Warhammer 40K: Three Army Ideas GW Should Use For The Next New Army

Let’s talk about some cool new armies Games Workshop should make for the Grimdark.

40K is putting out new books left and right, but few of them are really “new”. Rather they are updates of old books, or bringing old-school ideas back into the fold. Even Votann are a rehash of a classic army. That’s not a bad thing, but it’s been forever since 40K has really brought in a new army, whether in concept or lore. You may have to look as far back as T’au Empire, which despite being the “new” army has been around for 20 years now. Age of Sigmar on the other hand is pretty constantly bringing in new and interesting armies and crazy takes on old ones. With the Codex cycle almost complete, GW might be looking for some new ideas to keep pumping out books. So today I present three army ideas that GW should totally steal from me, with my full blessing.

3. The Army With Psychic Guns

Now we’ve certainly had some “super” psychic armies in 40K before. Grey Knights and Thousand Sons spring to mine as prime examples, but there are others with a lot of powers. However even in the most psychically powerful army their spells still tend to simply supplement the rest of the army, giving it a boost rather than being its primary source of damage.

So what if you made an army that fundamentally played differently by having psychics be their main source of damage. They could for instance simply not have guns, having evolved past the point of using guns. They would have just a crazy psychic phase, no shooting, and then ok close combat. I think this could be pretty interesting new faction.

2. Non-Imperium/Chaos Humans

Humans are one of the most prolific races in the galaxy and while they may not be the most numerous, they almost certainly control the most worlds. We know that not all human worlds belong to the Imperium, nor have all non-Imperium worlds fallen to Chaos. Yet currently these are the only options for fielding humans. I think a new non-aligned human faction could be really cool. This could something like the old Space Pirates, who fought the Imperium, or a group of hyper-advanced planets that never join the Imperium, maybe using pristine STC/Dark Age tech. Heck, even a group of breakaway worlds forced to fend for themselves after the opening of the Great Rift.

1. Humans and Xenos Together

I’ve always liked the idea of mixed-species armies. They get to have a really cool mixed visual appeal, and combine a lot of cool ideas. I’d love to see some kind of grand alliance of races type army. Right now the closest we have is the T’au Empire, and their line is pretty lacking in this regard, really being dominated by the T’au themselves for several editions. We also had a short teaser of this when Guilliman and Yvraine worked together.

In fact, GW has done armies like this before, the Rogue Trader Era pirate army had mixed species and Cities of Sigmar in AoS mixes humans and non-humans in a really cool force, hampered less by its core idea and more by it mainly being a graveyard for old Warhammer Fantasy units. I’d really like to see something cool like that added to 40K. I think this kind of cool and new army would really add a lot to 40K.

Let us know what armies you’d like added to the game, down in the comments!

Author: Abe Apfel

Abe is that rare thing, an Austin local born and raised here. Though he keeps on moving around, DC, Japan, ETC., he always seems to find his way back eventually. Abe has decades of experience with a wide range of tabletop and RPG games, from historicals, to Star Wars to D&D and 40K. He has been contributing to BOLS since almost the start, back when he worked at and then owned a local gaming store. He used to be big into the competitive Warhammer tournament scene but age has mellowed him and he now appreciates a good casual match. He currently covers 40K tactics and lore, as well as all things Star Wars, with occasional dabbling in other topics. Abe remains in mourning over the loss of WFB to this day.