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Hi all!

So I manly play 40K but lately due to some of BOLS blogs and Warhammer Online (WAR) has got me eying WFB a little bit. I'm not going to let myself get another game until I finish painting my Eldar army (and get more of my Nids put together).

But... that does not mean I can't start researching and learning about what army I'd like to get, if I were to make the plunge into WFB.

So...

Where do I look for detailed break downs of all the armies? I've seen a few posts here on Dakka but they often they are incomplete with not all armies being described or just not in very much detail. Is there a good place to go? GW web site imo is really lacking in this area.

My current thoughts:

I primarily play Eldar in 40K and I'd not mind going with something that is polar opposite. I'm currently thinking along the lines of units that are very tough. I'd also not mind if overall the army had less figures (less to buy, less to paint). After panting super clean Eldar, I'd love something darker/grimier. I currently have my eyes on the following (In order that I'm most interested in):

Warriors of Chaos (new) - I love the new models specifically the Chaos Lord on Daemonic Mount. I also really like the Chaos Knights and Chosen. I love the idea of riding in and challenging someones hero and if you win you gain boons from your chaos god. It sounds like they are going to be a tough/aggressive army which fits exactly what I'm looking for. Plus with a new codex almost upon us, should mean they'll stay current for a long while.

Orcs & Goblins - I love the Black Orc in WAR Online and makes me want to run a large unit of Black Orcs but I'm worried that most of their normal troops don't excite me very much. I also am not sure I'd want a ton of goblins (don't care that much for the goblin models). Also worried that the rules behind the army puts it at a disadvantage. Still I love the black orc models and the humor of the Orcs... so I'm still tempted.

Vampire Counts - Have always been a big Vampire buff. This is the army that I've seen tons of posts on and according to some of my friends they think they are overpowered. Anyway I love the Grave Guard and Heroes, not 100% sure about there base troops but sounds like they are mostly just meat shields anyway. I'm certain if I go this route rules wise they are very strong, so really this is the army at this point I want to hear the least about.

Dark Elves - I do really like the look of them, but I'm worried about how fragile they might be.

Tomb Kings - I've always been a huge Egyptian buff and this army seems to take a great deal from that culture. I do love the look as well and think it would be fun to paint. Overall not sure the play style of this army will fit my own (or what I'm looking for).

Anyway thanks in advance for any advice, information or links to articles that I should read.

-Jara

PS: I'm an old school GW player, Chaos Marauders board/card game, Space Hulk, 40K, Talisman. Yes waaay long ago I did dabble a little in WFB but it was smaller number of units and mostly it was Chaos Warbands along with Necromunda and Blood bowl but it has been at least 10+ years for WFB so I basically know nothing.

I will try to give you a run down on the armies you mentioned. This comes from my personal experience of playing with and against most of these armies.

Chaos: Always a good choice, solid infanty, hard hitting cavalry, good magic (both offensive and defensive). You can add variety to your army simply by switching gods. This is also a good army if you enjoy converting as Chaos always looks good in strange posses.

Orcs & Gobbos: Not one I would recomend for beginners. Animosity can be frustrating to new players, but the army can be fun if winning isn't a big concern. This army also typically contains alot of models so can look good on the table if you can paint well.

Vamp Counts: A strong Army, but almost completely character driven. If you want 4 bad@sses and a bunch of ressurectable meat shields this is the army for you. The undead theme also allows alot of conversion posibilities of dead versions of every other army that exist. With this being a recent release the new models for this army look amazing and it will be a top contender for a long time in the tournament scene.

Dark Elves (my current army): They will play very similiar to most eldar armies. They are primarily ranged based, yet have a flare for close combat too. Their magic is strong and flexible enough to fit most situations. They are one of the faster armies in the game so usually you have the advantage of picking your fights. They rarely have a high model count at most point levels so you have to use them sparingly. Their squishiness is their one drawback, no elf army can afford to get stuck in and stay in combat. They all need to hit, break their enemies and move on to the next one.

Tomb Kings: A strong resiliant army that in the right hands just beats opponents. But it is a difficult army to learn to play properly. There lack of speed often means they are getting charged or are not fighting at all. While their magic never fails it is often rather weak and easily dispelable. Their magic defense is typically on the weak side too, especially against the newer magic heavy armies that have come out (High Elves, Vamps, Deamons, Dark Elves, and the new Warriors). Proper use of their specials and rares will win games, but their troops are rather uninspiring.

Hope this helps.

