It'd be funny if the skaven from fantasy just opened a portal and landed on a 40k world. Seeing how they would develop their technology and interact with the world would be interesting.

10:05 - “I don’t know dude; the thing is - I don’t actually know enough about how the warp works…” - a casual conversation between a Chaplain and a Chaos Sorceror

Skaven already have a counterpart in 40k. It's called Imperial Guard.

When it comes to bugs for T'au, as Eric suggested you would not even need to invent a new species there is such a race in lore. The Thraxians, four-armed crabs/bugs known for serving the T'au as close quarters combat specialists (which would be nice for tabletop).

I think T'au Auxiliaries would be cool as the "weird alien soup" faction. I think most units being different species would be a super cool feel

100% agree that Elves need expanding with Ynarri as Imperial Agent equivalent and the expanded lore and (fractured) empire. From the lore - "Exodites are generally welcoming to other Eldar peoples. They have good relations with most Craftworld Eldar, particularly Alaitoc and are often visited and aided by Harlequin hosts." It is sensible and only right now to be able to put dinosaur-riding warriors fighting alongside the Clown Death Jester and Solitaire. Even Elf-dislikers like Brad can see the appeal of that imaginative story rather than yet another Primaris Marine model.

The "Tau-ish" side could be more of the "up-and-coming species willing to collaborate to survive the big powerhouses." Votann would fit in as more of "nobody knows they're actually closer to the big ones than they let on."

I think you're missing the "two birds, one stone" with Chaos. Introduce the Skaven AS the Chaos replacement for the Dark Mechanicus. Little greasy rats trading their labor in the eye of terror to CSM for shiny bits. Natural tinkerers and creators of weapons of absolute misery. Make them the primary worshippers of Vashtorr. His rise to Chaos God status is enough to drive the Skaven out from under the floor boards and begin scavenging for themselves, while also supporting various Chaos factions.

I want saurus in space, ideally in awesome space armor with awesome space weapons. I kind of hope that whatever faction we get next, they find some way to include zoats in it.

I would love some more non-humanoid factions, the Rak Gol being a good example because they already have a lot of lore in the setting. Make them weird and grimdark and properly ALIEN to humanity. Alternatively, the Hrud would be amazing, they are creatures that literally affect time and could have some really interesting gameplay as a result - instead of guns, you can age units in front of you until they crumble to dust, or have machines break down because they're internal components rust and fall apart.

Dark Mechanicus is the big one I see that to me would be a broadening of the CSM range instead of a unique faction. They'd be sharing the Daemon Engines and probably Cultists, and likely would have the same Daemon and Chaos Knight ally rules as CSM armies. I'm totally down for an army that mixes Knights and Daemon Engines, but I kind of think the DarkMech desire could be fulfilled by just adding a few awesome sculpts and letting CSM take AdMech units that could be converted and kitbashed to your heart's desires.

What if GW just gave troops to Knights? Like in lore the Knight houses have their household militias/planetary defense forces, so what if the knights just got those as models, and then operated as a kind of “big mechs with infantry support” army?

I want to make sure everyone knows that the Tau empire has psychic panda bears. I want that model.

Tyranids could really use Zoats as a genuine third faction. Like a Custodes-levek faction of biotech slaves that follow the swarms to cultivate the planets left behind to be eaten again. Imagine how sick that would be

I’m so glad he’s talking about rak’gol, that’s a faction I’d love

Saim Hann could easily be their own Blood Angels-tier sub-faction. they have a distinct playstyle and a separate culture to the other craftworlds in-lore. they have massive potential and GW sleeps on them

I think that one of the cooler parts of 40k that is often forgotten about is that it is a galactic-scale Post-Apocalypse setting. It is also a galactic-scale PRE-Apocalypse setting.

Gue'Vasa (Humans working for Tau) could be a cool army in the Tau section.

When I first got into the game at the beginning of 9E, I almost started with Tau after hearing about all of the auxiliary species that they recruited. The idea of playing “the Covenant” in Warhammer is amazing. The whole mecha battle-suit thing doesn’t appeal to me though, so I passed and decided on 1k Sons instead. Now I have custom 3D-printed chaos spawn and a Mutalith vortex beast with dusty marines and bird goats with the ability to soup in lovecraftian daemons. Diverse enough for me.

