Faction importance

Magnus - he's a faction all by himself.

He's a one man fluff machine. A main character in 3 books who put together the largest mercenary army the IK have ever seen and managed to effect regime change in Cygnar which has dramatically altered that faction's attitude to military action. Beyond that he directly influenced Stryker and Caine in their development (he directly trained Stryker and pursuing Magnus was part of the move from Caine1 to Caine2). He's driven more of the background from the WM perspective than anyone else.

But sadly no battlebox.

In Hordes, Skorne and Circle are probably the most important, but Skorne more visibly. They've attacked a major Cygnaran city, threaten bits of the Protectorate and have now launched a full invasion of Ios (something which no human army, or even the IK bogeymen, the Orgoth, ever did).

And Farrow are super important. It's just that Lord Carver is turning out to be the Leisurely Bringer of Most Massive Destruction. He'll get there eventually.

Collect all of the factions?!? That, sir, is a pretty big goal to set for yourself.

Collecting miniatures based upon faction importance in the background is a bit of a sideways approach to collecting the miniatures, kind of like appreciating the letters in the alphabet based upon what color they are. The "importance" of a faction can be measured in several different ways.

If you go based upon sheer volume of background material written, then collect Cygnar (and the mercenaries that love it) and don't worry too much about the others.

If you go based upon impact upon the landscape then the Elves / Retribution of Scyrah are the next choice - their ancestors cracked the continent and created a massive desert after succeeding to build a bridge to their version of heaven.

If you go based upon the size / importance of the patron of the faction then Protectorate of Menoth is all about the god Menoth (think Catholic Church + Islamic Jihad + Spanish Inquisition, all on a bad hair day) while Cryx is backed by the grand-daddy of all dragons.

If you go based upon overall impact to the storyline, then Thamar, who is credited with giving mankind "The Gift" of magic should be your next target, but she never started a faction. The best you could do for Thamar is a Mercenary Thamarite warcaster and a small collection of Thamarite solos.

If I were you, I would collect based upon what really calls out to you, either based upon looks or how the army fights in a game. After all, are the farrow important to the storyline? Not really, but the idea of collecting female Wagnerian Opera battle pigs (and friends) is really calling to me.

Grapheme-color synesthesia is surprisingly common, like a few percent of the population, so there are actually a substantial number of people who do exactly that.

No problem here. I can definitely see why it'd seem sideways to someone without it. I just thought it was funny that your "sideways" example was actually a thing.

Some other fun synesthesia facts: Most people who have it don't realize it's synesthesia. They may not yet realize that not everyone has it. It's a lot like reading. You know how you read and have like a voice or voice-like sound in your head? Or you read the words "red door" and automatically have a mental image of a red door? It's like that.

If relevance to the game world is important, you should start with Trollkin. Everything else is just a snack!

😬

That's a bit of a fallacy. Say something random to someone like "pink elephant" and what they really think is "why is this wacko spouting random words at me?"

It's not until you add "and you can't help but visualise a pink elephant" that their brain actually starts imagining what you think it 'has' to imagine.