A Commander Is You / Tabletop Games

• Infinity:
  • PanOceania — Brute: Frequently limited in camouflage and alternate deployment, PanO makes up for its deficiencies with brutal and cost-effective direct-attack units.
    • Acontecimento — Generalist: Trades some of the faction's more direct tools for Aleph specialists and infiltrators to produce a more flexible force, backed up by PanO firepower.
    • Military Orders — Brute/Loyal: An army of heavily-armored knights that don't back down, no matter how much you shoot them.
    • Neoterra — Brute/Elite/Ranger: Large, unsubtle, and fantastically overarmed.
    • Varuna — Technical/Guerilla: More subtle and sneakier than the typical PanO list, and armed with more technical equipment and much more camouflage.
  • Yu Jing — Generalist/Guerilla: A wide range of medium to strong statlines, with a broad selection of weapons and tech, Yu Jing can do anything...but particularly loves its holoprojectors.
    • Imperial Service — Generalist/Technical: IS leans into the stranger and more esoteric tools of the Yu Jing roster, without sacrificing their flexibility.
    • Invincible Army — Brute: The Invincibles are purely a sledgehammer, using power-armored troops in all roles.
    • White Banner Army — Generalist/Ranger: The White Banner Army pivots away from Yu Jing's more brute force tools into a lighter, stealthier roster.
  • Ariadna — Spammer/Guerilla/Unit Specialist: Lower-tech than the rest of the factions, without many of their fancy toys, Ariadna brings cheap units that do one thing very well and the ability to carpet the table in camouflaged troops.
    • Caledonia — Spammer/Guerilla/Unit Specialist: The kamikaze Scotsmen function very similarly to the main list, only more so, with a smaller roster and more screaming berserkers running about waving claymores.
    • Force de Reponse Rapide Merovingienne — Spammer/Ranger: A rapid response force in the truest sense, FRR's main strength is in its parachutists and their ability to appear unexpectedly from awkward angles.
    • USAriadna — Generalist/Guerilla: More expensive and more armored than the spammier Ariadna roster, the Americans sacrifice none of their camouflage tools.
    • Tartary Army Corps — Generalist/Guerilla: Many of the advantages of the main Ariadna roster, improved somewhat by invisible werewolves.
    • Kosmoflot — Generalist/Guerilla: In many ways the best of all worlds within Ariadna, combining signature units of several other sub-factions with their own powerful heavy infantry.
  • Haqqislam — Technical/Unit Specialist: Haqqislam brings some of the most versatile and effective specialist troops around, giving them an edge at scenario play, but their units often suffer outside their ideal roles.
    • Hassassin — Technical/Guerilla: As one would expect the Hassassin showcase the best of Haqqislam's sneaky tools.
    • Qapu Khalqi — Generalist: Almost as much of a mercenary force as a true Haqqislam one, the main faction's strong specialists are backed up by Nomad heavy armor.
    • Ramah — Technical/Brute: In Ramah's fireteams Haqqislam's selection of heavy units really begin to shine.
  • Nomads — Generalist/Espionage: Strong arsenal and good variety of units and equipment, Nomads have a particular focus on hacking attacks and indirect threats.
  • Combined Army — Brute/Gimmick/Unit Specialist: Complex rules and powerful, expensive specialist units make this coalition of aliens difficult to learn and use, but when you can deploy your scalpels carefully very little will stand in your way.
  • Aleph — Generalist/Gimmick: Loaded with strange and unusual tricks, Aleph's units seldom have the best stats or tools in their role, but often come loaded with a toolbox few other factions will match.
  • Tohaa — Turtle/Gimmick/Technical: While one Tohaa unit will seldom stand up to another faction's unit in a straight fight, their unusual fireteam mechanics let them support each other with unmatched flexibility and their symbiont armor gives them staying power.
• Star Wars: Legion:
  • Galactic Empire — Elitist/Brute: Favour self-sufficiency, with their units featuring strong defensive statistics and unparalleled strength within their defined roles.
  • Rebel Alliance — Balanced/Ranger: Makes up for their individual weaknesses by being nimble, versatile and able to access strong synergistic and support abilities.
  • Galactic Republic — Elitist/Generalist: Their armies are small but versatile, relying on expensive units supported by Jedi.
  • Separatist Alliance — Spammer/Technical: The Separatists can field hordes of weak droids, which require careful coordination and action management to become effective.
• Team Yankee
  • Germans are elitist, with strong and powerful units, particularly the Leopard 2, with a big gun and a armor of 18 frontally, but they cost so much that in the meta, they are basically useless.
  • Americans are balanced, with the M1 Abrams having good overall, and the M 1 IP being THE toughest tank in-game, with a armor of 19. However, it costs a lot. They have solid air support, and pretty good AA, as well as infantry.
  • French are Guerilla, with guns out the ass and even stronger ATGM spam. Unfortunately a near universal rally of 4+ makes them likely to fall back very very fast, if under fire, and so the Alpha Strike tactic is necessary to make losses as small as possible.