22:00 Legit, would be awesome to have a Grot only force.

I'd like to see Exodites (love to see space dinosaurs), Dark Admech and new giants factions to be a kind of xenos knights but just a race of giants would be interesting.

For the Tau our hosts forgot the pancake bears. The Nicassar technically did have a model, albeit only in Battlefleet Gothic.

They tried to do skaven with the Hrud, but didnt think it really qualified for a full army if I remember correctly. Of course now hrud have drifted far enough from those origins that I think they'd be a neat addition.

I've always wanted "Evil Intelligent Space Dragons".

I think a decent option for votann would be to allow soup of either tau or imperium. Allow maybe 1/4 of your army to be that but make it so you can only take one or other faction. That way no guard working with battlesuits.

I was *this* close to making a Rak'Gol kill team. I really love their design, 40k could really use a larger variety of less humanoidal aliens. Lore-wise, they're basically a violent piratical race less advanced than humanity (they basically barely discovered warp drives), it's either said or strongly implied they are kinda like ants with queens and castes (but no hive mind) and they love them some radiation and crude bionics. Definitely not tau empire material, I'd say their faction pitch would be "orks if 40k was an amnesia-style horror game".

I really like your guys' content, your chemistry and your shared love of 40k is fantastic. I liked the inclusion of Erik's Jazz Tangent. I'm mostly commenting to boost your engagement metrics. Good work, boys.

The skaven equivalent are called the Hrud ANd yeah I really want Tau and Eldar to lean into the multifaceted parts of their design too

I feel like Genestealers are the 40k version of Skaven. I know thematically they don't seem so. They don't have the clans and the history. But mechanically, I feel like they are similar, and could be fleshed out more to be like Skaven. The creeping enemy that rises from the sewers. The backstabbing betrayers. But also a horde that comes from nowhere.

They could potentially do an alliance of races the imperium thought they had wiped out during 30k that have had time to recover becoming auxiliary for the tau, I like the idea of the arachnids from murder being on the tabletop.

I could see the Dark Mechanicus as the stand-in for Skaven. Have their tech be really strong but with a chance of going haywire and hurt your units or have a bunch of cheap and ueseless techthralls to hold the enemy down while some crazy techpriest throws phosphex on them. Just anything other than "admech but with spikes" that we tend to get.

The first two are musts, but given how complicated the game is, the rest are very optional: 1. Renegades and Heretics...Forge World even still has a section for it. Although I'd be ok with them being some kind of subfaction in CSM as long as they were fleshed out and had their own Stegs, AT 70 and 83 tanks from the Sabbat World books. Folks who had converted their Leman Russes and such could proxy them as AT70 and 83 variants. 2. Dark Mecanicum, although again, I'd be ok if they came out as part of Renegades and Heretics (Negavolt Cultists!) 3. Barghesi or Rak'Gol. 4. Whatever the heck is in the Ghoul Stars. 5. Heavily fleshed out Sslyth within Drukari. 6. Men of Iron remanent mixed with Rouge Tau AI 7. Space Rats 8. Slann Remenant

Mantic games as the Verr-Myn, who are skaven in space for their Firefight game. They're pretty fun, with kits that work for both their sci-fi and fantasy range.

I love that you used Chika as the image for chaos

Votann and Tau allying with each other and slingshotting both of their tech forward exponentially would be sick as fuck

My plan for importing Skaven into 40k is just to kitbash and play them as GSC. They already have exactly the right kind of army rules and units that it's just a cast of reflavouring. Neophytes? Clan Rats. Acolytes/Metamorphs? Stormvermin. Aberrants? Rat Ogres. Jackals? Clanrats on Motorcycles. Characters can all interchangeably be thought of as Grey Seers, Warlock Engineers or Warlords. Vehicles can just stay the same but with visual alterations. In fact I think the existence of GSC and their flavour makes Skaven quite unlikely as a new faction, because they'd have the same gameplay identity.

