Are you familiar with such a thing as a fatal fault? When you see something and suddenly feel an urge to create — the same something but better. Without said fatal fault that festers the original concept and stops you from fully enjoying it.

Some time ago, my friend SMT5015 came across Equestria Divided, an AU setting of Equestria that had tried to give a more realistic and grimdark view on Equestria as we know it. Everything was nice but… In his opinion, Equestria: Divided in strive to appear more like Warhammer Fantasy failed at two things: by shameless brutalization of the Equestria of modern times we see in the TV series and by exploiting the characters to gain easy attention. The idea to build up something like this was born. Moreover, there as well was Sensko who had also tried to come up with “pony battles setting” idea, only more sensible and distant in time from the idyllic modern Equestria adored by so many people. You can find his rosters of units at Derpibooru, though the tag lacks a lot of relevant art. So what’s next? SMT5015 had a closer look at Sensko's art, an icon of Total War: Warhammer at the desktop and an immense desire to make better.

By the present moment, SMT5015 has detailed a great deal of Three Tribes Universe’s lore; he wrote several stories set in it and drew about five political/national factions for a pre-Equestrian era that predates the world of three pony tribes and the Windigo Crisis. The matter is that he does it in Russian, so I’m going to help him a bit with translation and composition of rosters.

Examples of the art:

Now we’ve worked up a two-part English roster of Hel tribes. Hel is the northernmost part of the Old World where ponies would later migrate from to Equestria, fleeing the oncoming windigoes, but for now it serves as a nest of barbaric invasions and raids to devastate everything that lies south. Hel army consists of savage, survival-hardened sapients like ponies and gryphons, and of more sinister creatures born by the evil goddess of hate and cold.

SMT5015’s DA
SMT5015’s Derpi

See, this is why I can't get behind it. Because it is a shameless attempt to do what Fantasy did, but with ponies. Warhammer, across all of it's various incarnations, stands alone I feel, in what it did with usual story types. It took them.

And then kicked them in the ass out the door and down the steps. Not sure the same would ever work with MLP.

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By now I'm not even sure am I doing this or something different. But kicking canon is a goal, sure. The only question is what do you mean by saying "I can't get behind it"?

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Simple. Besides being a shameless Warhammer Fantasy knockoff, to some degree, if I remember right, what happened to Equestria, and the Mane 6's fault in the whole thing, kills it for me.

It's been a long time since I've seen anything for it, so maybe I'm not remembering it all right. Just from this though, I can't get behind it.

Unless your version changes somethings about anyway. More than shown here.

7140649
Errrr so you think it's an EqD fanwork about modern Equestria with Mane6 present?

Looks nice, love the art style, looks suitably gritty and inspired by Warhammer but also maintains some of the original style of MLP.
Can't wait to see what those translated stories will be like.
Personally, I'm not worried at all about how this will segway into the modern times of EqD, rewrite that part however you like, I'll be focused on the "meatier" ancient past.

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Thanks, but... We surely need a disclaimer about this being TOTALLY NOT RELATED to EqD. EqD was only popular enough to inspire me for the actual work while Three Tribes' lore leads to the actual canon time without Godlestia and other outdated stuff.