  • British are turtles. Their main tank has no stabilizer, and their movement is garbage. With the extra armor upgrade, terrain cross gets worse. The British hunker down, sip tea, and absolutely Swiss cheese anything that they open fire on.
  • Russians/East Germany is Spammer / Loyal. Their tank front armor is low, and their infantry saves are too, but dammit, they've got low points value. One of their tanks can be taken for less than a single point in certain situations. At the same time, a lot of their units have very high Morale and Rally.
  • Czech is Spammer / Spammer. They have most of the same vehicles as the Russians, but lack all of the best ones. At the same time, a lot of their units are the cheapest (Europeans) in the game, because they are both poorly trained and easily frightened.
• Team Yankee: Oil War
  • Iranians are Spammer / Loyal. They typically have vehicles even cheaper and worse quality than the Russians or Czechs. At the same time, they can deploy Basij Infantry Company, which is a unit of hyper cheap, brave, poorly-equipped paramilitaries who have to charge across the map on foot.
  • Syrian/Iraqi are Spammer. A lot of their vehicles are just as cheap and terrible as the Iranian ones. They have infantry options which are about as poorly trained as the Russians/Iranians and so on, but are only of moderate Courage/Morale
• Warhammer
  • Empire — Balanced/Generalist, can be fielded in a variety of ways.
  • Bretonnia — Brute Force with Ranger-type mobility, almost Pariah due to 8th edition's nerfing of cavalry dependent armies.
  • High Elves — Elitist/Balanced, not entirely either, but leaning to Game-Breaker
  • Wood Elves — Guerrilla/Ranger/Technical hybrid, totally lacks defensive power and another Pariah. Tree Spirits add some durability to army, but are expensive and easily countered with Fire attacks.
  • Dwarves — Brute, ranged capabilities on par with a Ranger, but no mobility of that type. Could possibly be Generalist if but for lack of offensive magic and cavalry.
  • Orcs & Goblins — Brute (pure Orc) or Technical/Spammer (pure Goblin), Balanced (mixed) and possible Pariah (all versions)
  • Dark Elves — Generalist, formerly Game-Breaker/Generalist/Elitist.
  • Vampire Counts — Spammer, formerly Game-Breaker/Elitist/Spammer, most characters are Game-Breaker/Elitist.
  • Tomb Kings — Technical/Spammer; Pariah due to 1)horribly crippling dependency on magic and 2)their magic is easily countered by all factions bar Ogre Kingdoms and Tomb Kings themselves.
    • More recent change to their magic and the magic system in made it less crippling, and they added some Brute in the form of giant animated statues.
  • Skaven — SPAMMER with some random chance powered Gimmick thrown in, tends to rely on numbers once the Gimmick(s) blows itself and parts of both sides up, also a Game-Breaker with the later editions' focus on infantry hordes. Technical if dependant on Gimmick and no Spamming.
  • Lizardmen — A bizarre Balanced/Brute Force/Technical/Gimmick hybrid with some Ranger thrown in; also capable of Spammer. While it may seem that "Balanced" might cover it, it is actually able to field highly specialized forces that focus on some of the aspects instead to a degree rivaling other specialists.
  • Ogre Kingdoms — Brute Force and Spammer, recently promoted from Pariah to near-Pariah
  • Beastmen — Spammer/Brute, very generic playstyle with no flexibility. Later update gave them the option of going Guerrilla, in that they can ambush with reserve forces, something no other army can do.
  • Chaos Warriors — Brute/Elitist, lacking anything to cover the issues of both types.
  • Chaos Daemons — Elitist/Brute formerly Game-Breaker, possible Pariah due to lack of cheap units. Technical but only with respect to some odd mechanics rather than their playstyle.
• Warhammer 40,000
  • Warhammer 40000:
    • Astra Militarum — Spammer if using infantry, Brute with vehicles, Ranger with artillery, Generalist when using combined arms; shades of Technical given their Orders system. They emphasize regular Joes generally coming in underequipped and in huge numbers alongside an ungodly number of vehicles of all stripes, liberal smotherings of heavy and special weapons for nearly every unit, and leadership abilities most other armies can only be jealous of. The army is easy to learn while having a lot of options and tactics being discovered frequently. The two main downsides to the army is really flimsy infantry and a big reliance on synergy between units, though if the frontline holds the Militarum artillery is some of the most devastating in the game, blowing away infantry and armor alike.
    • Adeptus Astartes (Space Marines) — Elitist/Generalist. Astartes are fairly expensive points-wise and have great staying power compared to most basic infantry of other armies. They're also solid in whatever role they're put in: Marines are good shots, and they're not half bad in an assault, either. Astartes tanks, on the other hand, may not be as robust or as powerful as those of the Imperial Guard's, but they are dirt-cheap and reliable. Whatever an enemy army’s weakness is, Astartes have something that can exploit it, but nearly every other army does their particular schtick better than Astartes. The base Marine Codex, representing all Codex-compliant Chapters, in turn has special characters, units, rules and wargear for different chapters allowing the army to specialize a bit.
