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I need help choosing my first 40k army. Here's a list of some general things I want: non-imperium, tactical flexibility, good fluff to keep me interested. I've played one game with Necrons and I like their playing style. I'm just not sure how competitive they'll be considering their codex is two editions behind. Let me know what you think!

Well, Eldar might be something to look at.

or Daemons

I'd agree with Eldar. So many options depending on what you want. Aspect Warriors, long range bombardment, mass volley, tanks, jetbikes, mechs and ghost warriors. Anything you can ask for is somewhere in there.

I've skimmed through most of the codices. Aren't Daemons pretty fragile?

Good to see you're starting 40K! Tactical flexibilty, I'd look at Eldar, you can pretty much just use any models and get at least a semi-decent army. They've been around since the beginning of the 40k universe (I think), so there's lots of fluff to get involved in. I would have a look at Imperial armies if I were you, I feel like you're restricting yourself too much if you don't, but if you don't want an imperial army, that's your choice.

 Toastaster wrote:
Good to see you're starting 40K! Tactical flexibilty, I'd look at Eldar, you can pretty much just use any models and get at least a semi-decent army. They've been around since the beginning of the 40k universe (I think), so there's lots of fluff to get involved in. I would have a look at Imperial armies if I were you, I feel like you're restricting yourself too much if you don't, but if you don't want an imperial army, that's your choice.

I'm not completely opposed to playing Imperium, I just like the idea of fighting against them.

You could easily play an Imperium army against any other Imperium army. As the bad guy.

It's simple, either the Eldar have tricked you into attacking the Imperium for some reason, your army has recently fell to Chaos, and as such still has the shiny new toys that "good" little Mon-keighs get, or they decided the life of the Mercenary would be much more entertaining and they hire themselves out to the highest bidder.

Necrons are still plenty competitive and viable, despite the edition gap. Like Eldar, they have only a couple of outright weak units.

Where Necrons win out over Eldar is in durability - Necrons are one of the most durable armies in the game, in fact, owing to how they just keep getting back up even when you put them down.

I like gun line armies, so I guess that narrows it down to Necrons and Tau.

Da Orks is da bestest and is dead-killy. We can do killin wid klaws, wid choppaz, wid spiky bitz, we can be dead-shooty too. We'z got noisy-shootas, big-shootas, bigga-shootas, lotz of stompy fings.

Orkses never lose a battle, if we win we win, if we die we die fightin' so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die either, cos we come back for annuva go, see!




(OSX autocorrect makes writing like an ork a real chore)

Tau have very little Tacitcal flexibility. They do a gunline, and a gunline of Gundams, and then a Deep Strike deathstar of Gundams... Occasionally, they have a BIG gundam. Something like 12 decent units in the codex and I don't think I've seen them played in any different ways. They're devastating, but not flexible. From what I've seen when I was looking into them as my 7th Edition army before I settled in on Eldar.

Necrons atleast have some variety and they are certainly annoying to keep dead. Move too fast against them and the 'dead' units just come back behind your new front line.

 aj laveaux wrote:
Da Orks is da bestest and is dead-killy. We can do killin wid klaws, wid choppaz, wid spiky bitz, we can be dead-shooty too. We'z got noisy-shootas, big-shootas, bigga-shootas, lotz of stompy fings.

Orkses never lose a battle, if we win we win, if we die we die fightin' so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die either, cos we come back for annuva go, see!




(OSX autocorrect makes writing like an ork a real chore)

Could you give a serious reason why I should choose orks? Also, use windows.

 40k Wargamer wrote:

 aj laveaux wrote:
Da Orks is da bestest and is dead-killy. We can do killin wid klaws, wid choppaz, wid spiky bitz, we can be dead-shooty too. We'z got noisy-shootas, big-shootas, bigga-shootas, lotz of stompy fings.

Orkses never lose a battle, if we win we win, if we die we die fightin' so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die either, cos we come back for annuva go, see!




(OSX autocorrect makes writing like an ork a real chore)

Could you give a serious reason why I should choose orks? Also, use windows.

To be fair, that's a serious answer.

40k Wargamer wrote:tactical flexibility, good fluff... like their playing style... competitive

So what you're saying is that you want the perfect army. That's not a lot for us to go on.

First, I'm going to cut out good fluff, because that's super subjective. The only one I'd be tempted to cut from just that is tau, who has witheringly bad fluff. Second, I'm going to cut competitive, because that word doesn't mean what you think it means, and by the time you're done assembling and painting an army, relative power levels are likely going to be different than they are now.

