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 ArcaneHorror wrote:
What do you guys all think? I personally think that this could be a cool idea that could allow for there to be an anti-Imperium faction that isn't just the way they are because of daemons whispering their ear or alien parasites in their brain.

There is the risk that you diminish the 'grimdark' aspect of the setting as a whole - the idea that humanity is fighting a desperate and losing battle against impossible threats to survive at any cost, including their own humanity.

And then this new faction turns up and goes 'look, you can have your cake and eat it. It's not even that they would be wrong in many areas (i.e. the self serving nature of the admech) - but the Imperiums unwillingness and inability to move away from it's structure is part of the tragedy of it.

And by inability - consider one system that has, in isolation, overcome many of the Imperiums legacy issues. Right or wrong its changes would spread like a destructive cancer as pieces of a framework generations wide in terms of travel distance and supply lines fall into civil war.

Really it's the plot for a book, an inquisitor bringing ruin on paradise in full understanding that it is a better place, but that the Imperium would never survive the change.

Just write a good book about "Traitor" Guard and release a proper Codex and plastic boxes along with it. Don't make them crazy lunatics or fanatics, but more grounded forces. Guys that may do a prayer to their leech god once a day to save them from the agony that is life in the Imperium but when a tentacle grows out of their arm they're terrified and call for medical assistance.

The bigger issue is that the GW process is game then background.
You'd need to find a way in which a human rebel army would be different from the likes of Guard, Sisters, GSC, or Chaos which IMO wouldn't really be possible.

Not really, the rebel army could just be the IG with a different paint job.

Similar with how the Farsight Enclaves are just Tau Empire but red even thought they are canonically a different faction.

I agree but the point people seem to be making is that they don't want just a custom paint job with Imperial Guard rules.

And models.

Basically this is the issue GW has with 40K at its core. Because Marines dominated releases for so long with sub-factions and because most armies are pretty big beefy things that take a lot to update; it has kind of pushed 40K into quite a single mould.

Even though we've actually had quite a few new armies over the years (Necrons, Dark Eldar, Tau, Squats, Ad Mech) there feels like there's a touch of design stagnation that you don't tend to feel in Aos.

I suspect part of it is that GW's approach is that factions only get mentioned in the lore when they appear as models - at least in a big way. So whilst we know there are other Xenos around, we don't really get to learn much about them; see them in action nor really hear about them. Heck even subfactions of existing forces like Exodites are very rare to hear about and often only appear alongside major factions doing stuff (Exodites are often being saved by Craftworlders).

So we don't have a big legacy of fans of other factions and such. There isn't as much of a sense of a living universe with lots of diverse choices that GW cna pluck out. At least compared to the likes of Old World and AoS.



Of course there's a bonus in that it means most people have factions that do feature in the lore and are hyped up and such. But it still creates this sense of emptiness in creativity.




Hence the desire for more factions and why they oft end up being subfactions of existing main ones - eg a rebel group of Imperials; Dinosaur riding Spaceelves and soforth.

 Gert wrote:
I agree but the point people seem to be making is that they don't want just a custom paint job with Imperial Guard rules.

If one wanted to give such a faction district identity from IG, they could employ some xenos technology and blend it with the imperial stuff.

A while ago I did some concept art for mercenaries I called "Fringerunners" that operate in the galactic eastern fringe outside the jurisdiction of the Imperium.



"Fringerunners are mercenaries that hail from the galactic fringes outside the control of the Imperium. They freely traffic with the xenos, utilise forbidden technologies and spread heretical ideals, and thus are considered extremely dangerous by the Imperial authorities."

Right, but a design is one thing, distinct rules are another.

Ignoring the obvious "But Space Marines" for the moment, how would this faction play differently to say GSC or Guard?
There are already a fair whack of human (and sort of human) based factions that all play quite differently. Guard have the squishy troops backed up by tanks and artillery, GSC has hordes of dregs but infiltration tactics that allow units to close the gap much quicker, and Sisters have Power Armour and Bolters.

What would this faction do that other humans don't? Why should they be anything but a conversion or a paint job?