    • Dark Angels — Elitist/Unit Specialist. Dark Angels can legitimately field an army full of Terminators and/or bikes: their Terminators are some of the best Terminators you can find in the game, while their bikes are the only ones that can go toe-to-toe against the White Scars. They also shoot significantly better than Codex Marines, especially with Plasma Weapons. On the other hand, they lack access to certain vanilla codex units and their aerial game is subpar. Both of these were rectified as of 9th Edition, turning the main weakness compared to Codex Marines into special units being expensive and the Elites slot quickly filling up.
    • Blood Angels — Elitist/Brute. The Blood Angels are designed for blitzkrieg. If you're playing Blood Angels, it's because you want a fast-paced and slightly reckless play style. Their Death Company can be equipped to kill literally anything in close combat, and in a pinch even Blood Angels tactical marines can do some work in a melee while the elite Sanguinary Guard is more of a pain train demolishing most things in melee.
    • Space Wolves — Elitist/Brute. The Space Wolves have access to powerful HQ units, unique wargear better than those in the vanilla Astartes codex, and their access to Thunderwolf Cavalry and Wulfen means that few armies come close to being as good at assault as the Space Wolves. If the Blood Angels have their entire army focused on melee assault, the Space Wolves focus that power on powerful individual units, having the capacity to bulldoze Codex Marines if they get the charge.
    • Grey Knights — Elitist/Brute/Technical/Unit Specialist. The elitist (even by Marine standards) Grey Knights have excellent close-range shooting and assault but need to find a way to outmaneuver the opponent before they get blown up with long range firepower and low-AP weapons (precisely both the main weaknesses AND main lacks of this army). All Grey Knights are Psykers; this means they will rival the likes of Eldar in the Psychic Phase. Due to the Grey Knights' ubiquitous anti-Daemon abilities, never send your Daemons against them unless if you want to be curb-stomped.
    • Deathwatch — Elitist/Generalist. The Deathwatch get the best gear the Inquisition can give them, and the small model count, composition of many different chapters and versatile selection of wargear give them (especially characters) a very high degree of customisation. Run your Kill-team from the Deathwatch RPG as part of your army!
    • Sisters of Battle — Balanced/Generalist. This army of women warriors is kind of a hordey army with very strong close combat performance, plenty of options for long-range support fire and a unique Miracle mechanic. While they combine the strengths of both the Militarum and the Astartes, they also combine the weaknesses of both (relatively flimsy T3 infantry and limited numbers, but each sister having an invul save makes up for it a bit) unless you pick a gimmick and run with it. They also have a lack of reliable anti-tank options at range except for the more recently released Castigator Tank, which is still peanuts compared to the armored monstrosities of the Militarum.
    • Imperial Knights — ELITIST, verging into Awesome, but Impractical. Each Knight costs 400+ points and is tougher than a bucket of iron nails (T8, 3+ armour save, 5++ invul save and 24 wounds - the entire enemy army could hit one with everything they have and still not destroy it in one turn). That is not an excuse to get complacent as each casualty will diminish your army considerably. There are a lot of other problems as well: Having only four or five units does not help much in objective-scoring (what you have to do to actually win), it is an army that looks utterly terrifying to a novice but won't faze a level-headed experienced player, and dedicated anti-tank guns will still bring your big robots down with shocking rapidity. Most people take Knights as allies, which works fine, and it takes a very rare player to be able to field an entire detachment of them.
    • Custodian Guard — Elitist/Brute. Everything the Custodes can field is absurdly expensive, from the rank-and-file units to the vehicles and war machines, so their unit counts will be lower than just about any other faction. Case in point, one Custodian Guard model is worth almost the same in points as a 10-man squad of Imperial Guardsmen with a sergeant! Fortunately you get what you pay for: each unit is also armed with the best of the best, putting out huge damage every attack, and extremely well protected, with your average Custodian guard being an Implacable Man that refuses to die and anything beyond that being close to unstoppable. They don't have too much in the way of advanced techniques (not even psykers), and every single loss they have is going to hurt, but they are as Elite as they come and every last unit of theirs can mow down whole chunks of the opposing army if left unchecked.
    • T'au Empire — Ranger. If you want to specialise in ranged attacks, the T'au are the army for you. Their entire army is defined by high-strength, long-range shooting with some of the strongest guns in the whole game - even the basic Fire Warrior swings around a S5 gun. Combined with markerlights, anything that you point at is going to die very, very quickly in a hail of plasma fire long before they can get close. However, anything remotely optimised for fighting in melee will shred you to pieces if they can survive and close in. Even the flimsy Militarum can expect to win a melee punch-up with the T'au. Fortunately the T'au are decently mobile as well, with a lot of skimmers and jumping warmachines. But they also forgo any psychic abilities or counters for them, so a psychic army will have a field day against you.
