wanted to see the Maggotmen models, they just sounded so freaking creepy and fun, kinda blended together tyranids with the grossout factor and necrons with the tech so advanced its like magic. And a pinch of drunk Hari with their servant flesh machines (design, i think they made em themselves)
I'd love to see the Hrud show up in game one day, even as just a mini faction. The whole concept of them aging their enemies to death is just super cool. They could do something like ignoring saves, but you have to treat the enemies Toughness as their wounds instead. Or something like that.
I would love the Slaughth getting a fleshed out faction, maggot men who rule mostly by subterfuge but have tech that can melt a terminator sounds fucking metal.
The return of the rangdan would be cool. maybe they could have some auxiliaries like the hrud, rak gol, q'rol, sluagth, and cypher fiends xenos, kinda like a twisted grimdark lovecraft esqe version of the tau empire. As well as the possibility of flesheing out some of the tau's minor neighbors, like the world weve of noisome reek, the church of dracolith, the thexian trade empire, and the xenarch empire.
I think it would be cool to see tau battle suits that are designed specifically for the non-tau races. like a battle suit designed for kroot or Vespids.
On the subject of Xenos, I think there should at the very least be a "Agents of _____" for Xenos, the way Imperium has "Agents of the Imperium" and Chaos has "Agents of Chaos". Call them "Xenos Mercenaries" or something to that effect. A big umbrella for filing all manner of weird alien creatures under, that you can then plug into other Xenos armies. Then, release a ton of kits for them. Like, the Rak'Gol could easily be released as a Kill Team, and then have rules for running them in 40K in other armies. They did it for Arbites, and they got multiple different units in 40K to reflect their loadouts. Just make the Rak'Gol kit have a few build options. Maybe with the option of building one model as either a "Combat Leader" or a "Tech Shaman", so you have some Character builds. Suddenly you've made use of your extensive background lore. Another option would be like the Enslavers. Release a kit that can be built as three "normal" Enslavers, or two of those and one Character Enslaver. All models that are like flesh balls with tentacles wrapping around assorted Psyker models. And give them the ability to not only be taken in Xenos armies, but in many armies. So you're running the narrative that they're mind-controlling other forces. (Barring some exceptional armies who have in-lore reasons they'd be resistant to mind control, like Custodes, Necrons, or Tyranids). Make them strong psychic threats, and maybe have the ability to briefly mess with opposing models (a Leadership test can be good for this). There are so many weird and wonderful Xenos creatures, it's criminal GW has used so few of them on the tabletop.
The "Covenant" angle of the Tau is something that really should be explored more. A beastsnaggas type release that provides more kroot/vespid etc would allow Tau to move away from being the "shooting and nothing else" faction. They even have psyker aliens in the lore. You could add all these but they will be kept separate enough that if you want to just play traditional battlesuit Tau then that is an option. I feel like an insane/senile Votann would be a great way to introduce a Chaos Dwarves equivalent without going full warp. Have the ai go full self preservation mode pumping out robots and brainwashed clones, strip mining planets for resources to fuel it's war machine. Knights should move away from skew. There's a lot of lore and images out there of the retinues that follow knights around. Sort of the equivalent of a war party for a noble. A knight in real life needs a whole party to "maintain" them, squires, cooks, followers etc. Chaos knights have worshippers. They should be represented on the table.
I think Knights need even smaller walkers called "Squires". The Cawdor scrapwalkers in necromunda are the perfect template to start. They could have abilities to specifically help knights like options for Repair/increase of stats.
10:05 - “I don’t know dude; the thing is - I don’t actually know enough about how the warp works…” - a casual conversation between a Chaplain and a Chaos Sorceror
In the Arhiman trilogy the non-TS Chaos Sorcerers don't seem to know much either...
I bet the TS don’t think they do at least.
When it comes to bugs for T'au, as Eric suggested you would not even need to invent a new species there is such a race in lore. The Thraxians, four-armed crabs/bugs known for serving the T'au as close quarters combat specialists (which would be nice for tabletop).
Most of the tau auxiliaries would be super beneficial for their tabletop viability.
Other races would help their lore viability too. Some of the auxiliaries got access to FTL but the tau still spend several years traveling to farsight enclaves
Still waiting on the psychic bear people they are allied with.
Seems like GW doesn't need our money 😂 I am 100% with you guys. Would love to play official units not improvised and only in friendly games... 😢
In addition to having Auxiliaries and the T’au be separate armies, actually separate out the Farsight enclaves to be a wholly unique faction. Melee Battlesuits and focused infantry, different vehicles, fortifications and characters and make them able to pull from each other like Eldar/Drukhari do
I think T'au Auxiliaries would be cool as the "weird alien soup" faction. I think most units being different species would be a super cool feel
It would be great if you had a choice to play as full-on Mecha or Monster party with all kinds of critters
i feel like you can have more than one "alien soup" faction. i always find it a bit silly when sci-fi goes "ok, there's one faction with a bunch of different species and then the rest are just blobs of only one species" like what star trek does with the federation. i guess the nids having different bioforms is a bit soupy. an all-new soup faction might cause some bloat, but there's room in existing factions to add a sprinkling of something else, like how sslyth are mercs for the drukhari... how about chaos getting some more xenos outside of just lore bits? it's not like only humans fall
I would like them to be more like the 40k equivalent of the Covenant from Halo.
@@SurnameNameNids having bioform variation is like a body having cell variation
I think it would be super cool if Tau added a third war philosophy to branch off from the existing "patient hunter versus rapid strike force" two options and only very slight variations on going about doing that. A third one specifically about strength through cross-species cooperation, and being all about wambo-combos between different alien species with different specialties. Give the psychic space bears models, give them horrible crab aliens, hell, give them a unit that's a bunch of abhuman races that the imperium just said "nah, to mutated." and kicked them out, would be a great way of introducing beastmen or skaven-looking models that aren't just K-Sons Zangors
It'd be funny if the skaven from fantasy just opened a portal and landed on a 40k world. Seeing how they would develop their technology and interact with the world would be interesting.
