I know one of the main points is to reduce the SKU footprint.
However as a player what should I expect the end state army template to be. What I beleive to know at this point it is this:
2 Armies per faction
2 jack/beast bodies per faction
3 casters
1 Confirmed Character jack/beast (I would think this would/could end up being 2 at end state)
3 Merc Solos
1 Cadre of some sort TBD
1 Huge model of some sort (Assuming the Tank for Khador is not this - PP has not confirmed this I just suspect since they are still in the rules and Legacy lists)
Are there any implied limits on the number of Solos/Warrior units?
Are there plans to add more cards that are faction specific, that are not all the same like the Warjack repair ones are?
I don’t think I’ve seen anything stating firmly that there will be a max of 2 Armies per Faction, there could be more. Otherwise as far as individual Army size the Mk4 announcement said they were aiming for like 20-ish total entries. I believe what you see now in the App for Storm Legion, Sea Raiders, Winter Korp, and Dusk are the intended max size of a single Army.
So
3 leaders
2 jacks
1 character jack
1 80mm solo
approximately 12-15ish solos, units, and attachments
some number of Mercs.
The one puzzle is still Cadres, which sorta add to an Armies model count from a collecting perspective. Until we have more details on those though there’s not much we can say about them. I’d guess that any huge bases will be in Cadres to save having to produce as many big expensive models.
Edit: here’s the quote from the announcement:
Our current schema for an army includes three warcasters, two warjacks, five to six units, and a handful of solos.
So it would seem that character jacks were either a late addition or they wanted them to be a surprise and it’s possible for plans to change as noted in the article, but from everything I’ve read this hasn’t changed besides the character jacks.
If we follow their established mentality of “just make cool things,” I could see them maybe evolving beyond their current formula. I doubt they have an end goal, because frankly stating one at this point wouldn’t do much good or have much value. Much better to leave themselves open and with options
The announcement did say “current”. So I am guessing it’a the short term goal to get the factions to that state. I would seriously worry about the long term prospects for WM if it just stopped there.
Plans can certainly always change, but IMO the current plan is the right one to meet their stated goals. Personally I find the “limited factions” from older editions (CoC, CG, Grymkin, and Infernals) to be some of the most interesting factions to play because of the synergies they were able to build in when designing the whole faction at once. I think the continued addition of new stuff to Grymkin after launch was a mistake and I was really excited to see that they were carrying that lesson forward into Mk4. Lots of smaller self-contained sets makes for way more design options when you don’t need to future-proof against a continual stream of releases IMO. It also reduces the homogenization of factions as you start running out of ways to add to a faction that doesn’t step on another faction’s toes.
I really like the idea of limited armies. I just hope they offer alternate sculpts. I can’t ever see myself buying a Zephyr in it’s current form. A chariot is just really lame imo.
Interesting twist is that the preview of Spark Hammer suggests that cadres may include warcasters. So long-term the number of casters available to an army may go up quite a bit, as multiple armies become available for a single faction, and cadres are released alongside them.
My personal “this is enough stuff” has always been 2 of every model (ofcourse not for FA1 or FAC things) so i’ve got 2 starters, 2 expansions, 1 gencon box, 2 loose jacks and 2 80mm solos either already painted (everything that isnt the 80mm) or on their way to my house (the 80mm)…
I’ll end up with a general witha variant torso once he’s out, and probably 2 cadre boxes but for now i’m calling my storm legion stuff fully done!