    • Asuryani — Elitist/Ranger/Technical/Specialist. These Space Elves are generally deadly but fragile, relying on high mobility and cover to stay alive rather than heavy armour or high toughness. They have only a few all-rounders to balance out their plethora of specialists^note (which is a blessing and curse; Aspect Warriors have universal loadouts and little flexibility but they are arguably the very, very best at what they do. For example Fire Dragons, an entire squad of meltagun troops, can completely annihilate any vehicle or fortification that gets within range in mere moments, but are hopeless in melee and dedicated anti-infantry troops will shoot them down from outside the meltagun's pitiful 6" range), and only just a few melee specialists to balance out their mostly shooty army. They also have a lot of sneaky units that can infiltrate or outflank an enemy to strike from an unexpected quarter, and they have one of the strongest psychic supports in the game.
    • Drukhari — Elitist/Ranger. Thought the Asuryani were bad for fragility? Every Drukhari unit is exceedingly squishy. Even the humble lasgun can be a threat, and bolter fire will smear them across the scenery. Thankfully, the Drukhari are blisteringly fast and mobile (7" movement for infantry, much more for vehicles, nearly everything in the army flies or skims or can be shoved into something that does), possess witheringly strong firepower, and an arsenal of lethal poisoned weapons lets these skinny S3 elves punch well above their weight in melee combat. They also lack native access to psykers or heavy Lord of War units.
    • Harlequins — Elitist/Guerrilla. Intergalactic elf clown ninjas. Very fast-moving infantry who can vault and leap over terrain and into enemy forces to slice them to bits (they are one of the few armies to completely ignore charging through terrain penalties). Basic troops can have five melee attacks (in a game where a hero character might have four and most troops have one), and have widespread access to armour-piercing weaponry. However like all Eldar mentioned before they will be massacred by anti-infantry fire (even with their decent invul saves) and although their close-range shooting can be okay, they have no heavy long-range firepower to speak of - a handful of 24" Shuriken Cannons are the best you can do.
    • Orks — Generalist/Spammer. Typically played as Spammer/Brute ("We's bringin' da biggest and da most boyz ta crump all da 'umies!") but generally a hard army to pin down due to all the options they have. The few definite things that can be said is that Orks are one of the best close-combat armies in the entire game, and they can field a lot of units for a mercifully low points cost - you can easily field upwards of 100 models in a medium-sized game just counting troops. Ork shooting tends to be quite unreliable with low accuracy and short range (you have to make up with sheer volume) but most guns are Assault weapons so you can shoot while you close for the melee, drowning the enemy in a tide of green bodies and S4 melee attacks. However a near-universally slow movement rate for infantry and low armour saves mean your green boys might get cut down by concentrated fire before they even see melee.
    • Necrons — Balanced/Brute. The Necrons are the Stone Wall to the Orks' Mighty Glacier, the Drukhari's Fragile Speedster and the Asuryani's Glass Cannon. Every unit is painfully slow to get anywhere, but with T4 stats, great armour saves, lots of wounds, near-unbreakable morale and other mechanics (vehicles that can regenerate damage, infantry that can get back up from being killed), it is very hard to shift them once they have got there. Their low initiative and small numbers of attacks mean that they can struggle a bit in melee, especially against overwhelming numbers. They have strong shooting, but their anti-vehicle firepower tends to be concentrated into dedicated squads.
    • Tyranids — Can vary between a Spammer and an Elitist faction based on whether more, bigger 'nids ("Nidzilla") or hordes of the little bastards come out. Usually uses a mix of both, with the horde's sheer numbers tearing apart the enemy while the big guys come in at the end to clean up whats left.
    • Heretic Astartes — Balanced/Specialist. The Chaos Space Marines can be seen as a dark mirror of their Imperial counterparts: if the loyalists possess respectable offensive power either melee or ranged with strong defensive power, the Chaos Space Marines enjoy far superior close combat and psychic abilities, but lacking the loyalists' defensive and equipment options in many areas and requiring much more aggression and initiative on the part of the player. Rip and tear until it is done!
    • Chaos Daemons — Spammer/Technical. Daemons tie with Tyranids with sheer amount of bodies and Monstrous Creatures they cab put on the field. Unless you actively shy away from it, no other army, except maybe the Grey Knights, can rock the Psychic phase as hard as you can. Their units are generally stronger point for point than other units, but their unusual deployment type requires careful thinking when used, and their low Toughness and Daemonic Instability make them die very quickly if not managed carefully.
    • Renegades and Heretics — Spammer/Generalist. Basically a Chaos version of the Imperial Guard, nearly everything is relatively cheap and have great diversity and customisation provided by the abundance of options.
  • Horus Heresy:
    • Dark Angels — Generalist: The Dark Angels are the "template" upon which all other legions would draw their specialities from, and purposefully not too unique. In this era, their rules make them into a melee-oriented Legion, and they play like normal Astartes with lots of exclusive equipment both melee and ranged, an uncommon balance available to few others. In addition, they have some radical Rites of War which fill roles traditionally held by other Legions, which makes up for their generic Legiones Astartes rules.
