Hello Frontline Gaming fans, trolls, and lurker! SaltyJohn here from TFG Radio to bring you a bit of a manifesto from my soap box. Today I want to talk with you about giving the new edition of Warhammer 40k a chance.
If you would like to listen along to the article, or listen to it in lieu of reading, just press “play” below.
What I mean by giving it a chance isn’t what you may think. I am not saying it looks bad but let’s see; rather let’s give it a chance because it looks good. What I am saying is we need to play the game out of the book upon release and give the changes wrought by GW upon 40k a chance to work before calling to change things as a community.
With the flood gates now officially open after the huge events in England this past weekend; coupled with local stores around the world getting their preview copies of the New Edition of 40k this weekend, June 3rd we are quickly putting the pieces of the puzzle together. It is looking great. Not only is the game as a whole looking great but what we are getting in regards to the factions specifically are looking great too. The units look relatively balanced. With 6th and 7th editions there was an immediate crying out about certain things being completely OP and bad for the game. Calls for nerfs to specific powers, Invisibility, and to out right ban certain models, Super Heavies, and a call to completely rework the D weapon chart began within days of the leaks around those items. We aren’t seeing those types of reaction this time around. It isn’t that the internet has changed, or our community is less reactionary and prone to knee-jerk reactions. This time is different because this time around the game, the company, and the release are different.
It’s blatantly clear that this edition of Warhammer 40k was designed from the ground up to be more balanced and allow for a more competitive meta. Games Workshop has obviously gone to great lengths to insure this. Whether it was the inclusion of outside play testers, or them getting involved with the community again; via social media and by renewed attendance at outside conventions, the game was clearly shaped by that. When you look at the different factions like Tau, or even specific weapons like Grav, that were clearly OP in some areas the rules have been redone to balance that out. To drive the point home let’s look at some of the most egregious offenders in 7th edition:
- Independent Characters with the cornucopia of stacking Universal Special Rules joining units to make Death Stars. GONE.
- The Allies Matrix, and all the flaws inherent in that system. GONE.
- Formations; plug and play Riptidewing etc. GONE.
- Minimum CAD to unlock certain OP combos. GONE.
- Long, complicated, and overly powerful Psychic Phase/Powers. GONE.
- Free units and wargear via detachments and formations. GONE.
- Summoning 500+ free points of Daemons. GONE.
- Librarius Conclave. GONE.
- Destroyer Weapons. GONE.
- Complicated Terrain/Cover rules. GONE.
- Overly complicated rules for Flyers and Flying Monstrous Creatures. GONE.
- Templates, that cause constant argument over scatter and target models being “within” or not. GONE.
As a head judge for the Las Vegas Open and ITC I can attest to the ridiculous nature of many of the above. The tables at the LVO 2017 were overpopulated with Riptide Wings, Wraithknights, Daemon summoning, Eldar plug and play CADs, and Psychic shenanigans. The simple fact I could make that list and put the word “GONE.” next to those items makes me happy, and optimistic about the direction of 40k in the Dark Imperium era. I feel the fact so much of what people hated about 7th being gone has fueled a much more positive response from the community. There are certainly people who are salty about what they’re seeing in these leaks but they seem to be the fringe. They also seem to be more upset about changes to specific units or pieces of wargear than toward entire swathes of the rules. Scan through posts in the various 40k groups on Facebook and the overall reaction is positive. Of course people are discussing and seeing some things they don’t like. Obliterators come to mind immediately. But for every unit or rule that has a complaint leveled against it there are 5-10 that people are happy about. That isn’t even the biggest factor in my mind.
To me the single greatest part of this release, well it’s not quite a release yet as it isn’t the 17th of June, is the lack of people screaming about units/rules/powers being “overpowered” and in need of banning or nerfing via the community and Tournament Organizers. I have so far not seen a single call for a unit/rule/power/fortification etc to be banned or changed to be made playable. Even the Maelstrom mechanic, which many are wary of, seems to be getting a bit of the benefit of the doubt as people are more willing to see how everything plays out with this edition. That’s most certainly indicative of the work Games Workshop has done within the community to foster a much more positive view of them as a company and game designers. They’ve given us a voice, and made us to feel like they do in fact care about the game and know what they’re doing. Having been through 5 edition changes now with 40k, 4 of of them as a competitively minded player and judge, I can confidently state I’ve never seen a more positively received edition than Dark Imperium is shaping up to be.