Regarding Chaos, I like how the factions are divided in Total War Warhammer 3. You have each monogod faction with a combo of daemons and mortals, there's a mortal Chaos undivided, and then there's a daemon Chaos undivided. I'd love to see Beastmen added as another Chaos faction, or at least have their models within CSM expanded. You just gotta add some upgrade sprues for those fantasy goats.

They could give Harlequins some dinosaurs as circus animals

I'd love to see a full beastmen 40k range. It would be a good way make use of all the extra Tzaangors running around, too.

The Jazz Tangent with Eric was a great new segment for the show. I've been very very curious about that dynamic after you lifted the curtain a bit last week. Brad's frustration was palpable! 😂

Just getting into the hobby and I would love to build a Tau army with battlesuits + non-Tau auxiliaries

Something I like about the old art for aeldari is they look like fae and fair folk, appearing from space and doing there thing. Aeldari also dips into samurai aspects with war banners and hyper specialized soldiers with a culture based on learning as much as you can for every job as a warriors. Going in either direction for aeldari would hard solidify themselves fully as a different culture to the imperium entirely along with establish them as a fully fleshed out faction

The tau have an auxilarry named "tarelians" that are basically lizardmen. So if you do another votann you could use tbat to bring lizard people into 40k. Also on the rak'gol even if we can't get a full army for them i would love to see minis for them via kill team or some boxed game.

Each time I think about how to insert Skavens inton 40k I reflec on what makes the Skavens cool in the first place. The fact is, Skavens are cool -amongs other things - because of the warp infuse tech they got. If you want to do that in 40k, the rats mens must be fucking advanced... I think that core element of "OP tech compare to everyone else" is already covered by the Necron. If you put the Skavens like they are in Old World with fucked up tech and messy aesthetic, you just got Orks with Rats... That's a pickle..

For Adding Chaos to Chaos, I feel like a lot of races like the Rak’gol or the Enslavers feel too much like one-off monsters like the Ambulls. Maybe if GW made game mechanics to incorporate a PvPvE where monsters like this occupy the mid-field, then we’d see em

I like the idea of a race spawned from Tau AI. Tau have begun to be noticed by chaos, so their AI should turn on them. They're not as advanced as humanity during the dark age of technology, so they couldn't eliminate their AI. They're in a stalemate with their machines. It could be a great way to flesh out Tau lore. They were a naive younger race, but have begun learning that the Imperium might be right about a couple things. They already have an entire expansion that's aware of daemons and that their client races can be possessed. Make their AI rebel and now you have a faction that will only use drones controlled by other people.

Quick note on Rak'Gol, they actually have a small reference in Black Stone Fortress. There's a pistol equipment named after them. Personally, I'd be fine with them added onto chaos as another force to add some xeno elements to them. After we get chaos guard and dark mech, I'd love to see the chaos auxiliary units, including the chaos striking scorpions that fell to the dark powers long ago.

I kind of miss a mineral/rock/silicon race thats completly different I feel thats something that would be very interesting

On balancing Knights as a stand-alone faction. The appeal is obviously big robot leading smaller robots. So, what if even smaller robots that function as infantry equivalents. They could be some mechanical thing that's an obvious stand-in for knights on horses maybe around the size of a dreadnought.

I really share your opinions, especially on the Tau. But I would ad for a little bit of Lovecravetian spa e horror the Slaught ( Wormpeople) maybe as a side faction one the Drukhari

Skaven, lizardman (dinosaur tanks), undead (vampire, ghost, ghoulish and things), beastmen (choas and not choas), wood eldar (ents and forest beasts), water based faction, choas xenos, octopus xenos. There's many more possibilities for new army's.

14:51 I think fundamentally the Votann (aka: Ancestor cores) themselves prevent them from joining with the Tau in any meaningful way. Because the Ancestor cores lead the LoV and would prevent the leagues from joining the greater good in any meaningful way. Also important side notes: 1: the LoV have ai called Ironkin, fully sentient ai that are treated as equals. 2: the LoV as a faction is larger than the Tau and aldari in lore. They mention that there actually a pretty big faction numbers wise.

