The most difficult part I have in every miniature game is picking a faction I want to build up. It is still really early, but what do you think the different "feels" or unique tactical aspects of each faction will be now that we've at least seen unit cards from each? Ultimately it will come down to lore and aesthetics for me, but even on that front I'm not yet sold.

1) Which one looks the coolest to me?
2) Does the one i like the most use a mechanic i cant stand?
3) Are they at least playable, or am i wasting my time getting them because theyre so bad?

Basically the only things i look at with choosing a side. Aesthetics is the most important, if i dont like the models im going to hate the army. In 40k i have always, ALWAYS detested anything Eldar/Dark Eldar because i just hate their models. And i got bit by going for pure aesthetics initially because i went with Orks, and i joined RIGHT when orks got screwed over so basically i wasted my money. I've never encountered #2 with something i bought but ive noticed it in armies i was going to buy.
I also shafted myself getting Trollbloods for Warmahordes, as in Mk2 they were HORRIBLE but i liked them the most aesthetically because to me they looked like Ogres and i always wanted an army of Ogres rather than that 1-2 "Elite" unit in an army of orcs or some other "evil" force

RWM is new enough where the differences are mostly aesthetics with a couple noticable gameplay differences: this will definitely diverse as things come out. From what i can tell so far:
Waiqar: Debuffs, numbers, and regen
Daqan: Inspiration spam (remove debuffs or ready exhausted upgrades) and high damage output
Latari: Mobility over durability, lots of spell-related stuff
Uthuk: High health and (so far anyway) everything has a special ability that isnt tied to the Skill action.

We only know one dial for the Uthuk and none of the cards so their true gimick is still unknown atm.

Elves! Are are superior to all!

4 minutes ago, Vineheart01 said:

Waiqar: Debuffs, numbers, and regen
Daqan: Inspiration spam (remove debuffs or ready exhausted upgrades) and high damage output
Latari: Mobility over durability, lots of spell-related stuff
Uthuk: High health and (so far anyway) everything has a special ability that isnt tied to the Skill action.

That is very succinct and puts into words what I couldn't.

I think your first two faction qualities are also spot on for what I look for. The only thing I've recently realized is that I also like to have variety in tactics. Sure, a faction should specialize, but if "quick hit and run" is the only thing they can do it gets boring quickly.

Waiqar - combo synergy, blight opponent, feels defensive.

Daqan - hard hitting, balanced, high armour , inspiring

Latari- mobile! And magical

uthuk - aggressive, panic, low defense high health

Variety is more for an well endowed game, not a fresh one. RWM factions will more than likely stick to a couple of ideas for a long time before shifting over into other strats.

And even then, its usually not that good to delve into a tactic the faction usually doesnt do.

Very true. Both a bane and a boon of a brand new game.

It looks like the Uthuk Y'llan are going to have a host of mechanics that can be great in some situations, but awful in others. Maybe you could call it a risk/reward style of play.

Berserkers - You don't really want to trade one wound to yourself to deal 1 damage to the defender unless it's the final blow. Fortunately, you can choose when to activate it. The trouble is, when you don't use it, it's like you are missing an ability.

Flesh Rippers - That mandatory speed-1 march can be a great boon, but it can also get you into trouble. You really have to plan around that to not get bit.

Ravos the Everhungry - He deals a wound to a unit at range-1. That's great if you've managed to get into range-1 of your enemy, but otherwise you're dealing wounds to your own troops. That's quite a tradeoff. I think you can expect to take damage from that ability during the first round or two, at the least.

Here is my reasoning:

Undead are always lame, see trying to hard.

I'm human, I'm ok, humans are ok.

Elves look like a mobility based army, sounds very fun, I'll get some of those too.

Uthuk look silly, not interested.

personally, I was planning on only collecting Undead.. but Uthuk looks awesome, so I might get into them as well (since it's quite some time away, I'll see what happens with Runewars by then). Alongside Elves which gonna be for my girlfriend, I think my household will only be missing a proper human force. But w/e, they're humans. Let's just crush them

humans get the shaft in every scifi or fantasy flick. Nobody wants to be humans because humans are full of assholes and self-righteous pricks.
And i seriously envy you finding a gf that plays miniature games....every girl i meet looks disgusted at my "toy figures"

11 minutes ago, Vineheart01 said:

humans get the shaft in every scifi or fantasy flick. Nobody wants to be humans because humans are full of assholes and self-righteous pricks.

Although technically genetically engineered super humans, space marines are definitely the most played 40k army. When I go to a LFGS, all I see are red marines, blue marines, green marines, spikey marines, etc.

Well thats what happens when the company behind that particular game plays favoritism. Space Marines get all the cool toys, whether they need it or not, and get the most codex updates.
I know plenty of people that love Dark Eldar and pretty much only want to play Dark Eldar, but they are so outdated (prior to 8th edition anyway) they might as well be an abandoned and discontinued army. Completely unplayable in 7th edition, i havnt touched 8th yet but from what i hear its been pretty well rounded finally.
I have orks and tau. Any idea how excited i was when i found out they were getting a new codex, since they had the last one since 4th edition? The new codex wasnt just bad, it was abysmal. It actually HURT the orks, took away what little good things they had left and literally only gave them 1 good thing (Warbikerz actually were affordable now). Meanwhile, Space Marines get a new codex less than a year apart and get a lot of the perks that the orks needed, not the space marines (dreadnaught units for instance rather than solo models)
And the only out-of-codex model releases that are ever actually worth it are Imperial only, sometimes chaos marines get it but usually they dont. Xenos get jack. Yeah, orks got a flier (twice) but again following the codex trend, they sucked.