The battalion sets for the Dark Elves, Chaos, and Tomb Kings as depicted in the box setups on the website are around 25% of the standard GT total each. The orc set has no Black Orcs and the Vampire Counts set is around 75% of the other totals.

Orcs & Gobbos:
A LOT of different play styles here. At 500 pts take a Giant, couple night gobbo blocks with fanatics and a rock lobber. Build up into a choppy army from there, or keep gobboing out and go magic heavy... but that's tricky with greenskins. Animosity is either something you put up with or something you do as much as you can to limit; it all depends on whether you've taken Black Orcs. Goblin-based units are cheap (in points, not $$), finessy and fragile, whilst the bigger 'uns are quite hitty indeed.

Haven't played my greenskins for almost a year though...

Right, important things to sort out....

What sort of a Strategist are you? Do you prefer a few direct incisions, or a hammer blow? Are you impatient, and want to get to grips asap, or do you prefer to bide your time, doling out rope until your opponent has enough to hang himself?

These are really going to dictate which armies you'll get on with.

Take Empire. Quite the jack of all trades. Provided you brought the right bits and bobs, there is literally nothing they can't handle. But get your mix wrong, and you won't see turn 5.

Orcs and Goblins. If you care about a good win/loss ratio, keep away. These guys are all about the spectacle, whether it be a spectacular loss or victory, that is where you find your pride and glory.

Elves....all three are fragile, all three work differently. High Elves are fairly straightforward. Get a good defensive position, and you should be okay. Dark Elves are a lot more direct, and excel at range. Wood Elves though...definitely a patient mans army. Keep moving, take your licks, and only commit to combat when it's absolutely in your favour to do so. None of them are forgiving though. Your troops are of a high quality, but you don't get enough of them to really absorb casualties.

My best reccomendation is to play a few basic games with random borrowed armies, and of course, observe more experienced gamers. This is a game where T4 makes a difference, WS5 is horrific, and where a single manover can outwit your entire force. Firepower is strategic. Only rarely will a unit be lost to ranged alone. Instead, you will find unit weakened. The loss of a single rank can spell doom for even the most powerful combat unit, so be aware of this. Some armies fear Ranged Attacks a great deal, others are largely impervious.

The biggest difference though, is that every unit in the game can fall to every other unit. It's all about combat resolution. Even humble Gobbos can see off a Star Dragon. How? Combat Resolution. To my mind, playing with ranked units smaller than 20 (unless Ogres and Cavalry of course) is a daft idea. With 20 troops, I start off with 3 Ranks, and Standard. Thats 4 Combat Res Points. Against the Star Dragon, thats an extra one for Outnumber, giving me 5. This means the Prince and his Mount need to nobble 5 Gobbos just to Draw. But, in the case of Draw, you check Musicians. I'll have one. He doesn't. This means I now win by a single point. Killing 6 Gobbos is of course not a particularly hard task, but, it is sufficiently tricky enough to discourage a frontal charge. IIRC, between the, the Star Dragon and Lord have 10 attacks (6 from the Dragon, 4 for from the Lord). Now, normally, the best they can hit me on is a 3+. This means, statistically, he'll hit....7 times? 4 of which will be from the Dragon, which at S6, kills me on two's. The same for the Lord, assuming he's jabbing me vitals with a Lance. So, they only just get the 6 needed. And thats going on statistical probability. Just a single duff round of combat, and the Dragon could be running. It's not likely of course, but it's a far cry from 40k's sure thing combats, I'm sure you'll agree!

Wow thanks for all the replies!

Lots to think about, yeah I need to try to watch and get a few games in with others units.

For my Eldar I like the brain challenge of having to coordinate my units but I will admit that often I have to hold myself back, reminding myself to be patient! I should hold X or Y unit in reserve and wait for an opening or mistake from my opponent. Overall I feel that Eldar has little wiggle room and mistakes can cost you dearly.

I play to have fun and don't mind loosing but at the same time if a Codex is ancient and in dire need of updating or just has a ton of major flaws well it scares me.

In MTG I'm a Johnny/Spike.
(Johnny/Spike wants to win. He just wants to win with style. Johnny/Spike is the rogue deck builder. He's the guy that comes up with the crazy decks that just might work. But Johnny/Spike takes the next step; he actually plays it. Johnny/Spike is out to prove that he can win while having the limitation of also being innovative while he does so).

I think this is also why I really enjoy the pre-game of army list building.

