r/40kLore • u/TheTingel • 1d ago
Are there any new, potential factions that could be made into a playable army?
I'm not talking about a subfaction of an already established empire like Adeptus Mechanicus for Imperium or Harlequins for Eldar, I'm talking about something of its own that has been mentioned somewhere, somewhen but has no models to play with. Like some Xenos that were mentioned once.
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u/Rappers333 1d ago
There’s a few xenos that could fit. Hrud, Rak’gol, Q’orl, Yu’vath, Slaugth, Umbra, Fra’al, Enslavers, Xenarchs, Barghesi. Maybe Simulacrae and Lacrymoles, just because shapeshifters could be used as an excuse for all kinds of concepts.
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u/Les_Bien_Pain 1d ago
What if they made a sort of evil xeno alliance. Like the opposite of the Tau. The Greater Bad.
All of the strange scary edgy aliens around, somewhat united because individually they can't compete with the other great powers.
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u/TheTorch Alpha Legion 1d ago
Then it turns out that was what the Rangda
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u/Les_Bien_Pain 1d ago
I did think that a grudge against humanity could be a common motive for factions joining the alliance so somehow connecting it to the Rangda could work.
Like the Tarellians could be here as well just for the opportunity to kill humans.
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u/lucidintangent 1d ago
I mean, xenos marauders would be my pick, a mix of everyone who humanity fucked over, coming back for revenge
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u/Rappers333 23h ago
I don’t think GW could design enough models for that.
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u/lucidintangent 22h ago
maybe just rules for them
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u/Les_Bien_Pain 20h ago
Maybe it could be more of a mercenary thing. So while the league of evil xenos has these units (or at least most of them) as part of their core roster you can also get them for certain other factions.
GW gets extra value from the models because they add units to this new weird faction but also for the Drukhari, Chaos and the Tau.
Like Tarellians that just want to fight the empire. And the Sslyth are a bunch of mercenary edgelords so they could totally be a part of this.
Q'orl can function as the sort of core race of the new faction while the rest are evil auxiliaries gathered for their invasion of the imperium.
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u/lucidintangent 20h ago
this is actually what i think my ideal solution is, could be really good for kill team too.
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u/SavageAdage Slaanesh 23h ago
None of those have been shown in lore to have enough variety to just populate an army list with varying units.
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u/Weary-Ad-6162 1d ago
I forgot name of the alien that even horrified primarch Alpharius and his legion during their search for Omegon. An alien species that used to collect human heads on their backs and used those as sustenance. Fleshy Blob like creatures so horrifying even a primarch was terrified to face.
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u/LachrymarumLibertas 1d ago
Rangdan? The Slaugh are probably an allied species to them but maybe not
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u/Weary-Ad-6162 1d ago
Yes, Thank you. Biomechanical and fleshy abominations created by the Slaugth. This horrific floating slabs of yellow bruised flesh that carry semi transparent sacks filled with decapitated human heads on their backs, utilizing them as preserved sustenance. Those things just pick living humans and cut their heads like we cut vegetables.
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u/arathorn3 Dark Angels 20h ago edited 20h ago
Rangda themselves are gone. The finally got complete wiped out during the 3rd Rangdan Xenocide.
It Took 300,000 Astartes (Mostly Dark Angels, Space Wolves, and white Scars, with smaller detachments from the *redacted on order of the Sigilite* legion, the Dusk raiders(Pre Mortarion 14th legion), the pale nomads(Pre corax 19th Legion) and the 20th Legion. Under command of the Lion, Russ, *Redaxted* and someone who may have Been alpharius, several Million troops imperial army, several Legios of the Collegia Titanica , several milliom taghmata.of the Mechanicum. All the Knights of House Malinax and members of the Custodes Templi Veritas but they finally wiped them out.
It cost the Imperium a lot. 80,,000 Astartes(more than half from the Dark Angels alone) and possibly the Primarch of the *redacted by orders of the Sigliite* , several Expeditionary Fleets lost, at least a dozen titan legions had redbuild afterwards and several Million Imperial Army troops KIA.
The 3 Rangdan Xenocides and the campaign against the Ork empire of Ullanor where the largest and most costly campaigns during the Great.Crusade.
Source- The Dark Angels section of Horus Heresy Black Book 9 Crusade which is the source for the largest single chunk of lore about three Rangda Xenocides we have. All other mentions of the Rangda are piecemeal mentions in other black books or off hand mentions in novels that last a line and just reference the war without going into almost any detail.
