Maulgreth is a “Mercenary House Kallyss Sea Raider Solo” (which is, in itself a somewhat amusing string of words) but is rather puzzlingly not “Orgoth.”
I mean, we all assume he is an orgoth, but for rules purposes he is not. Is this intended? Is there some reason to allow him in a Sea Raider Army but deny friendly faction benefits?
It’s the case with all the MkIV mercenaries. They’re Army models (House Kallyss/Sea Raiders in this case) but not Faction models, even when models like Prisoner Numbers and Koldun Lord Korovnik clearly also are Khadoran or Maulgreth is very much an Orgoth.
i think its just future proofing to allow future mercs to be added without causing massive power creep because of some not considered interaction.
That NEVER happened in Mk1-3 
I think it’s probably a good thing long term. Having some mercs be Faction to some factions was neat but it created some really weird situations where the power level of a merc model could vary wildly between factions (Mk2 Eiryss 2 for example)
His Faction is Mercenary. Rules that reference “friendly Faction models” apply to him if the rule is on a Mercenary model, but not if it’s on an Orgoth or Dusk model. Rules that reference “friendly Sea Raider” or “friendly Kallyss” models still apply to him.
(Edited for clarity on Faction/Army rule application.)
Yup, I got that part. That wasnt the question. 
balancing is the answer
Could well be, though Im kinda hard-pressed to see what its curbing in relation to a character melee combat solo.
Sorry about that. I got confused by the “we all assume he is an orgoth” part.
The same logic has applied to Mercenaries since forever. The “Faction partisan” rule existed for a relatively brief period in Warmachine history, and was sometimes applied to models for whom the Faction tie was not immediately obvious. So from this perspective I believe it is intentional that Maulgreth is not an Orgoth model.
Just because he is Orgoth doesn’t necessarily mean he likes the Orgoth. He might despise them for one reason or the other and have joined the iron Kingdoms. Phineas Shae (Warcaster) was a Cygnaran but could never be taken by Cygnar (strong hatred of them in the story).
But he is a Sea Raider model. So he works with the Army, if thats what you mean by “liking them?”
And he is an orgoth. But he lacks the faction tag.
What you imply would make more sense if he had the Orgoth tag (faction), but was not a Sea Raider (Army) cause he doesnt like them, so will not work with them.
Like, his ethnicity has been stripped.
I see, I thought he was not in the sea raider faction.
I looked closer at his fluff. Considering he is a deathless, maybe they consider him more deathless than Orgoth? And therefote shouldn’t get things that target Orgoth?
To be precise, “Sea Raider” is not a Faction label, it is an Army label. Same with “House Kallyss.” Thats an Army, not a Faction.
The only faction label on Maulgreth is Mercenary.
But hes also described as an undead Orgoth, but lacks an Orgoth faction label.
None of the Mk4 mercenaries have the Partisan rule, right? It seems like a safe bet that they’re planning to just sidestep the Mk2 Merc-nar and Mk3 uneven Merc power issues by making most buffs Friendly Faction and making sure Mercs are never Faction.
Could be that that changes, but right now to me that reads as intended.
Youre probably right, but I figured it was worth an ask. Maulgreth seems a bit mopey as a non-faction melee solo. Tough to leverage him.
It’s hard to look into the future to see the impact of this, but i think friendly vs friendly faction should be removed.
Right now every army is tightly controlled, most of them don’t even have merc options. The ones that do have mercs have choices of 3 solos.
i think its time to just hang up the distinction if that’s going to be the limit of mercs in this edition.
Maybe, I dunno. I think at this point we just don’t know what the plan is for mercs long term though. It’s just a few solos now, but I don’t think I’ve seen anything from PP that completely rules out other model types down the road.
They can always remove the distinction later as well if it’s not serving a purpose.