/rantoff

We've still to really see what Panic will do with the Uthuk. I imagine a lot of their upgrades and future units will trigger when attacking a panicked unit.

That said why not collect a small army for all four factions? It would give a chance to play 2v2, experience the variety between each army and you could use that to make an informed decision on what faction to focus on. It's also very doable now while the factions don't have a huge amount of different units to collect.

Just now, Muz333 said:

We've still to really see what Panic will do with the Uthuk. I imagine a lot of their upgrades and future units will trigger when attacking a panicked unit.

The weekend before the announcement, I was envisioning a Chaos Lord ability that lets you spend some amount of panic tokens on an engaged enemy to reform it. I agree that panic is likely to be a big part of their gameplay.

Just now, Budgernaut said:

The weekend before the announcement, I was envisioning a Chaos Lord ability that lets you spend some amount of panic tokens on an engaged enemy to reform it. I agree that panic is likely to be a big part of their gameplay.

I can't wait to see how the Command units look!

4 minutes ago, Muz333 said:

I can't wait to see how the Command units look!

Me too! And I think that will be a key part of solidifying the faction identity. With Ankaur Maro and the Infantry Command packs, we saw regeneration taken to another level. I'm excited to see how Blood Witches and Bone Witches help the infantry out! (Assuming that's what the magic-user is.)

To be fair we thought that about the Waiqar too, but nothing except Lancers actually benefit from blight tokens in a unique way.
And so far only the Thresher actually does something with existing panic tokens other than the usual effect.

The real strength of that panic token isnt the reroll, its getting higher severity tests. Sev1 tests practically do nothing except potentially stack up for future big tests, giving 2 panic tokens is the only sev1 i tend to find that actually bugs me. If i dont clear that, i will take a Sev3-4 next time and more than likely get slammed with something nasty. Threshers pretty much will never cause a Sev1 test, allowing them better odds at getting the panic stacking one or get one of the Sev2 tests that are also badness.

15 hours ago, Ywingscum said:

Waiqar - combo synergy, blight opponent, feels defensive.

Daqan - hard hitting, balanced, high armour , inspiring

Latari- mobile! And magical

uthuk - aggressive, panic, low defense high health

One unit with High Armor does not mean high armor.

My approach was always:

1) What gameplay mechanics interest me? Somebody summed the factions up well already.

2) Do the armies with interesting mechanics look appealing?

I'll personally be going with enough Waiqar to play and then focusing on Uthuk. I like some of the elf mechanics, but I have starting despising seeing elves in everything. The exact same faction reskinned as steaming turds would appeal more.

But seriously, grab the one that looks the most fun.

7 minutes ago, TallGiraffe said:

One unit with High Armor does not mean high armor.

No, but easy access to armor bonuses does.
Cavalry have a white +1 def
Golems (especially with Wind Runes) can get +1-2 armor every turn easily
Easily able to ready Shield Wall w/o a Rally command.
Hawthorne is usually sitting at 5 armor (+1 unique and init2-3 with a white shield mod)
Spearmen can use Lance Corp to get +1 def easy, and again have the capability to keep Readying that card. (especially if Hawthorne dumps some tokens on them early)

Nobody else has THAT kind of defense access.
This is why the morale card that dumps my Boons really irritates me because i find it unlikely to get a token via Surge, however its stupid easy to stack it in turn 1-2 for later

Just now, Vineheart01 said:

No, but easy access to armor bonuses does.
Cavalry have a white +1 def
Golems (especially with Wind Runes) can get +1-2 armor every turn easily
Easily able to ready Shield Wall w/o a Rally command.
Hawthorne is usually sitting at 5 armor (+1 unique and init2-3 with a white shield mod)
Spearmen can use Lance Corp to get +1 def easy, and again have the capability to keep Readying that card.

Nobody else has THAT kind of defense access.

I think that is more thanks to good synergy with inspiration tokens making exhaust upgrades really good for the humans.

5 hours ago, Darthain said:

Here is my reasoning:

Undead are always lame, see trying to hard.

I'm human, I'm ok, humans are ok.

Elves look like a mobility based army, sounds very fun, I'll get some of those too.

Uthuk look silly, not interested.

No fun allowed?

The major factor for me is price. I might certainly want to wait for Latari and others, but at nearly the same price for the minis and book as the core set, means Daqan/Waiqar are looking better and better. At least with the core, I would get two chances to land "the right army for me".

2 hours ago, TallGiraffe said:

One unit with High Armor does not mean high armor.

Yup one unit with high armour, but all their units can increase their armour I think. On average I think they are the highest armour faction.

I could be wrong, it's been known to happen haha