In an interview about a month or so ago with Crabbok Luke Eddy was talking about subfactions and how there are so many ways to implement subfactions into the game. He didn't give any hints as to how they plan to don it but I'm curious how does everyone think they will do subfactions?

I think they have all ready shown us how with the mando units in the rebel faction. They dont have any special rules or fancy subfactions keywords but they synergies well together (clan Wren with sabine). I think subfactions will be just that units that fit well together both thematically and mechanically, without any sort of fancy subfactions keyword or rule.

Heres a link to thr interview if anybodies interested.

It could vary from subfaction what requirements and restrictions there are. Perhaps Gungans will only fight if Obi, Padme, and/or Ani are in your army. Wookies if Yoda or Ahsoka are in involved. Death Watch if Maul is in the army.

Might depend on the unit and circumstance. Perhaps what FFG might consider to be fun, interesting.

We do have some restrictions on what units can appear in the form of K2 and gunner teams for Vets and Shores, where you have to bring a unit to bring them.

If they were smart thered be zero restrictions on subfactions

they should be fully playable as part of a main faction or as their own standalone subfaction

theres not a whole lot of benefit to rules that say you cant use X unless you bring Y. all those rules do is reduce list diversity.

4 minutes ago, Khobai said:

If they were smart thered be zero restrictions on subfactions

they should be fully playable as part of a main faction or as their own standalone subfaction

I actually prefer this. They need to solidify THE FACTIONS they have first. Sub-faction can ruin the whole thing for them. I get the feeling this whole time that FFG "thinks" they are making the new 40K not realizing that 40K has had many ups and downs and ins and outs, but more than anything, has been around for 30+ years, so it could weather some of those down times. Legion is not nearly as popular or well-backed or well-organized.

well games workshop has their @!#$ together too

theyre killing it with the skirmish games right now because their skirmish games also act as entry points for their larger games

where FFG does the opposite and screwed over people that played imperial assault to make legion

subfaction box sets could absolutely serve as cheaper entry level products for legion to start one of the main factions. like you start out buying a subfaction box then maybe you get a core set.

19 minutes ago, Khobai said:

well games workshop has their @!#$ together too

theyre killing it with the skirmish games right now because their skirmish games also act as entry points for their larger games

where FFG does the opposite and screwed over people that played imperial assault to make legion

In all fairness, GW did the exact same thing in the 90s killing Necromunda, Blood Bowl, and Mordhiem in favor of 40K and Fantasy (now AoS). It's part of gaming companies.

6 minutes ago, Bigbboyd said:

In all fairness, GW did the exact same thing in the 90s killing Necromunda, Blood Bowl, and Mordhiem in favor of 40K and Fantasy (now AoS). It's part of gaming companies.

you are 100% right

but they realized somewhere down the line that killing off their specialist games was a huge mistake because they brought them all back lol

someone at GW realized they could sell more 40k if they had cheaper games like killteam that would eventually lead to people starting 40k armies. because not everyone wants to throw down $400++ for a starter 40k army. killteam was a cheaper alternative to try out the game without a huge money investment.

thats what FFG needs to do with subfactions. create a cheaper entry point for the game geared towards 500 point matches (or smaller than 500) with options to expand to 800 points if you buy a core set

I think we might be more likely to see thematic subfactions encouraged rather than enforced . For stuff like K2 and the emplacement teams, they were included in the box with the unit that unlocked them, so that doesn't work as well for non-unique units tied to a specific Commander/Operative.

On the other hand, Clan Wren and Mandalorian Resistance can be run without Sabine. Clan Wren is better with Sabine of course, but she is not required to unlock the other units.