    • Emperor's Children — Ranger: The Emperor's Children favour a fast and hard-hitting playstyle. Their troops run fast, hit hard, get multiple bonuses to initiative, and are quite likely to overrun opponents if when they win in combat. Fitting their bias for melee, they also have access to a plethora of alternate deployment methods. On the other hand, they are rather generic at ranged combat, and their unique units usually have a single thing that they are good at and need to work with the rest of the army to get the best out of them. Emperor's Children players need to master positional play and timing to have their units charging at the right moment while being supported with the right buffs, lest the enemy rob them of their melee advantage and they end up playing akin to generic marines.
    • Iron Warriors — Brute/Loyal: The Iron Warriors are THE offensive siege specialists, shrugging off ranged casualties like they don't care, coming to make a mockery of the enemy's hiding places, make them keep their heads down and claim No Man's Land as their own without giving any terrain themselves. Common builds include lots of Heavy Support choices as well as lots of Barrage weapons. The ability to ignore ranged casualties and being one of the few Legions with access to widespread Stubborn and Fearless means the Iron Warriors can lay claim to having one of the best morale in the entire Heresy. All in all pretty straight-forward marines but focused on big guns.
    • White Scars — Ranger: The White Scars tie for the best bikers in the game and their infantry also receive plenty of movement bonuses and they can reliably bring that one unit they need from reserves, as well as bonuses for going first. However, you gotta go fast, as they aren't the best for garrison duty and that their heavier guns are vanilla, and the enemy could give them a surprise were they to catch them going anywhere slower than full speed.
    • Imperial Fists — Generalist: The Imperial Fists play as "standard" space marines while being able to adapt to more complex scenarios like siege missions and Zones Mortalis. They have improved firepower when using bolt weaponry, their characters are almost assured some success when in challenges, and their vanilla Terminators are the best in the whole Heresy. They also have some very powerful special characters and units and they have access to some of the best exclusive wargear available.
    • Night Lords — Brute/Technical: Night Lords make liberal use of Fear as well as being quite nasty in close combat. They have good mobility with hard hitting units and are one of the few Legions with access to Deep Striking Terminators in every mission, as well as more customisable assault squads and infiltrating veterans. They also capitalise significantly on Night Fight rules, so can pull ahead quickly at the start of a battle while the darkness is in effect. The catch? They are prone to falling back themselves. While it sounds obvious, it pays to bully your opponent when playing Night Lords.
    • Blood Angels — Brute/Ranger: At their core, the Blood Angels are a melee Legion, with improved to wound rolls and with a good selection of pistols and AP2 initiative weapons. Best of all, they don't need to fulfill conditions like outnumbering the enemy or getting the charge, so other Legions need to take note. Overall they play like an improved version of themselves in 40k. With certain Rites of War, they can rival even the Emperor's Children for speed, or possess resilient and steadfast but tactically limited options with which to throw at the enemy with abandon.
    • Iron Hands — Brute: The Iron Hands are excellent at mechanised assaults, and if you want to go all-out with tanks, there is no better Legion. In exchange for their sheer resistance to incoming fire, they are stuck with very inflexible infantry-centric army builds, and their near-refusal to perform Sweeping Advances or Run moves means they have a very good chance to be outmanoeuvred by the enemy.
    • World Eaters — Brute: "Up close and personal" is the phrase that defines the World Eaters. Their basic attacks being outright deadlier than your average Legion means whatever is on the business end of their chainaxes will Eat a World of hurt, and it only goes up from there.
    • Ultramarines — Generalist/Loyal: The Ultramarines play as a mix of 40k and 30k, understandably so because their Primarch wrote the codex. Like the Imperial Fists, they prove that being "vanilla" doesn't necessarily mean being bad. They've got the closest thing to and they shall know no fear out of any Legion, and their special rules are geared towards making an army that can become more than the sum of its parts. On the other hand, the adage "jack of all trades, master of none" aptly sums up their vulnerabilities. They can adapt to a wide variety of situations, but they will rarely if ever excel in any one of them compared to the other Legions.
    • Death Guard — Elitist/Brute/Loyal: The Death Guard favour a playstyle for a slow moving, but very hard hitting ranged army. They can endure in the face of both terrain and weapons that would lay low anyone else, being one of the few things immune to Fear in 30k, they will keep going forward no matter what, perfect for attrition warfare. Furthermore, due to both their legion-specific units being Terminators they can bring the highest amount of them amongst all Legions.
    • Sons of Horus — Elitist/Brute: The XVIth legion is one of the most vicious legions when it comes to assault operations, being able to reliably bring in reserves and confering a multitude of close range and assault-oriented bonuses, meant to overwhelm the enemy through multiple combats, superior numbers and sheer firepower. They have some highly customisable units and special characters which are statistically better than counterparts in other legions, but they are expensive for what they offer and are not as focused as some other Legions are.
