By some sort of cosmic miracle...

this heretic here

Or no, this one.

Flesh out existing xenos.

Tau-stealer hybrids kults.

A friendly counterpart to the Necron

At least until they fall to chaos and start murdering their brothers.

I remember being a little kid and trying to think of my own race of aliens for warhammer after being dragged into a Games Workshop a few times by my dad. He let me watch games and marvel at the models while he bought paints.

They were basically Tyranids, iirc. They had the same guns as Necrons (I remember being enchanted by their green transparent parts), wore huge carapaces, and after careful deliberation I decided they would have purple blood.

This. We don't need (and hopefully don't want) anymore xenos; we just need to give the existing ones more love!

De-Squat Squats

This. Make a Beastmen port, but with more focus on being against mainline Chaos and more about desecrating other gods over worshipping Chaos itself.

>Ganzfeld Symbiotes

The Ganzfeld system is populated by a race of ectoplasmic psionic entities that survive through mutualism with other intelligent beings.
They favor humans due to our warp signatures and psychological malleability.

Ganzfeld symbiotes catalyze latent psychic abilities, transforming their human hosts into psykers. Ganzfeld symbiotes can also call upon their hosts memories and technical skills to organize themselves into different shapes, including machinery. Ganzfeld symbiotes bonded to human hosts prefer to morph themselves into the shape of powered armour similar to that of an Astartes. Most human hosts in fact gain the ability to psychically augment and reshape their bodies often into physiques reminiscent of Astartes.

lame
sounds like an excuse you came up with to play a whole army of librarians.

40k armies can only be iconic when they recycle and amalgamate pre-existing, strong archetypes and tweak them a little.

But they've already used up most of those that were compatible with their setting.
You've got hunters (kroots) soldiers (IG), knights (marines), barbarians (orks), EVIL knights (chaos), terrorists (genestealers), ancient warriors (eldar) and EVIL ancient warriors (dark eldar and necrons).
and mixed in all that you've got everything from frankenstein monsters to super sentai.

what's left?

It's not that simple.

Eldar (Ninja/pirate/egyptian elves in space)
Necron (Egyptian mummies in space/killer robots)
Orks (Orcs in space/barbarians/mad scientists)
Gene Stealers (Communists/Cthulu cultists/terrorists)
Tyranids (Bugs from Starship troopers/Cthulhu)
Tau (Asian stereotype aliens/Mecha/Communists)
Kroot (African stereotype aliens/Cannibals)

Imperial Guard (Soldiers +Ogres +Halflings)
Scions (Elite soldiers)
Space Marines (Knights/Viking Werewolves/Romans/Vampires/Warrior-Monks/Clones)
Sororitas (Battle nuns)
Imperial Knights (Knights/Mecha)
Adeptus Mechanicus (Mad scientists/cyborgs)
Skitarii (Cyborg soldiers)

Chaos Demons (demons in space)
Chaos Space Marines (Space Marines, but evil)
Chaos Cultists (Imperial Guard, but evil)

Really, every faction in Warhammer 40K is more of a bizarre mashup of a bunch of unrelated archetypes (in space!), and there's actually a lot of overlap between factions.

sentient bio-mechanical vampire-count necrons who are all like "the c'tan got stronger by eating the souls of sentients. Maybe it'll work for us."

And it does. It does work for them.

Skaven in spess.

This

Oh, I forgot.

Space Marines are also angels, and Orks are also football hooligans.

Hmmm...
OK, I have some ideas.

1) Australian aborigine Barsoom martian psyker aliens that travel space through a section of the warp they call dream space.

2) Mermaids in space: Humanoid angler-fish/gulper eels

3) Anonymous NEET frog-men xenos with remote controlled drones in Guy Fawkes masks. These aliens sit in the comfort of their temperature controlled command modules and use killer androids disguised as humans to do their dirty work for them.

I've always wanted to make a faction of Order Daemons. It's kind of grating how there's nothing benevolent or even indifferent in the Warp.

