Minecraft factions explained: power, claims and raids

Factions is a team PvP mode: players group into factions, claim land chunk by chunk, build fortified bases and raid each other with TNT. A faction's power, which members earn by staying online and lose when they die, decides how much land it can hold and when enemies can take it from them.

If you came for a server rather than the rules, the factions server list shows which ones are playable now: 6 at the latest ping, with 735 players.

Factions in one paragraph

Each player belongs to at most one faction. The faction claims chunks, 16 by 16 block columns from the bottom of the world to the top, and inside its claims outsiders cannot place or break blocks or open containers. Power, a number every player carries, sets the faction's land limit. Factions declare each other ally, truce, neutral or enemy, and enemies break into each other's bases, usually with TNT cannons, to steal loot and destroy spawners. A map runs for weeks or months, often with prizes for the top factions, then the world resets. Most servers run a version of the Factions plugin (FactionsUUID, a fork of it such as SaberFactions, or MassiveCraft's Factions), and all of them let owners change the numbers below.

Power, claims and overclaiming

Power is what makes factions different from a land-claim survival server. These are the FactionsUUID defaults, read from its source code on 18 October 2026:

A faction's power is the total of its members' power. When a faction holds more chunks than it has power, enemies can overclaim its land: they claim its chunks for themselves, one at a time from the edge of its territory inward, and inside those chunks the protection now works for them. The attackers need spare power of their own to hold what they take. FactionsUUID also has an option that strips all protection from a faction in that state, which it calls raidability. It is off by default, but some servers switch it on.

A worked example with the defaults:

1. Five members at full power give the faction 50 power. It claims 40 chunks, leaving a margin of 10.
2. A bad night: three members die twice each. Each loses 8 power and drops to 2. The faction now has 2 + 2 + 2 + 10 + 10 = 26 power.
3. It still holds 40 chunks, which is more than 26, so enemies can overclaim up to 14 of them, starting with the chunks on its border.
4. Each member who died needs 40 minutes online to regain those 8 power. Offline members regain nothing by default, so a faction that logs off after a lost fight stays exposed all night.

Two lessons follow. Keep a margin between your land and your power, and recruit carefully, because a member who keeps dying drags the faction's total down, below zero if it comes to that.

Raiding

TNT cannons

This surprises SMP players: on a default FactionsUUID server, claims stop players breaking blocks by hand, but TNT explosions in claimed land still destroy blocks. Overclaiming is one way in, but on most factions servers the main one is TNT.

A cannon is a redstone machine that fires primed TNT over a distance. The firing chamber sits in water, because TNT that explodes in water does not break blocks, so the cannon survives its own shots. Bigger cannons fire dozens of blocks of TNT at once, and many also shoot falling sand or gravel to fill the water layers that defenders build into their walls to absorb blasts. Vanilla TNT cannot break obsidian, so some factions servers add a rule that lets it wear obsidian down after several hits. Cannoning is a skill of its own, and big factions often have a member who does little else.

Defenders answer with layered walls, water and lava pockets, buffer chunks (empty claimed land that pushes attackers' cannons further away) and patching, which means repairing a wall between volleys. Bases also hide their valuables, often mob spawners, because many servers rank factions on a leaderboard by the value of what they have placed.

Grace periods and raid windows

Many maps start with a grace period of a few days in which TNT or all raiding is switched off, so factions can build before the first attacks. Some servers go further:

• Raid windows allow raids only at set times.
• Offline protection stops TNT damage in a faction's land while all its members are offline. FactionsUUID has this setting, switched off by default.
• Shields, in some forks, let a faction choose a daily window in which it cannot be raided.

Read these rules before you pick a base location. A server without offline protection rewards factions with members online around the clock.

HCF, the hardcore cousin

HCF stands for Hardcore Factions. It keeps teams, claims and raiding but changes almost everything else:

• Deathban. When you die, you are banned from the map for a while. Many servers sell or reward lives that let you skip a deathban.
• DTR instead of power. DTR means deaths till raidable. Each member's death lowers the faction's DTR, and when it reaches zero the faction is raidable: its claims stop protecting it until DTR regenerates. FactionsUUID can run in a DTR mode too.
• Small teams. Faction sizes are capped tightly, so a skilled team of a few players can beat a big one.
• Short maps with events. Maps open with SOTW (start of the world, PvP off for a while) and end with EOTW (end of the world, when every faction becomes raidable). In between, KOTH (king of the hill) events reward whichever team holds a capture point for long enough.
• Timers everywhere. New players get a PvP timer, combat tags stop you logging out, and ender pearls have a cooldown.
• Classes. Wearing a full armor set such as leather or gold gives a class like Archer or Bard with its own abilities.

Most HCF servers use 1.8-style combat, with no attack cooldown and fast clicking. Our comparison of 1.8 PvP and modern combat explains why that matters.

