I've seen some statements tossed around here and there over the past few months about how we don't really need orcs in this game because the Uthuk Y'llan basically fill that niche in fantasy tropes. I suppose that's because both tend to be destructive, pillage-and-burn factions.

However, now that we've seen a lot more of what the Uthuk Y'llan have to offer as far as gameplay is concerned, I feel that an orc faction could be very different.

1) An orc faction could be focused more on swarming. I'll be the first to grant that there is some thematic dissonance here since the Uthuk Y'llan are known as the Locust Swarm. The thing is, the Uthuk units cost so much that it doesn't appear to be that easy to swarm with them. An orc faction with costs more in line with the Latari Elves could end up bringing a different style of play by virtue of the number of units that can be brought to the battlefield.

2) The Uthuk Y'llan are playing heavily to fear and panic. The way they are being represented, it is like they are so terrible and so unbelievable that all who face them are driven to horror and madness. This is not the reaction you'd expect from an orc army. Orcs are so common place (in both generic fantasy and Terrinoth in particular) that you would never expect them to play this way. Whatever you may expect an orc army to do, it certainly wouldn't be dishing out panic tokens left and right.

3) The Uthuk Y'llan have a lot of self-damage or self-inflicted banes. I will concede here that similar abilities are seen in orcs in Diskwars and Rune Age. There are Diskwars orcs that say you can sacrifice an orc within 6" to heal a wound. In Rune Age, the Giant Troll lets you gain an effect if you destroy a friendly participating unit. However, I want to point out that the orcs have changed between the First Darkness and now. While they were once crazy, tribal creatures (similar to the Uthuk), they now appear to be relatively civilized. Orcs are not uncommon to see in the free cities of Terrinoth. In that respect, Rune Age supports this change because the only orc unit killing friendly units is the non-orc giant troll, which is more of a creature than a sentient being.

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While the above is the main message I wanted to get across, I also have some other random thoughts to throw at the internet.

If the orcs are not gameplay clones of the Uthuk, what could they do? How could the designers implement something unique with their faction?

As far as I know, the orcs are still split into many tribes. However, in times of war, the clans band together under the direction of the warchiefs. To get different peoples together to work as one cohesive army would take a lot of coordination. I submit that the orcs could be a synergy army. One effect that might be interesting is having cards that give different kinds of buffs depending on what range a friendly unit is at. So at range 1-2 it does one thing, but at range 3-5 it does something different (wording would be more technical, of course). This gives the player an incentive to carefully plan where their units will end up. They have to really watch their movement while still considering their opponent's movement.

If orcs ever make it into development, I'm excited to see how they play. However, for the time being, I think FFG just needs to focus on the main 4 factions until this game really starts taking off. Even though I believe FFG could do a fantastic job with orcs, I doubt we'll ever see them and I'm content with the factions we have now. At least we got all 4 main factions, unlike BattleLore.

So who is excited for orcs tomorrow?

Honestly I understand your frustrations, but they are in this case analogous to one of the few portrayals of orcs we get in fantasy. That aside buffs and rebuffs are 2 sides of the same coin. The difference is how the audience percieved them, not a mechanical difference. So yeah, we get our strong, dreadful, barbarian swarm (this time with spikes!). Pretty much orcs, very very close to Warcraft orcs really.

8 hours ago, Budgernaut said:

However, now that we've seen a lot more of what the Uthuk Y'llan have to offer as far as gameplay is concerned, I feel that an orc faction could be very different.

But, Uthuk are basically orcs, right?

2 hours ago, flightmaster101 said:

But, Uthuk are basically orcs, right?

3 hours ago, Darthain said:

Honestly I understand your frustrations, but they are in this case analogous to one of the few portrayals of orcs we get in fantasy. That aside buffs and rebuffs are 2 sides of the same coin. The difference is how the audience percieved them, not a mechanical difference. So yeah, we get our strong, dreadful, barbarian swarm (this time with spikes!). Pretty much orcs, very very close to Warcraft orcs really.

Not all fantasy orcs are a faceless horde though. I understand that Terrinoth orcs have spiritual shamans. I could see them being savage, yes, but in a more natural way. And maybe having more honor, trying to please their ancestors and stuff.

The Uthuk seem to be more about the power in blood and fury. Just do some blood magic, make 'em all go crazy. Much like followers of Khorne in Warhammer maybe...

17 minutes ago, King Cheesecake said:

Not all fantasy orcs are a faceless horde though. I understand that Terrinoth orcs have spiritual shamans. I could see them being savage, yes, but in a more natural way. And maybe having more honor, trying to please their ancestors and stuff.

The Uthuk seem to be more about the power in blood and fury. Just do some blood magic, make 'em all go crazy. Much like followers of Khorne in Warhammer maybe...

I've seen mindless Orcs and I've seen calculated honorable (albeit to the wrong cause) Orcs. As much as i want to say Uthuk are far different i would say they're quite similar. Not to say they couldnt create an Orc faction. Games have wood elves, high elves, and dark elves, I'm sure we could have uthuk and Orcs... but i would say fear would very much be a part of Orcs. Fear and brute strength.