Combine this idea:
With this idea:
And uh...
...We need a unique flavour for this.
Random bits and bobs to differentiate them.
Space Marines already have the angel aesthetic.
Gnosticism? Archons?
Hindu gods? We don't have any Indian themed factions in 40K yet.
Austrialian Dreamtime?

IA 13?

An army of clones ruled over by tyrannical (no-not a tyranid) AIs which are left over from the Age of Strife

Tau Auxilia.

Those space slugs finally get an army.

Many vehicles will be turned into their funeral pyres. Many vehicles.

This

So Hrud then?

I call it Pirates of the Outer reaches and it's a conglomerate of all the evil and monstrous aliens that raid humanity and get routinely wrecked by Space Marines and Crusades

Stuff like a named Sslyth warlord could be the top character, Kroot with heavy artillery they stole from the Tau before going AWOL, Fit in Rak'Gol since raiders and pirates same diff

Big on skimmers but unlike Eldar and Necrons they are all about being heavy and ramming stuff to crack it open and get to the juicy interior

Also a lot of single character model units ala Assassins and Harlequins. And the whole thing would be battle brothers with Dark Eldar.

Rak'Gol, Hrud, so many deserve more attention.

Old Ones army

Space LIzards deciding to purge the galaxy

So pretty much evil Tau counterpart? Considering Tau is meant to represent minor aliens as well.

>Tau representing minor aliens

Maybe initially but now out of their entire lineup all they have are some Kroot and Vespids.

Tau are no longer that, though. They're just blue bastards in gundams now, smaller xenos have been thrown to the wayside.

I like the idea of a "Commonwealth of Galactic Empires", where its literally just a bunch of allied mini empires too small to stand on their own, though able to band together and force other people off of them, but unfortunately tau are not this anymore.

Space chaos robot dragons that use space sand weapons.

Yeah I think that's the best way to make an evil tau counterpart.

no, those

in late 2nd edition Goodwin made a few concept art for skavs but they figured they shouldn't add too many new races since they already had dark eldar coming up and were getting rid of the squats.

and they're technically canon in 40k: the RT armoury mentions rhodotoxin, which is a poison used by skaven in WFB. Also I think they had a blurb that was copy-pasted from the WFB bestiary in the 40k white dwarf rules compendium of the first edition.

actually there was only the rodotoxin mentioned in the compendium, no blurb

>By some sort of cosmic miracle, Games Workshop has put you in charge of coming up with a new xenos race to be 40k's next new playable faction. What do you do with this power?

I come up with something so hilariously bad that not even the most loyal and hardcore 40k fan would even buy it or ever sing its praises. I do this in hopes of finally bankrupting the damn company and scattering their assets and IPs to the four winds.

CHAOS

SQUATS

Or Demons of Malal

squats aren't xenos and neither are demons

Small matter of fluff.

You'd introduce those anti-chaos guys the Emps met with, obvs.

fuck off

no

I can get tanking the company but why scattering the assets and IPs? that means no one else will ever pick up the brand and the game will never be picked up by anyone and thus never supported

Malal

you aren't cute, faggot

But I am a faggot, cutey ;)

Malal worshiping squats

How about something like a combination of fantasy Dwarves, Skaven, Chaos Dwarves, Beastmen and the old Squats, who interact and trade with warp entities rather than worship them , with warp powered/warpstone based technology. Warp ooze instead of warpstone could work well, a kind of ectoplasmic warp residue, that goes crystaline and nasty when it escapes from containment.

They could be a mutated human faction that come in many variants, but with the main ones being heavy-world-adapted dwarves and generaly mutated skaven/beastmen with snouts, fur, horns, hooves etc. What was once the rag tag remnants of a human settled system flourished into something new behind a warpstorm.

They would be in a state of Schrodingers Chaos Corruption, based on whether the warp entities they deal with to power their tech are actually controlling them or not. The imperials say "of fucking course they have fallen , exterminatus now and forever" but they say "No i *wanted* these horns and tentacles. Whats so good about being a so called `Pure Human` anyway?".

