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Hrud forces would be a sort of Imperial guard, for the cast off xeno's of the galaxy.

Ambulls, Hrud, Beastmen, Squats, Thrix, Troth, Jokeros, you name it. There are hundreds of "other races" in the list. I'd love to see a list of banded together Imperium of Non Humankind.

Well, we have Ambulls. We have Beastmen too. We have a whole faction for Squats. Jokaeros have rules too.


Hrud are a cohesive alien race that has never been shown to my knowledge to work with other alien races. In fact, it's basically impossible for Hrud to work with anyone except other Hrud. Hrud have a different relationship with Time than anyone else in the galaxy. Hrud migrate as a species through space and time in a way that absolutely destroys anything caught in its wake. The Iron Warriors during the Great Crusade suffer greatly attempting to fight the Hrud.



A "all the random aliens" list would be fun, but I think 1. we already have rules for many of these races and 2. the Hrud definitely wouldn't and couldn't be any sort of alien alliance facilitators.


Maybe you just want to play Tau with Kroot and Vespid and taking Ambull allies or something?

A few of them are already seeing new life in other 40K games such as BSF and Necromunda. Pretty sure Kill Team had Chaos Beastmen recently?

Yeah, no. The Hrud wouldn't work in 40k at all.
They have a naturally occurring entropic field that ages those around them and the more Hrud there are, the stronger it is.
Entire armies turned to dust and mulch in a single engagement.
They certainly wouldn't lead some kind of united alien federation.

Would the Hrud work as a faction? No.

Mainly because that would require the writers to understand what Entropy actually is and i doubt GW will be willing to spend the money needed to salary an engineer or a chemist/physicist for a rules-writing position.



I would like the Hrud to exist for the sake of Great Crusade funsies, but we'd probably appreciate Great Crusade era Elda.. sorry, Aeldari and GC era Orks first.

Agree with the above re. Hrud as independents. Any major Hrud migration is a huge deal for the Imperium on the scale of major Waaaghs! Smaller forces have weaker entropy effects and are not so deletedious on foes. They do cause smaller infestations and they are an enemy that groups like the Deathwatch will engage fairly frequently. I think Hrud have a place in 40k.

Probably only Necrons are reasonably resistant to their entropy effects.

Hrud could be introduced as a major faction in their own right, but I don't think GW was ever quite sure if they wanted to lean into space Skaven or not.

You *could* make Hrud a full faction, but you'd *almost* be building them from the ground up. We don't really know much about how they fight, what their various units would be like, etc. Also, the appearance they've been described as having frankly seems like a challenge to make "look cool". A gimmicky army-wide rule similar to 9th edition's DG diseases could work to represent their entropic auras though.

As for assorted aliens being in one book... That *should* be the bread and butter of tau, and I really wish GW would give that aspect of the faction more love. Hopefully the upcoming kroot rules are a good omen.

A Codex: Mercenaries could also be neat; basically serving as an expansion of the "unalligned" units available to everyone. The thing there is that a book like that would be a little bit of a nightmare for designers as you'd have to ensure that every unit in the book is powerful enough to make people want to buy and field them, but also you have to make sure they don't synergize with anything in any existing faction in a way that's OP. There's maybe also an argument to be made for preserving faction limitations. You probably don't want, idk, Khorne daemons suddenly having access to a bunch of top notch long-range heavy weapons teams, for instance.

Maybe Hrud should be the Big elite bois? Like the Deathwing Terminators of the "faction"? You can call down a trio of Hrud, that are essentially Amigers, with a deathguard-esque aura ability. It would not be hard to include them.

Hrud just don't ally with other factions as far as we are aware, and doing so would probably be bad for their allies.

Whelp, there goes my idea for that children's birthday party mascots. Thanks a lot guys, ruin everything!

Glad we could help! Its been emotional.

I'm going to go with "No".

