To be fair, I'm wondering the same thing and I play them. A faction named Pan Oceania somehow tilting more and more towards a european spaceknight theme is just off. I know they sell, so I can't blame CB but the standard space marine on bike is a pretty good reason for me to focus more on CA.
Oh yeah, no doubt about it. I never saw anyone complain about not having to deal with a lot of board control or trickery. It never stopped the "f... Pan O" chants but those seemed to get thrown around merely on principle not because of any actual gameplay element.
Ultramarines, obviously xD, they're the supreme symbol of GW and of its followers, exalted children, nothing more xD. Anyway, personally I don't like aliens, there's not really a faction I hate but the Illusive man was right, Humanity First !
Having seen the piles of bodies Ariadnan armies lose each battle - it's a wonder Dawn has any Ariadnans left.
Apparently I have no soul (well, it hasn't shown up yet and no-one has been able to show me empirical proof of the evidence of any of them, anyway). I don't "hate" any faction, there are just factions I won't play because I loathe their design aesthetics when it comes to the models, or other deeply held biases (Russians, 'Mercans, tartan, fish people, artichokes, angry space monkeys, deviant space nuns, furries, etc). Hate is a waste of emotion.
So far I don't "hate" any faction. I never felt like it was an uphill battle because of the armies we fielded, like it was some times in Warmachine.
Tohaa are still the worst designed faction though. I don't think that's overly harsh as a comment, and I think Spiral Corps is very much an "oh dear, Tohaa went wrong" response.
This is why I think we need to replace the 'Dead' state with 'Out of Action'. Same in-game effect, but not explicitly flatlined-dead in fluff. Major broken bones, head trauma, etc making them incapable of further combat right this second regardless of how many combat stimms you give them, but recoverable with some time in the hospital once the shooting stops.
I'm okay with calling it 'dead', even on Dawn the medical technology is over and above the most advanced modern trauma surgery, so there's 'dead' that you can probably survive even without a cube, 'Dead' that you can only come back from a backup, and 'DEAD' were you're definitely not coming back...
Which faction I hate the most? Hmm... I think my minis say it best :D Just as an example ;) Aleph and PanO are my favourite additions to my soldiers' bases ;) PozdRawiam / Greetings for them!
Hey Past-Red, future-Red here. You know that joke you made about Uxia MacNeill getting another sculpt? Well... One new Uxia down, and one more to go. This is the LE Uxia, maybe it's not for GenCon, although it may well be. On second thought, the Nomads. It is the faction most responsible for the proliferation of magic spell casting in the game. On third thought, Ariadna. I seem to have 8 Nomad minis now (Icestorm 'mads plus the alguacil in the Vallejo paint set box) and will end up with 2 Jazmin Jazz minis, and Billie, her remote. I'll only have 2 Ariadna minis ( Cadin and Alt-Cadin) which I intend to trade for some food stamps and a bag of aquarium gravel. On fourth thought, I don't *hate* any faction at all. I do like talking smack about almost all of them, except Haqq ( My Faction) and the Tohaa ( never played against 'em. Don't know of anyone who plays them. )
I fully recommend talking smack about Tohaa. It is entertaining and easy to mock the space gimp vegetables, their fart-based language and their culture inspired by Grade 3 mathematics classes.