Having the "subfaction" synergize with an appropriate commander in some way makes more sense than "your army list has to be X" with the way Legion is designed.

you shouldnt have to take R2 to use C3PO

you shouldnt have to take Cassian to use K2

whats the benefit to having detachment restrictions like that? it just limits list construction.

detachments should only exist when necessary for balance reasons. like turning strike teams into detachments as a potential way to balance them would be fine. but unless theres some balance reason for having a detachment rule I dont think they should exist.

which is why I dont think there should be requirements to use subfaction models in a main army. if you want to stick jar jar and a bunch of gungans in your GAR list without taking padme or anakin or obiwan you should absolutely be allowed to do that.

pointlessly limiting peoples options makes no sense.

20 minutes ago, Khobai said:

you shouldnt have to take R2 to use C3PO

you shouldnt have to take Cassian to use K2

whats the benefit to having detachment restrictions like that? it just limits list construction.

detachments should only exist when necessary for balance reasons. like turning strike teams into detachments as a potential way to balance them would be fine. but unless theres some balance reason for having a detachment rule I dont think they should exist.

which is why I dont think there should be requirements to use subfaction models in a main army. if you want to stick jar jar and a bunch of gungans in your GAR list without taking padme or anakin or obiwan you should absolutely be allowed to do that.

pointlessly limiting peoples options makes no sense.

I would argue that the current detachment rules are fine. I think it works well that you can only take a 1 mortar per unit of shores for example. They fit together well and it is also thematic and prevents people from running 6 mortars to fill out all their corp slots for 36 points each. I also think that it works with cassian/K2 and R2/3PO. In both of those cases you rarely see the counterpart or detachment without the parent unit thematically. What I could see as giving those two more freedom in lists would be to allow corp units to include them as a personnel upgrade. This isn't to say that I think that subsections should be done this way. I am all in favor of encouraging players to build a certain way as opposed to telling them how. I think in the instances we have it it is done well though.

14 minutes ago, Scientia06 said:

prevents people from running 6 mortars to fill out all their corp slots for 36 points each.

CIS:

Didnt I already say the detachment rule should still exist for balance reasons? I would say not allowing 6 mortars is obviously a balance reason.

my two examples for removing the detachment rules were C3PO and K2SO. i said nothing about removing the detachment rule for mortars. and I mentioned adding the detachment rule as a way to potentially limit strike teams.

the detachment rule is absolutely fine when its used as a means of artificially limiting how many of one unit can be in a list.

the detachment rule makes no sense when it just limits list construction for no apparent reason. would it really be broken to be able to take C3PO without R2D2? or K2SO without Cassian? I dont think so.

similarly subfactions shouldnt be limited by forcing you to take certain models in order to use the subfaction models. the detachment rule should only be used when theres a balance reason for limiting how many of something you can put in a list.

5 minutes ago, Khobai said:

didnt I already say the detachment rule should only exist for balance reasons? I would say not allowing 6 mortars is obviously a balance reason.

my two examples for removing the detachment rules were C3PO and K2SO. i said nothing about removing the detachment rule for mortars. and I mentioned adding the detachment rule as a way to potentially limit strike teams.

the detachment rule is absolutely fine when its used as a means of balancing how many of one unit can be in a list.

the detachment rule makes no sense when it just limits list construction for no apparent reason. would it really be broken to be able to take C3PO without R2D2? or K2SO without Cassian? I dont think so.

similarly subfactions shouldnt be limited by forcing you to take certain models in order to use the subfaction models.

It really depends on the unit, and the keyword. Counterpart makes sense for R2/C3PO, but I also think they should have included a unit card for both, giving you the option to decide which to take as the "unit leader".

As for K2 and Cassian, well the lore around them is fairly limited, as far as it we see thus far, they do spend the majority of their time working together. (Though it does beg the question, why isn't chewie a detachment for Han? As they're basically glued together through most of the SW canon).

Ultimately, named characters seem to be the biggest issue with the counterpart/detachment rules when it comes to thematics. It seems like they could fix this by making "counterpart:type-name" a rule that says while one is in the army, if the other is added it must either be added to the unit or be deployed as a detachment from the unit.