The T'au'vesa Coalition ("T'au Helpers" for a more distinct name than T'au Empire) is probably GW's biggest missed opportunity so far. They really turned in their homework half finished with the T'au auxiliaries. Kroot has the most work done in them, but even with Forge World, they lack the AP to get a functional army at the moment. The Vespid are the chitinous, bug people that aren't Tyranid... and they got one unit and have been basically forgotten ever since. The Gue'vesa human auxiliaries got an obscure footnote rule to add some guardsmen to your army. I'd still love some rules/model support for a drone-centric army, and they could develop more of the "maybe the T'au are in the early stages of AI sentience and revolt that the Imperium experienced," but that requires thinking about lore with more maturity than the bulk of their writing team can handle. Way to go, GW. Just focus on the literal most boring Space Marines and Chaos forever instead of the hint of something interesting. Eldar have potential to be more than one-note like they are right now. I agree they are the other strongest candidate for major empire, especially if they push into Fae territory. Lots of material to pull from. Anyways, great video and I agree with basically everything you guys brought up. I'll just have to make my own fan-codex in the meantime, because I won't hold my breath that GW will make actually bold decisions with their lore 😢.

You could add Zoats to Tau as an Auxiliary melee/close range support.

What I think we need is non-Space Marine Chaos. I love Chaos and I love Space Marines, don't get me wrong here. But having Human, Eldar, Beastman or Skaven Chaos _characters_ - especially psykers - seems so obvious to me. I also think that xeno mercenaries should be more common overall. Add a bunch of interspecies diplomacy to the lore, make mercenaries "their own thing" of which everyone may take some but the Tau are more efficient at it, e.g. giving their battleforged buffs to the mercenaries as well. Flavor kept, horizon broadened

the vespid deserve way more units in the tau. they're way too cool have just the one model

T'au and Votann can be mixed through the Demiurgs (those are the auxiliaries Brad mentioned) and have something like CSM and the dedicated Chaos legions where each have their own exclusive models but both can use the more basic/generic/whatever units and such.

Although you mentioned mechanicus and knights co-operation. But as well the militias and house hold gaurd who fight along knights. A mix of gaurd and scions maybe heavy/lighter infantry options with limited vehicles above transports but maily focussed on support roles for knights.

Orks could easily be expanded on more than "just" more Grot varieties and more Beastsnagga stuff. There is a whole bunch of Ork Clans that all could be given either upgrade sprue(s) and/or even dedicated kits. As a mainline range, Orks feel pretty complete already, so branching out into different subthemes would be a logical way to go.

I’m all for fleshing out the flavors of Eldar but it has always been inconsistent on how many there actually are. There are only so many literal craft worlds and admittedly I’m not a lore master but they are always referred to as a dying race. They make it sound like the loss of a single aspect warrior to be a crippling blow. Brad mentioned they are the same size as Necrons but I never got that from what little lore I’ve read. Basically because any planet could secretly be a tomb world you can have a couple billion more Necrons.

I read a bit about the Rak'Gol, and they would never fit into Tau. They have worse tech then the humans, but are described to be much more brutal. Also noone ever found out were they came from, and noone managed to translate their language. So all in all melle focused like Nyds but not nyds cuz they use actual ships and weapons. I got the idea that one could kinda spin the narrative that some ald enemies of mankind, maybe some surving Man of Iron, decided to be like the old ones and bioengineer a race to fight the humans or something and that that would be their origin story.

i'll probably be dead before mr. James workshop rolls out most of these improvements and expansions lol

Skaven tech could definitely be represented in dark mechanicum, with it blowing up all the time.

You could do just about anything with a deep void human faction, maybe driven back towards imperial space by the tyranids? There's a lot of xeno races driven to near extinction by the imperium, many become mercs, if the tau keep being so limited on the tabletop with their auxiliary options then maybe an actual standalone alien mercenary faction would be cool?

