To start a new faction, or to stick to one

That was Grymkin for me, luebbi.

I already had (still have) 3 factions that if I'm being brutally honest I don't play enough to justify, but the limited release faction of Grymkin meant I could get everything I wanted, paint it up, and then (almost) never worry about adding to / maintaining it. It's worked out really nicely so far, and my Grymkin have been a blast.

-und_ed

I've played almost exclusively Ret since I started playing Warmachine with occasional dabbling in to Trollkin (didn't like their infantry), Skorne (got sick of painting filagree, also couldn't figure out Fury 5), and Khador (basically just Russian Ret with different jacks). I was super excited about CoC but didn't have the funds to get in to it on release and for the past few years I've pretty much played Ret while sitting on a small Khador force because I love Old Witch.

MkIII was initially great for Ret, then themes have been less great, then I was playing other games for a while. Eventually I was back to playing a lot of Warmachine and started getting frustrated with listbuilding in Ret so I decided to look at a second faction again. I didn't want to expand Khador because other than jack-spam with a couple casters the only thing that really made Khador play differently from Ret was heavy infantry. Eventually I decided to sell off my Khador (except Old Witch) and jump in to Grymkin and it's completely re-invigorated my interest in the game. I love my elves and I'm never going to drop the faction but Grymkin is just so different from Ret in style and mechanics that I'm almost playing a different game. The warlocks are more dynamic, the corpse mechanic is unlike anything in Ret, and with a limited roster I don't have to worry too much about collection bloat. Not only that but the visual design is completely different and I'm looking forward to using it to really push my painting to the next level.

That said, I don't think I would have wanted to jump in to a new faction in my first couple years. I suppose if I hadn't clicked with Ret so much at the start it would be different but for me Ret was exactly what I was looking for when I started the game. Branching out can definitely make you a better player, and playing another faction (or another game) can help make sure you don't get burned out of the game. If you can afford a second faction I think it's generally worth having, but before you drop in to one you should definitely think about why you want to play it; I love Khador's fluff and aesthetic but got bored quickly because they have broadly the same playstyle as my primary faction which could be a huge waste of money.