The entire game has been redesigned and every faction has brand new rules coming out day of release. That means, that although there may still be old mechanics we disliked, Maelstrom for example, within the context of the new framework those previously bad mechanics may be great, or at least workable. It is important we allow the game a fair shake upon release and play it as designed and tested before beginning the call for mutilation, and bastardizing, of the game. Given how bad 6th was, and how much we had to alter 7th as a community, I understand the call for that but with a change like this one, where the community has been listened to and used, I feel it even more prudent to play the game as it is upon release for a good 12-18 months.
Only time can tell us what is to become of Warhammer 40k in the competitive, and even narrative, scene. It is important though that we as a community give it, and Games Workshop, the requisite time to prove the system is as good as we are all hoping, and Games Workshop is claiming, it to be.
What are your thoughts on giving the Dark Imperium era of 40k a fair shake? Personally if I take Age of Sigmar and how well it’s done into account, I am certainly optimistic about New-Hammer. Let us know what you think in the comments!
And remember, Frontline Gaming sells gaming products at a discount, every day in their webcart!
Good article, buddy. I find it funny to see folks jumping to conclusions before having played the game, haha. 8th is awesome, it has some issues but for the most part it is great. I’ve been loving it.
Every system will have issues; but giving a game a chance to be played, adapted to, and really fleshed out is important. Especially with changes this big 😉
Yeah, agreed. Just have to remember that those who are upset are feeling strong emotions because they love the game.
From the handful of games I’ve played, I love it. Streamlined, everything feels right and the units all seem to have their place. Nothing seems broken OP or unusably bad, but at the same time, there are synergies and tactics. The game doesn’t feel shallow at all, despite the fact that it plays a lot faster and the mechanics are easier to understand with less exceptions to the rule. Can’t wait for the codices to come out. Give the people what they want!
I played a couple games and had a blast. Man Black Templars are actually scary again.
This was my thing. I can’t believe how many people are complaining about it sucking, etc BEFORE THEY EVEN SAW THE RULES!!! Ridiculous. Humans are so jaded, lol.
I am excited to see a bunch of the stuff that turned me off at the end of 7th being gone. I am even more excited about the “living” point system (assuming truly does adjust to breaks in the meta). A responsive and well meaning game company, rules designers, and playtest staff can combine to make this the best edition ever if done properly.
Well said, my friend.
Well, most things sound okay so far and most that sound iffy might make sense in context. That said I have zero faith in this new GW, why they changed their attitude and if they will sustain that. Hyped enough to start repainting my Necrons which will take a few months. If they can somehow keep themselves from releasing 3 Space Marine books that all give them free stuff during that time I’ll give it a shot.
I am all for skeptical optimism. It’s not only understandable given the previous track record of GW but prudent as well.
I just find their communication isn’t trust-inspiring. Like this is new GW but why? What happened? Why aren’t tournament players the devil’s spawn anymore? How did the people who invented Grav weapons figure out there was a problem?
All that said I have two large 40k armies and it doesn’t take a great system to have an excuse to keep working on them. Serviceable will do just fine. That’s all I’m asking for. Do not shoot your own game in the foot. I blame the hype and yesterday’s mega stream for me almost believing they might pull that off.
Can you now use your imagination to theorize what is new in the company to cause changes? It seems fairly obvious to me….
Dude I just put 5 bananas in a shake, drank the whole thing and am now wondering why my stomach complains. I’m not exactly a rocket scientist…
lol!
I have seen lots of complaints about blast and template weapons being nerfed. I am happy to see a degree of simplification, but I’m concerned that much flavour and tactics has been lost. Armour facings and a vehicle damage chart, risk/reward on deep strike, initiative in combat etc etc. I am VERY happy 30k is keeping the more ractical rules from 7th.
I share some of those concerns but for now, I’m trying to see the positives of losing all the extra complications that came with this stuff. I feel like Flamer and Template weapons becoming sort of the same thing as high rate of fire weapons is a bit of an issue or at least might turn out to be one. We’ll have to see how that turns out.
People complained about flat d6 etc blasts in Bolt Action being stupidly powerful against small weapons teams and officers whilst doing little against concentrations of troops. It was enough of an issue to bring in templates in 2E, though with a ‘roll to hit place templates’mechanism. Now 40k has introduced the very system people disliked in BA.