Well there is Grimfuture, its an alternative (i think better) ruleset for 40k.
And they implemented Skaven and Lizardman to the 40k rules.
Considering the skaven have lore where a warlock saw the kharadron’s sky ships and said “I could do that but better.” He then came back a few years later (was extremely secretive because skaven like backstabbing) with the title of admiral and 11 flying skaven ships. It’d be interesting to see what they would make given the tech they’d discover in 40K.
no
Yes-yes good great
So um Skaven worships Nurgle yes? Just imagine Skaven plague Marines.
100% agree that Elves need expanding with Ynarri as Imperial Agent equivalent and the expanded lore and (fractured) empire. From the lore - "Exodites are generally welcoming to other Eldar peoples. They have good relations with most Craftworld Eldar, particularly Alaitoc and are often visited and aided by Harlequin hosts." It is sensible and only right now to be able to put dinosaur-riding warriors fighting alongside the Clown Death Jester and Solitaire. Even Elf-dislikers like Brad can see the appeal of that imaginative story rather than yet another Primaris Marine model.
I would love to see space dinosaurs
@@cp1cupcake That's fine, and probably makes more sense in the lore as an auxiliary unit. So long as they can work with any other Elves is the main thing.
@@cp1cupcakelump together Corsairs, Harleys and Ynnari +whatever other weird thing you can find into some sort of agents of the Aeldari.
Exodites can work as auxiliaries but I honestly really want them as a standalone faction. Exodites almost exclusively keep to themselves normally, but it wouldn't be hard to make up some new lore to give them an excuse to venture out from their planets en masse. My favourite scenario has always been a kind of Aeldari grand crusade to free Isha from captivity in Nurgle's garden, which the Exodites will be especially keen to do - it's obvious they would have the strongest connection with the goddess of life and fertility, being technologically primitive in all things but war.
There's loads of different directions standalone Exodites can go in, as "primitivist space elves" can be taken in many different directions. The obvious one is to base them loosely off the wood elf archetype, maybe give them magical bows and stuff, but "low-tech elves" could also make them lean more towards fantasy high elves, especially given the presence of "dragon" riders (that is, dinosaur riders - I'll never understand why they made aeldari call dinosaurs "dragons") who could take up a niche as heavy shock cavalry.
@@sulphuric_glue4468 Exodites have access to the webway right? So they can turn up where they want anyways. That being said, I don't imagine them medieval, but technologically minimalist in a survivalist/guerilla kind of way. (Basically Rangers meet Dinosaurs).
The "Tau-ish" side could be more of the "up-and-coming species willing to collaborate to survive the big powerhouses." Votann would fit in as more of "nobody knows they're actually closer to the big ones than they let on."
Assimilate or die 😊
Skaven already have a counterpart in 40k. It's called Imperial Guard.
I literally choked on my sandwich while I was reading this well done😂
😐
You aren't wrong, the Guard are just the not furred and less infighty version of Skaven.
I'd go further and say the Imperium as a whole is very Skaven. An unwieldy empire of fast-breeding creatures living in squalor, whose many feuding subfactions are begrudgingly beholden to a council of bastards that claim to speak for their species's god. Throwing their people into the twin meat grinders of Industry and War, to perpetuate a deeply unjust and cruel hierarchy.
Imperial Guard are Clans Verminus, the endless hordes of disposal chaff. Their elite Tempestus Scions/Kasrkin (also called "Storm Troopers") are Storm Vermin, who get the best training, the best food, and the best equipment.
The Ecclesiarchy/Sisters of Battle are Clans Pestilens. Zealots given over to religious mania, who dive headfirst into war high on both unshakable faith and the fumes coming off their censer bearers.
The Adeptus Mechanicus are Clans Skryr, scientists with no scruples and a conviction in their own brilliance. Bombarding their foes with the energy coming off glowing green rocks, while equipping their soldiers with heavy weapons they don't really understand.
The Officio Assassinorum are Clans Eshin, a dark and secretive order of killers who loose modified murderers to remove threats to their empire's interests. Agile spies and skilled killers, who are as often stabbing their own people in the back as their enemies, for crimes real or perceived.
The Space Marines are Clans Moulder, or rather the products of their debased bio-craft. What is a Space Marine than a glorified Rat Ogre, after all? They're just as brainwashed and just as unthinking of commands given to them from on high.
💀
I think you're missing the "two birds, one stone" with Chaos. Introduce the Skaven AS the Chaos replacement for the Dark Mechanicus. Little greasy rats trading their labor in the eye of terror to CSM for shiny bits. Natural tinkerers and creators of weapons of absolute misery. Make them the primary worshippers of Vashtorr. His rise to Chaos God status is enough to drive the Skaven out from under the floor boards and begin scavenging for themselves, while also supporting various Chaos factions.
What if Vashtorr IS the Horned Rat?
BRILLIANT!
This is such a good idea!
I said this and then saw your comment. I whole-heartedly agree.
Hang on my idea is kinda similar to this I gotta find it
14:51 I think fundamentally the Votann (aka: Ancestor cores) themselves prevent them from joining with the Tau in any meaningful way. Because the Ancestor cores lead the LoV and would prevent the leagues from joining the greater good in any meaningful way.
Also important side notes:
1: the LoV have ai called Ironkin, fully sentient ai that are treated as equals.
2: the LoV as a faction is larger than the Tau and aldari in lore. They mention that there actually a pretty big faction numbers wise.
I would love some more non-humanoid factions, the Rak Gol being a good example because they already have a lot of lore in the setting. Make them weird and grimdark and properly ALIEN to humanity. Alternatively, the Hrud would be amazing, they are creatures that literally affect time and could have some really interesting gameplay as a result - instead of guns, you can age units in front of you until they crumble to dust, or have machines break down because they're internal components rust and fall apart.
I would LOVE to see the Rak Gol get actual tabletop representation!
