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Hello,
My name is Matt. I've been lurking around here for the past couple of months, and I felt it was time to introduce myself as well as enlist your help. I've been playing Warhammer 40k fairly casually for the past year or so. I've probably played about 10-15 games total. In that time I've assembled a smallish force of Space Marines, and more recently, about 500 points of Chaos Daemons. The more I play the more I begin to realize that I don't really enjoy the play styles of either of the armies. Space Marines just seem so bland and common , and Daemons are too random (plus I think the models are ugly).

So I'm searching for a new army to play. I was hoping some of you could give me some advice based on the following criteria. I want an army that is fairly well balanced for both assault and shooting. The army needs to be fairly competitive, because most of the people in my area play tourney quality lists with no real regard for army comp. I'm no fan of it either so it all works out. I don't want to play Orks, Chaos Space Marines, or Tyranids. I have some close friends that play Orks and Tyranids, and it seems like 40-50% of the players in my area play CSM. I was recently considering Sisters of Battle, but the all metal models, and the lack of good assaulting as well as very short range shooting turned me off. I wasn't much of a fan of the fluff either, but I'm not normally a fluff player.

I seem to systematically eliminate all the possible army choices for various reasons. I don't know I'm just kind of lost. Any advice you can give with regards to choosing an army would be helpful, even just telling me why you enjoy your army so much. Thanks for the help.

The best "first army" is Space Marines. They do everything well. They have the most fluff.

Darrian
(Wanna buy my Marines?)

sounds to me like your looking for eldar/tau

both can be horribly shooty, and eldar can be a pain in the butt in cc when used well. Don't know too much about tau, they have kroot etc to keep it interesting, but personally I find them a little bland.

Eldar are lovly models to learn to paint with, they have loads of good colour combos and look great painted with different techniques. You do need a little patience painting them though as they can be very detailed (alternativly, if you just want them coloured treat em like marines, drybrush the lot and pick bits out in a contrasting colour)

Hope that helps.

Eldar brings the pretty, and it brings the flexibility. Ultimately, it's a very veteran force with a steep learning curve. Be prepared to proxy a good deal of stuff until you find a force that clicks for you.

I may have to give Eldar a shot, I was hoping to avoid them because I'm not much of a fan of the dirty space elves. However if they are exactly what I'm looking for game play wise I may have to try them out. Are there any other alternatives? An Eldar-esque army that isn't eldar?

What, are you WFB dwarf player? lol, oh, and welcome to dakka.

Based on what you currently own, you could try playing renegade (Chaos) Marines with (some) Lesser Daemons.

Or you could sell the entire lot and play Tau Empire or Imperial Guard.

Or you could wait 3 months for the new SM book to come out and see if something there strikes your fancy.

I second JohnHwangDD on waiting for the new codex, looks like its going to be really good (but they almost always are).

Have you thought about and Inquisitor force? Means you can use your SM but can have plenty of variety.

Most importantly welcome to Dakka and the hobby!!