    • Word Bearers — Technical/Loyal: The Word Bearers get access to Daemonic allies, Daemon-boosted unique units and special rules meaning they can have have a lot of invulnerable saves and Fear causing effects, but are also subject to a degree of random chance — if you want to go down that route. Furthermore, the ability to make many HQ choices into Sorcerers makes Word Bearers the premier Psychic force in the 30k environment, at least until Forge World releases rules for the Thousand Sons. At their simplest, the Word Bearers do well as a melee-oriented Legion, with their excellent morale and boosted Sweeping Advance chances.
    • Salamanders — Ranger/Loyal: The Salamanders' main themes are endurance and some of the best Legion-specific wargear available... along with their usual heat-based weapons. Endurance in they way of holding the line with their noticeable morale buffs and being outright immune to Fear. They also have some of the most resilient vehicles in the game, tied perhaps with the Iron Hands. But not everything is a straight step up from their 40k incarnation, having the dubious honour of being THE slowest Legion of them all. Their main issue remains that they are a slow force.
    • Raven Guard — Guerrilla: Either the Raven Guard have Furious Charge or appear from where you didn't expect them to. So basically fast and hiding in cover. Their bias for lightning-fast attacks and aerial deployment allows them to set up powerful Decapitation strikes, tying up enemy units only to suddenly appear behind the enemy lines and kill that pesky HQ.
    • Alpha Legion — Generalist/Technical/Espionage: The only thing for certain about Alpha Legion tactics is that they're an infantry-heavy army. As for what is that infantry going to do, you can't make predictions. They can have playstyles so different you'd think you're facing an entirely different legion. And with Alpharius and their Rite of War screwing enemy reserves and outright using units from other Legions, it might be. However, with Mutable Tactics being their only trait, they play like normal marines with a few buffs here or there, their actual advantage being flexibility.
    • Shattered Legions — Generalist: This is a themed army mixed up from a variety of different Legions, with some access to each of their special rules and units.
    • Adeptus Mechanicus — Elitist/Brute: Gameplay wise, Mechanicum models are universally hard as nails. However with a handful of exceptions they are somewhat pricey, a number are a steal for how effective they are but never the less when all you can do is choose between a variety of pretty expensive choices (with one, very notable exception). Tough as you are, this is primarily a crutch for the vast the majority of their models are short range, though they hardly lack in long range if you wanna put in some points here and there.
    • Solar Auxilia — Spammer/Generalist: The Solar Auxilia are a force with decent survival ability as well as the large numbers and firepower of classic Guard. Although they have competent melee units as well, if you want to make a melee-centric list, the only assault transport you can use is in the Lords of War slot. All in all, the Solar Auxilia list encourages a well balanced army.
    • Imperial Militia and Warp Cults — Spammer/Generalist: While not an overly powerful army, it is one of the most customisable armies you'll ever find. You can build an army of cyber augmented Skitarii wannabes, a feral world regiment of jungle warriors, a pre-compliant civilisation or even a full-fledged Chaos cult. This army pretty much allows you to do whatever you want. Your advantages include how cheap you are compared to other armies, the fact that you can buff your infantry fairly easily and the amount of armour and heavy firepower that you can bring to the field with cheap vehicles.
    • Army of Dark Compliance — Generalist: Another themed army, built from a blending of Legiones Astartes and units from the Warp Cults list. The insane customisation options in the Warp Cults list are still available, and you are not prevented from taking any option from your Legion list either.
    • Questoris Knights — ELITIST: See Imperial Knights above. Your army of superheavy walkers are universally immune to small arms fire and most melee attacks, but each loss will diminish your army considerably.
• Iron Kingdoms:
  • Cygnar: Balanced/Ranger: Cygnar is almost exclusively a ranged army, with everything having some level of ranged capability. Consequently, a lot of their abilities and spells are tailored to buffing that to ridiculous levels. Unfortunately almost every Cygnaran unit (barring cavalry and characters) are single-wound infantry. Even Cygnaran warjacks don't often get past “average” for their defensive stats, which in Warmachine means “going to get wrecked without support”.
  • Khador: Spammer/Brute: Khador's main profile is running lots of light infantry (Winter Guard, Assassins, Iron Fangs) usually supported by one heavy warjack. Unless you want to use Karchev all the time, filling your army list with warjacks is almost never the best use of your points. SPD 4 are the standard in Khador, but once Khador gets to the opponent, it's going to do some damage. Units such as the Doom Reavers or Iron Fang Pikemen are melee specialists and are solid fighters.
  • Protectorate of Menoth: Elitist/Brute/Technical: The Protectorate relies very heavily on synergy: combining elements of an army to be more powerful than their stat lines might suggest—and denial. The basic idea is that their units all work much better as a group than individually. Protectorate warjacks are rather lackluster if examined in a vacuum, but make up for this by fielding hands-down the best support units in the game. No one stacks buffs and de-buffs as well as the Protectorate, and their powerful support spells and abilities can make even the humblest fanatic strikingly effective — so long as you can keep your support units alive.
