What new 40k army would you like introduce?

[st.germaine]

There are several possibilities that would tickle my fancy.

1) The return of the Lost and the Damned as an official army. It's not right that the list that describes most Chaos armies is the one that's been abandoned.

2) Squats / Demiurg. While this game has clearly moved beyond it's beginnings, at its core it's still Warhammer in Space. Not including the Dwarven analog is just wrong on so many levels. That the first attempt was an abject failure is inescapable. Writing the Demiurg as the bug-hunting survivors of their race could be genius.

3) Croneworld Eldar. I am absolutely enthralled by the idea of guardians, warlocks, daemons, and vehicles with Arhra the Fallen Phoenix and his Dark Scorpions.

4) Real Undead. Boatloads of movies have demonstrated that real undead work in a modern milieu and a few have shown it in sci-fi. This one is a marketing no-brainer for GW so I don't understand why it's never happened; sell the same minis for two different games doubling the market for figures that have already been developed.

5) Fixing the Orks. In the beginning the only humorous aspects to 40K were the implementation of the the Dwarf and Orc analogs in 40K. GW recognized that humor in 40K was just plain out of place in the dark and dangerous universe that they had postulated and the Squats disappeared. This was due to them not having a champion in the Studio. Unfortunately Orks did and so we're stuck with "how many Orks in that clown car" instead of the truly fearsome Mongol/Barbarian analog (a la LotR Orcs) that the Orks were meant to be.

[Wolf Lord Herby]

first choice: Lost and the Damned back again! They were cool.

Second Choice: A PDF/ Adeptus Arbites variant on the IG. Not really a new army, but basically IG with less tanks, slightly inferior infantry, and some Enforcers! Woo!

[avatar of khaine]

reading this, i say exodite eldar. they're not like craftworld eldar either! They have no paths.

Some aliens that aren't actually humanoid, but not eat! eat! eat! like the tyranids would be good too

[Canew]

Well, I have to agree that the Imperium has more than enough stuff to go around. Sure, I'd like to see some improvements, with top priority being a reorganization/new codices of the entire Inquisition, soup to nuts, but that wasn't the question.

As to what I'd like to see, well, I think squats would be a lot of fun, though I don't know if that counts as Imperium, since I wasn't around for the RT days and don't know whether they were Imperium forces or on their own. I also don't know how you'd explain how they came back after having been eaten (I think) by the nids, but there seems to be a LOT of interest in them, and GW could make a fortune if they did it right.

But if there's an entirely new race, meaning one that isn't just a rip-off of a WHFB army or something like that, I've always been curious about the "technology-mimicking Jokaero." Now, maybe there's some fluff out there that somebody can clue me in on, but that line from the Necron codex is all I know about them. They are cited as one of a number of races (also including the Orks) that were initially created by the Old Ones in a desperate gambit to stay alive when Chaos rebelled against them, but that's all. Nothing mentioned about what they are, where they went, or how they "mimic" technology. Might make for an interesting concept: an organic race that attempts to resemble technology. Kind of admech, but clearly alien in nature.

That and maybe the Hrud are the most original ideas I've seen yet that aren't already represented in some way by an existing 40k race. EDIT: With respect to St. Germaine, the necrons technically ARE the undead. I know, I know, they're not just-walked-out-of-a-caesar-romero-movie undead, but how would you do a zombie/undead army? From what I've read/seen about them, they are represented by mindless monsters bent on eating and killing. No direction, no plan, no nothing. Just a wave rolling in a given direction. In order to work, they'd need a sorceror or necromancer or something controlling or guiding them. Unfortunately, you'll never see a new race created like this, since that's pretty close to how the Necrons are organized, and a new race with the same makeup would be ditched before it got started as being "too Necron-y." There are plague zombies, too, but a "counts as chaos" army is usually the best way to make one of those.

[Wolf Lord Herby]

I can't remember reading any in-detail fluff on the Jokaero, but bits of Jokearo tech spring up from time to time in the background, and they seem to be mainly linked with micro-technology, like the digi-weapons, and an assassinating spidey-thing.

[avatar of khaine]

just think how awesome a jokaero side led by the old ones would be! That would totally rock! I know I'd buy them!

If somebody could find me enough fluff about them for a starting point, i will write a codex for them. You know, structure, what their technology can do, names of different unit types... Does anybody know of how an old one would work on the battlefield, what they look like... I am inspired. Almost enough to get over my crippling apathy

[Kitsune75]

My RT books are back in the states, but from what I can remember:

1) The Jakero look pysically like orangatangs ... The orange apes.

