Here is a list of all possible armies that are in the warhammer fantasy universe. (list is from Games-Workshop) If FFG decides to keep the line-up we are looking at a hefty amount of decks/ideas. Me personally I can't wait, playing Vamps would be awesome.

Beast of Chaos, Bretonnia, Daemons of Chaos, Dark Elves, Dwarfs, The Empre, High Elves, Lizardmen, Ogre Kingdoms, Orcs & Goblins, Skaven, Tomb Kings, Vampire Counts, Warriors of Chaos, Wood Elves

If we're talking about all possible then what about Chaos Dwarves?

There is also the possibilty of Cathay and Nipponease...

And I forgot Albion

I haven't seen anything about those, but then again I don't follow Warhammer Fantasy. The more the better, what do those armies consist of?

Well they're only remote possibilities, Cathay and Nippon have never been released but they were where the Skaven's clan eshin learnt their ninja skills.

Albion has only had a few models from the storms of Chaos. Giants, swamp beasts and druids.

Chaos Dwarves haven't been a full army since 5th Ed I think, but there were dwarves with big hats and permed beards that did everything dwarves didn't do - rode monsters, got close to Greenskins, and cast spells (although that turned them into stone) am dthey had blunderbusses.

Also I forgot the Dogs of War army.

Sounds awesome! The odds of them being in W:I seems unlikely, they are small in fantasy. It does leave more windows for expansions, I can't wait.

Well, if we're discussing folks of WH world, you can't go past Estalia, Tilea, the Border Princes, Araby and Kislev! The factions mentioned in first post, however, are the ones most likely to appear, I think. But dogs of war would have been a cool neutral faction (expensive specialists).

I wouldn't get to caught up in the idea of all of those being playable races. I suspect most of those will end up as order or destruction only neutrals, or if they do end up with their own loyalty symbols, I'm not sure that FFG will produce a capitol board and include them regularly in the Battle Packs. I'd say however Skaven are handled is the most likely way the other races will be handled.

Well I would like to see some of the larger, more popular Races added down the road, once the 6 primary Races have been fairly thoroughly developed. Races I'd like to see added include:

Tomb Kings, Lizardmen, Skaven (as a full race), and Chaos Dwarves.

I don't think that they will include all the race choices, but to add to the list of races in Warhammer, you have missed off the Halflings, haven't had their own Army List, but do have their own lands (The Moot) and have had playable units for the Empire and Dogs of War.

I just hope they won't introduce new races at expanse of older, seemingly less popular ones. What might seem like a good thing to do (keeping things ballanced by simply putting an old faction on the backburner and filling the now empty "slots" of meta with a new race), can turn out ugly for loyal fans, who would feel their race got left out. I know it's somewhat farfetched without knowing the design policies on this game, but that's something I really wouldn't like to see.

Man, you guys got them all covered (unless you really want to go waaaay back and throw in Amazons, too).

I hope they do continue to expand into new races at the expense of the older ones simply because it is the only way 'newer' factions can ever catch up with the older ones. If enough card crossover exists with Order and Destruction mixing and matching then older players should have plenty of new cards to mix into and 'liven' up their older tactics while drawing in new players who were waiting for 'their army' to be made into cards.

Right now, though, I'm just hoping for the expansion.

Bringing in new customers at the expense of current customers is a very dangerous idea. It rarely is done well and the ill will that it garners isn't always solely directed at the company.

I'd rather the six core races be left as is. If things need to be added to attract new players release a companion set with the understanding that there will be no regular publication of cards in every Battle Pack to support those add on races. They could include a card or two per cycle but a couple of cards per pack would cause quite the stir I feel.

The way bringing in new races makes sense financially is if each new race brings in more people than could reasonably expect to leave over the old race falling out ofcontinual print. at least a 3/2 ratio if not 2/1.

Personally I hope each Army Book faction will end up in the game. Though not persay all as an individual faction. Beasts of Chaos for instance has seems to be put in 'Chaos'. I suppose one might put Vampire Counts / Tomb Kings together letting them share similar 'undead' aspects.