Yeah, I'd sell a kidney for Rak'Gol. I was really surprised neither of our two hosts on this poorhammer podcast didn't know about them. They're like the most commonly wanted xenos army that somehow still don't have models and that have a ton of existing lore. And their empire makes up a sizeable portion of space. And lore wise they're elite enough to where we could finally have a xenos army that is super elite. They'd probably be between Grey Knights and Adeptus Custodes in how elite they are, I'd imagine.
30K has an insane wealth of crazy xenos, including a lot fitting into the voidborne aspect he mentioned would be cool.
Dark Mechanicus is the big one I see that to me would be a broadening of the CSM range instead of a unique faction. They'd be sharing the Daemon Engines and probably Cultists, and likely would have the same Daemon and Chaos Knight ally rules as CSM armies. I'm totally down for an army that mixes Knights and Daemon Engines, but I kind of think the DarkMech desire could be fulfilled by just adding a few awesome sculpts and letting CSM take AdMech units that could be converted and kitbashed to your heart's desires.
I would combine dark mechanicus with chaos knights, and throw the skaven in there, I think they would make the most sense combines with dark mechanicus, maybe as foot soldiers (instead of skitarii) and some abominations, you can even have some AI shenanigans, since dark mechanicus would not care about the rules against AI, also, you can make an option and go into heretek, and you can combine them with necron tech, so you build a bridge between chaos and necron, going back to the time where necrons were actually chaos robots, I would love that, you basically have two dark admech factions, where you can choose
Hard disagree. I hate that if I want to play chaos guard I have to play Chaos Space Marines. What if I want to get away from the faction mascots and play with a faction that has nothing to do with them? I would have to play anything else which means no cultists, daemon whines, etc for me.
@@IcoOst That could work, but honestly in the lore the DarkMech aren't really as martially active as the AdMech. They're more of the Fabius Bile Mad Scientist types, and their armies are basically already represented in Chaos Knights and the Daemon Engines. That's why I think just a couple of sculpts for an HQ or two and an Elite option would go a long way to fulfilling what a lot of people want. I'm all for a total body horror DarkMech range but I think GW could honestly go lowish effort for a big win.
@@Unknown-qj9sm There's no reason to take Traitor Guard out of CSM, the CSM army rule is perfect for traitor guard. All they have to do is let you build with X Points Imperial Guard units. If you want 0 other flavors of Chaos at all, you can literally just play Imperial Guard and put spikes on them.
@@Xynth25 well, remember how the admech started, as part of the imperial army, I would basically make it like agents of the imperium but with solid army options maybe in combination with xenerites
I want to make sure everyone knows that the Tau empire has psychic panda bears. I want that model.
do they starve to death if they dont have an endless supply of bamboo because they've evolved to exclusively eat one of the most nutritionally lacking and inefficient plants in existence?
@@thepinkplushiethey are polar bears and not pandas so it would be easier to feed them considering that there is a nearly infinite amount of meat instead of a potentially exinct plant from terra
Pandas don't just eat bamboo. It's just they prefer to because there's so much of it where they live and it grows faster than they can eat it, so it's almost zero-effort food.
That's why it doesn't matter that it's so low in calories and nutrients. Pandas barely have to get out of bed in the morning 🤣
The niccasar. I've wanted them for years
I want saurus in space, ideally in awesome space armor with awesome space weapons. I kind of hope that whatever faction we get next, they find some way to include zoats in it.
I could imagine something the like of how Predators are portrayed. Aztec aesthetics with space lizardmen :)
@@captain_torket3254 That would be awesome. A reptilian race with a strong warrior culture with more of an emphasis on honor. In the first horus heresy, they mention coming across a strong reptilian that had banned war on most of their planet. Maybe after being wiped out by the astartes, their numbers have recovered and their culture evolved over the last ten thousand years.
Zoats!!!
Literally Tarellians
I used some converted Lizardmen as Kroot. Gave them some tau weapons and a fire warrior shoulder pad. And a saiyan scouter because I'm a weeb.
I think that one of the cooler parts of 40k that is often forgotten about is that it is a galactic-scale Post-Apocalypse setting.
It is also a galactic-scale PRE-Apocalypse setting.
Aren't all settings pre-apocalyptic? Perhaps not imminently so, but definately at some point...
There's already been a couple, and now another one is coming. Like hobbits and their meals.
When I first got into the game at the beginning of 9E, I almost started with Tau after hearing about all of the auxiliary species that they recruited. The idea of playing “the Covenant” in Warhammer is amazing. The whole mecha battle-suit thing doesn’t appeal to me though, so I passed and decided on 1k Sons instead. Now I have custom 3D-printed chaos spawn and a Mutalith vortex beast with dusty marines and bird goats with the ability to soup in lovecraftian daemons. Diverse enough for me.
I’m so glad he’s talking about rak’gol, that’s a faction I’d love
Tyranids could really use Zoats as a genuine third faction. Like a Custodes-levek faction of biotech slaves that follow the swarms to cultivate the planets left behind to be eaten again. Imagine how sick that would be
I didn't think Zoats were aligned with the Nids.
@@jeffreymonsell659Originally they are essentially the Diplomatic Corps of the Nids
@@tchynerd Huh, I guess I need to learn more about them. I still mostly associate them with Wood Elves, which isn't even 40k.
@@jeffreymonsell659yeah their 40K lore is unrecognizable. That said its also highly limited and almost all of it comes from the '80s. The Zoats were enslaved outside the galaxy and brutally bioengineered. They served as essentially the Tyranid "diplomats", scouting out high value worlds, spreading misinformation and discord, and it's even implied they would be the origin point of some Genestealer cult rebellions.
Their lore would need to be reworked somewhat but there's very little of it so that would be easy. Unfortunately they're canon again with the Blackstone Fortress stuff and completely unrelated to the Nids as far as we currently know so, it's unlikely they'll come back as Nids auxiliaries
Also we could give us some if the unigue faction units for the gene stealers sense their factions have a lot of potential!
What if GW just gave troops to Knights? Like in lore the Knight houses have their household militias/planetary defense forces, so what if the knights just got those as models, and then operated as a kind of “big mechs with infantry support” army?
They could import Cities of Sigmar models like they did with Chaos Daemons.