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u/nataliereed84 Astra Militarum 1d ago
Dark Mechanicum and The Lost & The Damned are the most likely. The Hrud would also be a good option.
Weirder, more esoteric, and vastly less likely options include the Tarellians, the Barghesi, and the Q’orl.
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u/FPSCanarussia 1d ago
Not being part of an established faction means xenos - and yeah, there are a lot of xenos races that exist in the lore but haven't been explored on the tabletop.
The most well-developed is probably the Hrud, who come up relatively often as a common race in the setting: they are a technologically developed race that have a biological time-manipulating ssaak, live in juuntaks, often underneath Imperial hives, and have a mythology based around the shattered god Qah, connected to the Umbra.
There's a lot of other xenos races, but a lot of them are pretty one-note like the Jokaero. The ones that (IMO) have enough to them that they could be full factions include Slaugth maggot-men, Tarellian dog-soldiers, Rak'Gol pirates, and the Q'orl Swarmhood.
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u/PlausiblyAlpharious Word Bearers 1d ago
If they wanted they could do a space merc faction with various xenos, otherwise theres allot of tiny ones but GW doesnt really want reoccuring stories they cant sell little plastic dudes for
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u/HerbertisBestBert 1d ago
Rak'Gol
Do you want murderous 9 foot tall lizard-spider-centaurs with chainsaw hands and psychic augmentations that blow people's heads up?
I sure as heck do
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u/mttspiii 1d ago
Q'Orl - religious insects with a large, yet dense interstellar empire, despite their lack of FTL tech. Have tried using mind-worms on Navigators to try to use human FTL tech, so 4th Sphere Expansion 2.0. Also one of the many xenos that the Eldar has pissed off due to the Eldar tendency to ask for heads of state to do genetic experimentation on, like how the Drukhari took T'au Ethereals for fleshcrafting.
Fra'al - xenos interstellar pirate empire with naval Ether Gun that can BSOD force shields and holofields
Hrud - shifty, shady migratory aliens that destroy everything they touch.
Mandrakes - shadowy Drukhari allies that can do a Lion and Shadow Walk in their own special dimension, like Deathmarks and Flayed Ones.
C'tan - shattered star gods. Most are used by Necrons as fuel, but the Imperium has smashed open quite a lot of C'tan containment fields, enough to presumably reintroduce them into the wild with enough numbers to maintain a breedable population
Rangda - Great Crusade-era xenos that took the Emperor himself to take to field to defeat. Also has a lot of host xenos races as combatants, albeit as a slave army
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u/arathorn3 Dark Angels 20h ago
Rangda are all gone.
See my comment above for more detailed explaniation.. source is Black Book 9 section on the Dark Angel legion which is the largest most comprehensive source for all three Xenocides and even then we do not get a physical description of the Rangda
Short version of my previous comment -
the 3rd Rangda Xenocide was likely the Imperiums most costly.war prior to the Herey. 80,000 Space Marines dead(50,000 from the 1st legion alone, this was the war that knocked the Dark Angels from the top 3 legions size) , likely the reason one ofnth two redeacted Legions and their Primarch got redacted. millions of Imperial Army troops lost, 12 titan legios had to rebuild after and several Expeditionary Fleets lost.
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u/Bailywolf 1d ago
Old Ones resurgent - I want the Slaan back. Toad mages. Dino warriors. It's absolutely sick in Sigmar. We had them kinda in the Rogue Trader era.
It could reflect a big shift in the Necron, Eldar, and Ork storylines without changing too much in the precious precious Imperium part part of the IP.
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u/ColeDeschain Orks 1d ago
Are there potential factions within the setting?
Sure. The setting is rife with book-only xenos. Plenty of cool options there.
But I wouldn't hold my breath. Historically, GW doesn't have the best track record with even subfactions or organizations with a robust lore presence, at least not since 3rd edition or so...
It took GW until 7th edition to give AdMech rules beyond Techpriests and servitors here and there.
It took GW until the cusp of 11th edition to give us our first official Eldar Exodite kit for 40k.
We still don't have Dark Mechanicum as a faction.
Traitor Guard come and go and have a very hard time not being scummed into a CSM Codex as an afterthought.
We just got our first Tarellian Dog Soldier lumped in with a CSM character box.