Things like Cathay and Chaos Dwarves is far to marginal to pop up except perhaps as part of an existing force. Like the Canon that Chaos had during Storm of Chaos. It was manned by Chaos Dwarves and could be a card.

Darthvegeta800 said:

I would have to agree. Having all the little side factions in as well as the major ones would be way to much. In if they dont have their own major army book in fantasy they shouldn't have their own theme deck in Invasion. They should just be added cards to the appropiate deck.

"Faction Bloat", as it were, is one of the more irksome problems that a lot of CCGs have had to deal with over time. To be fair I'm speaking from a position of some ignorance on Warhammer - I have the core set, but I'm not even sure if the Skaven are going to be Neutral, Chaos, or their own faction so I'm basically clueless in that regard.

It strikes me that a Living Card Game is one that, off the bat, has a better chance to control the card pool and retain interest in and balance between the various factions as growth is determined by the contents of the monthly expansion sets. I can cite examples of CCGs which have both gained and lost from trying out and then trimming off new factions (and they are always trimmed off) - particularly Legend of the Five Rings - as games which end up with too many "teams". Thus when a new expansion set is released - as it is collectable - the cards of interest to the player of a given faction are harder to collect, and the ratio of Cards of Interest to Cards Not Of Interest is skewed, generating frustration and a growing unwillingness to return to the game.

With a faction-based game in general, the peril of not getting the cards desired can be a problem. This is not the case with an LCG as the expansions hold every card from that set - this will also lend players a familiarity with factions that they do not necessarily favour. However, if further races were introduced as factions - the Tomb Kings, say, or the Skaven - then the pool of cards available to each faction will diminish. The possibility here is that the introduction of further factions will lessen interest in each faction in a wider fashion than that of Faction Bloat in a traditional CCG.

A knock-on effect of reduced card pool on a regular basis for each faction is that the remaining cards will have to in some way ignite creative thought in terms of gameplay and deck construction as well as excitement in general. To put it another way, if Chaos is only getting one card per expansion, then that card had better be awesome.

Or at least better than whatever card the Slaan are getting. Blasted Slaan.

Anyway, that's my initial impression about further factions. I'd like to see cards that reflect the wider Warhammer World - who wouldn't? - but I think that the addition of further definitive factions to the game might in the long term do more harm than good. Any slight goosing of interest from players getting their own faction will necessarily be tempered by their later feeling as if they have got short shrift. Which they will have - I mean, a faction introduced a length of time after the initial six will always be running to catch up, and balancing such a latecomer effectively may be problematic.

Perhaps but on the other hand you'll loose A LOT of potential customers by not implementing some of the other popular factions. I don't see a fan fo say 'Tomb Kings' or 'Wood Elves' invest in the game if his favourite faction(s) aren't in it. Which is already the case for some people.

But that reasoning is flawed. I could make the same argument that by not having some aspect of a players vocabulary positively affecting their game state and/or negatively affecting their opponents loses them all the potential players of Scrabble, Booggle, etc. that could be playing this game.

There is always something that could be added, taken away, or changed that will possibly bring in new players, the question is how much will th ecurrent game, and current player base suffer for it? And when it does negatively affect your current player base you need to also remember that you will also be losing out on potential players who won't play a game that has those problems.

I look at it this way... If I love baseball, but my favorite team didn't make it into the World Series, I'm still going to watch the games, because I'm a fan of baseball. I may not buy my own tickets for it, but if a friend is having a game day party, I'm going to go, because it is baseball and my friends, and I don't have to pay. Someone who wouldn't isn't a fan of baseball, they are a fan of a team, and are less interested in watching a good game, and more interested in a small cast of characters.

These are the same fans that rail against their teams and when they perform poorly and often end up giving up on their team after numerous disappointments saying they aren't watching anymore or going to anymore games until player/coach/manager/owner etc. does X better. They are fickle and fairweather fans more often than not. Of course there are also die hards who own every piece of team and player merchandise will sit in the rain to watch their team get shut out because they couldn't bear the thought of them not being there to support their team... but that type of person is greatly outnumbered by the fairweather fan.