@@themocawThe difference is that Daemons don't need to have modern fucking firearms to make sense.
So... old admech?
They'd need to be on par with Secutarii in terms of effectiveness, probably even stronger and more intelligent to make them distinct. I was thinking lancers or men-at-arms with old Empire-style plate armor and pike-and-shot formations, except that they are also cyborgs linked into the Throne Mech of their lord and can use the Knight's targeting systems to scout out and eliminate key targets like what Tau have with the markerlights.
That way you still need a knight to have a functioning army while also giving Knight World forces more depth rather than just a generic PDF that happens to randomly have access to this one super rare tech.
...squires?
For the Tau our hosts forgot the pancake bears. The Nicassar technically did have a model, albeit only in Battlefleet Gothic.
To be fair I don't think most Alien Allies are numerous enough to make sense as independent factions, so I'd more see them being one big menagerie faction that plays the more infantry focused role to the Tau mech/battlesuit focus.
I could see the Dark Mechanicus as the stand-in for Skaven. Have their tech be really strong but with a chance of going haywire and hurt your units or have a bunch of cheap and ueseless techthralls to hold the enemy down while some crazy techpriest throws phosphex on them. Just anything other than "admech but with spikes" that we tend to get.
I'd like to see Exodites (love to see space dinosaurs), Dark Admech and new giants factions to be a kind of xenos knights but just a race of giants would be interesting.
I dream of a world where Wraithknights could be balanced as both for craftworlds, and at the knights level
@@BARMN89 I respect this dream
22:00 Legit, would be awesome to have a Grot only force.
their conga tactis will be unsstopable
I really like your guys' content, your chemistry and your shared love of 40k is fantastic. I liked the inclusion of Erik's Jazz Tangent.
I'm mostly commenting to boost your engagement metrics. Good work, boys.
Saim Hann could easily be their own Blood Angels-tier sub-faction. they have a distinct playstyle and a separate culture to the other craftworlds in-lore. they have massive potential and GW sleeps on them
I feel like re-factioning the harlequins ought to come first.... but yeah.
Maybe you already know this, but in 3rd edition, there was a (thin) Codex: Craftworlds with special rules (and special characters) for each of the Eldar Craftworlds.
They ranged from "meh" to "OP as fu*k!"
I loved me some 3rd Edition Craftworld Codex Jetbikers. The greatest model never made was a Saim Hann War Chief on Vyper-based War Chariot.
You could say that of almost every Craftworld
@@SamueL-td7fb yes
Gue'Vasa (Humans working for Tau) could be a cool army in the Tau section.
A Tau faction of humans would be such a let down. We have all the humans we need in the imperium.
I don’t think a whole faction for human Tau would be necessary or even that good (humans have so many armies already) - but I 100% agree that a Gue’Vasa unit would be huge on tabletop (I say that with a Gue’Vasa kitbash in the works)
I think a detachment with the ability to Soup guard, and then one Auxillary Gue’Vasa unit
Frankly I just want an auxiliary subfaction with rules for a dozen or more species and weird things. Models or not tbh. Gue'vesa are trivially easy to kitbash anyways and I think encouraging that side of the hobby like they do for Orks would be good (but please dear god make it economically viable without having to search for lots of random parts online).
I think people get too tunnel-visioned here, but considering the Tau are pretty undeniably the most diverse faction in 40K we need a way to represent that on the tabletop (which currently is the opposite of the case given how out of meta and interest Kroot are)
@@thepinkplushie they either need to do that, or make a different covenant style faction. It’s the one big thing missing in 40k
I think a decent option for votann would be to allow soup of either tau or imperium. Allow maybe 1/4 of your army to be that but make it so you can only take one or other faction. That way no guard working with battlesuits.
They tried to do skaven with the Hrud, but didnt think it really qualified for a full army if I remember correctly. Of course now hrud have drifted far enough from those origins that I think they'd be a neat addition.
Regarding Chaos, I like how the factions are divided in Total War Warhammer 3. You have each monogod faction with a combo of daemons and mortals, there's a mortal Chaos undivided, and then there's a daemon Chaos undivided.
I'd love to see Beastmen added as another Chaos faction, or at least have their models within CSM expanded. You just gotta add some upgrade sprues for those fantasy goats.
The first two are musts, but given how complicated the game is, the rest are very optional:
1. Renegades and Heretics...Forge World even still has a section for it. Although I'd be ok with them being some kind of subfaction in CSM as long as they were fleshed out and had their own Stegs, AT 70 and 83 tanks from the Sabbat World books. Folks who had converted their Leman Russes and such could proxy them as AT70 and 83 variants.
2. Dark Mecanicum, although again, I'd be ok if they came out as part of Renegades and Heretics (Negavolt Cultists!)
3. Barghesi or Rak'Gol.
4. Whatever the heck is in the Ghoul Stars.
5. Heavily fleshed out Sslyth within Drukari.
6. Men of Iron remanent mixed with Rouge Tau AI
7. Space Rats
8. Slann Remenant
My plan for importing Skaven into 40k is just to kitbash and play them as GSC. They already have exactly the right kind of army rules and units that it's just a cast of reflavouring. Neophytes? Clan Rats. Acolytes/Metamorphs? Stormvermin. Aberrants? Rat Ogres. Jackals? Clanrats on Motorcycles. Characters can all interchangeably be thought of as Grey Seers, Warlock Engineers or Warlords. Vehicles can just stay the same but with visual alterations.
In fact I think the existence of GSC and their flavour makes Skaven quite unlikely as a new faction, because they'd have the same gameplay identity.
Cheesestealer Cults! It was one of my earlier 3D printing ideas that got lost to other projects. I'm going a different way with my GSC army I'll be making, but I love the Skaven route, they have so many 1 for 1 equivalents between their range and GSC.
@@thepoorhammerpodcast It's something I'm looking to start at the back end of this year probably. Pick up a GSC Combat Patrol, some Stormvermin, some characters and then just play around and see what sticks. Though I have a gut feeling that with the Seraphon range refresh, Skaven might soon follow. The current Clanrat kit is useless for kitbash purposes and your options for characters on foot are very limited, so that would be a game-changer for my plans if it happens.
