Hey would you guys be interested in a homebrew theme?

Disclaimer:

I have, in years past, run my own personal Khador CIDs for models such as the Berserker chassis, Butcher2, and Harkevich.

Additionally, I wrote and played my own modified Unbound rules format after I found the official MK III Unbound rules lacking.

The chief problem you will face is this: no matter how much you test beforehand, no matter how thoroughly you preemptively address concerns, roughly zero people will agree with you once you show the new rules.

The Warmachine community, in my experience, has a severe allergy to using rules beyond what appears in Steamroller. (Heck, even after 2.5 years of the new edition, I’d still get groans when putting Burning Earth or Rolling Fog on the table! Apparently anything beyond a forest, obstacle, obstruction was too much...) I fought uphill battles even getting people to use officially published rules from No Quarter!

Additionally, I don’t know how much mileage you’d get out of this effort. I don’t think there’s an appetite for this in the wider community. I think this sort of community-driven mod works better in the loosey-goosey Warhammer ruleset.

What I do think would be productive is if we could all come to an agreement on what we’d like to see out of CID, so we can go in with a unified vision, like the Circle players did when they pushed through the ludicrous Tharn changes a couple months after the tepid results from the MoW CID.

Burning Earth is also a cloud effect, and can also physically be removed from the table by Wind Blast or anything that removes cloud effects. So, it's more than just a way to apply Continuous Fire/Corrosion to stuff.

Yes, it's lethal to single-wound dudes, but it makes for interesting "Do I send my multi-wound stuff through it?" decisions.

In RPG, since you aren't play competitive games and the story is the most important factor, so there are many houserules.

But for competitive multiplayer game, I don't think that homebrew theme is acceptable. At first you need a bunch of followers in order to actually run it, but I doubt you can make it. The only acceptable homebrew element in the game rules is tournament rules, or a makeshift rules for the game that is already abandoned by the developers.

It sounds like you are trying to fix the Iron Fangs theme more than create a new theme. If you would like to discuss changes to the LoS theme (what's wrong, what's right, new unit suggestions) I think that you will find more interest among the others.

If we were to talk about fixing Legion of Steel — and sorry Olaf, this is what happens when you ask people for their opinions on fixing stuff — then I can offer a simple guide.

That is: Butcher1’s Claws of the Dragon theme force in MK II. I’ve written about this several times before, but it boils down to: cheaper models = more bodies, mild revamps to certain models (Sofya, looking at you), better delineation between IFP and Black Dragons, mild theme revamps (the existing benefits are weird considering what the theme needs).

But, something or the other.

It needs to give you plus fifteen to plus twenty freebie points. I would be much happier with the theme lists as a concept if they just dropped the entire requisition thing and we ran 95 point games as a standard instead. I realize the entire point of them is to try and manage the ongoing model bloat but I think they do a pretty poor job of it. It's just frustrating. I do like the template. Very clean and straightforward.

But anyway, I don't want to run LoS. I want to run Iron Fangs in a viable theme. Not the same thing. LoS is an iron fang spam list. Any 'fix' of LoS need to remain true to this fact. Otherwise it's not LoS, it's just a new theme with iron fangs in it with the same name as LoS. Problem is spamming Iron Fangs is dumb. They all do basically the same thing. Compare to winterguard:

Wanna swarm? Infantry.
Want to not go all in on winterguard and just take a few winteguard for the sac pawn? Infantry.
Ranged? Rifle corps. And rocketeers.
Durable melee presence? Battle engine.
Glorious gunline jank? Artillery. 

And that's all without bringing in any of the other units you can take in the winterguard theme. 

Meanwhile iron fangs:
Want to do something that isn't a solid melee attack if you get a charge? Take something that isn't iron fangs. 

Basically Iron Fangs can be good but... they need other troops. What does everyone call it? Combined arms? But if you turn LoS into a combined arms theme it's no longer LoS. So no I don't want to fix LoS, I want to do a new theme. Cause it would be fun to run with iron fangs. Also I do like the flavour of a Jackhunter force, and it's fun playing around with themes. And the forum is a bit still at the moment and I wanted to prod some activity into it. There is more than one motivation. This is a complex multi layered operation here. 

So with that all said this is what I got so far:

Theme: Jackhunters
Khador will regulary organize forces dedicated to handle hostile incursions by Warjack or Warbeast heave enemy deployments. Unofficially these forces have come to be known as: Jackhunters. 


Models Allowed:

Warcasters: All Khador warcasters
Warjacks: All Khador warjacks
Battle Engines: None

Units & Solos: 
Up to one each of the following
Iron Fang Pikemen
Iron Fang Dragons 
Iron Fang Uhlans
Iron Fang Kovnik
Plus any attachments to the above

Up to Force Allowance of
Man-O-War Drakhun
Iron Fang Character Solos
Widowmaker Units & Solos
Greyforge Seers

Greylord Adjunct
War Dog

Mercenary and Minions:
1 Minon or Mercenary solo
1 Minion or Mercenary unit
1 Minion or Mercenary battle engine
Captain Valachev

Requisition Options:

Iron Fang Kovniks
Iron Fang attachments
Small Base Iron Fang character solos
Widowmaker Solos
Warcaster Attachments
Greyforge Seers

Theme Bonuses:

Friendly Khador Warjacks Gain: Heavy Boiler (When this model runs, add 2" to its movement)
Friendly Iron Fang Units Gain: Prey[Warjack, Warbeast]: After deployment but before the first player's turn, choose an enemy Warjack or Warbeast to be this model/unit's prey. A model with Prey gains +2 to attack and damage rolls against its prey. When the prey is destroyed or removed from play, choose another model/unit to be the prey.

Friendly Iron Fang Models Gain: Giant Hunters: When this model charges a model with a large or huge base, it gains 2" movement and pathfinder. 

Color Scheme
As jack hunters are drawn from regular troops, they can have any color schemes and sometimes contain disparate color schemes between different unit types drawn from different regiments. Dedicated Jackhunter lists often have Greens and Browns in them, or standard Khador red supplemented with yellow. 
<insert three images of example Jackhunter armies here, with some cute lorefriendly caption underneath of who they are and what they did>