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Sup, I originally got into the Imperial Guard because I loved the idea of a mass of men fighting back the xenos threat through sheer weight of numbers and firepower... then when I started playing it became clear that the only way to play decently was to shove all my guys in chimeras and give them special weapons. Despite my best efforts, it was obvious that platoon-based Imperial Guard ust wasn't going to win battles. They die too quickly and don't do enough damage. Also, while the Leman Russ was cool and fluffy, the Vendetta was so much better, and cheaper. That's just stupid.

What about other armies? Space Marines seem to play pretty fluffy from what I can see, as do Tau (hang back - shoot stuff!). Though Eldar don't seem to, in so far as eldar can be said to be played .

Orks.
Poor equipment (horrible armor saves). Poor marksmanship (need 5's to hit with a gun). Can whip themselves in a frenzy (fearless in large mobs).

Charge! You can kill the first 3 ranks of orks, but we don't care! We have lots and lots more.

I don't know, I find that Guard infantry and tanks work very well. They do better with some air support and mechanisation, but I would not say that they are useless without them.

Dark Eldars, they're mechanics and rules kind of fit with the fluff (such as pain counters, or the blades on the reavers, I particularly like those)

Gunline guard seems to work just fine, at least in 6th.

Elysians play exactly as their fluff would dictate; because there is no other choice.

Sisters play with their holy trinity. Bolter, flamer, melta. And run such a huge faith that everything has a 6++. That faith lets them have heroic acts like rending, reroll to wound, twin linked. Their only access to long range firepower is a pipe organ that shoots missiles. They are very fluffy. They are not space marines. They don't need to be.

 Trickstick wrote:
I don't know, I find that Guard infantry and tanks work very well. They do better with some air support and mechanisation, but I would not say that they are useless without them.

Infantry die. Like rapid-fast.

I'm going to go with Orks as well. A green tide plays very much like the fluff, and is pretty darn competitive unless your opponent is packing a lot of templates. Only downsides are the cost of getting the models (I cheated with AoBR) and you're going to spend half of the game moving miniatures.

Eldar. My goodness do Eldar ever work like their fluff. Every unit is highly specialized and excels at precisely one task while being mediocre to bad at everything else, requiring careful combined-arms play, experience, and foresight to get the most out of the army.

I'd say orks, simply because almost any army idea you can come up with is justified fluffwise. Ig have this to an extent, but nowhere near the leeway orks do. Want your army to have nothing but shooting? Orks have an entire WAAAAAGH of DAKKA! Want nothing but bikes and dakkajetz? Cool speed freak army. Green tide? No prob. Nothing but nobz? Boss decided he wanted to have some fun with his bodyguards. Battlewagon convoy. Totally legit. Tons of lootas and trukk spam? Awesome deffskulz army.

You'd be hard pressed to find an unfluffy ork army, simply due to the fact that since orks follow no real organization (aside from blood axes) you can pretty much go nuts with them.

Dark Eldar in my opinion are very fluffy on the TT where they strike hard and fast with advanced eldar weaponry then disappear once their objective is accomplished; just like a normal 40k battle.

 Testify wrote:

 Trickstick wrote:
I don't know, I find that Guard infantry and tanks work very well. They do better with some air support and mechanisation, but I would not say that they are useless without them.

Infantry die. Like rapid-fast.

Well they play pretty similar to the fluff then.

(-:

They aren't so bad with cover and sufficient numbers.

Chaos Daemons ^^

They come from nowhere and are generally a pain to get rid of.

Most of their units excel at CC. Which is to be expected.

Dark Eldar are pretty fluffy.

Eldar are quite fluffy. You have to have a bit of foresight and use your units to support each other or you're army is just going to collapse. The only thing that would make them more fluffy would be allowing you to attack with overwhelming force, but that would make for a pretty boring game. Eldar don't seem like the type to engage in any fight where they weren't at a severe advantage unless absolutely necessary.

Fire dragons are about the least fluffy unit in the army IMO. Generally they end up just being a suicide unit, boosting up in their wave serpent to drop out and blow up a tank or elite unit and then just get lit up by enemy fire. It's not really their style to just throw away lives like that.

Space Wolves, Some shooty goodness until they get close enough to maul your face. Not to mention they have a couple units that can outflank and work like a well oiled wolf pack.

Lone Wolves are the epitome since they want to die and in game you want to have them do a lot of damage but still die so you don't lose points for them still being alive at the end.

Space Wolves, at least the last few years, have been amongst the least fluffy armies. Mechanized gunlines and tons of heavy weapons troops making for armies with as many heavy weapons as most IG/Tau armies and a half dozen or more tanks is hardly the idea one would have of Space Vikings.


