I think it's easier to illustrate with an example. Say I use the Battalion Detachment. Now the Battalion Detachment has requirements of 2-3 HQ, 3-6 Troops, 0-6 Elites, 0-3 Fast Attack, 0-3 Heavy Support and 0-2 Flyers. Plus you may include 1 Dedicated Transport for each other choice, for a potential 0-21 slots. I'm going to assume you can take Lords of War and Fortifications (let's assume 1 each) because it makes no sense to exclude Lords of War and Fortifications from the new Detachments. In return, I get 3 command points. As you all know, I play either Imperial Guard or Adeptus Mechanicus, and am restricted to fielding entirely one or the other without space for the others unless I find an opponent willing to play 4,000-points games with me.
But with this new system of including Imperium as a faction keyword, does that mean I can field a combined Imperial Guard-Adeptus Mechanicus army? For example, I can field a Tech-priest Dominus and a Tank Commander squadron for my 2 HQ, a Skitarii Vanguard squad, a Skitarii Ranger squad and a maniple of 3 or 6 Kataphron Destroyers as my 3 Troops choice. Then I can field 2 squadrons of Leman Russ tanks (1 squadron of 2 Leman Russ Punishers, another squadron of 2 Leman Russ Executioners) and 1 squadron of 3 anti-air (Icarus Array) Onager Dunecrawlers for my 3 Heavy Support choices. Assuming there is a Lord of War slot that isn't shown for some inexplicable reason, I can field an Imperial Knight (Knight Crusader) as my Lord of War. If I have space left over I can throw in the Sicarian Ruststalkers and Sicarian Infiltrators as my Elites, a squadron of 3 Vendetta gunships for Flyers, and a Primaris Psyker or Space Marine Librarian for the 3rd HQ slot. I could go crazy and throw in a Grey Knight Terminator squad for my Troops slot. The possibilities are endless.
Of course, this won't benefit me as much as say, a pure Imperial Guard Detachment, which might offer me 1 HQ and 1-4 Heavy Support choices (no Troops! YAY!) for an armored company option, which gains better Ballistic Skill for my tanks or something. But it's more flexible? I dunno. As I said, I'm just speculating here. I've no idea how this is going to work. We'll need to see.
And then we come to the next crux of the problem. Allies. How will the Allies matrix work in 8th Edition? Are we still following the same old Armies of the Imperium being Battle Brothers with each other, having Eldar as Allies of Convenience, Tau and Dark Eldar as Desperate Allies, and everyone else as Come the Apocalypse? Will the One Eye Open rule still be in effect? I suspsect it will be. I also heard rumors that we might follow an Ally Matrix from Age of Sigmar, where they have a Grand Alliance of sorts, or Order versus Chaos and that sort of stuff. In that case, the Imperium of Man will be a Grand Alliance, and all the Astra Militarum, Adeptus Mechanicus, Adeptus Astartes, etc. will be sub-factions. Hmm...
If that's the case, the Castellans of the Imperium Detachment might make more sense. Perhaps they put it in there to test out how a combined Imperium army might work. We'll see. I've no idea how this is going to play out, but it might work somehow.
But if the Age of Sigmar Grand Alliance thing is true, then maybe it makes sense how the official Warhammer 40,000 website divided things up into Imperium, Chaos and Xenos. Let's look at their Explore the Factions page and see how things are divided.
Now, if you notice, the first thing they tell you to do is Choose a side. You'll notice that there are 3 sides to choose from: Imperium, Chaos and Xenos. From there you choose a Faction. Now note this interesting choice of words - the Imperium is merely a side, and it is further divided into Factions. If that's the case, my speculation above on a combined Imperium army or a Grand Alliance thing is completely nonsense and I just wasted my time writing it (and I apologize for wasting your time if you read through all that rubbish). What we do know, however, is that each Faction will get its own thematic Detachments and unique Command Benefits, so hooray for that at least. Even if we don't get a Combined Imperium army, we still benefit somehow. However, this will then throw the whole Allies Matrix into question, but we'll talk about that later. For now, let's focus on the Factions.
For the Imperium, we have the following Factions:
Space Marines (Ultramarines, the poster boys for Games Workshop)
Blood Angels (because they're not Space Marines...uh, what?)
Dark Angels (ditto)
Space Wolves (special snowflake and all that...fitting, given how they live in Fenris, an ice world)
Grey Knights (because they're in a...uh, grey area)
Deathwatch (not on my watch!)
Imperial Guard...ahem, I mean ASTRA MILITARUM (this is MY main Faction)
Adepta Sororitas (Space Nuns in Power Armor)
Adeptus Custodes (why bother?)
Sisters of Silence (I'm gonna stay silent on this matter)
Adeptus Mechanicus (another of my Factions)
Imperial Agents (they can play secret agents)
Imperial Knights (this is also MY main Faction)
For the Chaos we have the following Factions:
Chaos Daemons (I notice that Khorne Daemonkin and Pandemonium of Tzeentch aren't mentioned?)