That just leaves tactical flexibility. For that, what you're looking at is an army that has a lot of different kinds of builds. Probably the best army for this is vanilla SM, who can do a bike list, a raider list, a drop pod list, a foot horde, and a razorspam list. Among others. Of course, you're not considering imperials, which means you want the army with the most number of options that's not them.

Which means orks. Orks lost a bit of this recently, but they're still going to be better than most everything else. Xenos armies in particular tend to get pidgeonholed into just one or two list styles (especially tau and necron), and orks, by virtue of being around for so long, have had more different kinds of things added over time. Like a well-aged scotch, it's gotten better with time.

Second to orks, I'd say CSM. They're slanted towards close combat, and so don't gunline as well (which is a good thing, actually), and they have ludicrous flexibility with their fluff. Plus, they have a lot of different units that can count as troops choices, and while those differences aren't as sweeping as the difference between a bike list and a terminator list, a brass tide and a plague marines in rhinos army are going to play more differently than you might think.

In the words of a wise man...

"We true Ork players don't play Orks because of the rules. We play Orks in spite of them."

Am I missing something here? Look at your avatar. I think right there is your army of choice.

Just look what happened to Tyranids. Look what happened to Orks. Could this happen to Necrons within the next year?

Still look what you picked for your avatar. I think right there is your answer.

Davor wrote:
Am I missing something here? Look at your avatar. I think right there is your army of choice.

Just look what happened to Tyranids. Look what happened to Orks. Could this happen to Necrons within the next year?

Still look what you picked for your avatar. I think right there is your answer.

I decided on Necrons right before you posted this.

 40k Wargamer wrote:

Davor wrote:
Am I missing something here? Look at your avatar. I think right there is your army of choice.

Just look what happened to Tyranids. Look what happened to Orks. Could this happen to Necrons within the next year?

Still look what you picked for your avatar. I think right there is your answer.

I decided on Necrons right before you posted this.

Yay Necrons.

Sm are good, i started with gunline guard.

I was going to say - You sound like you'd love Necrons.

I will warn you that almost everything is a 24" shooting range. But you are durable as hell.

Remember that you can take allies as well if you want even more flexibility. I'm just returning to 40k too and getting a Thousand Son CSM / Necron force going because I couldn't choose between them and they seemed like a great fit.

ORKS!!!! Amazing models and tons of fun to play, even if you don't win the games are always tons of fun!!!!!!!

Crons ain't gunline though.

40KNobz11 wrote:
ORKS!!!! Amazing models and tons of fun to play, even if you don't win the games are always tons of fun!!!!!!!

you kidding me? the boyz model looks like he is taking a poop while walking. (now, some of the bikes ARE baddass, but... all I ever see are boyz >.> )

buuuttt, they are extremely fun to play and or play against :3. to bad we are marines. marines don't like fun. we kill fun on sight.... your not having fun are you >.>

 Ailaros wrote:
First, I'm going to cut out good fluff, because that's super subjective. The only one I'd be tempted to cut from just that is tau, who has witheringly bad fluff.

Says "good fluff is subjective", then states that Tau have "witheringly bad fluff" as if it were an objective fact.

Like it matters anyway, even GW's best fluff is stolen from other, better sci-fi. It's not even theirs.

As a dark eldar player i am going to do my pick me share

ALthought tactical they have a few gaps but fluff wise they are more intresting than eldar and tyranids.

You can go either really shooty or really melee its an easy army to play with due to the poison and a lot of army hate that.
Ofcourse there are some bad units due to older codexes but even the bad ones are fun.
and the models are really nice, you have a lot of option and can alwas pick eldar as battle brothers.

Negatieve points :
- cant handle flames
-vehicles that exxplode will annoy the hell out of you

Positeve points
-lots of nice fluf
-lots of different tactics
-lost of shooting and attacks
- cool models
-eldar fanboys that will help you
-VENOMS
- female chars (as i girl i like that)
- fairly cheap army

Rite shame yaz dint pik da Orkz. Weez crush dem sleepy bony boyz any day.

 The Mangla Of Manglatha wrote:
Rite shame yaz dint pik da Orkz. Weez crush dem sleepy bony boyz any day.

FTFY.

I'm going to say the same thing here I say every time I see this type of thread.

MAKE UP YOUR OWN GODDAMN MIND OR YOU WON'T BE HAPPY WITH WHAT OTHER PEOPLE GIVE YOU

I suggest spending a week or so of light reading on Lexicanum and make sure you get a good look at all the cool models GW and FW pump out

Space Marines

I know, I know... everyone plays Space Marines. But there's a reason for it. They're a good army to just get a feel for the various aspects of the game. It's easy to start off with Space Marines, build up a small army, and then move on to any other army once you work out what sort of things you like.