54 minutes ago, King Cheesecake said:

Not all fantasy orcs are a faceless horde though. I understand that Terrinoth orcs have spiritual shamans. I could see them being savage, yes, but in a more natural way. And maybe having more honor, trying to please their ancestors and stuff.

The Uthuk seem to be more about the power in blood and fury. Just do some blood magic, make 'em all go crazy. Much like followers of Khorne in Warhammer maybe...

Yes the noble savage tribal orcs are the other trope, and that's fine, but it doesn't fail to disconnect the similarities between uthuk and other orc tropes.

I can haz Murlocs plz?

3 hours ago, Polda said:

I can haz Murlocs plz?

NO!

Orcs bleed good. Send more orcs.

24 minutes ago, Ywingscum said:

NO!

Mrrrrrggllle

Dragonkin plzkthx

I think people are underestimating the design space for this game. The sheer amount of different ships in xwing should be evidence enough considering there's only one dial and four numbers to play with.

I'm personally on the side of "please make tons of factions" so I'd love to have orks enter the battle (although I'm hoping dwarves come first).

But the game is amazing whichever way they decide to develop it.

yes but different ships is akin to different units. So far Runewars has 21 different "ships" (units) released if my quick count is right (waiqar and daqan 6, latari 5, uthuk 4).

To my understanding there aren't factions in XWing so they don't have to worry as much about how many ships they have, it's also very far along in development. Eventually all 4 factions will have 2 heroes, 2 sieges, 2 of each infantry, range, cavalry and then some... That's 40 just when that criteria is met for each of the 4 factions. To then get a 5th faction out and try to keep it up with the others (talk about needing to get units released quickly). I don't see it. Logistically it'd be VERY tough.

Uthuk already had to come out with the army and command at same time to make it even viable. By the time another faction came out (at least a year or more, considering we've known about Uthuk since like May) They'd have to try to keep up with all the other factions already being fleshed out a bit. That's my thoughts on it...

How many ships does X-Wing have?

X wing has 3 factions.

whether Runewars stays at 4 factions or adds more it doesn't really matter to me.

They will be adding cool stuff regardless of direction.

5 minutes ago, Ywingscum said:

X wing has 3 factions.

whether Runewars stays at 4 factions or adds more it doesn't really matter to me.

They will be adding cool stuff regardless of direction.

I agree 100% with that. I'm Uthuk all the way either way (I'll try to keep my Waiqar army somewhat up kept). How many ships does X-Wing have in total?

13 minutes ago, Curlycross said:

I agree 100% with that. I'm Uthuk all the way either way (I'll try to keep my Waiqar army somewhat up kept). How many ships does X-Wing have in total?

56 if you count the epic ships, and a handful of them are useable by multiple factions.

3 hours ago, rowdyoctopus said:

56 if you count the epic ships, and a handful of them are useable by multiple factions.

Got ya. Yeah, I wouldn't imagine they do a 4th faction. Knowing that each faction will have 2 of each of the main army type, 2 heroes, and probably 2 siege (at least), that's 40 in total. With how long X-Wing has been out and only having 16 more than that... If we got a 5th faction it'd be really long before we got the 2 of everything fleshed out. Who knows though, time will tell...

I’m hoping 2018 expand the current armies to what could be considered full strength in terms of complete rosters of different unit type options. Multiple infantry types, maybe three siege types, two cavalry, and two heroes? Then the end of 2018 could spoil the fifth and sixth armies which could see full expansion in 2019. With various supplemental pieces in between, like epic play or card sets.

Orcs always seem like a horde army to me and that might hard with this model, because of the price point. Orcs in WFB were a turn off to some because the cost would usually be x2 a normal army.

Swarming in a game like this would be very difficult to execute well. The closest I could see is big blocks.

You don't want to let an army have MSU that surrounds you and blocks you in. There are only so many charges an army can do over 8 turns, and then you have to cut that down to account for reforming to aim at new stuff, etc. If you let an army truly "surround" an army as its swarm style, it wouldn't matter how fragile its units were (even if they could be more fragile than 1 armor 1 wound, which the rest of the infantry in this game already is), it would be overpowered simply by dint of preventing the other army from maneuvering and having room to maneuver. We don't have overrun, (as much) unit breaking, and so on that keep swarm armies in check in other games.

Finally, MSU swarms would be bad for the pacing of the game. Template movement is quick and easy when there's room to breathe. When you start crowding the battlefield, you begin to have to mark trays and set them aside to move over them, and so on.

No, if we ever see a real swarm army, it's going to be an army that likes to take blocks of 9-12. And I feel like we already have those, they're just not always powerful in the current meta. Reanimates and spear-stars are the kind of play you're going to see for a "swarm" army, and they're already in the game. And I don't think it's even reasonable to see something cheaper than the big block of reanimates, because the amount of time to simply chew through all of that would get out of hand.