Lives and shorter deathbans for money are worth a hard look. Mojang's Usage Guidelines allow paid perks that affect gameplay only if they do not "ruin other players' experience or give a competitive advantage in the game" (read on 18 October 2026).

Factions or SMP: which suits you

Factions and SMP servers both put you in a shared survival world for a long time, but they reward very different things.

If you love PvP but want something in between, lifesteal keeps the survival world of an SMP and adds stakes to every fight. For servers where breaking into bases is allowed outside a factions plugin, see the raiding server list.

Your first faction: join one or found one

Join one if you are new to the mode. An established faction has power, a base and players who know the server's cannons. Look for recruiting posts in the server's Discord, check /f list for active factions, and expect a trial period of mining, farming or guarding before you get base access. If a faction only ever uses you as a miner, /f leave is always there.

Found one if you have at least a couple of friends who play at the same hours:

1. Create the faction with /f create <name> and invite your friends with /f invite <player>.
2. Build far from spawn. Use /f map to see who owns the land around you before you settle.
3. Claim small. Claim only what you can defend and keep claims well below your power, so a few deaths do not open you to overclaiming.
4. Claim buffer chunks around your base before you build walls.
5. Set a faction home with /f sethome, and agree who is online when, so the base is never empty during the server's busiest hours.

Commands you will use

These are the FactionsUUID forms, which its forks share, with MassiveCraft's longer forms in the third column. Servers also switch on extras such as /f fly, /f tnt (a shared TNT bank) or /f vault, and add commands of their own, so type /f help to see the list on yours.

Factions servers in numbers

We ping every listed server once a minute. Right now, 6 of the 12 factions listings are playable with 735 players, and 6 raiding listings with 739 players.

Mode	Listed	Playable now	Players now	Players, 7 day average	Busiest hour	Votes, 30 days
PvP	104	50	2,466	3,544	15:00 UTC	12,990
Raiding	13	6	739	979	14:00 UTC	9,071
Factions	12	6	735	849	16:00 UTC	3,841

A server tagged with three modes counts in all three, so the rows overlap and do not add up to the network total.

Measured 19 Oct 2026, 22:55 UTCHow we measure

Here is what the pings showed as of 18 October 2026:

• A small niche inside big networks. 12 listings carried the factions tag, and 8 were playable at some point in the 7 days to 17 October. Together they averaged about 830 players, but the two busiest, both networks that also list lifesteal and SMP among other modes, held 98% of them. The other six averaged under 20 players each, and five of those under 2. Live: 7 playable in the last 7 days, 849 players on average, 98% on the two busiest.
• Busiest in the European early evening. Over the 28 days to 17 October, factions servers peaked from 15:00 to 17:00 UTC (17:00 to 19:00 in Berlin) and were quietest around 03:00 UTC, with about half as many players. Weekends were about 15% busier than weekdays, and Sunday was the busiest day. In your time zone, the peak is at 16:00 UTC and the quietest hour is 03:00 UTC, with weekends 16% busier.
• Fewer accept Bedrock than lifesteal servers do. At 00:24 UTC on 18 October, 3 of the 8 playable factions servers also answered on their Bedrock port. Live: 2 of 6 factions servers, against 13 of 17 lifesteal servers.
• Map lengths are rarely published. Only one factions listing stated a map length, 90 days. Live: 1 (90 days). Ask in the server's Discord when the current map started before you commit to it.

Peak 16:00 UTC

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Times in UTC

Busiest at 16:00 UTC with about 1,103 players, quietest at 03:00 UTC. The busiest hour holds 1.9 times the players of the quietest.

Measured 19 Oct 2026, 22:55 UTCHow we measure

Our pinger sees one player count per server address, so a network that runs factions next to other modes counts in every mode it lists. The players above are on servers that offer factions, not all inside the factions world. The methodology page explains how we measure. For other PvP formats, see the PvP server list, and for every mode in a few sentences, Minecraft server types A to Z.

FAQ

When is the best time to join a factions server?

At the start of a new map. Everyone begins with nothing, the grace period gives you time to build, and factions are recruiting. Joining halfway through means facing full bases, finished cannons and a head start of weeks. Within a day, the busiest hours shown above bring the most players to team up with, and the most raids.

Can you play factions solo?

You can, but the mode is built against it. With default settings a new solo player starts at 0 power, tops out at 10 chunks after 50 minutes online, loses 40% of that with each death, and has nobody to guard the base while they sleep. Solo players usually do better joining an established faction, playing HCF with a small team, or picking an SMP or lifesteal server instead.

Is factions on Bedrock?

Bedrock players can join Java factions servers that run Geyser, using the server's Bedrock address and port, and the world behaves the same because the Java server runs all the redstone. Combat feels different on Bedrock, especially on a touch screen, and competitive factions PvP is mostly played on Java. Fewer factions servers on our list accept Bedrock than lifesteal servers do, so check each listing for a Bedrock address.