  • Cryx: Spammer/Technical: You can expect a typical Cryx army to be numerous, fragile and fast: lots of light infantry and warjacks with high SPD that can ignore terrain but will die as soon as you hit them. Cryx warcasters usually do more casting, something emphasised by the fact that Cryx has access to a lot of arc nodes which allows to extend the range of its spells and cover much more of the battlefield without putting its casters too close to the front lines. Unlike other armies, Cryx does not tend to buff their own troops, instead they will debuff the enemy.
  • Retribution of Scyrah: Balanced/Unit Specialist/Technical: The Retribution is a faction of versatility. On one hand, it has the Mage Hunters and Battle Mages — generally easy to remove if you can engage them but with many special rules that can turn the tide of a battle. On the other hand, there are the Dawnguard and Houseguard — generally more durable, slower, and more focused in a single role. Retribution armies are very, very fussy about their order of activation; you're unlikely to achieve maximum synergy if you do things in the wrong order and, thus, unlikely to win.
  • Convergence of Cyriss: Generalist/Technical: Each unit is very adaptable, but there are simply not many. The most important thing when running a Convergence army is to keep in mind that there are definite synergies in the army and, if you ignore them, you are just running around with sub-par models. On the other hand, if you can make it work, your opponent will be hard-pressed to find weaknesses. This is also reflected in the building of your force, which is a lot more difficult than with other factions. The Convergence of Cyriss also requires much more finesse and attention to order of activation than most other factions.
  • Trollbloods: Elite/Brute: Trolls are big. Trolls have a lot of medium based models. Enemy heavies will lament not being able to trample over your battle line. And they have all kinds of abilities that make them bigger and tougher.
  • Circle Orboros: Guerrilla/Ranger: The Circle army is fast and maneuverable, but many of its models do not hit terribly hard and most cannot take a lot of damage. It often plays as one might expect a hunter to behave: setting traps and ambushes, manoeuvring opponents to vulnerable positions, and controlling where the battle will happen. If you can get your opponent to spring one of your traps, you will likely win. The Circle has a lot of synergy, a few powerhouses, decent range, and is the only faction with a "teleportation" theme. Circle can play an attrition game with some of its warlocks, but mostly it is a game of trying to take down as many of your opponent's models as possible before their advantage in numbers or armour (or both) overwhelms you.
  • Skorne: Generalist/Unit Specialist/Brute: The Skorne are a combined arms faction, infantry that specialise against infantry, and warbeasts that specialise in killing warbeasts (the Bronzeback Titan being powerful enough to one-round a colossal). And they are in particular known for their support, especially Beast Handlers turning melee warbeasts into wrecking machines and providing fury management. What makes them a powerful force is that once they engage in melee, their foes usually crumble around their agony-inducing instruments of torture, and their armour is able to withstand the desperate counter-attacks of their opponents.
  • Legion of Everblight: Elitist/Ranger: The Legion of Everblight relies on a combination of ranged attacks and incredibly powerful warbeasts. Legion warbeasts are, apart from the lesser warbeasts, some of the most powerful and cost the most points of all the Hordes factions. With Eyeless Sight (universal among Legion warbeasts), Legion armies can effectively ignore many common advantages that other factions struggle to deal with or, in some cases, rely upon to defend themselves entirely. With an abundance of abilities like pathfinder, Flight, Stealth or simply a high speed stat, the Legion usually has no issue getting its beasts where it wants.
  • Mercenaries and Minions: Balanced/Generalist: They do a little bit of everything, with the intention of filling in any missing pieces in a player's army.
    • Searforge Commission: Elitist/Brute: They tend to have expensive troops, slow speed, moderate ranges, and high armour values. For example, lists which have cheap infantry might consider Horgenhold Forge Guard an elite unit to be screened by more expendable elements, whereas in the Searforge list, the Forge Guard are the cheapest infantry around.
    • Talion Charter: Balanced/Generalist/Pariah: With the exceptions of Phinneus Shae and the Commodore, absolutely everything in Talion is accessible to the Four Star and Highborn contracts, and the bonuses of the Talion contract don't offset the restrictions. So the only reason to use this list is to take Shae and his cannon outside of his tier list, but since Shae's tier list is much better than anything he gets from Talion Charter, nobody ever uses the contract except to play a fun, pirate list.
    • Puppet Masters: Spammer/Brute/Gimmick: Most of your drudges and monstrosities are cheap and awful, but when assisted by an Agitator drudges have the effective MAT and armour cracking ability of an elite unit like Stormblades. Otherwise you need to keep your unit leaders safe. The death of the Mind Bender or Mind Slaver leave you with awful troops who need to huddle together. If your Dominator dies your mercs run away. And if you lose your Agitators you lose a vast amount of power. Everything else is disposable. This means that a Cephalyx list is basically a massive wave of tough infantry that excels at breaking heavy armour. And gets destroyed by enemies with good spot-removal abilities.