Not because I dont think they'd work as an army, not because i think their rules would be to difficult, etc et. Etc.
No, I just don't think GW will ever get around to doing them at all.

As others have said- I doubt they'll ever be a faction, but a stand-alone mini, or even a Kill Team would be possible.

If we ever get another 40k Warhammer Quest game like BSF, I could see one there- after all, BSF gave us both the Ambull and the Zoat.

Give that Ambulls, Arbites and even the Squats have gotten kits, the Strategic Nostalgia Reserve in Nottingham must be low. So I would guess they would get a kit of some sort in the near term future.

As for how they might work, please, if this game has C'Tan and Greater Daemons stomping around Entropy Rats are easy.

Squad of 5: 5++ save, AP -1 weapons.
Squad of 10: 4++, AP -2
Squad of 20: 3++, AP -3

And there you go.

I’d rather see Xenos kill teams introduced that can be added to armies like mercenaries. A bit like the Fellgor ravegers but not aligned to a single faction.

No point in making it a non mankind imperium, I mean, I can't fathom the level of lore and.logic bending it would take and I.d probably hate it.

Not sure GW would revert to the mindset that made them publish a some 5 entries or so list for the original necrons. But I'd be all for that kind of list, maybe not competitive, but fluff and fun to add to your beer hammer storytelling. Maybe released as a single book because they won't necessarily all be super fleshed out?

Getting a kill team would already be great though.

I mean, lets be honest, Necrons have weapons that can delete stars, Nids could wipe out the galaxy if they made an actual concerted push, The Emperor of mankind can manifest miracles at will, and the power of the a navy battleship renders entire ground forces superfluous. But Hrud causing degraded stats with an aura is literally unthinkable in how 40k works?

Every major faction has some ultra powerful mcguffin thing that never makes it to the table top. I don't think it's impossible to give Hrud a basic monstrosity statline and then a 6-12" aura of degrading AP/damage/Str/Tough

I see Hrud operating kinda similar to current Death Guard. An aura effect that lowers toughness, strength, WS, armor etc.

How can they make it different than Death Guard, I don't know....

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
I mean, lets be honest, Necrons have weapons that can delete stars, Nids could wipe out the galaxy if they made an actual concerted push, The Emperor of mankind can manifest miracles at will, and the power of the a navy battleship renders entire ground forces superfluous. But Hrud causing degraded stats with an aura is literally unthinkable in how 40k works?

Necron star destroyers can't be deployed in game. The Tyranid numbers are limited largely by the points system. The Emperor is not a unit in game and at best is represented by the SoB Miracles system (if that's even still a thing). Starships are not units in game.
The difference between all of these things and the Hrud is that these things are the exceptions to the normal state of how the 40k game system works. The Hrud basic power is intrinsic to every single being of the species.
They are not the same thing.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
Give that Ambulls, Arbites and even the Squats have gotten kits, the Strategic Nostalgia Reserve in Nottingham must be low. So I would guess they would get a kit of some sort in the near term future.

As for how they might work, please, if this game has C'Tan and Greater Daemons stomping around Entropy Rats are easy.

Squad of 5: 5++ save, AP -1 weapons.
Squad of 10: 4++, AP -2
Squad of 20: 3++, AP -3

And there you go.

Hrud aren't a nostalgia play. They've never had minis. Nobody has ever had rules for a Hrud army. They are a single background lore reference that came into being in 3rd edition and have since been updated, expanded, retconned, and revised in various ways, but have never risen past being a background reference.

 Gert wrote:

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
I mean, lets be honest, Necrons have weapons that can delete stars, Nids could wipe out the galaxy if they made an actual concerted push, The Emperor of mankind can manifest miracles at will, and the power of the a navy battleship renders entire ground forces superfluous. But Hrud causing degraded stats with an aura is literally unthinkable in how 40k works?