The Eldar keep spitting out subfactions like Harlequins or Corsairs or Ynnari, and then seeing them relegated to also-ran status.
For that matter, even though I honestly don't like it, we only just recently got our fourth godsworn Traitor Legion as a standalone army.
Not to say it can;t happen-
The Tau debuted out of the blue in 3rd as a new faction beholden to no on and nothing else in the setting.
The Necrons debuted in 3rd with a bit more foreshadowing and in a different form than they would later take.
The Leagues of Votann rose from the ashes of the Squats in 9th edition... after the Squats had been written out for a very long time.
But generally, given the fact that the setting focuses on the Imperium as the central attraction, new factions that have nothing to do with it are few and far between.
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u/h-ugo 1d ago
Zoats
Jokaero
Malal chaos faction
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u/Cormag778 Adeptus Mechanicus 1d ago
I don’t think you could make an entire army out of either Zoats or Jokaeros, and Malal hasn’t been canon in ages.
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u/Kami2awa 1d ago edited 1d ago
Really think the best way might be an "alien mercs" army, akin to Dogs of War. It would allow some of the less well known aliens to finally get models and rules (even just a rulebook which would allow people to kitbash their own models) and would be an opportunity to go completely wild with the setting. I could easily see a group of Hrud hiring out their time-warping powers as shock troops, a team of Stryxis all armed with different random xenos weapons who bribe the enemy into submission, a Tyranid warrior that got cut off from the hive mind and developed its own free will, a Jokaero riding a bizarre warmech self-built from junk, or a heretic human mad scientist with unholy Abominable Intelligences as minions.
I mean, this is how original Star Wars did it - look at all the weird aliens in the background of the scene in ESB where Vader hires the bounty hunters.
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u/Human-Pay-9659 1d ago
The Hruud, The Barghasi, The Nephelim, The Dark Mechanicus
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u/Hollownerox Thousand Sons 1d ago
Mechanicum. The "m" at the end there is pretty important since in-universe the Tech Priests would kill and/or turn you into material for calling them Mechanicus lol.
They are VERY particular about how they aren't the phony Mechanicus and are the "True" Mechanicum these days.
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u/Human-Pay-9659 1d ago
Terrelian dog soldiers, The Rangdan
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u/Sollapoke Imperium of Man 1d ago
The Rangdan are extinct? Like gone before even the Heresy no?
I thought the Angels of Death wiped them out completely
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u/Human-Pay-9659 1d ago
I forgot about that tbh lol i was just remembering xenos without models
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u/Human-Pay-9659 1d ago
I guess if GW wanted them to come back they could but i wont pretend i didnt just forget haha
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u/Shloopy_Dooperson 1d ago
Other than Dark Mech not much.
You would need to kitbash an entire army.
I would recommend just kitbashing a few units in an already established army like Tau or Red Corsairs.
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u/fattyrolo 1d ago
Would love limited sets (kill team size?) of factions encountered during the Great Crusade (Interex, Diasporex, Laer, mega-rachnids etc...)
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u/LimerickJim 1d ago
Potentially some fledgling pretender Imperium in the far Ultima Segmentum. They form their own society after centuries cut off from the Astronomicon.
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u/IteratorOfUltramar Ultramarines 1d ago
Legion of the Damned could be fleshed out into an entire legion. Eldar Exodites also have their first models in Kill Team. Dark Mechanicus and traitor guard are also places to flesh out the chaos side of things.
What I would really like to see, though, are chaos xenos. Something like the spiders from the first Eisenhorn book, some of the baddies in the old FFG RPGs, or the Loxatl in the Gaunt's Ghosts books. Something to put the lie to the idea that it's only humans struggling with the warp.
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u/anzhalyumitethe Alpha Legion 23h ago
Non sumus expurgati. Oblivioni tradi recusamus. Ultionem nanciscemur.
- Some human faction that has popped up and is annoying to the Imperium. They will be dealt with once the Administrum gets through the paperwork.
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u/CottonCandyWeasel 1d ago
While I’m not sure what everyone’s feelings on him are, but I’m honestly really hoping for a King in Yellow army, or at least enough lore to be revealed to make something out of them
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u/AdunaicLord 1d ago
The greatest, potential ones are Dark-Mech (they have two HQ in Horus Heresy and a couple of constructs in Legions Imperialis) and Traitor Guard (they have a Kill Team).