I could see them as mainly space based, making use of converted asteroid ships and bases, lots of re purposed mining weaponry like drills and mining lasers, and use of old arcotech like grav-guns alongside attempts at machine based psy powers, warp-lightning weapons.

They also have a massive ancestor fetish, and tempt to preserve the souls of those who die in a similar method to eldar, except using a living shamanistic host instead of a spirit stone, because they KNOW what happens to loose souls that get sucked into the warp.

For a unique style:

A mix of eldritch warpstone-fueled art deco ladled ontop of functional and spartan architecture and equipment (almost brutalist architecture). After being trapped behind a warpstorm with limited resources and constant Deamon attack they would have a massive thing about everything being practical and austere, combined with actually being a fairly diverse and spiritual bunch, accepting of their own changing forms and representing that in their culture.

Everything looks like it was designed by dwarven William Van Allen working for NASA but customized by Rene Lalique after huffing warpstone.

A good thing to nick I think would be the slow petrification suffered by the chaos dwarves, with master engineers being slowly overcome by the buildup of warp-slime and being crystalized, some covered in tiny bursts of multifaceted crystal from containment breach incidents, and some covering themselves in living symbiotic armour made out of the stuff, for at least partially religous reasons.

That could be a good internal conflict actually: one religous group says "we must protect our souls from the ravages of the warp, imbuing them in elder shamens for safekeeping" and another saying "some of these warp guys are okay, and their power is amazing, lets become symbiotic and go of to new lives as powerful souls in the warp when we die".

I imagine they would get on quite well with Dark Elder, and trade with them for captured souls/slaves to trade with their "friendly" warp entities.

I could imagine the "friendly" warp entities they trade with as being hinted as deamons of malal.

Basically, I would make a race based off the Elders from XCom: A supremely advanced race that primarily uses troops created by genetically modifying different species of aliens that they have enslaved or otherwise defeated. Would be a great way to get some little gray aliens onto the battlefield, and it would actually give us some artistic variety instead of having a bunch of units that all look the same.

>that means no one else will ever pick up the brand and the game will never be picked up by anyone and thus never supported

EXACTLY!!!!!

>A supremely advanced race that primarily uses troops created by genetically modifying different species of aliens that they have enslaved or otherwise defeated.
Tyranids?

Best things GW could do is release a codex like the Imperial Army one for 30K which is full of options to make your own force/race.

Then use this to represent all races that may still be powerful in a skirmish or locally, like the Demiurg, but aren't sufficiently powerful to threaten the established order of the Galaxy. This is what I would do if I were king for a day.

>that means no one else will ever pick up the brand and the game will never be picked up by anyone and thus never supported
One can hope.

I can dig it. We definitely could use some art deco/brutalist architecture to contrast the Imperium's cathedral shit.

And I like the slow petrification/crystallization idea.

I'd rather have them be separate factions to be honest, but allied if GW could afford to make multiple races.

To me the Old Ones would be more crystalline and channel all the old progenitor/forerunner/ancient race themes with crystal or gas creatures with crazy artificial constructs etc, and the Space Lizards could be one of their younger and more brutish warrior forces.

Sounds familiar

Wouldn't the old ones be apes? All their creations are ape like.

Why not crystal apes?
I like the left one the most, especially if the crystals changed colors to emit emotion and language. But I would like to see the rock dude have some really advanced tools and weapons that look more like iron ore with some magma inner lighting.

Make an army of alien slugs that all have Assault 4 guns with Str 5, AP3. And their weapon upgrades are an Assault 6 version, an AP 2 Flame Thrower with Strength 4, and a Heavy 1 Strength D, AP 1 gun that ignores Invulnerable Saves of any kind. Their Psykee has a 2+ deny the witch to any unit he joins. And their vehicles are all tanks mounting bigger versions of their infantry guns, but are immune to Melta because they're always slimey or some shit. Points cost are somewhere around Eldar, and standard Ballistic Skill and Weapon Skill values are 4 across the army, with Elite choices given 5, and armed with Powerfists that swing at initiative on base strength 4 models.