I think T'au needs a 2nd army. Something like Auxilla legions. There's 11 canon auxillary species in the T'au empire and 2 got models. 6:57 Always thought it'd make sense that various 'pirate subfactions' should be allowed to ally each other on the tabletop. It's iffy in the lore, but it just seems fun to think some Freebotaz, Corssairs and human prirates meet up and decide to raid some massive trasport together because then they can pull it off.

Not really connected to the episode but I cannot say how thankful I am for this content! Just got into the hobby and your content has been a great way to learn more about the game!

I want a xenos chaos faction from the Ghoul Stars.

A thought to expand on the Necron / Ork standalone; I think those two together could be their own tier. Call it Order & Chaos. Two factions ever vying for position over one another. One numerous and plentiful beyond belief with a love for violence. The other immortal, undying with a pacing the eschews mortal lifetimes. Each places the other in 'check', there's tons of Necron based lore about the Orks constantly ruining and disrupting their plans, while other races seem to be simply swept to the side by the Necrons.

>lesser xenos auxillary army Either go full 40k:Dogs of War, ditch Tau internal balanc around shooting to make their auxillary work (on the bright side, melee battlesuit) or just make Old ones return. Psyker mega brain frogs who are using lesser xenos auxillary as their meatshield EDIT: 'Old folklore?' Guys this is how we had ended up with Fimir. You should really learn thing or two about history development of WF

The Rok'Gol could make for a really imterseting counterbalance to the Tyrannids. Like maybe they arrived in the Milky Way from another galaxy that had been devoured by the swarm and were forced to sacrifice their "humanity" to survive against the tyranids. They would be generally hostile, but drop everything to fight tyranids. Kind of like the Seraphon in AoS do against the forces of chaos.

I love the edit for Eric's tangent.

Give me more Blackstone Constructs like the Spindle Drones, GW. It is incredible, mind-boggling, that elves on dinosaurs still aren't a thing in-game when they're so very cool in-lore. I would buy that army so fast.

This has to be the most they’ve talked about votann, and I’m here for it! Also, correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe in lore votann taught tau to use ion weaponry.

As a Necron player I would love to see some love for dinasties outside of the sautehk one (and I guess the szarekhan one although it’s only the silent king), kinda like space marines chapters, although then you’d have to do that for different cults of the T’au or something as well

In no particular order, Exodites, Kroot, Skaven , flesh out Knights with like household troops,and sisters of Silence with more than 4 selections. Random lesser races could be rolled together: Rak guhl, slith, Fra’al, as like void raiders or something. Votann could gain the demiurge which were basically nomadic Votann, and add Ai robots to the faction.

My understanding about Rak’Gol is that they are a predatory race of Xenos who hunt human ships and other races for weapons, machines, and sport

Skaven could just be a chaos version of Ad Mech.

Something I would love is some sort of Ghoul Stars faction

Here’s a revised four pillars, each with 4 -5 factions: 1) Imperium: Space Marines (inc. GK, Templars, Deathwatch, Custodes), Sororitas / Agents of the Imperium, Astra Militarum, and Ad Mech with Imperial Knights Not really changing anything except what was said about giving giant robots to Ad Mech, which makes sense. Any odds and ends can be expanded through Imperium agents - Rogue Traders, Inquisition, etc. 2) Chaos: CSM (undivided plus DG, EG, WB, TS), Chaos Daemons, Dark Ad Mech with Chaos Knights, Chaos Beasts, and Chaos followers Following suit with Chaos Knights joining Ad Mech siblings, there’s a expansion there. The new Beast faction is the Skaven plus the classic beastmen (who just returned in KT), while Chaos followers army are cultists and traitor guard, though you can crossover beastmen to the followers army or send some cultists and guard to back those rats…either can play separate as animal men or humans, or mixed up. 3) Xenos aligned: Aeldari, Harlequins, Exodites, Votann, Tau with Slann Dark elves are dicks, and are not going to play nice with anyone, so they’re out - Eldar are just not dense enough to be their own pillar. But you get Exodites to beef up the space elves side, so there you go. Votann, like the Eldar are a semi tolerable alien so they slot in well, and Tau get to be the catch-all for xenos that area not pure evil. And you get to introduce space lizard Slann as descended from the Old Ones…Slann gave the Tau the evolutionary and informational bump to rapidly progress, and you can run them on their own or as soup with them, like an expanded Kroot force or Vespids, Zoats, and any other cooperative species. 4) Xenos enemies: Orks, Necrons, Tyranids, GSC, Drukhari Bad aliens, plain and simple An expanded Grots army that can run on it’s own or link up to their bigger green brothers like Tyranids and GSC would be great. Any other nasty species you want to add, this is where they’d go. If you really need to make more pillars, split into 8 there’s: 1) Space Marines 2) Imperium (Ad Mech/Knights, Sister/Agents, Astra Militarum) 3) CSM with Dark Ad Mech / Knight 4) Chaos Daemons with Beasts and followers 5) Eldar (all but dark elves) 6) Xenos (Tau - Slann, Votann) 7) Xeno Hordes (Ork, Necron, Drukhari) 8) Xenos Invaders (Tyranids, GSC)

