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Hey guys, I want to get into WH40k as I love the lore of the game and love tabletop games! However, Im debating between Necrons and Space marines to play as a Beginner. Which ones do you suggest to start with? And of the choice, what units should an optimal army be made of? Im getting a bunch of different advice from the people at the LGS.

One guy said Necrons are good, and that you just need 2 squads of Necron Warriors, some Destroyers and a Necron Lord - and that the other HQs are more flavor and inferior to the normal Necron Lord.

Meanwhile, another guy told me that if you went Space Marine, its easier and cheaper because if someone has extra Space Wolves, you can side them in in your Space Marine army even though theyre from different armies. Is that true? Both guys were trying to sell my tyheir units to so... that's why Im kind of iffy on their advice haha.

Well, if by competitive, you mean "easy" then let me direct you towards tau. Or to a much lesser extent, eldar.

If you're a new player who wants to get into an army to play for the long-term (being able to use lots of different minis, and consistently over time), then I'd say space marines, as necron are, sort of, a new army. That is to say, they had a certain way of doing things in a certain way, and all of that got completely changed a few years ago. They're not quite as "settled" as regular space marines are.

Yeah I want this army to be my long term army as well . If I went necrons, what would a good set up on the army be? is it true what the guy said that the necron warriors, destroyers and N-Lord are the only good units?

Far, far from it.

There's this thing called a necron flying bakery which dominated 6th ed that contains sort of none of the units you're talking about, and things like annihilation barges are plenty keen these days.

If you want to play necron, then play necron. How they're doing at the moment shouldn't inform too many of your choices as 40k is still under active development, which means things change over time.

if you want to win play eldar or tau. if you're dead set on marine or necrons, i'd go necrons. bonus: veeeeeeeeeeery easy to paint.

I'd warn you from going 'competitive'. Warhammer 40k is not very well ballanced and tends to change ballance quite often. Competitive lists tend to rely on spaming a couple of overpowered units. And then the codex gets an update and this allmighty units become much more in line with everything else and can't no longer win games on their own. Or the general rules change and they stop working like intended in the ferst place.

I think that better aproach is to have a well-ballanced army consisting of as many types of units as possible. For example, if you play necrons, you have a squad of wraiths + destroyer lord. They work great and are considered a competitive unit. But instead of purchasing a second identical squad, why not get something like warriors + transport. They're a decent unit but not nearly as annoying for the opponent as wraiths.

And if you go in this direction, you'll end up with an army full of different fun-to-play stuff and possibility for a very flexible tactix. Note, that ballanced armies generally don't work vs spammed cheeze but cheeze tends to hold for 1 year or so and becomes garbage afterwards. While a ballanced army remains ballanced cause something gets better and something gets worse thus staying the same altogether.

And choose the army you like more fluffwise.

Fair warning, I've done exactly that with csm (get all the units in a codex to have lots of variety and versatility) only to realize i wasted hundreds of dollars on units that aren't heldrakes. My advice is play a few proxy battles before you buy anything. As in get your mates space marines and say "these are warriors/wraiths/destroyers etc" and just find what list works first.

Yep, currently you're supposed to play vs people with the same approach to listbuilding for everyone to have great time.

I'll cast my vote to Space Marines.
I mean, nothing wrong with Necrons, a great army and if you like them just go nuts!
I just prefer Space Marines for the variation you can get to your lists.
Since all Space Marines (roughly third of the armies out there) are pretty much the same, using little different tactics but mostly same units, you can quickly alternate your playing style by simply changing codex or Chapter Tactics from the "vanilla" SM codex.

Pick up couple of Tactical Squads and maybe Devastators and Tanks. Next, choose a painting scheme that you like. After that, see whch SM chapters offer you the gameplay you might enjoy. Then you can build on top of that whatever you wish.

A quick rundown on different chapters and their playstyle:
- Blood Angels: fast tanks and Assault Marines. You can get FnP everywhere, making your marines bit tougher.
- Ultramarines (X): the most generalistic and pretty challenging in a way, Tacticals and Devastators benefit the most, but practically every unit gets some advantage.
- White Scars (X): Bikes and lots of them. Propably the most competitive choice, also might include Tacticals in Rhino.
- Imperial Fists (X): Pretty basic one, offers minor bonuses to all your bolter weapons. Your Devastators will also enjoy this.
- Black Templars (X): good basic units called Crusader Squads. A bit better than Tacticals IMO. Either footslog bigger squads or go with massed Land Raiders. Get bonuses in deny the witch, which is a big thing now in 7th.
- Dark Angels: bikes as well, altough they also like Terminators and they work better than any other SM Termies
- Iron Fists (X): slightly more survivable troops and bonus to Vehicles.
- Salamanders (X): bonus to your flamer weapons. Your characters also gain a slight buff which is cool!
- Space Wolves: Drop Pods and truly elitistic troops. They will get a new codex soon so bit unsure of how they will do.