So for instance, R2 would have:

Counterpart: Unit-C3PO

Meaning while list building, if you add R2 then add 3PO, they go together in a unit. Vise versa 3PO, would have:

Counterpart: Unit-R2

Meaning while list building, if you add 3PO then add R2, they go together in a unit.

Allowing you to take either or both.

Cassian would be:

Counterpart:Detachment-K2

Meaning while list building, if you add Cassian then add K2, K2 is added as a detachment. Vise versa K2, would have:


Counterpart:Detachment-Cassian

Meaning while list building, if you add K2 then add Cassian, Cassian is added as a detachment.

Allowing you to take either or both.



Though all that said, it's a moot point. they'd have to errata the current cards and balance /create unit cards for the counterparts. Anyway you cut it we're stuck with the current system.

I honestly dont think printing new cards and selling them is as big of a deal as FFG makes it out to be.

Lots of other games do that.

FFG doesnt want to do it for the specific reason that they want to force you to buy the models to get the cards. They dont want to provide updated cards through card packs. They dont want their game having any kindve secondary market either.

23 minutes ago, Khobai said:

would it really be broken to be able to take C3PO without R2D2? or K2SO without Cassian? I dont think so.

I think whether it would be broken or not isn't really the question. I think its more about what makes sense thematically and for each character specifically. I mean in the movies C-3PO routinely states that he would be as far away from the action as possible if it weren't for R2 getting him into all these shenanigans. You would never ever see 3PO leading the charge to take an objective. With K2 in rogue 1 we get the sense that cassian and he have been together for a while and operate well as a team (thus the teamwork keyword). I imagine their dynamic will be fleshed out more in the cassian show but even for now it makes sense that they would be together in battle. It would also be interesting to see a generic imperial droid expansion although im not sure what the rebel option would be.

It would still make perfect sense if you could take C3PO by himself.

Its just a bad rule.

Please explain to me what purpose 3PO would serve by himself

Well youd obviously have to change his rules around a little so he could function more independently instead of as a counterpart

But thats how he always shouldve been. You should have the option to take either R2D2 or C3PO or take them both together.

Just like how you can take either Han Solo or Chewbacca or take them both. Because they arnt constrained by the goofy counterpart rules. And R2D2 and C3PO shouldnt be either.

Its a bad rule that makes no sense at all.

And I really hope they dont have rules like that for subfactions where you have to take model X to take model Y. its dumb to constrain list construction for no reason.

34 minutes ago, Khobai said:

Well youd obviously have to change his rules around a little so he could function more independently instead of as a counterpart

True but how would u change 3p0? What role would he play in the army. Caculate the odds is always good being able to pass out aim and dodge tokens, but would he still have secret mission?

I've thought about sub factions and I'm not sure if things like Gungans or Geonosians would be sub factions or just unit options within the GAR/CIS respectively, like how the Rebels have multiple units pulled from different cells into the wider army.

I wonder if subfactions would be a way to run models you already have in a different way. Such as with the GAR giving each Clone Legion its own unique rule set, so you can run basic Phase 1 or 2 Clones, or pay more to have 501st or 212th Clones, but that just adds onto the unit card and models you already own. They could release codex for the army types then, this would be easy to do in some armies but a bit harder in others, I think GAR and Rebels lean more heavily into this kind of thing than the largely ubiquitous Empire and CIS armies.

I think the easiest way would be to make them their own factions, but have dual faction cards for some of their units.

They don't have to be fully fleshed out factions. They could just have one choice in each section, and maybe a couple different commanders for flavor.