Chaos factions are essentially a 3x5 matrix: Rows: 4 Gods + Undivided Columns: Marines, Demons, Cannon Fodder + Whatever Vashtorr is up to.

This just in - if we actually get Exodites as a playable faction, im building an elf army.

This seems like a great idea!! As a guy who just got into 40k, I have no idea if GW would do something like that, be it in the near or far future

I'd love to see some big monsters added into the orks for a bit of xenos variety.

Just wanted to say, the thumbnail is solid; took me too long to get it, but much appreciated. ^_^

I would love the Slaughth getting a fleshed out faction, maggot men who rule mostly by subterfuge but have tech that can melt a terminator sounds fucking metal.

Part of the reason that I prefer the xenos armies to the imperium or chaos ones is for the opposite reason to why you want to split up the xenos armies - I like how T'au have a mixture of elite mechs with regular infantry and lighter auxiliaries (in theory at least), it gives the army more flavour and depth than if you just created 3 one-note armies by splitting T'au up.

Could you guys go into more detail as to why allies do not work mechanically? Also Skaven should totally be the 5th chaos faction worshiping the Great Horned Rat that comes directly from AoS through them opening some horrific one way portal to 40k. It'd piss a bunch of people off, but it would so super cool and thematic for Skaven!

I’m listening to you talking about deleting Knights while painting a knight 💀

This would be an obscure one but I’d love to see the rangdan return. They were a 30k race that could mind control other races and gave the imperium a run for their money so it would be cool if they returned in full force or if it turned out they were the puppet masters of a faction like the tau

Enslavers were still their own warp-thing in the 40k era in the lore up until... 5th ed(? I think). Don't know if they've been explicitly written out of cannon as of yet. They were one of the big reasons for the Black Ships, as an Enslaver incursion one of the very common nasty ends untrained psykers could cause (by being turned *physically* into a gate the Enslavers use to enter real-space).

I kind of want ynnari wraithguards equipped with nasty harlequin and drukhari poison/hallucinogen sprayers, they could be nicely backed by eldar deathcultish melee. Also, Yu’vath could be cool. Their… ‘servant’ races could easily go for the original tyranid idea where they were supposed to be all essentially individual species co-opted into the hive mind, as opposed to the more modern all their own thing just specialized bioengineered with a bit of stolen dna in there. Could be a glorious mixed bag with a nice top coat of chaos to tie it together.

For flesh them out in lore read, ' have Rob Rath' write them a book. The man is a proper historian and it shows.