I could see that happen yeah. Nothing to dissuade anyone from flooding the field with giant unwieldy blobs that take forever to move on one hand. And small units suffering way too much from former template weapons on the other.
We’ll probably know in 2 months the latest then people have chewed through the game and spit out whatever leftovers we’ll call the meta. 😉
The giant blobs do take a lot less time to move when you don’t have to worry about getting them spaced out at exactly 2″ to avoid getting trashed by Blasts and Templates, tho.
Giant unwieldy blobs are much, much easier to move when templates don’t exist. Which was 90% of my problem with templates in the first place. The idea of having an area-of-effect weapon that does more damage to bigger units is cool. But it just turns into a game of who wants to take the time to space their models out exactly 2″ apart. This virtually ruins small blasts (given they would hit at max 1 or 2 models) and makes large blasts also fairly lacklaster. A straight line of models would have 3 under one large blast. So instead of templates being good in their own right their usefulness was centered around whether your opponent was too lazy to properly space his models.
And the time it added to games was significant. When I brought daemon armies with lots of foot units there was a definite difference in the time my movement phase took when I knew the opponent had templates and when I knew he didn’t. I would have liked to see more rules like the Melta Cannon where you get more shots the bigger the unit is to preserve the original mechanic but I’m definitely not bitter that templates are no more…
It’s the same system from AoS, which may have been influenced by BA? I am not sure. It works just fine, though.
I personally hate the fact they brought templates into BA, I preferred when you could just freely move your models and didn’t have to worry about spacing everything to avoid potential template maxing.
In BA your small units will still be obliterated by a template, they are just less effective at hurting vehicles, which is kind of a bummer.
Yeah, I like not having to worry about model spacing, too. SLowed the game down a lot.
Previously a howitzer might do 2d6 hits to a sniper team. Now it will do 2. So teams are far safer, don’t see how you can see otherwise. Also when units were just clumped up it looked and felt really wrong. Having to think about figure placement is pretty much the definition of a skirmish game!
Having played 8th, a lot, I do not miss half of the things listed in the slightest. I HATED the vehicle damage chart as it was what made so many vehicles unplayable, haha. Good riddance to it, IMO. And how is 7th more tactical than 8th, in your opinion? Have you played 8th yet? I feel the game has lost a lot of clutter but no depth. The depth comes in how you play the game not in knowing a million little rules, IMO. 7th had clutter that people felt was depth but really it made the game extremely difficult to learn for new players and bloated. 8th is easier to learn, plays SO much faster and has a tremendous amount of tactical depth to it.
The keywords seem like they were a great idea for that. I really like how individual characters have abilities that only affect units from their or whatever so it inherently prevents combining certain characters for ridiculous combos.
Exactly! Totally agree. No more crazy combos that make the game no fun (or a lot less, anyway, if they do pop up). Keywords are awesome, I agree.
No, I haven’t played it yet, but I am neither invested in defending the game (because I haven’t been involved in playtesting), nor do I have any axe to grind against it. In fact many of the simplifications I’ve advocated for for years, such as a single set of rules encompassing vehicles and MCs, and a M characteristic to replace all the movement rules.
However I think the vehicle chart was a really cinematic addition to the game. Without it we will be plugging aways at vehicles slowly reducing their wounds, which is, lets face it boring. Being able to take a risk on the off chance that oblit or melta wielding guy just might pop the vehicle is almost the definition of cinematic.
A better fix for the absence of expensive vehicles in 40K would have been making armoured ceramite an option for Land Raiders etc in 40K as it is in 30K (where Raiders, spartans etc are common sights).
I wanted a single system for MCs and vehicles, but rather than losing the vehicle chart I would have had a similar chart for MCs, including results such as ‘blinded’ (BS1 and WS1), ‘crippled’ (halve M), ‘panicked’ (move in a random direction) etc etc.
The flattening of weapons due to changes in Toughness and wounding seems odd to me and again removes tactics due to target priority being less important.
I really feel positioning has now lost a lot of meaning due to easy deepstriking, removal of casualties as player choice, no blasts or templates, no armour facings etc. Yes it will still be important, but not as important and it again removes the possibility for the demonstration of player skill and player agency.