7 hours ago, Khobai said:

you are 100% right

but they realized somewhere down the line that killing off their specialist games was a huge mistake because they brought them all back lol

someone at GW realized they could sell more 40k if they had cheaper games like killteam that would eventually lead to people starting 40k armies. because not everyone wants to throw down $400++ for a starter 40k army. killteam was a cheaper alternative to try out the game without a huge money investment.

thats what FFG needs to do with subfactions. create a cheaper entry point for the game geared towards 500 point matches (or smaller than 500) with options to expand to 800 points if you buy a core set

And hopefully FFG will learn that quickly (at least faster than GW. It wasn't until 2015 after an almost 20 year gap)

52 minutes ago, Bigbboyd said:

And hopefully FFG will learn that quickly (at least faster than GW. It wasn't until 2015 after an almost 20 year gap)

GW still hasn't "learned" anything. They brought back the games they did to cash in on nostalgia without harming their bottom line. So far there is zero signs of an update to Kill Team to bring the rules in line with 9th, and is now a bad intro game since the rules and stat lines are very different than the full game. Not to mention that most competitive builds require one or two models out of a whole box, so you are better off buying individual models off eBay.

What GW did learn is they can make a bunch of money by repackaging an existing sprue or churning out some one offs, adding a few cards, and ship to market. Or by selling people an alternate set of rules for models they already own. In the case of Blood Bowl, the updates had already been done for them, they just needed to start producing models again, as well as new, DLC expansion rules (until they decided to sell a new rulebook, but that's a separate thing).

9th edition has skirmish rules in the rulebook now, which is similar to FFG providing skirmish rules on their website. Something to remember is that FFG already produces a BUNCH of different games, just not all of them are Star Wars related. Also, unlike GW, they have STAR WARS to bring people into the game, they don't necessarily need an intro game to get people interested.

8 hours ago, lunitic501 said:

True but how would u change 3p0? What role would he play in the army. Caculate the odds is always good being able to pass out aim and dodge tokens, but would he still have secret mission?

Yeah I think you should be able to take either R2D2 or C3PO by themselves and both should have secret mission. But secret mission shouldnt stack if you take both.

Both should have secret mission, inconspicuous, and 3 wounds each.

C3PO should get about 20 points worth of new abilities to make him more worthwhile his own. Could give him the ability to command Ewoks because hes their GOD.

And you should have the option of taking one for 40 points (I think 35 is too cheap for R2D2) or both for 70 points. And if you take both you should get a bonus special ability similar to teamwork. That way taking both is incentivized over taking only one of them.

I just dont like how counterpart works now. i feel like theres never any reason to take C3PO at all. C3PO is dead weight with the current rules.

I would prefer the game to go in the direction of allowing fully open army construction instead of having to take model X in order to use model Y.

6 hours ago, Caimheul1313 said:

GW still hasn't "learned" anything. They brought back the games they did to cash in on nostalgia without harming their bottom line. So far there is zero signs of an update to Kill Team to bring the rules in line with 9th, and is now a bad intro game since the rules and stat lines are very different than the full game. Not to mention that most competitive builds require one or two models out of a whole box, so you are better off buying individual models off eBay.

What GW did learn is they can make a bunch of money by repackaging an existing sprue or churning out some one offs, adding a few cards, and ship to market. Or by selling people an alternate set of rules for models they already own. In the case of Blood Bowl, the updates had already been done for them, they just needed to start producing models again, as well as new, DLC expansion rules (until they decided to sell a new rulebook, but that's a separate thing).

9th edition has skirmish rules in the rulebook now, which is similar to FFG providing skirmish rules on their website. Something to remember is that FFG already produces a BUNCH of different games, just not all of them are Star Wars related. Also, unlike GW, they have STAR WARS to bring people into the game, they don't necessarily need an intro game to get people interested.

Good point on Star Wars itself being the draw. As to GW, sounds like they have moved on from Kill Team. Atleast they are still doing new content for Necromunda (books at least) and War Cry seems to be doing decent. And yeah, it may be a nostalgia thing for the old heads, but bother also seem.to be bringing in new players as well. Buying 1 or 2 sets to build out a full.force is a lot cheaper than the 8 to 10 needed for bigger game.

As to FFG as a whole, they are indeed far more diversified then GW ever dreamed, but that is also a double edged sword at times as some lines will always suffer and (as is the case with Star Wars ), you are beholden to the IP licensers.