So that's a quick overview of different Marine playing styles.
If you have questions about a specific one there, do ask!
And note that every one of those that I marked with (X), can be found within a single codex. The rest have books of their own.

And hey, welcome to Dakka!

Both have two very versatile codexs, not plagued with crap like a lot of other ones, but not easy mode armies like Tau and Eldar. I actually came in here to suggest SM, it's easy to compete with them but hard to be a dick. The models are easy to get a hold of, and quite intuitive to play. You can paint them however you want & on the offchance that it doesn't suit a chapter, you can call it a successor.

If you want something different from the norm, Crons are fine too. A much stronger army imo and easier to play, but easy to play and win with armies may possibily do more to slow your progression more than it helps. They are pretty badass though and just the design of the units make you feel godly when using them, they are a lot of fun and not OP, just... Fairly straightforward.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
There is no right or wrong answer here, pick the one that you like the look of most. Their rules are subject to complete overhauls at the drop of a dime.

necron can be fun . one or two command barges with lords or a destroyer lord to join wraiths, 4-5 squads of warriors in night scyths and 3-4 Anihilation barges make for a fun army to play with. Not as good as eldar, but still fun.

Lets approach it from another (IMO equally important angle) angle

What sort of army do you like to play - sit back and shoot or assault or something in the middle?
Large numbers of troops or small elite forces, hard hitting but suffer badly as their numbers go down?
What sort of people do you play with - are you looking to be a regular tournament player or just with our mates at the local club / game store or a mixture of the two?

I wouldn't recommend space marines for a competitive first army unless you sit down with that codex for a month and really think about it. However, space marines have so much FUN for a new player, with lots of options, customizations, and space marine specialties, like chapter tactics and drop pots.

Necrons are a mean bunch, but quite boring if you ask me. For a begginer, you'll probably win the most with them but after a while they will go drab...and soon your only fun will be lucky revive rolls and the great monolith monster truck rally.

Honestly for a beginner, I'd go Tau for competitive. You'll have the most fun customizing them and how their rules just seem so damn awesome.

My vote is on Space marine (considering I just bought my first tactical squad), but their small number might be heavily frustrating for a new player.

You can always join the hive fleets

Thanks for the input guys! Hmm im debating on the Necrons now. Normally people play with 1,500 point armies right? So what would a typical Necron army be composed of? Like that guy said, I dont have the money to buy every single unit of Necrons :/. :(

Beginner and competition seems like a contradiction in terms.
The most competitive armies are said to be Tau, Eldar, Necrons, and Daemons.
These xenos armies are not easy to play.
So as said above, Marines is the way to go for a beginner.
They can be played quite competitively.

Makumba wrote:
necron can be fun . one or two command barges with lords or a destroyer lord to join wraiths, 4-5 squads of warriors in night scyths and 3-4 Anihilation barges make for a fun army to play with. Not as good as eldar, but still fun.

I like how everything you mentioned is pretty much all the "cheesey" or "competitive" stuff in the codex. Necrons have a lot of fun options to play with, without being cheesy. Like, I use wraiths without a D-lord. Deathmarks are awesome, Lychguard with Obyron is cool to see, as well as Immortals. Hell, Scarabs are hilarious. And bring a brood of cheap ass MCs to spawn more.

 xxtwisted26xx wrote:
Thanks for the input guys! Hmm im debating on the Necrons now. Normally people play with 1,500 point armies right? So what would a typical Necron army be composed of? Like that guy said, I dont have the money to buy every single unit of Necrons :/. :(

I started Necrons when the most recent codex came out and I was pleasantly surprised with how economical the army actually was. A lot of kit-bashing can be done, so there are ways to create your own units with just your bits. For example I have 10 praetorians (which rarely see play) which are conversions using the praetorian bits on necron warriors legs and bodies. I also took the time to convert a unit of 6 wraiths (before they released the models), all from bits and I think they look great.

At any rate, with both Space Marines and Necrons you'll accumulate tons of useful bits, which will help the overall cost of things to be much lower.

The catacomb Command Barge/Annihilation Barge kit is an amazing value as well, and it probably a kit you'll buy a few of. Great bits and a model which can be used as two different unit types in the game, without having to magnetize or heavily convert. Great kit.

 wuestenfux wrote:
Beginner and competition seems like a contradiction in terms.
The most competitive armies are said to be Tau, Eldar, Necrons, and Daemons.
These xenos armies are not easy to play.
So as said above, Marines is the way to go for a beginner.
They can be played quite competitively.