Iron Warriors or Imperial Fists perhaps.

But no, Space Wolves really don't have much of a history of fluffy armies in recent memory.

Vaktathi wrote:Space Wolves, at least the last few years, have been amongst the least fluffy armies. Mechanized gunlines and tons of heavy weapons troops making for armies with as many heavy weapons as most IG/Tau armies and a half dozen or more tanks is hardly the idea one would have of Space Vikings.


Iron Warriors or Imperial Fists perhaps.

But no, Space Wolves really don't have much of a history of fluffy armies in recent memory.

I believe the Space Wolves Codex describes Gunnar Red Moon as preferring Long Fangs over all others, so I don't see anything "un-fluffy" about it.

A single Wolf Lord who prefers the old veterans for company because they make better drinking buddies is a poor excuse for a Codex that, as a whole, has generally incentivized Imperial Guard style heavy weapons gunlines led by psykers with heavy-weapon-esque powers (and *not* said Wolf Lord).

It's certainly not reflective of what most would consider a "Space Viking" army and Red Moon is certainly not exactly a major aspect of their fluff.

I think that since the last codex, especially with Jetbikes being moved to Troops, Eldar play like their fluff represents, though their ranged ability is severely lacking to represent their technological superiority.

Orks can always play to their fluff. because their whole philosophy is just throw everything at the enemy and overwhelm them.In Example, a sloggin' army has mostly boyz which works well if you have a few heavy support to take out enemy heavies and the rest kill all enemy infantry and elites in a hurricane of dice.

Every codex has the potential to build a "fluffy" army, and for the most part, GW has done a good job of doing that. There are a few builds in each army that seen to be a bit outside of the fluff.



Black Templar:

Fluff wise, they are the "Black Horde" Big mobs of infantry on foot or in Land Raiders running at you, looking for close combat.

Their best builds at the moments are all Long Range Shooting based
(PotMS Vindicators and Predators, 2x ML-Tank hunter Terminators, Cheap Land Speeder Typhoons, 5 man crusader units with heavy and special weapons)



Grey Knights

Purifiers are very rare in the fluff (supposedly only around 30 of them) but you see entire armies made of them.

Also, the 3x henchmen in a Razorback units are common in lists and not exactly within the fluff either.

Space wolves and GK, as well as nercons have been played the least fluffly for a long time now.

Everyone else does pretty well on the fluff front. Except the old eldar and DE alliance nonsense.

 svendrex wrote:

Purifiers are very rare in the fluff (supposedly only around 30 of them) but you see entire armies made of them.

Not to disagree with your overall point, but you're exaggerating a bit there. The fluff says there are rarely more than a few score purifiers at any given time. A "score" is supposed to be twenty. So, depending on how much a "few" is, we could be looking at anywhere between 60 to 200 Purifiers. And they can occasionally swell above their usual numbers (though that usually means the gak is about to hit the fan).

Current codex nid's have trouble playing to fluff and being good. you can build fluffy armies well with it though.

I agree that orks are good for this. Also, dark eldar.

Imperial guard are pretty good as well. Unlike the OP, I've been having a fair amount of success in a competitive environment with my foot horde guard.

When I start playing in the next league which will start after the holidays, my guard army will be a CCS leading three infantry platoons and three russes. Don't get much more fluffy as a guard player than that.

My friend plays Orks, and has a full on Green Tide list atm. At 1750pts he has something like 150 models on the board. And could have more if he switched it around a little. Its really gard work (even for me, I play Tau) to take down enough of them before they get close enough to threaten CC.

I play Tau, and they play pretty well to their fluff. I sit back with heavy weapons and lures like Broadsides (Kau'yon) and my FW gunlines, while lots of suits jump all over the place, taking out key threats (Mont'Ka) and deny the enemy any chance to shoot back

orks=fire pointlessly into the air, should be 3 6's to hit and t'shirts dont stop bullets

all marines= adimantanium plaredd armour/ 2/3 chance to block a flimsy knife, 2 hearts/ one wound

guard=you said it yourself

the eldars, nids ans daemons are pretty fluffy

oh yeah, and tau, definately tau.

Surprised that Chaos Marines don't even get a mention so far. I've not played the new codex, take it that it doesn't really support the fluff too well?

I agree that foot guard are one of the fluffiest IG style armies, but rather than their lack of effectiveness I found it just took far too long to set up and play :(

IMO, Tau play pretty fluffy. Ethereals are just about as useful as a preist on the battlefield... Very shooty troops, high-tech battlesuits, etc. Their vehicles have always felt wonkey though, They're supposed to be airborne gunships, etc. and they play like grav-tanks without even deepstrike...