I don't believe they have to be anything but a conversion and paint job. Also I don't believe factions need to be whollly unique mechanic wise. (we have how many variations of melee Space Marines?)

But that may put me in a minority.

That would be my opinion as well. I didn't need Traitor Guard rules to play my army and for the longest time, I didn't have them because I didn't have any FW books.

8th rolled around and killed the R&H list but I just went back to using the Guard Codex because it did the same things anyway.
I also used Solar Auxilia rules before C&M was released for HH2.

The Codexes are just a set of rules. They shape us as hobbyists. But how we live with those rules is the true test of a hobbyist.

chaos0xomega wrote:
Chaos *is* the rebel alliance. All the stuff about them being evil and corrupt, etc. is just imperial propaganda and/or grimdark styling.

No it's not. Chaos is literally evil.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
Chaos *is* the rebel alliance. All the stuff about them being evil and corrupt, etc. is just imperial propaganda and/or grimdark styling.

No it's not. Chaos is literally evil.

I don’t know what you mean. Surely when a cruiser is taken over and then starts perpetually broadcasting KILLFRENZY! On all available frequencies it just means it just needs a friendly hug.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
Chaos *is* the rebel alliance. All the stuff about them being evil and corrupt, etc. is just imperial propaganda and/or grimdark styling.

No it's not. Chaos is literally evil.

Chaos is a reflection of the emotions of souled beings in 40k.

Humans suck, and are the most or second-most numerous psychic race (Orks are number one or two, but they're so single-minded that they get Gork and Mork instead of Chaos writ-large). So, Chaos sucks too.
Eldar partied too hard and were terrible, making Slaanesh.
Tau barely have souls, so they barely impact Chaos.
Necrons don't have souls.

 Crimson wrote:
Yes, at this point I feel something like this is needed.

GW is unable to the subtlety of storytelling that is required to portray "no one is good" universe properly, so we usually end up as fascist, totalitarian imperium as "the good guys" in the narrative.

To avoid this we need honestly decent human faction for contrast, and scrappy underdog freedom fighter faction is perfect for that.

We already have the Tau.

Calling the Imperium "fascist" is reductive.

 JNAProductions wrote:
Chaos is a reflection of the emotions of souled beings in 40k.

Chaos has goals, plans, desires and takes conscious actions. They may draw power from the emotions that feed into the Warp, but to argue that they aren't really evil shows a total ignorance of the setting.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Calling the Imperium "fascist" is reductive.

 JNAProductions wrote:
Chaos is a reflection of the emotions of souled beings in 40k.

Chaos has goals, plans, desires and takes conscious actions. They may draw power from the emotions that feed into the Warp, but to argue that they aren't really evil shows a total ignorance of the setting.

They are evil. But they’re evil because everyone else is.

If humanity, the Eldar, and all other soulful races of 40k were noble do-gooders, the Warp would be an awesome place.
But it isn’t, because they aren’t

Hecaton wrote:
We already have the Tau.

Tau are not good guys, they're the generic scifi Evil Empire from any other setting.

 ThePaintingOwl wrote:

Hecaton wrote:
We already have the Tau.

Tau are not good guys, they're the generic scifi Evil Empire from any other setting.

They're about as "good" as makes sense in the setting.

Hecaton wrote:

 ThePaintingOwl wrote:

Hecaton wrote:
We already have the Tau.

Tau are not good guys, they're the generic scifi Evil Empire from any other setting.

They're about as "good" as makes sense in the setting.

I don't think "we're pragmatic enough to understand that enslaving you provides more value to our empire than spending resources to kill you" really counts as good. Slightly less evil, maybe, but still evil.

 ThePaintingOwl wrote:


I don't think "we're pragmatic enough to understand that enslaving you provides more value to our empire than spending resources to kill you" really counts as good. Slightly less evil, maybe, but still evil.

It's less evil than the Imperium, which is "we will go against expedience to destroy you because we hate you." The Imperium is compelled to do evil, regardless of its utility.