Hmm, different stroked for different folks, I guess. I don’t think wearing things down and them getting weaker as you go is boring at all. It’s a lot of fun, IMO. But, it is different, sure. I hated losing an expensive vehicle to a single melta gun that cost a fraction of the points (or las cannon or whatever). That is precisely why you didn’t see expensive vehicles in 40k unless they ignored that effect (Super Heavies).
And how does tapering the damage table simplify target priority? IME, having played a lot, it doesn’t. At all. It simply changes things and evens out the highs and lows of the game. It makes T3 models not so weak, or T5 not so incredible, etc. It makes weaker weapons stronger and stronger weapons weaker, making more units and weapons viable. It has only been a positive in our experience. For example, strength 6 weapons are no longer the clear choice in all instances, which to me, is a positive. Now you see Auto Cannons and Missile Launchers again when previously you did not. We have more variety now, which is only good to me. YMMV.
And model positioning is simpler but directional shooting was, while cinematic, so annoying, lol. Slowed game play down a ton. There’s ups and downs to it, but I think the up outweighs the down with the changes. No more spending 5 minutes to perfectly space every model in a unit to avoid blast damage, etc.
Ultimately in 8th what I have found is that skill becomes more important than list, which 7th at the end was swaying towards list over skill. That change alone makes me so excited for this edition. Again, YMMV, but this is a net positive–massively–over 7th ed in my experience.
Well I would have liked to see Grav weapons and melta guns being FAR more expensive to limit their use. A meltagun is worth 40 points in my opinion and a Grav cannon perhaps 80 (though would have been better to nerf it). This combined with armoured ceramite would have solved the vehicle issue without having to lose the cinematic and tactical elements.
You’ve put your finger on it, the new rules flatten the differences between weapons and between targets. You might like that, but anything that makes elements in a game less distinctive is a loss of flavour, and I think a lot of people are feeling that already.
It was interesting to hear the reason FW gave for keeping the 7th rules for 30K, they said that 8th couldn’t reflect the subtle differences between weapons and units needed to give the Legions their flavour.
I think as a tournament organiser you saw a different side to the game from us ordinary club players. I’ve never seen anyone take 5 minutes to position the models in a unit. I have however seen people having fun and getting excited when some tactic comes off and allows you to get rear shots into a unit, killing the champ etc.
The skill vs list issue in 7th wasn’t anything to do with the core rules, it was the army rules and meta GW manipulated to drive sales. I don’t see any reason why 8th will change that behaviour from GW. The game might be balanced (more or less) on release, but WHFB was in 6th with Ravening Hordes, but Gw soon broke that game too in the name of sales.
I think you miss my point, haha. You still shoot lascannons at vehicles and such, you still shoot Meltas at vehicles, bolters at gants, etc. None of that has changed. The only thing that has changed is that MANY other weapons and units that sucked are now good. That ADDS distinction and adds variety and improves the game.
If you like the very swingy rules of a little dude blowing up a big dude with a mleta gun (but only a vehicle, mind you, never a Monster =) as that makes sense…haha) then I am glad you like 30k and are happy to see if stay in the old pradigm, I found it silly that a Riptide was immune to that wunder-tactic you describe but a dreadnought was not. That is not tactical depth, it is an imbalanced rule-set that incentivizes you to not take many units, IMO. Now we have more equanimity, which is nothing but positive and increases the number of tactical options available to you.
40k seemed to always work on the holy trinity of Flamers vs mobs, Plasma vs elite and Melta vs vehicles. Then someone came up with Grav and broke the whole thing. I feel like 7th was such an abomination at the end that this reboot went farther than it had to out of sheer shock.
Grav was fairly obviously a response to the overpowered nature of Monstrous Creatures and rerollable 2+ saves. It would have been better to have dealt with these directly since the grav ‘patch’ had far reaching and unforeseen consequences.
The introduction of armour saves for vehicles, a damage chart for MCs and a maximun 4+ on a reroll, with more attention paid to army lists, would have fixed it.
Templates were inaccurate time wasters meant to create a more cinematic experience. They’re really old mechanics. Most BA players really didn’t want them back.
I’m optimistic about 8th Edition but GW does seem to still have their ‘old gw’ boots on at least, even while they’ve got their new gw suit on. They could have done a lot more – gotten rid of all the rerolls, gotten rid of overwatch and random charges, made to hit, wound, save simplified, etc. It’s definitely a step in the right direction – hopefully in ten years they can be what they should be.