The skaven equivalent are called the Hrud
ANd yeah I really want Tau and Eldar to lean into the multifaceted parts of their design too
I was *this* close to making a Rak'Gol kill team. I really love their design, 40k could really use a larger variety of less humanoidal aliens.
Lore-wise, they're basically a violent piratical race less advanced than humanity (they basically barely discovered warp drives), it's either said or strongly implied they are kinda like ants with queens and castes (but no hive mind) and they love them some radiation and crude bionics. Definitely not tau empire material, I'd say their faction pitch would be "orks if 40k was an amnesia-style horror game".
They could potentially do an alliance of races the imperium thought they had wiped out during 30k that have had time to recover becoming auxiliary for the tau, I like the idea of the arachnids from murder being on the tabletop.
Votann and Tau allying with each other and slingshotting both of their tech forward exponentially would be sick as fuck
I feel like Genestealers are the 40k version of Skaven. I know thematically they don't seem so. They don't have the clans and the history. But mechanically, I feel like they are similar, and could be fleshed out more to be like Skaven. The creeping enemy that rises from the sewers. The backstabbing betrayers. But also a horde that comes from nowhere.
Yes, the psychic bug cult definitely equates to hilariously incompetent and selfish rat people.
Cheese stealer cult
Something I like about the old art for aeldari is they look like fae and fair folk, appearing from space and doing there thing. Aeldari also dips into samurai aspects with war banners and hyper specialized soldiers with a culture based on learning as much as you can for every job as a warriors. Going in either direction for aeldari would hard solidify themselves fully as a different culture to the imperium entirely along with establish them as a fully fleshed out faction
I've always wanted "Evil Intelligent Space Dragons".
GW has never done dragons well, in my opinion. They always dilute them, by making them adjunct units to some other army. Whether it's mounts in High Elves or Stormcast Eternals, or in the Helldrake in CSM.
Dragons should be their own faction. Glorious and terrible and inexorable as the tide. Intelligent and magical in their own right. If they work with other creatures, it's as masters to armies of slaves. Dragons should be no one's servants.
@@Bluecho4 Cathay in TWW3.
Also, as a conspiracy theory to consider: who is REALLY in charge in Azyr? Most mortals think it's Sigmar, but maybe Dracothian rescued him (and the Seraphon) because the godbeast of the magic of prophecy was picking out his instruments.
There's also a degree to which some Tyranid bioforms look and can be made to feel a bit dragonish.
Space Dragons And Minions are probably #1 on my list of factions that would fit into 40k. They cover a clear fantasy trope that can be easily placed into a scifi context, they’re ripe for the hyper-gothic aesthetic a lot of 40k has going on, they’re intuitive to make rules for… I’d fuckin kill for some dragons.
I Imagine you could combine all of the chaos ideas together.
chaos sororitas:
Could be the trader sisters forcing the other unaligned warp entities into one religious slave faction.
Dark mechanicus:
This could be the faction for chaos alien races combining their biology and technology.
Chaos guard:
I imagine them like space pirates having different flags using what they Steel & heretical resources.
The Jazz Tangent with Eric was a great new segment for the show. I've been very very curious about that dynamic after you lifted the curtain a bit last week. Brad's frustration was palpable! 😂
Mantic games as the Verr-Myn, who are skaven in space for their Firefight game. They're pretty fun, with kits that work for both their sci-fi and fantasy range.
I love that you used Chika as the image for chaos
Quick note on Rak'Gol, they actually have a small reference in Black Stone Fortress. There's a pistol equipment named after them.
Personally, I'd be fine with them added onto chaos as another force to add some xeno elements to them.
After we get chaos guard and dark mech, I'd love to see the chaos auxiliary units, including the chaos striking scorpions that fell to the dark powers long ago.
They could give Harlequins some dinosaurs as circus animals
And Wraithbone fiery hoops to jump through.
I'd love to see a full beastmen 40k range. It would be a good way make use of all the extra Tzaangors running around, too.
Yes! They could have a pretty solid starting point just doing upgrade sprues for AoS units.
Me too, but unfortunately they kinda kneecapped them in the lore. They used to be abhumans that were notably poorly treated and hated by humans to the point they often fled to become mercenaries or fell to chaos. Now they're just a generic chaos mutation which is way less interesting imo.
Then again they kinda kneecapped them in Fantasy lore too, they used to have a lot more freewill and more of a tribal and nomadic culture and then GW just made them, again, generic chaos mobs of mindless barbarians
@@thepinkplushiethis works out perfectly, because I think the *old* lore is incredibly boring!
I really liked them being part of the imperium, I just wish they were cooler, like let them help bridge the gap between sm and guard and lore wise letting everyone hate it
Each time I think about how to insert Skavens inton 40k I reflec on what makes the Skavens cool in the first place. The fact is, Skavens are cool -amongs other things - because of the warp infuse tech they got. If you want to do that in 40k, the rats mens must be fucking advanced... I think that core element of "OP tech compare to everyone else" is already covered by the Necron. If you put the Skavens like they are in Old World with fucked up tech and messy aesthetic, you just got Orks with Rats... That's a pickle..
Also, the secret underground society thing is already covered by Genestealer Cults and Chaos cults.
But I'd still really like them to find a niche for space Skaven.
Personally, I have a suspicion that's why skaven didn't make the transition - Orks already have the 'crazy, unreliable tech' angle, the Aeldari have reliable warp-based weapons, the Drukhari Haemonculi make monstrosities, and so on. One of the things in my mental map for skaven, however, is "Bond villain" - that might be something that could be played up, and having some bits and pieces that are stolen from other races would fit that as long as the final product has its own identity.
I really share your opinions, especially on the Tau. But I would ad for a little bit of Lovecravetian spa e horror the Slaught ( Wormpeople) maybe as a side faction one the Drukhari
The tau have an auxilarry named "tarelians" that are basically lizardmen. So if you do another votann you could use tbat to bring lizard people into 40k.