    • Blindwater Congregation: Elitist/Unit Specialist/Brute: The Blindwater Congregation specialises in confronting the enemy with a core of very resilient and powerul Gatormen, while the Bog Trogs and Croaks flank and ambush the unwary. They have tough troops who won't go down easily, debuff-heavy warlocks, and terrain manipulation (with swamps).
    • Thornfall Alliance: Balanced/Brute: The Thornfall Alliance has a selection of amazingly powerful warlocks that favour close encounters, either by supporting their beasts or getting in themselves. Thornfall armies have access to hard-hitting warbeasts that dish out a lot of attacks, and each battlegroup can easily contain six or more beasts.
• BattleTech traditionally has fairly soft faction calculus between the two tech bases due to the huge amount of customization, though faction mechs show distinct trends:
  • The Clans are Elitist brute/rangers. Clan equipment is significantly more expensive than Inner Sphere equipment, but is lighter and more effective. Clan military doctrine considers artillery and the like dishonorable, so most of their units are direct combatants.
  • The Inner Sphere powers were pure Spammer when the Clans first invaded — they field twice or thrice as many mechs as the Clan — though as they recovered Lost Technology they took on Technical traits. The five Great Houses have their own minor twists on the archetype.
    • The Federated Suns are generalist brutes, loving nothing more than massed autocannon fire.
    • The Lyran Alliance are elitist brutes, fielding assault mechs out the wazoo. When they rediscover the long-range Gauss Rifle, they shift towards rangers.
    • The Capellan Confederation are guerrilla/technial, with many of their mechs carrying advanced electronic warfare suites.
    • The Draconis Combine are rangers, essentially a more spammy version of the Clans. Their bushido honor code encourages direct combat and their mechs are fast and powerful for their weight but usually lack armor and ECM.
    • The Free Worlds League are generalists, befitting their combined arms doctrine.
• Force of Will:
  • Brute: Fire. Very aggressive and use resonator with high stat during the late game.
  • Elitist: Darkness. Their card cost more than normal with their additional cost like paying life or banishing your own resonator.
  • Spammer/Generalist: Wind. Jack of all trades with the ability to do every role of other attribute but they also have the ability to generate token more than other attribute.
  • Turtle: Light. Have a lot of defensive spell and healing.
  • Technical/Gimmick: Water. Use trickery and bouncing to harass or confuse the enemy. Doesn't have high stat resonator like Fire and Darkness.
  • Balanced: Void. Void usually serve as the support for the other attribute.
• Root:
  • Marquise de Cat: Spammer/Generalist. Generally quite aggressive, and their ability to regain their troops when they die means they’re more likely to bring large armies to combat.
  • Eyrie Dynasties: Balanced/Berserker. Outside of the Marquise they’re probably the most straightforward faction in terms of combat, but their decrees mean they have to be very aggressive to avoid losing turns to political infighting.
  • Woodland Alliance: Guerilla. They have less units, but can roll higher in combat and perform their actions at a different time to everyone else.
  • Vagabond: Elitist. There is literally one of you.
  • Lizard Cult: Turtle/Espionage. They will never win a straight fight, but they don’t have to, having abilities to leech off wars between other players and being annoying to attack in return.
  • Riverfolk Company: Pacifist/Economist. Their win condition is based on trading cards with other players, and although they can get their hands dirty to push their own agenda, they generally don’t want to.
• A Song of Ice and Fire: Tabletop Miniatures Game
  • Stark: Balanced/Berserker: Generally average units that get stronger as they lose ranks. In Season 3, can also play as an Elitist/Brute faction relying heavily on Tully Cavaliers (elite lance cavalry).
  • Lannister: Balanced/Technical: Average, slower units with lots of panic and control mechanics. Signature tactics card is Counterplot.
  • Night's Watch: Elitist/Brute: To the point where many think it's a Game Breaker faction. And they get stronger as the game goes on thanks to their unique card attachment mechanic.
  • Free Folk: Spammer/Gimmick: Lots of cheap expendable units, but relies on tricks and traps to take advantage of their numbers and activation advantage.
  • Baratheon: Balanced/Turtle: Slow, defensive, retaliatory.
  • Targaryen: Balanced/Ranger: Lots of fast glass cannons.
  • Greyjoy: Balanced/Gimmick-Berserker: Get stronger as they get kills thanks to their unique Pillage mechanic. They also have some of the best healing in the game.
  • Martell: Elitist/Technical: Fast, high-powered units with great special abilities and debuff tricks, but generally with low armor if they get stuck in combat.
  • Neutrals: No real character, though in Season 3, they lean towards Elitist/Generalist thanks to Golden Company units.
  • Boltons: Pariah: Weak deck, weak units, and no access to neutrals makes them the bottom-dwellers in Season 3.

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