This is the one thing that really annoyed me about Tau, when they initially released I thought they were going to go the full Covenant route with the main Tau options being Battlesuits and Fire warriors but then expanded out with a ton of Auxillary units, the Vespids and the Kroot were the start of that but then GW proceeded to almost completely ditch that side of them when they were 'redeveloped' into the T'au with only those two left as sort of holdovers from the original idea. I get the feeling it was the backlash because the Tau weren't 'grimdark' enough and a Covenant/Star Trek style alliance of races fighting to survive in a hostile universe was seen as not Grimderp enough for the fan wankery on 4chan (remember these were the assholes loudly going "I don't want anime in MY 40k" etc.) I mean how cool would it have been to get Tarellians (aka Dog Soldiers aka 40k Kobolds since they're "small reptillian xenos with dog like snouts, hence their nickname" which is pretty much 5e D&D Kobolds) as your scouting and skirmishing unit, the vespids as your big mobility assault marine option, the Kroot as your cheaper but not quite as good rank and file meant for screening and fighting in close combat, the big bear people as your heavily armored melee heavy hitters kind of like Terminators or Exosuits and so on. Heck there's even points where in the novels Space Marines suddenly find themselves fighting other Marines when in a war with the Tau and it turns out that they're just weapons test dummies outfitted with marine armor and enough intelligence to be deployed as a fighting troop meaning you could even have a full battlesuit and robot themed army if they bought in basic AI units as options to fill out the missing areas of the T'au or to use in place of the minor Xenos alliance options. You could have the army lean, as suggested in the video, two or even three ways depending on build choice. Go full Advent from Xcom2 style alliance is what I'm getting at.

I think it would be cool to see tau battle suits that are designed specifically for the non-tau races. like a battle suit designed for kroot or Vespids.

The return of the rangdan would be cool. maybe they could have some auxiliaries like the hrud, rak gol, q'rol, sluagth, and cypher fiends xenos, kinda like a twisted grimdark lovecraft esqe version of the tau empire. As well as the possibility of flesheing out some of the tau's minor neighbors, like the world weve of noisome reek, the church of dracolith, the thexian trade empire, and the xenarch empire.

On the subject of Xenos, I think there should at the very least be a "Agents of _____" for Xenos, the way Imperium has "Agents of the Imperium" and Chaos has "Agents of Chaos". Call them "Xenos Mercenaries" or something to that effect. A big umbrella for filing all manner of weird alien creatures under, that you can then plug into other Xenos armies. Then, release a ton of kits for them. Like, the Rak'Gol could easily be released as a Kill Team, and then have rules for running them in 40K in other armies. They did it for Arbites, and they got multiple different units in 40K to reflect their loadouts. Just make the Rak'Gol kit have a few build options. Maybe with the option of building one model as either a "Combat Leader" or a "Tech Shaman", so you have some Character builds. Suddenly you've made use of your extensive background lore. Another option would be like the Enslavers. Release a kit that can be built as three "normal" Enslavers, or two of those and one Character Enslaver. All models that are like flesh balls with tentacles wrapping around assorted Psyker models. And give them the ability to not only be taken in Xenos armies, but in many armies. So you're running the narrative that they're mind-controlling other forces. (Barring some exceptional armies who have in-lore reasons they'd be resistant to mind control, like Custodes, Necrons, or Tyranids). Make them strong psychic threats, and maybe have the ability to briefly mess with opposing models (a Leadership test can be good for this). There are so many weird and wonderful Xenos creatures, it's criminal GW has used so few of them on the tabletop.

A few concepts that come to mind: 1) I'm not well-versed on Tau lore, but some kind of Dark Tau. FOR THE GREATER EVIL! 2) A tribe or group of tribes of Votanns dominated, subjugated and forcibly cyber-modified by one of their big AIs gone murderous. Quake's Strogg come to mind. 3) A lost colony of Men of Iron. Perhaps a bit too similar to Necrons, but they could shed some light on pre-Imperium human history.

On the "rethinking ad mech and knights" specifically when talking about combining tanks and infantry, having more rules that make infantry stronger against unsuported vehicle's would be perfect for that and it has basis in irl warfighting.

I really, really just want the Sons Of Malice to be brought in as a full-on faction. Not only that, but holy fuck GW have an entire fifth Chaos God that we hardly know anything about just sitting on the sidelines, and they won’t do anything with him? Or his incredibly interesting Traitor Chapter? Absolutely goofy.

I will say this every time Skaven get brought up, they should be incorporated AESTHETICALLY to the Dark Mechanicum, they already pretty similar Imagine the dark Mechanicum skittari equivalent have metal rat skulls for helmets!