Necron star destroyers can't be deployed in game. The Tyranid numbers are limited largely by the points system. The Emperor is not a unit in game and at best is represented by the SoB Miracles system (if that's even still a thing). Starships are not units in game.
The difference between all of these things and the Hrud is that these things are the exceptions to the normal state of how the 40k game system works. The Hrud basic power is intrinsic to every single being of the species.
They are not the same thing.

Per the lore, a single squad of marines can conquer an entire planet and a terminator can survive getting stepped on by a warlord titan. Lore representation != rules on the tabletop. That entire line of reasoning just isn't a strong enough justification to exclude them from the game. To Fezziks point, the game is already full of things that are indicated in lore to be significantly more powerful or dangerous than they are shown to be on the tabletop. Hrud? They're just another grain of sand on the beach.

chaos0xomega wrote:
Per the lore, a single squad of marines can conquer an entire planet and a terminator can survive getting stepped on by a warlord titan. Lore representation != rules on the tabletop. That entire line of reasoning just isn't a strong enough justification to exclude them from the game. To Fezziks point, the game is already full of things that are indicated in lore to be significantly more powerful or dangerous than they are shown to be on the tabletop. Hrud? They're just another grain of sand on the beach.

Fezz's examples are complete nonsense and not remotely in the same ballpark. They are talking about things in the background that are either:

A - Don't have a presence in the game because they are waaaaaaay out of scale i.e. Star destroyer super weapons and starships.

B - Are restricted by the nature of game balance because having one army with 8x the points of another isn't remotely a standard mode of play for a game.

The Hrud by their very natural existence can cause matter to age and decay at an unbelievably accelerated rate. When the Iron Warriors fought the Hrud during the Sak'trada Deeps campaign, they only managed to start winning after Perturabo constructed massive stasis fields to counter the natural entropic field of the Hrud.
Barabas Dantioch lost almost the entire 51st Expeditionary Fleet in that campaign and aged 3000 years during the fighting.

It's not "Oh my we are fighting the Hrud, I was 28 at the start of this battle and now I'm 32", it's "Oh my we are fighting the Hrud, half of our Regiment is now fifty years older and the other half have turned to dust while all of our armour has rusted to ruin and the battle started three hours ago".

 Gert wrote:

Spoiler:

chaos0xomega wrote:
Per the lore, a single squad of marines can conquer an entire planet and a terminator can survive getting stepped on by a warlord titan. Lore representation != rules on the tabletop. That entire line of reasoning just isn't a strong enough justification to exclude them from the game. To Fezziks point, the game is already full of things that are indicated in lore to be significantly more powerful or dangerous than they are shown to be on the tabletop. Hrud? They're just another grain of sand on the beach.

Fezz's examples are complete nonsense and not remotely in the same ballpark. They are talking about things in the background that are either:

A - Don't have a presence in the game because they are waaaaaaay out of scale i.e. Star destroyer super weapons and starships.

B - Are restricted by the nature of game balance because having one army with 8x the points of another isn't remotely a standard mode of play for a game.

The Hrud by their very natural existence can cause matter to age and decay at an unbelievably accelerated rate. When the Iron Warriors fought the Hrud during the Sak'trada Deeps campaign, they only managed to start winning after Perturabo constructed massive stasis fields to counter the natural entropic field of the Hrud.
Barabas Dantioch lost almost the entire 51st Expeditionary Fleet in that campaign and aged 3000 years during the fighting.

It's not "Oh my we are fighting the Hrud, I was 28 at the start of this battle and now I'm 32", it's "Oh my we are fighting the Hrud, half of our Regiment is now fifty years older and the other half have turned to dust while all of our armour has rusted to ruin and the battle started three hours ago".

That could be made to work.
It'd certainly be interesting to see people trying to play around it. And more interesting to hear/read them screaming about it.

 Gert wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
Per the lore, a single squad of marines can conquer an entire planet and a terminator can survive getting stepped on by a warlord titan. Lore representation != rules on the tabletop. That entire line of reasoning just isn't a strong enough justification to exclude them from the game. To Fezziks point, the game is already full of things that are indicated in lore to be significantly more powerful or dangerous than they are shown to be on the tabletop. Hrud? They're just another grain of sand on the beach.

