I’ve been thinking about it for quite some time, but I recently made the jump to start a new army, this time in the world of HORDES. It took me a while to figure out precisely which faction I wanted to play, and I finally settled on Circle Orboros.

Believe it or not, this wasn’t quite as easy a choice for me as it might have first appeared. If you know me at all, you probably guessed that any faction with wolves would be an open and shut, easy pick. You’re mostly right, and, when it came right down to it, it was my initial draw, but it wasn’t the only factor I thought about. Specifically, while Circle Orboros does have cool wolf warbeasts, my first impression of the warpwolves wasn’t positive. I don’t know whether it was the posing or the shape (specifically of the pureblood warpwolf), but something just rubbed me the wrong way about the models. It was hard to not judge the faction by their warpwolves, so I couldn’t be sure, and so didn’t buy in.

My second choice was the Legion of Everblight (strange that they would be distinct enemies of the Orboros). At first glance, I really liked the look of their warbeasts, they were weird shaped, sure, but between the color scheme and their poses, I really liked their look. The main drawback, for me, was that I really don’t like to play the evil guys in any game that I play. It could probably be said that none of the factions in HORDES are “good” guys, but the Legion came across to me (in reading the fiction) as being the “we’re EVIL” race, which, fiction-wise, doesn’t really do it for me. So, I didn’t really buy into them either.

I did, of course, look into the other factions, but there wasn’t really enough to get me interested beyond passing glance. Trollbloods seemed a little bit too much like Khador (which was already playing), and I found it hard to be drawn to them. Khador, at least, had the Northerner/hardened by cold feel to it, which I definitely enjoy, and Trollbloods didn’t have that. Alternately, the style of the Skorn didn’t really appeal – not sure what it was, but they were mostly dismissed out of hand as not having the right feel for an army. Minions, like Mercenaries, didn’t appeal partially because of their limited selection of models, but mainly due to their lack of theme/cohesion. I wasn’t looking for variety, more an interesting theme.

Once Domination hit and some of the new models started showing up on the site, Circle really pulled ahead as a faction I was really interested in. The Celestial Fulcrum was just too awesome to pass up, and the new plastic warpwolves looked pretty cool to boot. Since then, they have also released the Winter Argos, which I really like the look of, and their warlocks have also grown on me. I picked up their Forces book a couple of months ago, and have really just been waiting for their plastic warpack to drop before I started in. Well, that happened this week, and so I started a new army!