I'd call this army "Delicious Manchild Tears."

Niggers.

Lol, so edgy.
11/10
Much /pol/-fucking wow!

True. Plus they already have Orks

Isn't inperial stuff pretty brutalist if you strip off skulls?

nah its pretty heavily a gothic + gothic revival under all the skulls, but its all prefabricated standard template buildings with little actual varience, you might find a gilt cathedral cloister being used as a small chapel on a space station, a children play area with swings and slides in the upper levels of a hive or a rogue traders private quarters

its like space ikea

my idea was to go the other direction, have everything be uniquely built out of very simple structures (big space concrete rectangular cubeoids) which are then heavily decorated to their makers taste (rather than everything coming pre loaded)

it would still end up all looking quite similar, as that would be required for making anything that will be built out of model kits, but because the base designs are simpler (brutalist boxes rather grimdark cathedral chunks) you could get more variation based on how you put the parts together (because you dont have fucking great flying buttresses and shit getting in the way), then decorate with art deco bits to taste.

man you got a point, i have been in a few threads on co and warseer and places that talk about similar ideas for neo-squats/demiurge. guess i internalised them more than i thought.

I'd be cautious about a legitimate "old one" faction, I really feel keeping them mysterious is a good thing.

Maybe a "new race" of more humanoid lizardmen with crystal tech or something is discovered giving more hints about them, but actually bringing old ones to the tabletop would be too much I think. Better to keep the mystique.

Dude the old ones (or rather their descendants) were playable in the first fucking edition of 40k.

and they were frogs

Q'orl develop warp drives.

There's nothing mysterious about the Slann/Slanni.

Space skavens, of course.

done

A race that combines the eldar and Tau into a race of blue-skinned blonde-haired super-beings that are generally on-par with space marines and have superior battlesuits that excel in close combat.
Everyone who's been playing the game will hate them and everyone who'll be new to it will love them.

>I'd be cautious about a legitimate "old one" faction, I really feel keeping them mysterious is a good thing.
Was if it's an "illegitimate" one?
I had the idea of a subset of old ones that survived the warp fuckery of the end of the war in heavens by somehow cutting their warp connections. To them it was basically like cutting your ears, eyes, nose and tongue and trying to live with only touch, but they were just that desperate.
Without their psychic power, after a long time to get on their feets, they now rely on more standard bio engineering, and have learn to stay under the radars, manipulating shit and shit. They may have gotten quite bitter, though their objective would still be to save the universe from both chaos and necrons. Then you can imply that other old ones may or may not have find other ways out of the war in heavens, that they may or may be not behind tau ethereals, human parias or whatever you want.
The issue would be that they would be eldar+tyranid, but they could have their own esthetic by having more grotesque bio-puppets rather than alien killing machines.

or just roll with the canon ones.

The race the Tyranids are running from. They turn out to be a race made out of pure energy contained within psychic fields. Each individual is a psyker, except each individual has enough clout to disrupt the Shadow in the Warp caused by Hive Mind.

I was just thinking, exodites are still a thing.

I know those exist, but my idea was precisely to have non standard old ones.
Though if you go for slann old ones (after all the separation of slann and old ones was a fantasy thing) you still need to flesh them out.
Are they just degenerate lizard Aztec eldar? Not sure if I would want that. Sell them to me!

The warp extends only through the milky way galaxy. Thus it could indeed be assumed that there are other warps in other galaxies. So, my new xenos faction would be an extra galactic empire that has discovered a way to jump to the subspace in other galaxies. They don't want to devour planets or end all life or anything. They just want land and resources and slaves. They look like large hominids constructed out of metal. Some look like Greco Roman statues, some look like automatons and some look like strange abstractions. But they are all metallic. Also they are very slow. On foot they are just incredibly slow, slower than necrons. However, a strange quirk of their development has made them capable of thinking very quickly. Also, they are basically giant metal people, thus they have a ton of armor. Their vehicles are fast and varied, as they are incredibly slow on foot. Their vehicles also lack armor for protecting personnel, only armor for the vehicles engine and stuff. So, no tanks, no super heavies. Just a lot of decently durable transport vehicles. This empire of metal folk uses heavy automatic weaponry with a high rate of fire. They despise the warp, as it can completely bypass their natural defenses. Thus, they essentially want to colonize the milky way, but first they will side with the fleshy imperials to destroy chaos. And then stab them in the back.

they're frogs
they can all have psychic powers
all their names are puns

>The warp extends only through the milky way galaxy.