2) The Jakero were savants, they could recreate anything that they saw mechanically.

2) The Jakero are no more (this was in a later book... maybe a chaos one) they were enslaved then wiped out.

Number one is cool, I'd like to see the models... Hmmm... Maybe if not for 40K, orangatang models could be used for an Ind army in fantasy.

Number two and three is what would hold them back in 40K. three obviously, but that could be overwritten (or I could be plain wrong on the whole point). Number two would make them subservient to someone else. OTOH... maybe a new tau alien species. Hmmm...

--Jim

[omegoku]

Jakaero usually only hung out in small family groups, flying at random to places to look for scrap metal to turn into awesome technology. They are orangutans that do not have intelligence as we would understand it but have an inate understanding on technology that borders on magic. In Rouge Trader you could take an object and make a different object of a similar size by declaring what you were doing and rolling a Ld type test. If you rolled successfully you had built the new object, otherwise you could keep trying.
This meant you could knock over a guardsman and take his lasgun, spend a turn tinkering and end up with a plasma gun!
Jakaero only fight to escape and protect themselves so an army wouldn't work. They are more of a special rule that a campaign organiser could throw in.

Undead exist in 40k. Vampires are just a Xenos race that feeds on blood or souls (can't remember which) and can change shape at will. They are Psykers so they could conceivably create an army of zombies. But that is just a lazy drag from fantasy clone army.

I'd like to see them bring back beatmen for both Imperial Guard that use Abhumans and The Lost and the Damned.
LatD should be a competitive but fluffy list. Last time nobody I knew would go near it for fear of losing every game they would play.

[st.germaine]

Originally Posted by Canew

<snip> EDIT: With respect to St. Germaine, the necrons technically ARE the undead. I know, I know, they're not just-walked-out-of-a-caesar-romero-movie undead, but how would you do a zombie/undead army? From what I've read/seen about them, they are represented by mindless monsters bent on eating and killing. No direction, no plan, no nothing. Just a wave rolling in a given direction. In order to work, they'd need a sorceror or necromancer or something controlling or guiding them. Unfortunately, you'll never see a new race created like this, since that's pretty close to how the Necrons are organized, and a new race with the same makeup would be ditched before it got started as being "too Necron-y." There are plague zombies, too, but a "counts as chaos" army is usually the best way to make one of those.

I understand perfectly that the Necrons are the Undead analog. I wrote letters for years to GW lobbying for the addition of the major analog omission. I have a Necron army but it's not the same thing. I also understand that this list will never see the light of day unless something like Citadel Journal returns. Back in the days of v3 I had written a full blown codex for them with input from a group of the guys on the old igcom 40k mailing list. We playtested it some just before the release of v4 and the general consensus of our group was that this was an interesting army to play against. Admittedly there were a few things that needed to be adjusted. GW released v4, I got wrapped up in my loyalist EC, and the Undead codex never got tweaked and then updated for more recent rules. (Recent discussions on a couple of forums have gotten my creative juices stirring and the idea of pulling this back out for an update is becoming more appealing.)

I've always been a huge fan of zombie movies, undead in AD&D, and movies like The Keep (the book was far better than the movie), Underworld, Pirates of the Caribbean, and The Mummy. I understand that this idea flows directly from this interest and is not a universal interest. That said, I think that there are a lot of people who would enjoy this idea if it were released as a test concept in something like CJ. The GW bean counters (who clearly rule the roost at the expense of everyone) should love this idea. While there would be some development needed for the codex, there would be almost no cost for miniature development as the figures already exist.

As you guessed the army is very similar to the WFB Undead armies - powerful main characters (necromancers, vampires, liches, etc..) controlling the army supported by shambling hordes (zombies, skeletons, ghouls) and some very swift support units (undead cavalry, banshees, headless horsemen (grenadiers), etc...)

[kithre]

There are so many ideas that could be used, definitely some sort of "Alien encounter" pack for the release of the Ordo Xenos book (whenever that may be) would be nice - including wild Kroot, Cudbears, Jokaero, Fiends of the Donorian Sector, Hrud etc would be an excellent way of having the random element in 40K.

The best cocnept for a new army would be something that is new vs the others, so it doesn't have the same hooks. The Demiurg or Squats fit in to a certain extent if you have them as artisan warriors, and have their own uniqueness, rather than just being translated directly to Space Dwarves.

Adeptus Mechanicus would be like Guard crossed with Iron Hands, and no doubt an effective tech-guard force can be made out of the new codex.