You’d think the idea of just putting all movement into the thing called movement phase wouldn’t be so hard to grasp, especially since their games used to work like this. And I agree advance roles are just needless time wasters. Still, I somehow suspect behind the scenes it was a tooth and nail fight to even get the option to chose psychic powers and such because GeeDubs loves their random charts just soooooo much.
Given you’ve been able to choose spells, traits and the like in AoS from the beginning I think you’re being a bit blinkered.
Terrified of Age of 40K.
Many good things BUT…
I see the future. In a few years more primarchs will come out. More multi-wound special troops.
The part about just adding to your army is ok but won’t last. I see just like AoS, the new models will be so much better in the new system that everyone ‘s old model will become outdated
In 5 years I’ll bet most games will be played with the primarchs, primarus marines, and all the yet to be released models. Old armies’ figures won’t win well against the new.
On another note, the super competitive mindset will do math-hammer and know how to beat anything in no time at alll. Back to same old stuff.
You can see the future?!?!
Tell me what numbers to get on my next lotto ticket! We’ll head to Vegas and get rich, son! Muahahaha!!!
It’s a Lexx Time Prophet thing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89Gi7N3Rxag
“Time begins and then time ends and then time begins once again. It is happening now, it has happened before, it will surely happen again.”
Or simply pattern recognition but there is no awesome silly musical for that so I go with the time prophet.
Yo Reece, future is actually a good topic. There was tons of playtesting for this edition, which is great. What I’ve seen so far is looking good.
How will development of new codices and untis go though? Will there still be external playtesting, or was that exclusive to the run-up of this reboot?
Can you provide any insight at all? I’m curious.
I cannot talk about how things are done in that regard, sorry =(
I think we can already see that with the new Primaris gunboat and PMarines which are obviously better than the old Minimarines.
Like I said earlier I am very glad 30K isn’t going this way.
Are they? Have you looked at them from a points comparison basis? Hard to make that call without knowing points costs =)
Stats wise yes, they are better, but that is kind of the point you know?
points costs were leaked on Reddit a few days ago.
From the index or the starter box? The starter box has different points.
And, either way, I actually feel many of the Primaris Marines are too expensive and am uncertain if I would use them in a list.
I agree with Reece. They might work out and they are gorgeous models but they are a ton of points. Not sure if they’re worth the increase.
Isn’t that good game design though? It would be kind of lame power creep and a seeming cash grab if the new models were just better that the old one outright. Each unit has its purpose.
I personally hate the fact they brought templates into BA, I preferred when you could just freely move your models and didn’t have to worry about spacing everything to avoid potential template maxing.
In BA your small units will still be obliterated by a template, they are just less effective at hurting vehicles, which is kind of a bummer.
I can only assume you don’t actually play AoS, many of the best lists are older armies, Tomb Kings, Skryre, even Dragonlords are really good…
Yeah, exactly! haha, I love my old army =)
I always found it kind of funny that people would call entire armies OP when in reality it was usually only one specific unit/ability/rule that broke the game. If you never used that unit/ability/rule then your lists were fine but your faction still got called OP.
True, largely because you almost always saw those powerful combos.
Ugh, yeah. I remember all the times I’d get flack for running IG in 5th Ed, or Nids in 4th, even tho I mostly wasn’t running the stuff that made those Armies notorious. People would just see the Faction and get all riled up.
I’m glad they went back to picking the casualties. It used to be the rule and they always said back then that it represented someone else picking up the melta gun etc. Even with the Sgt. There is a chain of command for who is in charge of the squad, not to crazy to think the new squad leader picks up the weapons
That is such a good point.
Same, here.
That’s actually even shown up in the fluff. I’ve seen a couple of stories where the Sarge bites it, and his designated successor takes up his Power Sword or Lightning Claw and leads the remainder of the Squad through their Mission.
Thanks for taking the time to go over the vast amount of rules and fix the headaches with the game. But in all do honest there’s issues with this version that are utter trash. Did you honestly.play test every model, doubt it something armies are complete shit. Welcome to the melee world of 40k.
You are welcome but lol, how can you possibly say some armies are complete crap? Play the game a few times, friend.