I would have to agree with the list or armies, except for Necrons. In all honesty, they have a lot of the flexibility as Space Marines, with less options. My girlfriend calls them very "cookie-cutter". So, for a beginner army, you pick a few units of Warriors or immortals, which are just generically tough, and throw in what you want. They can be very easy for beginners.

Crons will be the most fun. But tau or eldar are different and are a lot more competitive and a lot more complex. The tau can be fun and they would probably be a happy medium. Meanwhile Tue eldar sit atop their throne of competitiveness with the most complexity.

 ionusx wrote:
Crons will be the most fun. But tau or eldar are different and are a lot more competitive and a lot more complex. The tau can be fun and they would probably be a happy medium. Meanwhile Tue eldar sit atop their throne of competitiveness with the most complexity.

What's so complex about Eldar? =P Most competitive lists involve any number of Wave Serpants or wraith units apparently.

I say go Imperial Knights. For an 1,850 competition army you only have five models to keep track of. They're all identical so you only need to really learn a single unit. They're powerful and possibly a top tier army based on recent tournament results. Plus its really not even that expensive of an army considering that we're talking about Games Workshop. You can get all 5 Knights for $700 base retail.

most of the competitive builds are not complex, and rely on spamming certain unit types.

as for the first post, most people do not see destroyers as competitive or even good units. Most necron armies that are seen as competitive, or as you put it optimal, consist of the following:

Lord with either Destroyer body MSS orb, inv save, etc. or
Lord with above gear -destroyer body + catacomb command barge.


Then you take some minimum sized warrior/immortal squads(preferably warrior) with nightscytches 2-6 of these

then you take 0-2 squads of 10 warriors with ghost arks

As many wraiths as you can possibly take, do not take any of the gun options.

Annihilation barges.

You will see almost none of the other units in a "optimal" necron army, ever.

Space marine armies can be somewhat more varied, but many people feel they aren't quite as competitive as the necron flying army I just listed. This is not to say space marines are bad, they are quite good.

There are many space marine army compositions which are considered competitive, so you will see more variety in space marine armies, but still often "spammy" in that although one army might be different than the next, each army will have many repeats of the same thing.

if you want to play an army for the long term, I would pick space marines as they have lots of optimal builds, and lots of variety between all of their "armies of the imperium" battle brothers and what not.

i will second what an above poster mentioned regarding knights, a knight army is very powerful however be aware you are more likely to lose with a knight army than win due to not having objective secured. Which you can easily overcome by taking a knight formation of 1-3 knights and a standard space marines CAD

Also, how competitive is the OP's meta?

Necrons are fairly simple to learn and straightforward to play. They are also one of the more powerful armies in the game.
Also on the plus side, they are easy to paint.

 Albinonewt wrote:
I say go Imperial Knights. For an 1,850 competition army you only have five models to keep track of. They're all identical so you only need to really learn a single unit. They're powerful and possibly a top tier army based on recent tournament results. Plus its really not even that expensive of an army considering that we're talking about Games Workshop. You can get all 5 Knights for $700 base retail.

You also have an army not everyone will agree to play against.

You can actually do a 5 knight army for $600 codex included if you buy from discountgamestore on ebay.

Noobie tip#1 never ever use the gw retail store or pay full price ever. Discountgamestore for days!!!

Necrons.

- They'e easy to paint well.
- Units are versatile with not many wargear options, so list building is easy.
- Very few special rules, so they're easy to play.
- Are capable of being powerful without being OP.
- Are capable of being OP.

For the army: just buy the Battleforce and an Annihilation Barge then add on whatever you want (other than Flayed Ones) from there, you can't go wrong.

JOIN THE GREATER GOOD!!! Here are some good reasons: The Tau's fluff is amazing and will help keep you interested. They have some of the best units in the game- crisis suits and riptides, plus they're the only race in 40k that aren't complete douchebags.

If you want to play competitive and not have people outright reject playing against you, you need to play a different game.

jy2s [a competitive, tournament player] list from his recent batrep. This is at 2000 points so you might have to drop some barges. I definitely recommend buying to a list - although GW love it, making random purchases based on looks will make it very expensive for you.

CAD #1:

Overlord - 2+/3++, Mindshackle Scarabs, Warscythe, Catacomb Command Barge, ResOrb
Overlord - 2+/3++, Mindshackle Scarabs, Warscythe, Catacomb Command Barge

5x Warriors - Night Scythe
5x Warriors - Night Scythe

Annihilation Barge
Annihilation Barge
Annihilation Barge

CAD #2:

Overlord - 2+/3++, Mindshackle Scarabs, Warscythe, Catacomb Command Barge

5x Warriors - Night Scythe
5x Warriors - Night Scythe

Annihilation Barge
Annihilation Barge
Annihilation Barge