Fezz's examples are complete nonsense and not remotely in the same ballpark. They are talking about things in the background that are either:

A - Don't have a presence in the game because they are waaaaaaay out of scale i.e. Star destroyer super weapons and starships.

B - Are restricted by the nature of game balance because having one army with 8x the points of another isn't remotely a standard mode of play for a game.

The Hrud by their very natural existence can cause matter to age and decay at an unbelievably accelerated rate. When the Iron Warriors fought the Hrud during the Sak'trada Deeps campaign, they only managed to start winning after Perturabo constructed massive stasis fields to counter the natural entropic field of the Hrud.
Barabas Dantioch lost almost the entire 51st Expeditionary Fleet in that campaign and aged 3000 years during the fighting.

It's not "Oh my we are fighting the Hrud, I was 28 at the start of this battle and now I'm 32", it's "Oh my we are fighting the Hrud, half of our Regiment is now fifty years older and the other half have turned to dust while all of our armour has rusted to ruin and the battle started three hours ago".

Which is, once again, all background fluff that the games gleefully ignore.

I suppose this is a good moment to bring up the mere existence of this guy....

 SirDonlad wrote:
I suppose this is a good moment to bring up the mere existence of this guy....

Spoiler:

Ok, what about him?

He’s a Man of Iron

 JNAProductions wrote:
He’s a Man of Iron

Yes, I know that.
What's he doing in a thread concerning the Hrud as a possible playable faction?

The point is there is a place for just about any part of the 40k lore, it just needs the right system to be put in.

Men of Iron were deep lore in the 40k universe and the idea of having a model released for them or them to be playable in an officially supported game system was ludicrous. But then he appeared in Blackstone fortress.

So whats stopping the Hrud making an appearance in that game system?

I would hope some of the smaller already existing factions get fleshed out first. GK, Custodes, Drukhari could all use an expansion before we add another new main Faction.

 Gert wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
Per the lore, a single squad of marines can conquer an entire planet and a terminator can survive getting stepped on by a warlord titan. Lore representation != rules on the tabletop. That entire line of reasoning just isn't a strong enough justification to exclude them from the game. To Fezziks point, the game is already full of things that are indicated in lore to be significantly more powerful or dangerous than they are shown to be on the tabletop. Hrud? They're just another grain of sand on the beach.

Fezz's examples are complete nonsense and not remotely in the same ballpark. They are talking about things in the background that are either:

A - Don't have a presence in the game because they are waaaaaaay out of scale i.e. Star destroyer super weapons and starships.

B - Are restricted by the nature of game balance because having one army with 8x the points of another isn't remotely a standard mode of play for a game.

The Hrud by their very natural existence can cause matter to age and decay at an unbelievably accelerated rate. When the Iron Warriors fought the Hrud during the Sak'trada Deeps campaign, they only managed to start winning after Perturabo constructed massive stasis fields to counter the natural entropic field of the Hrud.
Barabas Dantioch lost almost the entire 51st Expeditionary Fleet in that campaign and aged 3000 years during the fighting.

It's not "Oh my we are fighting the Hrud, I was 28 at the start of this battle and now I'm 32", it's "Oh my we are fighting the Hrud, half of our Regiment is now fifty years older and the other half have turned to dust while all of our armour has rusted to ruin and the battle started three hours ago".

In fairness, the Hrud effects seem to scale with numbers. So on a 40k battlefield, you would expect much less impact than in a Legions Imperialis battle. Small infestations don't seem to be a major threat, it is the huge migrations that devastate entire worlds and annihilate armies. But at that scale, they are little different to a Waaagh! or Hive fleet in impact.

Adding a small infestation to kill team would be the logical first step, would be perfect against a Death Watch team.