Anyway... I think I'd love for a more aggressive charge in impatient army if one exists.

Mad Doc Grotsnik, thanks a ton for that overview/write up, it really helped point out some of the big differences between 40K and WFB.

Zarcarius, thanks for the army run downs. Hum, yeah Vamp Counts and Chaos are sounding cool. Of course the challenge of coming up with a winning Orc Gobbo army that features Black Orcs as a main component still drift to my thoughts.

-Jara

Keep in mind whether or not you want flyers/skirmishers or not. Also whether you want shooting as aside from Magic; Chaos and Vampires don't really have any.

As far as the any units beating any other unit, I've done it. I've taking a 30 rat unit of Clan Rats with hand weapons and shields and taken a charge from Bretonnian Knights Errant under the Errantry War List. I took a few casualties but I wound up breaking his unit.

Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
The biggest difference though, is that every unit in the game can fall to every other unit. It's all about combat resolution. Even humble Gobbos can see off a Star Dragon. How? Combat Resolution. To my mind, playing with ranked units smaller than 20 (unless Ogres and Cavalry of course) is a daft idea. With 20 troops, I start off with 3 Ranks, and Standard. Thats 4 Combat Res Points. Against the Star Dragon, thats an extra one for Outnumber, giving me 5. This means the Prince and his Mount need to nobble 5 Gobbos just to Draw. But, in the case of Draw, you check Musicians. I'll have one. He doesn't. This means I now win by a single point. Killing 6 Gobbos is of course not a particularly hard task, but, it is sufficiently tricky enough to discourage a frontal charge. IIRC, between the, the Star Dragon and Lord have 10 attacks (6 from the Dragon, 4 for from the Lord). Now, normally, the best they can hit me on is a 3+. This means, statistically, he'll hit....7 times? 4 of which will be from the Dragon, which at S6, kills me on two's. The same for the Lord, assuming he's jabbing me vitals with a Lance. So, they only just get the 6 needed. And thats going on statistical probability. Just a single duff round of combat, and the Dragon could be running. It's not likely of course, but it's a far cry from 40k's sure thing combats, I'm sure you'll agree!

The Mad Doc is referring to Static Combat Resolution, or SCR. It took me a long time to
figure out that acronym (or it was a long time until someone explained it to me). It's also how
Vampire Counts win. It's not the number of kills their skeletons can cause, but the number
their Combat Resolution starts at unless someone manages to hit their flank.

Stacking SCR often involves stacking standard, BSB, high number of troops, 3+ ranks
(the + is to account for shooting casualties) to bring things to a starting number of
6 (BSB, standard, outnumber, 3 ranks). There are magic items in the game that
allows you to increase your CR, but at all times you have to be aware of SCR, because
if you're relying on kills (Mad Doc's Star Dragon example) you're going to be let down
in a game that relies on d6s.

Jaradakar wrote:

In MTG I'm a Johnny/Spike.
(Johnny/Spike wants to win. He just wants to win with style. Johnny/Spike is the rogue deck builder. He's the guy that comes up with the crazy decks that just might work. But Johnny/Spike takes the next step; he actually plays it. Johnny/Spike is out to prove that he can win while having the limitation of also being innovative while he does so).

I'm curious if you happen to know where this archetype originates? It's a new thing to me.

Play Skaven.

Nevermind. I found the article.
http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtgcom/daily/mr220b

malfred wrote:Nevermind. I found the article.
http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtgcom/daily/mr220b

Ah, glad you found it. It's one of the best player type analysis that I've found and I think it applies to more than just MTG (I think it works for board games, computer games pretty much everything).

-Jara

It's a shadow of much larger theory of gaming. It used to be known as GNS theory. It's now usually simply called the Big Model.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Big_Model

It originally applied to RPGs and it was as a DM that I ran across it.

Also I'm a Timmy/Spike with decent Johnny streak.

I don't totally agree with these models but their have their uses.

So now that Chaos Warriors are out, any thoughts/suggestions?

Are they any good? I've read some complaints that for them to be good you have to rely on a bunch of marauders and not so much actual "warriors of chaos". Not sure if I care that much, as I also like the marauder figures (though I'm unsure I'd want to have more of them than actual troops in armor).

I've picked up a WFB rule book and have just started to crack it. I've also went ahead and picked up a codex for Warriors of Chaos and have just perused it slightly...

Anyway I know/plan to try to get some playtest/mock battles in at some point just have not had the time (WotLK release and all).

-Jara