Asterians

The Asterians are your resident ancient elitist alien race in Warpath. They're kind of like Eldar in Warhammer 40,000 and have similar units, although their fluff doesn't really cross over. They started as an army in Deadzone, but have now made the jump to Warpath in the new alpha rules.

Background

The Asterians are the oldest race in the setting, having traveled through space when all the other races were still playing with themselves on their homeworlds. Interestingly enough, every other sentient race has stories of Asterians kidnapping members of their species throughout their histories, seemingly making them the setting's grey aliens even though they don't look like them either. Regardless, most races don't trust them because of these past encounters.

Most of the information released on them is through GCPS studies, hence making it hard to know much of the asterian history and activities outside of warfare. What it is known tough is the following:

-Asterians are tri gender(having one female gender and two male genders( true male and neutral male), this would serve to justify the androginous look of some Asterians, also it explains the way their military is structured in a Three way sistem.

- Asterians are not an empire but rather a lose confederation of states, similar to craftworlds, but it is unknown yet, how much of space do they occupate or if they are Asterian worlds. What it is rumoured though is that they were the first race to encounter the plague, and they let it reach humanity...for the LULZ

- Asterians place importance in balance, and see war as an activity necessary to archieve it, but they are not warlike

- Their technology is mainy biomechanically based, similar to wraithbone, but as far as we know with less focus on psykers and souls

- Asterians have a splynter cell of pirates known as Kalyshi, who are more known in GCPS space as pirates and traders, similar in essence to Forge Father Brokkrs

Military

Asterians and Eldar are actually very different militarywise, while eldar focus on ritual warriors and psychic might, with wraithbone constructs as support, Asterians instead use mostly constructs operated remotedly ( you know like an endangered species actually should) with only Kalishy and overseers being seen on the battlefield.

These constructs can be divided into roughly three categories:

- Drones: similar to tau drones

- Marionettes: The backbone of the army, remote controlled soldiers with a variety of weapons at their disposal. Interestingly, one Asterian can control many marionettes at the same time, hence making the asterian default battle experience similar to an actual videogame for said Asterian

- Cyphers: The elite drones, though technically they are more like Asterian avatar, since the connection between cypher and asterian requires a complex ritual and mostly one asterian controls one cypher unlike marionettes. Cyphers are flexible with acces to normal rifles, energy gauntlets and even katanas.

Also Asterians have weapon platform artillery, grav tanks and some weird segway speeders.

All in all, at the battlefield, an asterian army is more prone to look like a melange of eldar and necron armies than a traditional eldar army, and could even be used as a tau army if one so desires.

Dreadball

The Asterians have two teams in Dreadball split between two seasons. The Shan-Meeg Starhawks were introduced in Season 3. They get access to all four player types, and their base team kit even comes with a defensive coach. Their team rules are split between their player types and include some once per game effects, so bookkeeping is required. Their guards have an ability that allows them to claim they were fouled on the pitch, forcing a check against an opponent's player. This can only be done once per game per player though.

Their jacks and strikers both have a rule called "Fragile" that gives them a single automatic fail on any armor check. This really sucks, but is supposed to be balanced by the second jack ability which lets them claim they were fouled as they pass by an opposing player. This forces a check just like with the guards mentioned above. So basically they're dirty, cheating space elves.

The Bremlin Nebulas were introduced in Season 5 and are female space pirate Asterians. They only have access to strikers and jacks, which is somewhat limiting. In the fluff they're said to be the most common type of Asterian most Humans encounter, leading to a "distorted" view of Asterian culture, at least according to the Asterians.