There's a lot of rebel alliances in 40K from what I can remember some which still exist and some which don't. Not all of these are offically called rebel alliance but these include a) Chaos factions b) renegade space marine factions c) Inter-rex d) Craft world's with differing view points. These have for the most part already been posted by the posters before me.

I think the best e.g. that I can think off is the Necrontyr and the Blood angels teaming up to deal with the Tyrranids in the lore at one point. (Two forces which imo do not normally team up do so to combat a greater threat which happens a lot)

 ArcaneHorror wrote:
With the Imperium as broken as it is now with the Great Rift, and with the Imperium's best forces focusing on the most existential of threats, I think that a large uprising has a much greater chance of gaining traction. This is especially true in the Imperium Nihilus, where Imperial central control is almost non-existent.

I fully agree that the idea of the anti-Imperial uprising is an underexplored and marginalised one within the wider 40K setting and that it should get more attention. The Imperium Nihilus is pretty much custom-designed (and I have to assume that this was deliberate on GW's part) to become an environment where Imperial control breaks down and human societies are forced to consider ways of existence which don't begin and end with 'Do Everything Terra Says'.

But I feel like it shouldn't so much a coherent faction as a concept. Should there be a rebel alliance uprising over on the far side of the rift? No, not 'a' rebel alliance, there should be dozens or hundreds of them, all trying to elbow their way into a position of survival, stability and power in the ongoing bar-room brawl that is Imperium Nihilus. They will be fighting each other as much as the Imperium, because this is still the grim darkness of the 41st millennium, and there is still only war, and the realities of power and greed and the turbulence of a political vacuum still apply. Some of them will be crushed by an Imperial response or be subverted by the whisperings of Chaos or be beaten down by xenos predators or collapse under the weight of their own internal struggles or the inability to organise. Some will grow and make diplomatic alliances and absorb their weaker neighbours and thrive despite the odds. Natural selection will take it's course.

Some 20 years ago I made an anti-Imperial rebel army. It mostly involved filing away the Imperial eagles on my Guard army (they were metal, so the filing was a pain) and making up anti-Imperial slogans to call out during games. For a large number of of rebellions, they're going to look much like that - without any unique techbase to produce distinct weaponry and equipment, they'll be reliant on defectors bringing Imperial kit over. In a lot of cases you're going to look at a rebel alliance army and see the same lasguns and heavy bolters and Leman Russes in their ranks that the loyalists have, so at that point the 'rebel alliance' army list already exists, it's the Astra Militarum army list. Or if you want a more guerrilla uprising theme, it's the Genestealer Cult army list (with the xenos hybrid elements proxied in as drugged up manual labourers, rad-waste mutants, reprogrammed servitors, etc). Or perhaps with the AdMech unable to enforce their will, scientific innovation is back on the table and you can go for a higher tech approach and use the Votann or Tau rules.

The way to do this is not to wait for someone in Nottingham to write and release it, but to do it ourselves.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 alextroy wrote:
There will never be a good Rebel Alliance in 40K because 40K is a tragic setting where the good guys are bad and the bad guys are even worst.

I don't get the impression that the op was -necessarily- talking about a "good guys" human faction, they can reject the Imperium whilst still being terrible people. Sure, rebel alliance and all but it's going to be a grimdark rebel alliance.

I mean yeah, if someone started talking unironically about how they were going to introduce a space utopia with Democracy Marines I'd roll my eyes pretty hard, but that's not what is being discussed (....is it?).


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
So any such rebellion is typically easily contained, even if eradicating it takes rather more time and effort.

Typically, yes.

But in Imperium Nihilus the idea seems to be that GW have set up a semi-galaxy worth of space where the Imperium can't just run around leisurely chainsawing down any independent minded malcontent and laughing any more, because literally everything is upside down and broken and on fire, and so you end up with a power vacuum where the seeds of secessionism can start to take root and grow (and where maybe that's the only chance a particular human world or system or subsector has to survive, as the Imperial network they previously relied upon has ceased to exist).


Automatically Appended Next Post:

A.T. wrote:
There is the risk that you diminish the 'grimdark' aspect of the setting as a whole - the idea that humanity is fighting a desperate and losing battle against impossible threats to survive at any cost, including their own humanity.

