Makings of an Army Part 2: Creating the Faction- The NorKraag

Once your idea or concept is ready to go, I always find the hardest part is creating the faction. Its the foundation for the rest of your army and while the Unit Classes you will create will be the models you field in your games, Creating the Faction is how you get there.

Makings of an Army Part 1


So lets dig in on our challenge with the miniatures from Atlantis Miniatures. There is a lot that we want to do with this faction, and even one of the in-house playtesters was uncertain I was going to be able to do it without the Allegiance Rules (which are in early testing).

Designing a Faction: When you design a faction in The Genesys Project you are selecting a set of traits that will give your army wide abilities (special rules). This means every model in your faction will have these rules. Its very straight forward, we get to select a certain number of traits that defines our new faction.

Starting Characteristics for a Humanoid
Strength 2                 Toughness 2             Movement 3
Martial  3                  Ranged 2                  Defense 3
Discipline 3              Willpower 2              Command 3

Now granted I have in my hands the release version of the rules and Humanoid Primarius, which is very much refined and expanded upon the beta rules. However, I think we can create this faction without the release set.

Its important that we think ahead when creating our faction knowing that our standard units will only be able gain an additional trait, with elite units gathering two at most, and leaders building upon both of those even more.

Lets select some traits.........
Here are the traits I am selecting

Genetic Mutations 0-2

• Trait: Dwarf 2pts + Dwarven Riches 0pts (species variants allow a second trait to be taken) abilties gained: Species Variant, Increase Defense 1, Decrease Command 1, Abundant Resources 2
• Trait: Dwarven Constitution 6pts abilities gained: Increase Toughness 1

Environmental Adaptations 3-4

• Trait: Adaptive Advantage 4pts (choice of martial or ranged increase) abilities gained: Increase Martial 1
• Trait: Hierarchical 2pts (this allows additional unit classes to be created) abilities gained: Class Bonus Elite 1, Class Bonus Leader 1
• Trait: Legendary Heroes 3pts (this allows 2 extra traits for my leader classes) abilities gained: Bonus Traits 2 (Leaders)
• Trait: Scientific Adaptation 2pts + Chainmail (medium) Armor -/10pts (Scientific Adaptation allows for a knowledge trait to be taken here but it will cost me 2pts) abilities gained: Special Equipment Chainmail

Knowledge and Science 1-2

• Trait: Improved Bow -/5pts abilities gained: Advanced Ranged Weapon 1 (note that advanced weapons works different now)
• Trait: Polearms -/5 (having polearms will grant us some additional long weapons later on with str bonuses) abilities gained: Special Weapon Polearms

This is where we will start. Our base model for our Dwarf faction will cost us 19pts per model. Note that armory traits (which look like this -/5) only cost us points if we equip our dwarves with that weapon and is not added until we are making an army list to play a game. This allows them to take other weapons besides our special weapons at a cheaper point cost, not to mention that abundant resources will reduce these costs.


So using our new Create a Faction sheets.. (which have been updated) this is what our faction looks like.

Next up we will start building our Unit Classes. At this point it is still a challenge... Remember we are trying to get all of these models into our faction. We need huge Titan sized models, a Giant Eagle, Spellcasters, and of course the riding bear.

Continue Here
Makings of an Army Part 3: Unit Creation