Locally the concern we found has come from smite spam. For instance in a 2k list you can have 36 troop sections in three detachments. Each troop choice can be a 10 man brimstone unit for 20 points that spits out a smite on a 5+. This whole operation on average clears 12 successes (12d3 mortal wounds) for only 720 points. Yes you lose a horror per cast however you’ve probably deleted most things in front of you, and still have 1280 left to play with for .. anything.
Assuming your opponent never denies any of your powers or doesn’t shoot any of your horrors…
It’s a pitance of points, has 360 models over 36 units and is making 36 tests a turn for only 720 points. There are ways to combat it however to a man they are all more expensive, less efficient or not reasonable in a tournament (taking 5 culexus assassins and triangulate).
The solution is to limit smite to one a turn or play power level, as this stops the oblique efficency of horrors.
Horrors cast powers with a single D6, they aren’t as scary as you may think.
Pink, of course not. However you can purchase brimstone for 2 ppm. They take up considerable board presence and cast smite all the same. Again 720 points is 36 units of 10 models each that average a mortal wound per unit. Even if no mind bullets were involved that’s insane model count for a small point investment.
This may not pan out to be anything however it’s a build that shouldn’t of been offered. Regardless of the quality of people play testing they still pale in comparison to thousands of internet troll idiot proofing the most glaring errors
Sure, brimstone horrors are insanely cheap but they’re also insanely useless other than hoping to get a smite off every once in a while. They still have to footslog into that range (only half your units can deepstrike in matched play) and you also actually have to have 360 brimstones which I think is the most unrealistic part of that equation…
Everyone on the ‘inside’ has been saying how 8th is all about board control. Yet you dismiss an army that will dominate the board with numbers as weak. Not logical.
Well, perhaps you’ve had better results with them than we have because we’ve found this exact tactic to not be that great.
Only thing I hate is that a company commander for imperial guard did not stay with his command squad. He was never a IC to begain with and it kinda makes me scratch my head due to the fact a CO will never be without his first sergeant, Company medic RTO and driver. Which wait… is 4 other guys who would make up the command squad.
Space Marines are different due to them being super humans. in fact, only the guard are really laid out like an actual military force hence that makes me upset.
Otherwise, I do like the edition save for lasguns wounding a landraider cause a 5.56 does not have a chance in hell of killing a M1 Abrams and a soldier with a rifle can not hit a F-22 while its flying.
I’m afraid too many people won’t give 8th ed the time it needs. I agree the framework for a better game is there but I don’t think GW is ready to deliver it yet. Speaking from seeing the indexes and rulebook, there is still a lot of character and flavor missing.
Just using t-sons as one example, they are infinitely more ready for success with an almost universal point reduction and much more useful guns, but they’re are absolutely useless in the psychic phase where they’re supposed to shine because they have one 3 power discipline in which all of those powers can only be used once per turn. So their entire psychic phase is basically reduced to smite bots. Not much better than warp dice bots for Magnus last edition.
I think once we get that character and that flavor back 8th will be fine but I fear too many people will abandon it like AoS and not give it a chance to grow into its promise.
If GW sticks to its guns and actually delivers a sort of balanced game people will come back to it. However, I will blame absolutely no one for leaving. This company has abused its player base way beyond any reasonable limit and if the lesson that you can’t treat your customers like that is all we get out of this then that’s just fair.
I have been thinking about the first turn thing. It feels too much of a meta advantage that a player could get to pick both deployment and turn. What if instead of the first to deploy gets to pick turn, the rule was that the player who did not pick deployment got to then pick turn. Example:
Player 1 wins first objective placement.
Player 2 places last objective, then chooses deployment.
Players deploy.
Player 1 gets to pick turn because Player 2 picked deployment.
Going further, I think there should be a roll off at the beginning of the game, that could be rerolled for CP. The winner of this roll off could then pick either of (1) Pick Deployment or (2) Pick Turn.
I’ve been wondering one thing that I haven’t found in the new rules, but read in some of the rumors : how does vertical movement work in buildings. I know that bikes, vehicles ect. cant move up and down, but how many inches does infantry get to move?
Although some of these are great (formations and free summons/wargear gone).
I find the allies matrix to be far worse now for anyone who isn’t an Imperium player. I truly hope tournaments not only limit detachments, but also number of factions.