I am hoping to find out the status of cross-faction themes in MKIV. Llaelese Resistance and Flame in Darkness account for some of my favorite armies to play. I don’t expect them to be Prime armies, but I really do expect them to be playable in Unlimited.
I suppose I can just print out the cards and play from there (as long as it’s okay with my opponent, of course). Even better, however, would be list building and playing within the app. It would be cool to have individual armies for all the cross-faction themes, but it could also work if there were an “Unlimited Unlimited” army that allowed any model in the game (ideally with no fa restrictions). Anyhow, just some thoughts. I’m looking forward to getting my LR and FitD armies back to the table. Thanks!
Flame in the Darkness has most of its options in Unlimited. You’re just missing the non-Merc casters, which is a pity of course.
Other than that, I feel you. I never managed to finish painting all of my Flame in the Dark models before edition change, and had only recently bought a number of Cygnar units for the Resistance.
I understand Legacy armies are a low priority for PP, but I’d absolutely love to see these old (not even that old, considering how they were released towards the end of Mk3) Theme forces make a comeback. Heck, make these lists a paid DLC for the app and I’d buy it in a heartbeat, or however many heartbeats it takes to navigate through the app store.
From what I’ve heard, they are dead and gone. This seems to be backed up by the structure of the armies in the app (Mk IV, Legacy Prime 1-X, Unlimited), which doesn’t seem to have a place for a cross-faction list.
And honestly, good riddance. They should never have been allowed outside the Oblivion campaign setting.
I hope to see these cross-faction armies get an option to be played, even if it had to be in Unlimited play only. These were neat armies, and it’s a shame that they didn’t get to be alive longer.
Organization-wise, they could be in a separate branch, similar to Mercenaries, something like “Legacy Themes” , they probably would need to add the icon/images for each model included in that branch and then do “Prime like” lists on it, but somehow marking that those lists are for Unlimited only, if the app organization allows for it without a redesign.
Given the rest of the work and schedule that they had during this year of MKIV Deployment, it’s logic that is low on priority list, I mean they probably want to push desktop app and printed cards first, and well all the work done to upload all Ultimate models.
Huh, I don’t remember such a statement. I did remember someone saying they’d bring it up to Matt and saying they liked the idea, but I don’t remember any confirmation or assurance
(For my part, I never saw or heard anything like that. There was a bevvy of player speculation, but I couldn’t find any such statement by anyone from Privateer.
Usual disclaimers apply re: the general inability for meaningfully searching social media.)
Below was posted on Facebook. Maybe the guy who posted it was confused or otherwise wrong, but judging from the specificity of his recollection and the fact that a quick search of his posts shows that he is a good contributor to the community, I have reason to trust his account. It’s fine if you don’t. As you wisely pointed out, searching social media is what it is.
"So according to Loren, stuff that uses lots of cross-faction models will turn into Cadres. She specifically called out Llaelese Resistance, Strange Bedfellows and Flame in the Darkness as turning into Cadres
Sadly she also said to not expect them to happen for a while
This was over on the LOS Mercenary Discord channel, before they threw their big tantrum and shut down their WM stuff"
Quick edit: If Loren were to say that they did or did not say such a thing, then that would be strong evidence.
While Loren giving credence would make this seem more plausible, this feels more like rumor of a rumor to me than a company representative giving assurance
Well, the entity known as “Loren” ( @pps_Loren ) seems to be summonable here given the correct star alignment and, probably, using Christmas food as threat.
Anyway, that 1’5 or 2 years away there was a maybe possible development using cadres, etc… and that there is no intent to remake cross-faction lists at this time are not two statements very hard to reconcile if we use modern scientific discoveries such as “time passes”
The worst scenario for cross-faction themes hardcore fans is to make a Ultimate+ format that is, basically, Ultimate + printed cards with the old theme model selection, no additional rules needed other than, maybe, something like “all the models in the list are considered friendly faction” and agree with rivals to use it with a “maybe this is not equilibrated in any way but let’s check” Extra Heavy disclaimer. And add Magnus+Invictus.
Should or shouldn’t doesn’t come into equation. The fact is, they were allowed, and people invested money, time and effort into them, so pulling the rug from under them feels like what GW pulled with Storm of Chaos. “Yeah, these are official, tournament-legal armies.” Until they weren’t.
I’m just used to PP not doing stuff like this in the 18+ years I’ve played Warmachine. Even the crazy-ass Mk2 theme force collections mostly survived the transition into Mk3.
(Also, Llaelese Resistance was not an Oblivion campaign theme force, it was one of the big Merc contracts, sometimes known as the Highborn Covenant.)
@Randall used his sugar cookie pentagram to summon me so I guess I better respond.
Some of the issue here is that unless we made an army for them we have no way to properly gate model access in the app for cross faction play in Unlimited. It is part of why Exulon Thexus can attach Warjacks when he shouldn’t be able to in Unlimited for example. I could make new armies in Unlimited that are more restrictive but that didn’t seem very … Unlimited?
When we were picking Merc armies to make for Prime Arena we wanted ones with as many Merc choices as possible. To get the most bang for our buck and bring in the most Merc models into Prime Arena as we could. It would be pretty weird if one of the Merc armies in prime was composed of other faction’s models. Balancing models over different factions and in different armies is also complicated, usually reserved for Casters. Rahera for example.
Could something app side or prime side change that enables us to bring in these options into the game some how? Maybe, but …
If your playing Unlimited with your friends I would encourage you to bring what ever sparks joy and have fun playing models together. Don’t let a stuffy app tell you what you can and can’t do
Maybe the app could have some mode where you can build a list using all models no matter the faction. Then it would be possible to at least somehow play these lists.
I’ll just want to add that PP would get very much goodwill if they made one more Merc Prime Army and that would be Flame in the Darkness. Much of the disappointment seems to be that the fairly recently released models which could be in this army were taken out of the game.
That’s not accurate. If you’re referring to all the Morrowan, Thamarite, and archon models, they’re still in the game. They’re just not in the Prime format. “Not in the game” and “Not in the tournament format” are two very different things.
