Now that all four factions have been announced, it is time to see how the wars will go on between them. Eldar were the final chapter to get a full feature last week. Now that we know most of what each faction will field it is time to look at how they will match up.
Space Marines vs. Chaos Marines
The classic war, the Heresy, this match up will be offset by whatever Behavior Interactive does with Chaos. If the Chaos warriors are given certain gifts and boon then it will add a lot of flavor to them. However, the four chaos chapters we will see in the game at launch are not god aligned, so what types of benefits we will see remains uncertain. Space Marines on the other hand bring firepower to the fight. They also bring brutal assault and some of the best tanks in the game. What will be interesting to see here is how Space Wolves will differ from say Dark Angels and so on. If each chapter is given their own unique abilities it will make for some great lore among the players. I see this match up pretty even all things considered.
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Eldar vs. Orks
This match-up is a question of speed. Eternal Crusade has already said the Evil Sunz are in the game which brings the Speed Freaks to the tabletop. However, Ork vehicles are fragile at best. The main thing here will be if your Ork Nob can ride a bike and how close they keep it to the 40K rules. If so you will see loads of Ork bikers out there, I mean who wouldn’t want to play one? The Eldar have speed on their side as well. Jet Bikes will hopefully be available to the faction, unsure on that one yet. If they are Eldar will be zipping across the battlefields to the fight. In terms of fire power, I wonder if they will find a way to make the ork shooting interface really bad. The flip side of that coin would be to make the Eldar shooting much more precise. There is no telling how these two extremely different factions will match up but it should be interesting.
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Chaos vs. Eldar
How will psykers impact the game? That is really the question here. We already know Warlocks for the Eldar are in the picture. The question then becomes how powerful will Chaos Sorcerers be if they make their way to the field? Most likely I can see the Word Bearers having some psychic powers which will match up against the Eldar Warlocks. The other main area I see this fight going is in the heavy fire power department. Dark Reapers vs. Iron Warriors is the real fun match up to watch. Both use heavy firepower and both have some really cool weapons at their disposal, this is a great match up to look out for when the game launches.
Orks vs. Space Marines
This is the classic basis to the entire game of Warhammer 40,000. Space orks fighting against enhanced human marines. The history of this match up goes all the way back to the first box covers. Now, the difference between these two factions to watch out for is numbers. The free-to-play options of Ork Boyz could literally flood the battlefields. If this starts to happen it will tip the scales quickly in the orks favor. However, Marines should be able to kill ork boyz easily, but will have a much tougher time when it comes to the Nobz. In that match up the Nob will likely be stronger in melee vs. the Marine, but horrible at shooting.
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I know there are more match-ups to look at, but thought we should start talking about the wild cards to this game instead of repeating some of the faction talk. Here is the basic question, which faction will be the strongest? Well, that is answered simply by the one who has their act together. The most organized factions in this game will rise to the top quickly. The ones who have guilds and powerhouse squads running around will be very hard to match up against in combat. If you are part of a faction that is unorganized and random, you will lose more often than you think.
Eternal Crusade will have some critical elements to the game on how the community works with each other. If you can get ten friends together to form a squad, join a really strong, large, chapter and play together regularly, you will have a serious impact on that battlefield. Hopefully we will see some powerful community tools in place to make sure people can meet up and play together!
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