While the intent of the design is to promote reasons for cross-factions, these ACs definately have uses for faction purity. Heck, why play one Harka when you could field five, giving them all the zesty abilities of OotCS for free?

Are Mjolnir and I about to agree?

There must be a planetary alignment! :D

Sadly true. The BPR have a tradition of getting over-costed, under-ranged, slow, low attack, poor defense, low damage pieces. It's like they make pieces for every other faction and then say," You know, I think we need more pieces that are less useful than everything else out there. Let's make some black powder figs that look really cool and really suck!"

I'm sure I will get lambasted by all the BPR fans out there, but I have to say, with very few exceptions, BPR figs under-perform almost every other faction's figures.

Every times I feel sorry for them and decide to play one of their figures, I always find a better one cheaper in another faction.

There is no excuse for the **steam mauler! Even Technomantic control cast on it twice only brings it up to the speed most other pieces start out. And the cost!

Now on to the topic. I like the cards because you can be a faction pure snob (happily I'm not) or you can be a min/maxer which I am!

Pickman

Gotta agree with Quantrill, I don't know why WK is so anti-faction pure, oh I know, because people would only get as much as they need for two or three factions and a lot less people would be out to collect everything.

It's wierd though, because they actually do support mono-faction with the new Mechwarrior sets with their "faction pride" cards, I don't know why these aren't the same...sometimes ideas work WELL across game brands.

Did anyone notice the AC says to roll a die for each figure you choose and then it gets healed? I guess I would always choose all my figures all the time.

But i think they are very well done. They are like domains that you can play only one game/round and cost points (maybe free). They'll have to do something to keep these away from conquest though, I could see someone easily playing 5 in one game (if you can).

I gotta agree with Dernjg on this. It can support single faction (single unit in the case above) play nicely also.

S

It can support single-faction, but doesn't actually REWARD it, since you can play multi-faction and get the EXACT same benefits. Single-faction, or even purer, single sub-faction, builds, obviously have more inherent weaknesses than multi-faction builds (i.e. taking the best pieces from each faction to build the best armies).

So, these type of cards are finally a way to reward single-faction players and to help make single-faction armies more competetive.

I just hope WK doesn't really miss the boat on this opportunity....

In the case of Raydan it makes sence to not be faction pure, his team is multi-factional by its nature. I hope to see some fiction teams and some pure faction though.

Excellent point Ver. I suspect these Adventuring Companies will be at least somewhat based on the fiction. Therefore, you'll see some mutli-factional ACs like this one, and maybe some single-faction ones based on a group from one of the factions, like maybe some assassins from the Dark Crusade or some underground resistance in the BPR... who knows.

Why does it need to be single faction pure? Why do single faction armies need to be "rewarded"? It goes against the entire back story of the game and what WK has always wanted to do. The idea has ALWAYS been to "Choose your hero, build your army, create your destiny" (or however it went). Unless WK wants to make a Raydan Marz faciton (which they might) we must mix/match to be able to play a "Raydan Marz pure faction" army.

Seriously, what is stopping people from playing pure faction armies? Do pure faction armies just suck that bad (I wouldn't know, I"m not the worlds best player)? If so, the problem is with WK not making all around good figures for each army, not in the mix/match system. If not, there is no problem and your just trying to impose your will/view of the game on others. It's strange to me that there are plenty of calls to have "pure faction play" but no one on the other side of the 'issue' is calling for WK do away with mono style play (because you can surly do it now).

Besides, nothing says that WK won't make company cards that can only be used by Pure faction armies. Why don't we just hold judgement until after the set it released.

Just my oppinion as always...

Now to the subject....I was expecting a little more out of adventuring companies then a easy way for WK to create factions/sub-factions. It really surprizes me that you can reduce the cost to 0 as well. The ability to heal a click seems powerful enough that paying full price, no matter what your figure count would be worth it.

Wait, if Mage Knight isn't about faction pure armies then wouldn't they do some sort of fiction about mixed armies fighting? Wouldn't they do make short stories or comics and include them in the starters or something? ;)

Seriously, Mage Knight was originally about a Warlords armies of mixed factions. "Faction purity" is something that crept into the game because of some players styles.

WizKids have actually done some things recently that strengthen faction pure armies. Look at the Dark Riders and Sorcery faction domains. Dragon's Gate is a great domain for Draconum pure armies. Play it against a player who only has a single Draconum in their army and they are definitely inconvenienced by it.

Now they are going back to the basics of the individual Warlords with their mixed bands. I wouldn't be suprised if the original surviving Warlords appeared with their warbands (I think only Darq, Rayden and Black Thorn remain) in the adventuring companies.

Well, the ads appear to imply otherwise - "Adventuring companies create multifactional groups with their own special abilities."

Then again, assuming how rules work based on marketing information is always tricky, at best.

Very interesting. From the looks of it, the Order of the Crescent Sword is based around three factions: Orc Khans, Atlantean Empire, and BPR (assuming Raydan Marz belongs to AE). I really like this concept (there are some motley crews out there that work like a team such a Kerrai, Snow, Byrch, and Co.), but I agree that there should definately be some Adventuring Companies that focus on faction purity. I could imagine something like the Order of Mortis including Mortis Draconum (unlikely since he's retired, but I can always dream ;)), Whelp Monks, Grathakar (he has Stealth afterall), and some new draconum (perhaps a new non that pays homage to the Mortis the same way the Magna Champion does for the Magna Draconum).

But one question remains: would multiple of a Cohort non be able to reduce the Company cost more (say, 3 Harkas reduce the price by 21)?

It says right there in the example "two delphana masters"

I was gonna mention em :) yay BPR! :)

hmm there may be other adventure companies that effect everyone in an opponent's adventuring company.....you might not want to choose everyone if thats the case ;)

Irk! This card doesn't benefit or promote any new builds, this just begs you to keep playing your Delphana Masters with Harka familiars even more! I hope they do soem different stuff with the other cards that might be a little mroe original.

Now, it's not as though these cards prevent pure faction benefit, more often then not I sport quite a number of Harkas in any of my pure orc armies, so I would essentially get to toss this card on for free. The same applies to anyone who loves to field those great Prieskans too. The only problem is if the cards end up benefitting already grounded multi-faction combos it could start getting disgusting.