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I've been on a roughly 5 year hiatus from the game, and now that I have a steady and well paying job, I've decided that I'm going to get back into 40k. The only problem is that I am torn between playing a few different armies, so I thought I would pick the brain of the community to help make my decision.

The basic criteria for my selection (in no real order of importance) is:

1) Price (While in the long run it won't really be an issue, I don't want to start off my run being overly gimped in army selection)
2) Ease of painting (to put it mildly, I can't paint worth a damn. And while I don't mind paying someone else to do it, there's nobody local that offers painting services)
3) Winnability (goes back to being gimp. While I don't mind losing, I don't want it to be one sided all the time)

That being said, I've narrowed it down to a few armies that I personally like the look of. Please understand that I will be building the army completely from scratch, as I gave away my old Tyranid army when I quit

1) Tyranids. The army I used to play before I quit. I've been lurking here a bit and I've seen the 'Nidzilla lists. It seems to make sense to me both from an ease of building standpoint (especially with the new 5 Carnifex box), and from winnability. Only issue is painting.

2) Necrons. Heard a lot of bad things about how they play, but for some reason I seem to be drawn to them. I really like the way they look and they seem to be pretty straightforward tactics-wise. Also easy to paint. Only issue here is winnability

3) Tau. I must admit that I know nothing about them. I just kinda like the way the non-Kroot models look.


If anyone is willing, or maybe even an experienced general has the time, could you reply here and let me know the general pros and cons of each army, and perhaps some general strategy?

Thanks for the help everyone, I really appreciate it

All of these are solid armies.

Tyranids are very competitive, and as you’ve already surmised, the Nidzilla style of play allows you to build, paint, and play your games more quickly, since you’ve got fewer models to deal with. Look up Tactica: Carnifex in the articles section of the website to get a sense of how you need to equip the big bugs. What surprises a lot of folks who aren’t that familiar with the current codex is that it is largely a shooty army. Due to their slow speed, Carnifexes will practically never get into HtH unless the enemy wants them to. So you need to equip them to shoot. Two common philosophies for the supporting units are either cheap Rippers as your Troops, or more substantial and expensive squads of Genestealers, which give your army a substantial HtH threat. Either army also often uses some Raveners for more HtH and/or cheap objective-holding.

Necrons are again quick and easy to put together and paint, and pretty darn resilient. It’s hard to go wrong with Warriors and Immortals for a durable and shooty core, though most tournament lists I’ve seen in the last year or so make use of lots of destroyers to add more range and mobility to the force. It’s kind of hard to go wrong with Necrons unless you don’t take a Resurrection Orb or DO take Pariahs.

Tau can often be more mobile, and give you the feel of playing with a more human-ish and sympathetic army, instead of the above forces of unfeeling bio-engineered or mechanical killing machines. The competitive Tau builds tend to focus on the grav Tanks and on the battle suits (particularly Crisis and Stealth suits) to give you mobility. Fire Caste Warriors and Broadsides can set up a brutal static firebase, but all static firebases have some terrible weaknesses. Certain psychic powers (Lash of Submission from Chaos, Fear of the Darkness from Space Marines) can ruin your day, and the lack of mobility really hurts in some missions and on tables with heavier terrain. Fire Caste Warriors with a Devilfish transport, on the other hand, have the option of setting in terrain and using their long range, or riding in their transport close to an enemy and hosing them down with S5 Rapidfire goodness, depending on the mission and opponent.

I've been playing Necrons for about 8 months now and I've really enjoyed it. I really like the idea of a very ancient, soulless robotic army marching forward to crush their opponent. They have a very easy learning curve; you can generally make a mistake and their high toughness and durability will make it easier to recover than more fragile armies. My friend started playing Eldar at the same time and it was a long time before he won a game because my army was just so much more straightforward.

By straightforward, I mean that their options are somewhat limited. There's only one model that can be given equipment (the Lord). While it's fairly powerful gear, like the ability to teleport the Lord and a unit anywhere on the board, or the ability to make every enemy unit w/in 12" take a Morale check, the basic troops and Elite units are pretty straightforward.

This makes building an army much less complex than some other armies, but you still have balance issues that you have to consider: how to deal with hth threats, how to avoid phase out, how to deal with long range threats ( >48" ). The Monolith, while not invincible, is certainly one of the toughest vehicles in the game (and probably greatly underpriced). Probably the most difficult aspect of playing Necrons is that they are largely a mid-range army ( 12-36" ). Anything closer than 12 and you're in danger of being assaulted (not the Necrons strong point). Anything greater and you have trouble getting there, outside of some fast attack choices, and end up getting blown to bits.

The worst thing with Necrons is that so many of their rules are exceptions to regular rules, so if you play with people who are easily angered by units that were just killed "coming back to life," then you might want to reconsider. Most of my friends just shake their heads, curse the C'tan, and work on phasing me out.

I think another important aspect to check out is what other players in your area play. If there are already a lot of tyranids, you might want to try something else, as I find same race battles pretty boring.

Are you looking at playing in many tournaments, or just friendly pickup games? I don't recall seeing Necrons winning many tournaments, although they can do fairly well. Tyranids certainly win fairly frequently, while Tau used to win a lot, but are still a viable threat.

Tyranids probably gives the most future variety, as the army can focus on shooting or melee, mix big bugs with little, etc. Tau can vary between static and mobile shooty, but it's always going to be shooty. Necrons are even worse, as they have very little variety in models/units.

All of these armies have the added bonus of being frustrating for opposing players, especially those that aren't playing really competitive armies. Necrons are tough to kill, big 'nids are tough to kill, and Tau just shoot and hide....really annoys those large, footslogging melee hordes you'll see people bring to local pickup games.

well if your worried about cost buy from sites like http://www.thewarstore.com/ they have 20% prices all the time. money shouldn't be much of an issue then. I bought a 2250pt lizardman list for $220.

other than that I'd say go for necrons or tau as few people play those. it's usually a god idea to diversify the armies in local gaming groups. necrons are really hard to play and win all the time. basically the best idea for them is 2 lords kited out, immortals, lots of warriors, some destroyers, and a monolith. other than that they become wasted in points or lose effectiveness with certain units. I've seen some necron armies played well, but they still are hard to do.

tau are much in the same boat, but have much more unit choices, so your list can be very flavorful and different. so they differ from the necrons a ton as they aren't so cookie cutter. just remember though, when your play tau they are very fragile and suck in CC

On the "play what others aren't" issue:

I honestly have no idea what everyone around here plays. I have a friend who has Dark Eldar, Black Templars and Thousand Sons, so there's no worry there. Other than that, I would be playing at a hobby shop that I just found out existed, so I'm not really concerned about playing what everyone else does.


Its fair to say now that Tau are completely out of the picture. I'm actually kind of leaning towards Necrons, as I never really enjoyed the Tyranids a lot.

well sounds like you have a diverse gaming group (far from mine of all marines/nids all the time) so yes the necrons would be a good idea. they play straight forwardly, just eb sure to keep the phase out, and other weaknesses of the list in mind when you play them, because if you forget those you may be rcked every game you play.

After more lurking, I've drawn these 2 conclusions about Necrons:

1) Multiple squads of 12-16 Warriors = good
2) Scarabs are my friends for keeping CC units tied up until I can focus fire on them.

I'm heavily leaning towards Necrons, especially since someone on BarterTown is selling off a bunch of them on the cheap.

If you can get an army cheap, that's an even better reason to get them! There's a good batrep recently with swarms of scarabs...kind of interesting.