Also on the rak'gol even if we can't get a full army for them i would love to see minis for them via kill team or some boxed game.
Just getting into the hobby and I would love to build a Tau army with battlesuits + non-Tau auxiliaries
Orks could easily be expanded on more than "just" more Grot varieties and more Beastsnagga stuff. There is a whole bunch of Ork Clans that all could be given either upgrade sprue(s) and/or even dedicated kits. As a mainline range, Orks feel pretty complete already, so branching out into different subthemes would be a logical way to go.
They should lean into their fungus nature more, I mean, they're giant mushroom guys.
Although you mentioned mechanicus and knights co-operation. But as well the militias and house hold gaurd who fight along knights. A mix of gaurd and scions maybe heavy/lighter infantry options with limited vehicles above transports but maily focussed on support roles for knights.
For Adding Chaos to Chaos, I feel like a lot of races like the Rak’gol or the Enslavers feel too much like one-off monsters like the Ambulls. Maybe if GW made game mechanics to incorporate a PvPvE where monsters like this occupy the mid-field, then we’d see em
06:00 - love the gag of Chika as the true face of Chaos... XD
T'au and Votann can be mixed through the Demiurgs (those are the auxiliaries Brad mentioned) and have something like CSM and the dedicated Chaos legions where each have their own exclusive models but both can use the more basic/generic/whatever units and such.
We already have off-shoots of Kyn in Necromunda, why not a group in Tau space?
Demiurgs were already confirmed to be Votann (they sold Tau the ion tech).
On balancing Knights as a stand-alone faction. The appeal is obviously big robot leading smaller robots. So, what if even smaller robots that function as infantry equivalents. They could be some mechanical thing that's an obvious stand-in for knights on horses maybe around the size of a dreadnought.
What I think we need is non-Space Marine Chaos.
I love Chaos and I love Space Marines, don't get me wrong here. But having Human, Eldar, Beastman or Skaven Chaos _characters_ - especially psykers - seems so obvious to me.
I also think that xeno mercenaries should be more common overall. Add a bunch of interspecies diplomacy to the lore, make mercenaries "their own thing" of which everyone may take some but the Tau are more efficient at it, e.g. giving their battleforged buffs to the mercenaries as well. Flavor kept, horizon broadened
I agree, it’s so weird chaos Xenos don’t exist on tabletop. For Eldar, the path book has some Drukhari who worships Nurgle, Khorne, and Tzeentch respectively. There a whole bunch of independent Xenos that do. Chaos dwarves feels like a matter of time. Tyranids have been corrupted in lore by Nurgle once in the middle of space to my knowledge after some Tyranids were somehow cutoff from the hive mind. Farsight is one step away from turning Khorne every other Sunday. Etc, etc.
More non-faction aligned daemons would be cool
@@peenwienerstein2 Undivided daemon are great, but what we really need in 40k more minor chaos gods. Minor aspects of Vashtor if he ascends, Malal does exist I cannot be silenced. Maybe Hashut?
I kind of miss a mineral/rock/silicon race thats completly different I feel thats something that would be very interesting
Necrons are right there
the vespid deserve way more units in the tau. they're way too cool have just the one model
100% agree about Elves and Tau having to be fleshed out for the setting to be more balanced. Not because they are non-human, necessarily, but because they are all actually very human, just in different ways The Elves represent a humanoid species after their fall, the Imperium represents one in the process of falling, and the Tau represent a new, naive race trying to survive and hopefully someday thrive. They also represent the three different genres that 40K exists in. The Elves and they're enemies are the ancient and magical, the Imperium and Chaos are the space-medieval knights vs demons thing, and the Tau and their allies are the new and technologically advanced. Yeah, I really think 40K should officially be set up like that.
You could add Zoats to Tau as an Auxiliary melee/close range support.
The T'au'vesa Coalition ("T'au Helpers" for a more distinct name than T'au Empire) is probably GW's biggest missed opportunity so far. They really turned in their homework half finished with the T'au auxiliaries. Kroot has the most work done in them, but even with Forge World, they lack the AP to get a functional army at the moment. The Vespid are the chitinous, bug people that aren't Tyranid... and they got one unit and have been basically forgotten ever since. The Gue'vesa human auxiliaries got an obscure footnote rule to add some guardsmen to your army. I'd still love some rules/model support for a drone-centric army, and they could develop more of the "maybe the T'au are in the early stages of AI sentience and revolt that the Imperium experienced," but that requires thinking about lore with more maturity than the bulk of their writing team can handle.
Way to go, GW. Just focus on the literal most boring Space Marines and Chaos forever instead of the hint of something interesting. Eldar have potential to be more than one-note like they are right now. I agree they are the other strongest candidate for major empire, especially if they push into Fae territory. Lots of material to pull from.
Anyways, great video and I agree with basically everything you guys brought up. I'll just have to make my own fan-codex in the meantime, because I won't hold my breath that GW will make actually bold decisions with their lore 😢.
Enslavers were still their own warp-thing in the 40k era in the lore up until... 5th ed(? I think). Don't know if they've been explicitly written out of cannon as of yet. They were one of the big reasons for the Black Ships, as an Enslaver incursion one of the very common nasty ends untrained psykers could cause (by being turned *physically* into a gate the Enslavers use to enter real-space).
Enslavers are still in lore but would really not work as an army - they're meant to be a singular type of entity that represents an existential threat to psychic races (and would probably not have a good time against Tau or Necrons), not an actual civilisation or society that has armies.
@@philipbowles5397 true, but I wasn't referring to them being an army, just them being called out as proto-demons; they're more than just that. As for Tau and Necrons having an easy time against them, they were the reason the Necrons took a long nap, because their constant incursions into real-space (thanks to the Slann's numerous cheaply knocked out and barely trained psychic warrior races) were tearing down the barrier between warp- and real-space. A proper Enslaver incursion is a threat to anyone, and the current timeline has *lots* of parallels to the last time they almost overran the galaxy.
