About a year or so ago, we spent a considerable amount of time talking about mini-codices that were playable and yet, did not use up a full Foc. These codices were in fact designed to be allied codex's. Now that we have one of these codices, the Inquisition, what could that mean for the future of what is to come?
Here is a rumor we had from July of 2012 from an anonymous source that was part of a behind the scenes conversation.
There is a strong desire to add new and interesting ways to use allies, beyond just mixing and matching existing armies.
In a recent iteration of the Tau playtest material Kroot were removed as one developer felt that tables looked "clutterd" and tau armies looked "rag-tag" when using Allies, at the same time as Kroot and Vespid.
This was seconded by it being suggested that Space Marines for instance, may have a willingness to work with Tau, but might react poorly to the barbaric Xenos that are Kroot.
This expanded into the idea of making mini-dexes that are not designed to stand on their own. Army lists with 1-2 HQ options, 1 troop option, and only 1 of each other slot, or even some slots completely ignored.
These lists would be released in White Dwarf along with all the models necessary if they currently didn't exist. These "splats" would be easy to physically design and produce, so the idea has taken some root.
While it would be possible to play an entire army using one of these lists, it would not be balanced and would be missing lots of tools and have huge gaps. Normally this is a design issue, but could be easily overlooked in this instance.
The first idea for a list such as this is Kroot, who could therefore have a different allegiance level with Tau and Space Marines and still end up on the same table in games of 2k+.
This would add to the cinematic worth where Tau are not commanding Kroot, but instead a Shaper would have his own warband since as Allies it would require an HQ.
This would also start bringing into question interesting relationships between the levels of allegiance in terms of where these chunks of the army could be on the battlefield. Tau being battle brothers with both, but Space Marines being Desperate with Kroot.
Potentially this could allow all sorts of sub-races, or existing ideas which cannot be fully fleshed out into entire armies to find their way into this edition. Who knows, if something takes hold it could later be expanded upon in the same way.
This is SO early though, so it's all very much so subject to change.
In the Future
This is just a look at some of what could be coming, these are not rumors, although a few do mention previous rumors.
A Kroot codex is probably the first thing that comes to mind, as well as an expanded alliance for the Tau. These would be good mini-dexes. These have been rumored, and probably even playtested out some, as we had lots of rumors in the past of "other" kroot being worked on and even modeled. A Kroot codex is hopefully not too far off.
Harlequins. Now here is one that I would love to see, and makes a great candidate for us Eldar fans. It would fit well into many armies, mostly eldar and dark eldar, but could easily tag along some of the other races we see in various degrees of alliance.. This is one that as Dark Eldar come about in 2015 that I would love to see.
Legion of the Damned. Ok, there has been no rumors of this, but this is on my wish list. They would fantastic to dig into their origins and even perhaps vary them some.
Gaunt's Ghosts. Those guys we love to read about. There are just not a lot of them around, and a mini-dex would be very cool to have a squad or two of them running around. This is by far wish listing way down the road, but how fun would this be?
Book of (Chaos Gods). Yes, this is already rumored to be coming next year. What format are these going to be in? Mini-dex, codex supplement, or possibly even their own full codex? We just dont know right now, but the most obvious format would be that of a mini-dex. Not only would a mini dex suit them, they would be quicker to make without having to create a ton of new units for each one.
Tzeentch is rumored to be first, and that would be a ton of fun, and throw some life into the people that want to combine daemons and marines in new ways. Of course we recently had a Khorne codex rumor as well, even if it was a little far fetched.
Genestealer Cults. Yea, thats right, Genestealer cults would work best as a mini-dex that allowed a contingent of Imperial Guard or very specific units.
I know there are lots of other ideas and other armies that could easily fall into the mini-dex format, and I am sure I am missing some more of the obvious ones, or others that would be excellent to fall into this category.
This games is expanding fast, and is becoming extremely variable on what we can play and face across the tabletop. I believe the future of this game over the next two years will be very exciting for us as a hobby and game.
What other mini dex's would you be interested in, or think we could use?