Chaos Space Marines (Traitors!)
Death Guard (they make me sick)
Thousand Sons (the most awesome Chaos Faction...okay, I'm biased...I mean, c'mon. "All is dust.")
Wait, what? That's it? Huh. Well, okay. I suspect at some point they'll continue to expand the number of Factions in Chaos. Since we have Death Guard and Thousand Sons, I believe we'll eventually have World Eaters and Emperor's Children. Furthermore, based off the Battletomes of Age of Sigmar where they had Disciples of Tzeentch and some Korny Khorne faction, I think they'll further split the Chaos Daemons into Khorne Daemonkin, Pandemonium of Tzeentch, uh...something of Slaneesh and Nurgle Zombies or something. Or Nurgle Plague-bringers. Or Nurgle Gurgle. Maybe Slain Slaneesh, or Slaneesh Slash. Oh, throw in Traitor Guard, Dark Mechanicum and Renegade Knights while at it. Then we'll have as many Chaos Factions as we have Imperium Factions! Yay!
Speaking of which, they really, really need Traitor Guard. You know, like the Prosperine Spireguard. Then I can safely ally my Traitor Guard with Thousand Sons. And complete the stuff with Dark Mechanicum Daemon Engines. Muahahahaha! Oh, wait...sorry, Emperor! I'll stay loyal and resist the temptation!
Last but not least, for the Xenos side we have the following Factions:
Uh, first we should cover the Aeldari because they have a whooping four Factions for them alone (pitiful compared to the Imperium but on par with Chaos if we discount Khorne Daemonkin, Pandemonium of Tzeentch, and the inevitable World Eaters and Emperor's Children). What's with the damned name change, anyway? Why can't Games Workshop stick to Eldar? Aeldari may sound cool and all, but...ugh...it just doesn't make sense. Well, apparently the the fluff, Aeldari was the name of the Eldar before the fall, so after the Aeldari fell, the alphabets A and I fell with them and they became the Eldar. Anyway, here's the four factions of Eldar...ahem, I mean AELDARI.
Craftworlds (they know their craft)
Harlequins (also known as Harley Quinn)
Dark Eldar (because having the name dark makes you sound cooler)
Ynnari (Eldar necromancers. No, I'm not kidding)
Then we have the two Tyranid Factions. Yay!
Tyranids (giant space bugs)
Genestealer Cults (they steal your jeans too)
And then we finally have the three remaining xenos Factions:
Orks (Waaagh!)
Necrons (space undead)
Tau Empire (I'm surprised they didn't divide this into Tau Empire and Farsight Enclaves)
Okay, that's pretty much all the Factions. Phew, I don't know how we're going to get all these guys into a Dawn of War game. We'll need like 3 more expansions to get every single one of them into the game (it's actually doable!), assuming that each expansion adds 3 Factions. So yeah. Let's see. Right now we have Space Marines, Eldar and Orks. 1st expansion adds Imperial Guard, Chaos Space Marines and Necrons. 2nd expansion adds Tau Empire, Tyranids and Sisters of Battle. 3rd expansion adds Adeptus Mechanicus, Dark Eldar and Chaos Daemons. Something like that. That's for Relic to decide. I'm just throwing stuff around. But then, this isn't a Dawn of War III blog and I'm not going to play Dawn of War III until Imperial Guard is added as an official Faction in the game. I mean Astra Militarum...wait, Relic, you're not going to buy that Astra Militarum BS, are you? Stick to Imperial Guard. Speaking of which, there is no longer a Militarum Tempestus Faction, so I assume the Storm Troopers have been subsumed into the Imperial Guard itself. Yay.
Anyway, I digress. The whole point is, how will the Allies Matrix work here? Can the Eldar use each other's stuff like a Combined Imperium army? Will we even have a Combined Imperium army? I mean, Chaos Space Marines is pretty much a Combined Chaos army that can field the Rubrics of the Thousand Sons, the Plague Marines of the Death Guard, Khorne Berzerkers of the World Eaters and Noise Marines of the Emperor's Children. So why can't a Combined Imperium army do the same? I dunno? And how will they help each other? I can see Chaos being Battle Brothers with each other, but the xenos obviously will not have the same Battle Brothers tag as Armies of Chaos and Armies of the Imperium. I mean, Craftworlds sure as hell ain't gonna be Battle Brothers with Orks. Neither will the Tau Empire. And the Tyranids will eat everything except their spawn, the Genestealer Cults (unless those Genestealers belong to a different Hive Fleet, then everything's fair game). So how will this work out?
And will we ever have a General's Handbook or Battletome/Codex (whatever Games Workshop want to name it) for Traitor Guard? Dark Mechanicum? I believe World Eaters and Emperor's Children are only a matter of time, but don't forget about Traitor Guard and Dark Mechanicum!
For now, this is just speculation, so please ignore my rambling. You can have the Emperor execute me and delete this blog from the Webway if you find my posts annoying, and I apologize in advance for making readers trawl through this post of nonsense. Sorry!
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