Bringing in multiple new factions is depending on your current player base and your potential player base buying and sticking with the product because they are true die-hard fans, when the truth is a significant portion are fans of the game, or fairweather fans already. Mucking about with the distribution will lose you wide swaths of both, and only make the diehard fans happy... no game produced by a for-profit company can survive from such a limited player-base. Their buying a playset of everything for their faction will never equal the amount of money lost by those who leave the game.

I really hope that all of the Warhammer Fantasy Battles armies will be represented with their own faction at some point. I am especially keen on Lizardmen and Wood Elves since I play both of those, but I think I could introduce it to even more friends if they could play their own race in the game.

dormouse said:

Just to say that this is similar to behaviour I have observed with other games - increasing the faction count will increase the amount of static you get from people who feel they're getting the high hat from the game. For example, a future set is released (let's say) that focuses on Tomb Kings and Wood Elves. They get the expansion set, they get a good pile of cards from the ensuing chapter packs, and the (for example) Dwarf players think "my faction is stagnant. Absolutely two cards in the last few sets have been Dwarf cards, and they're marking time - they're not brilliant cards." Chaos players think the same thing.
Then a future set redresses the balance and the Wood Elf players think "Oh, I see: We're a flash in the pan, it's back to the Dwarfs and such". The more factions there are, the harder it becomes to balance the players' expectations, desires, and goodwill.

I think that in future cards will reflect these other factions, but I think that bringing them out as full factions to be fully supported will take away a lot more than it will bring.

Rakshasa said:

Well that is basically how the game of Warhammer works. once every 4 years or so you get new toys. If FFG did one pack a year dedicated to a certain faction they would be way ahead of what normal Warhammer players are used to. If the starter didn't have a faction I played, I probably wouldn't have picked it up until my faction came out. I think more of my Warhammer group will get into it when they can pick up the faction they play and will probably buy the chapter packs that are more geared towards their faction.

What if this game is not for Warhammer Table Top Gamers? What if it is for gamers in general? It is entirely possible that they go this route, but I expect there will be a mass exodus from the game by CCG and LCG players. They expect regular and full support for each playable faction.

I used to find with Warhammer (bear in mind I haven't played table-top Warhammer since shortly after Realm of Chaos) that when a new army was being shown as The Bee's Knees, they always made them just that little bit better than other, older armies. The cynic in me says that the decision to have people keen to buy all the new miniatures may have played a part, but whatever the idea was invariably you got a lot of players flow to the improved faction, and ticked-off players who are, say, Empire or Dwarfs or Orcs or whatever.

I do like Invasion, though, and I think it might serve the non-ccg buying public very well, whether they play Warhammer or not.

Jormi_Boced said:

And I'd argue that this system is still flawed even for WHFB players. I have played WHFB casually for years and this element of the game has ticked me off more than anything else. Basically is the problem of "You're book wasn't as shiny as the other books in the power creep at the moment? Too bad, guess, you'll have to wait 4 years". I'm a Dark Elf and Chaos Warriors fan. They royally screwed DE last run, but made them really good (some say too good) this run. On the other hand, Chaos Warriors used to be god-mode but now really don't hold up (and won't for the next 4 years).

In all honestly, the system makes it really hard to keep things balanced as you have one shot to make a faction balanced and then you have to balance the other factions to that faction, and if you do balance it, the sales are lower because only players of that faction actually buy the set. Plus, if you play a faction that they screwed up, there is no recourse, you're just S.O.L. until the next expansion.

As a follower (love the lore, can't spare the expenses of the models) of the Lizards, I'd love them to be a full faction, but that would dilute my other two loves (DE and Chaos), and would make the game weaker.

i dont think every Warhammer Amy needs there own capital.... i think every army should have cards yes.... but there own capital and decks... i dont think so....

i wouldnt like to see Ogres have there own capital for a start.....
that would tie them down to Order or Destruction only and that doesnt suit the fluff in the army book...
which stats that they would fight for anyone who gives them enough money or give them enough food no matter who they are....
Ogres should b comepletley Neutral and should b able to b put in Order and Destruction decks