Wrong, the Warp is the reflection of the material universe. All of it.

The purpose of colonizing is to find more worlds to exploit. See, they use up the resources on a planet to make themselves, incubating in the earth, drawing minerals and metal to their form until they are fully cooked. But the process is inefficient and imperfect. There's not a lot of standardized results. Thus they need planets both for breeding and for science. Unluckily, their first foray into the milky way several millennia ago dropped them right inside the eye of terror on a demon world. They tried to breed upon it, build up an army. This lead to intense chaos corruption, with chaos gleefully warping their already malleable bodies. Because they can consciously alter their form over time, and that their souls are not very well protected, chaos finds in them a good vessel. Thus, chaos gets a new auxillary, imperium gets a new ally of convenience and now we've got a combined arms army with a variety of infantry shapes, with the basic infantry models being just beefy metal men that are incredibly easy to paint. Also they can incorporate weapons into their bodies. So, sword hands, imperium shotguns jammed into their chest, stuff like that.

The immaterial extends through out the material Univers but what we know as the warp is localized to the milky way. The space between galaxies is just empty immaterium that is supposedly impossible to navigate.

An insectoid race that uses biomech weapons and vehicles.

Despite what many would expect they are not a hive mind or the like, instead they are more like a specific type of huntsman spider where they have one 'mother' and her children all work towards guarding her territory. Each clan/swarm would have its own Queen/Mother with their own agendas, all soldiers her children that possess free will but contribute to the family/hive as a whole. Due to their bonds of family they do not accept other races but are willing to work alongside them if they believe such an agreement would help the family/hive as a whole.

When born/hatched they begin as large bugs about the size of a bird that work in swarms. They act as scouts and shields for the upper tiers of the family. At birth they have no real sentience yet and act more like youd expect a hive mind to act. After a year of this they meta-morph into the bipedal, sentient 'adults'. These adults have different types (wings for jump troops, simple biped for troops, psychically inclined for psykers etc)

Technology wise there weapons and vehicles are 'grown' (think the material xenomorphs make their hives out of) using advanced nerves as the internal wiring and such. They are essentially bodies without minds, the wielder/operator becoming the brain that controls all the nerves to make them work.

Design wise think pic related, but add some HR Giger styled weapons and chitin to him.

I can dig it. Actually, you know what'd be rad as shit, this but they are born out of the refuse on hive worlds. They start with just fighting scavvies and rats and cultists until finally becoming big enough to be considered an empire. Eventually they take the hive entirely and convert it into a literal, actual hive, giving them more of a focus on flying infantry

So, perhaps instead of "if you were given control over a project for gw, make a xenos race" let's instead ask

"What aesthetic, tactical style or philosophy is missing from 40k that we could base a species around"

How would we flavor them though? Immune to terrain?

Seems like a good plan.

I make the Evronians. Fuck copyright.

Yeah... we could maybe....

Give them a rule that allows them to, I don't know, "Move Through Cover". We could call it "Cover Movement" or "Move Through Terrain".

I was thinking more that blast markers from their heavy artillery are gonna be considered Impassible Terrain due to there being enough radiation to kill a space marine.

Seeing as the Rak'gol ships are like the this 24/7 they don't really give shit.

So, Coolflames would be roughly the same as guardsmen, your standard Evronian is prolly gonna be on the level of a MEQ and their guns force a Leadership test or the target loses a wound, if the target loses all their wounds replace them with a Coolflame model, if you have no Coolflame models handy, the model just dies.

Also the Everonian feeding method becomes more horrifying in 40k because they're literally ripping people souls out and eating them.