A thought to expand on the Necron / Ork standalone; I think those two together could be their own tier. Call it Order & Chaos. Two factions ever vying for position over one another. One numerous and plentiful beyond belief with a love for violence. The other immortal, undying with a pacing the eschews mortal lifetimes.
Each places the other in 'check', there's tons of Necron based lore about the Orks constantly ruining and disrupting their plans, while other races seem to be simply swept to the side by the Necrons.
I’m all for fleshing out the flavors of Eldar but it has always been inconsistent on how many there actually are. There are only so many literal craft worlds and admittedly I’m not a lore master but they are always referred to as a dying race. They make it sound like the loss of a single aspect warrior to be a crippling blow. Brad mentioned they are the same size as Necrons but I never got that from what little lore I’ve read. Basically because any planet could secretly be a tomb world you can have a couple billion more Necrons.
@Poorhammer 32:20 sooo brad is saying he wants an all tzaangor faction?
I want a xenos chaos faction from the Ghoul Stars.
Idea: you have 3 armies in T'au, an offensive one, defensive one and kind of a middle-ground where they focus more on specific characters or units a quasi special forces. Think of it from the standpoint of military branches... you got the offensive or expeditionary forces which move fast, carry big-ish guns and are much more attack/reduce enemy numbers oriented then you have the defensive which move slow carry VERY big guns and are tough and then a special-forces with varying degrees of support and smaller squads of fast-moving infantry/transports that are meant to move fast, take locations and then hold them while support blunts enemy counter-attacks.
I read a bit about the Rak'Gol, and they would never fit into Tau. They have worse tech then the humans, but are described to be much more brutal. Also noone ever found out were they came from, and noone managed to translate their language. So all in all melle focused like Nyds but not nyds cuz they use actual ships and weapons.
I got the idea that one could kinda spin the narrative that some ald enemies of mankind, maybe some surving Man of Iron, decided to be like the old ones and bioengineer a race to fight the humans or something and that that would be their origin story.
You could do just about anything with a deep void human faction, maybe driven back towards imperial space by the tyranids?
There's a lot of xeno races driven to near extinction by the imperium, many become mercs, if the tau keep being so limited on the tabletop with their auxiliary options then maybe an actual standalone alien mercenary faction would be cool?
Quickest I've ever seen a video since it's uploaded.
I think T'au needs a 2nd army. Something like Auxilla legions. There's 11 canon auxillary species in the T'au empire and 2 got models.
6:57 Always thought it'd make sense that various 'pirate subfactions' should be allowed to ally each other on the tabletop. It's iffy in the lore, but it just seems fun to think some Freebotaz, Corssairs and human prirates meet up and decide to raid some massive trasport together because then they can pull it off.
I like your pirate force, and it is maybe lore-doable. Get a Rogue Trader set, that Elucidian Starstrider box. This is the Rogue Trader command and they have gone completely off-piste, very freestyle. We already have precedent for Eldar Rangers joining up, as in Blackstone Fortress, and it isn't so odd anyway, so that brings the Corsairs in. Freebootaz are there for a laugh and the cash. Not all of it will mesh, but there is a coherent story and narrative army there.
As a T'au player let me tell you: DO NOT do what you suggested with splitting the army into two branches. That would kill any hype I have for the entire army. That sounds like the absolute worst thing you could do to them.
Second Tau player here to say that I absolutely agree. The whole gimmick of the Tau is that they are united (ignore Farsight for a second). What would really make Tau feel larger is actually adding the vast amount of Auxilerly units that are in the lore
@@theloneadventurer9871 If I wanted to play T'au without a Riptide I could play Astra Militarum
The whole idea that the imperium is more fleshed out because it has more armies is a stupid idea, making that into the tau is worse, to get the tau as fleshed out as the imperium is they just have to release lore for them, from the Tau's history to be anything beyond war world peace then interstellar conquest, however I do think there is a way to split the tau into different armies and make it work, the farsight enclaves should get a codex that starts identical to the main empire besides named characters and the ethereal, then as editions go passed the farsight enclaves and the tau empire have 2 different evolving points, the enclaves can be forced to make adaptations to there existing stuff while the empire is able to make deadicated new desighns for war machines, on a desighn level this would mean that enclaves could get upgrade sprues to older models to give them a way to make it seem they ate progressing just like the tau area but because the deadicated equips is there, you can have the enclaves take the army into a more infantry focused faction with auxiliaries as support units while the ethereal could be made more progressive and all about advancing there battle suits and aircraft to the point there infantry is lagging behind the enclaves
Not really connected to the episode but I cannot say how thankful I am for this content! Just got into the hobby and your content has been a great way to learn more about the game!
40k skaven just seems so obvious
🏆
They would get destroyed tbh
Rats... IN SPAAAACEEEE!!!!
The joke is getting old...
40K RATLING GUNS!
@James_YT2 I mean so would orruks just bump up the size them bam planets full of skaven
i'll probably be dead before mr. James workshop rolls out most of these improvements and expansions lol
I was never fond of DarkMech, tbh. Regular Mechanicus already has such an intense body-horror theme that introducing a faction of "Those guys, but somehow worse" seems like it would mostly just cannibalize from the existing faction.
They aren’t just Admech but more body horror, they have a completely different philosophy. For example Xana 2 are a forge world and that went rogue during the Horus Heresy because they despised the imperiums resections on innovations. The dark mech love innovation and creativity, they look upon a galaxy that refuses to invent anything and laugh, and by their nature take it to far and tamper with forces they shouldn’t of.
DarkMech are often trapped in contracts they fear and loath to the dark gods like Csm, they have body’s of metal which create spider like or centipede like form of horror. It isn’t just body horror, they’re become actual monsters with enough tampering. They also have no care for the imperiums rules on Ai and will happily track them down to use them as weapons.
Also they might not actually have that many Skitarii since most of their forces comes from 30k where Skitarii didn’t exist. The contrast mechanically would be Admech revolve around Skitarii and dark mech don’t.
This has to be the most they’ve talked about votann, and I’m here for it! Also, correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe in lore votann taught tau to use ion weaponry.