And then this new faction turns up and goes 'look, you can have your cake and eat it. It's not even that they would be wrong in many areas (i.e. the self serving nature of the admech) - but the Imperiums unwillingness and inability to move away from it's structure is part of the tragedy of it.

I feel like pointing at the Imperial approach and saying 'you've been doing it all wrong for ten thousand years and here's the proof, you god damn idiots' preserves a healthy dose of grimdark. It's not as though the Imperium is going to reform or collapse as a result, so at least half the galaxy is going to still be trapped in the machine that is actively making everything worse.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Gert wrote:
The bigger issue is that the GW process is game then background.
You'd need to find a way in which a human rebel army would be different from the likes of Guard, Sisters, GSC, or Chaos which IMO wouldn't really be possible.

Yeah, for this and other reasons, barring some -very- major changes in Nottingham you're aren't going to get Codex: Post-Imperial Secessionists any time remotely soon.

It would be a fun thing to see a grassroots movement in the 40k community where a bunch of people get inspired by the idea, and start converting and painting and making artwork and writing backstories. But that's as much as you can realistically expect.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
Chaos *is* the rebel alliance. All the stuff about them being evil and corrupt, etc. is just imperial propaganda and/or grimdark styling.

No it's not. Chaos is literally evil.

From my point of view, the Imperium is evil.

chaos0xomega wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
Chaos *is* the rebel alliance. All the stuff about them being evil and corrupt, etc. is just imperial propaganda and/or grimdark styling.

No it's not. Chaos is literally evil.

From my point of view, the Imperium is evil.

Why not both?

Eumerin wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
Chaos *is* the rebel alliance. All the stuff about them being evil and corrupt, etc. is just imperial propaganda and/or grimdark styling.

No it's not. Chaos is literally evil.

From my point of view, the Imperium is evil.

Why not both?

Given that the Imperium's methods have been actively driving their population into the arms of Chaos worship for the last ten millennia, whilst actively stamping down on any alternative way of existing, you can absolutely declare 'a plague on both your houses' and take the view that the Imperium and Chaos are just two sides of the same evil coin .

Hell, one of the first Dragon magazines I bought as a kid had an article that talked about doing the rebel alliance thing with the Rogue Trader setting.

But when is mainline GW going to find time in its packed release schedule to cater to some brand-divergent utopian splinter group? Do you really want to end up with a kill team box (estimated time to "Temporarily sold out online" ) and some Forgeworld resin?

It's important to remember that the Rebel Alliance's full name was The Alliance to Restore the Republic.

The people who fought the Empire have memories of a time when worlds were free from the grasp of tyranny and people could speak their minds.

40k doesn't have that. There is no better predecessor to the Imperium.

 Gert wrote:
It's important to remember that the Rebel Alliance's full name was The Alliance to Restore the Republic.

The people who fought the Empire have memories of a time when worlds were free from the grasp of tyranny and people could speak their minds.

40k doesn't have that. There is no better predecessor to the Imperium.

Maybe not galaxy wide, but there are individual systems and small networks that get bulldozered back into the Imperium that arguably provide a better individual level of experience.

 Gert wrote:
It's important to remember that the Rebel Alliance's full name was The Alliance to Restore the Republic.

The people who fought the Empire have memories of a time when worlds were free from the grasp of tyranny and people could speak their minds.

40k doesn't have that. There is no better predecessor to the Imperium.

Heck when you consider the timeline of Starwars and all that the Prequels present, it really is also only a stone's-throw since the Republic was a thing. Meanwhile the Imperium wasn't so much a huge uprising as it was a defensive move that slid more and more into the Emperor's style of control. The whole "he dissolved the senate" part at the start of A New Hope is almost a throw away moment to explain how threatening the Deathstar is going to be, yet with the Prequel understanding you realise that its actually a massive thing that shifts the full control to the Emperor alone

 Gert wrote:

The people who fought the Empire have memories of a time when worlds were free from the grasp of tyranny and people could speak their mind.

Unless you're a slave, which the Republic was basically fine with...