We really don’t need 40K skaven. Just saying that they should have an equivalent in the setting isn’t a good argument. I don’t see people asking for Tau to get an AoS analogue. Or Tyranids.
Just wanted to say, the thumbnail is solid; took me too long to get it, but much appreciated. ^_^
I want an actual robot army. Like Men of iron
Necrons aren't robot enough for you?
I'll agree only if the lore says the emperor was smart enough to make space marine deal with even AI, mainly because the emperor is already beat by cawl.
17:00 the ‘unknown auxiliary’ were actually named in BFG, they were the Demiurg. Their battleship’s main gun was literally a huge mining laser
Give me more Blackstone Constructs like the Spindle Drones, GW.
It is incredible, mind-boggling, that elves on dinosaurs still aren't a thing in-game when they're so very cool in-lore. I would buy that army so fast.
The Rok'Gol could make for a really imterseting counterbalance to the Tyrannids. Like maybe they arrived in the Milky Way from another galaxy that had been devoured by the swarm and were forced to sacrifice their "humanity" to survive against the tyranids. They would be generally hostile, but drop everything to fight tyranids. Kind of like the Seraphon in AoS do against the forces of chaos.
As a Necron player I would love to see some love for dinasties outside of the sautehk one (and I guess the szarekhan one although it’s only the silent king), kinda like space marines chapters, although then you’d have to do that for different cults of the T’au or something as well
This seems like a great idea!!
As a guy who just got into 40k, I have no idea if GW would do something like that, be it in the near or far future
Skaven tech could definitely be represented in dark mechanicum, with it blowing up all the time.
If we got a dark mechanicum and it turned out to be mostly skaven, I would be so down
This would be an obscure one but I’d love to see the rangdan return. They were a 30k race that could mind control other races and gave the imperium a run for their money so it would be cool if they returned in full force or if it turned out they were the puppet masters of a faction like the tau
21:21 I feel like they could do that by like itroducing new types of vespids and stuff, make vespids more of a thing
I will say this every time Skaven get brought up, they should be incorporated AESTHETICALLY to the Dark Mechanicum, they already pretty similar
Imagine the dark Mechanicum skittari equivalent have metal rat skulls for helmets!
Thing about the Cthulu esque faction idea. Theres technically one that exist in lore. I've always wanted to see the Maggotmen models, they just sounded so freaking creepy and fun, kinda blended together tyranids with the grossout factor and necrons with the tech so advanced its like magic. And a pinch of drunk Hari with their servant flesh machines (design, i think they made em themselves)
I'd love to see the Hrud show up in game one day, even as just a mini faction. The whole concept of them aging their enemies to death is just super cool. They could do something like ignoring saves, but you have to treat the enemies Toughness as their wounds instead. Or something like that.
I would love the Slaughth getting a fleshed out faction, maggot men who rule mostly by subterfuge but have tech that can melt a terminator sounds fucking metal.
Skaven could just be a chaos version of Ad Mech.
The return of the rangdan would be cool. maybe they could have some auxiliaries like the hrud, rak gol, q'rol, sluagth, and cypher fiends xenos, kinda like a twisted grimdark lovecraft esqe version of the tau empire.
As well as the possibility of flesheing out some of the tau's minor neighbors, like the world weve of noisome reek, the church of dracolith, the thexian trade empire, and the xenarch empire.
I think it would be cool to see tau battle suits that are designed specifically for the non-tau races. like a battle suit designed for kroot or Vespids.
I’m listening to you talking about deleting Knights while painting a knight 💀
I'd love to see some big monsters added into the orks for a bit of xenos variety.
On the subject of Xenos, I think there should at the very least be a "Agents of _____" for Xenos, the way Imperium has "Agents of the Imperium" and Chaos has "Agents of Chaos". Call them "Xenos Mercenaries" or something to that effect. A big umbrella for filing all manner of weird alien creatures under, that you can then plug into other Xenos armies. Then, release a ton of kits for them.
Like, the Rak'Gol could easily be released as a Kill Team, and then have rules for running them in 40K in other armies. They did it for Arbites, and they got multiple different units in 40K to reflect their loadouts. Just make the Rak'Gol kit have a few build options. Maybe with the option of building one model as either a "Combat Leader" or a "Tech Shaman", so you have some Character builds. Suddenly you've made use of your extensive background lore.
Another option would be like the Enslavers. Release a kit that can be built as three "normal" Enslavers, or two of those and one Character Enslaver. All models that are like flesh balls with tentacles wrapping around assorted Psyker models. And give them the ability to not only be taken in Xenos armies, but in many armies. So you're running the narrative that they're mind-controlling other forces. (Barring some exceptional armies who have in-lore reasons they'd be resistant to mind control, like Custodes, Necrons, or Tyranids). Make them strong psychic threats, and maybe have the ability to briefly mess with opposing models (a Leadership test can be good for this).
There are so many weird and wonderful Xenos creatures, it's criminal GW has used so few of them on the tabletop.
The "Covenant" angle of the Tau is something that really should be explored more. A beastsnaggas type release that provides more kroot/vespid etc would allow Tau to move away from being the "shooting and nothing else" faction. They even have psyker aliens in the lore. You could add all these but they will be kept separate enough that if you want to just play traditional battlesuit Tau then that is an option.
I feel like an insane/senile Votann would be a great way to introduce a Chaos Dwarves equivalent without going full warp. Have the ai go full self preservation mode pumping out robots and brainwashed clones, strip mining planets for resources to fuel it's war machine.
Knights should move away from skew. There's a lot of lore and images out there of the retinues that follow knights around. Sort of the equivalent of a war party for a noble. A knight in real life needs a whole party to "maintain" them, squires, cooks, followers etc. Chaos knights have worshippers. They should be represented on the table.
Does anyone know where the scene around 32:20 is from? The tentacle ship over the city
Baldir's gate 3. Ship is called a nautaloid for a species called illithid/mind flayer
I think Knights need even smaller walkers called "Squires". The Cawdor scrapwalkers in necromunda are the perfect template to start. They could have abilities to specifically help knights like options for Repair/increase of stats.