Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

So i recently started up playing again and pretty much every army has a new rulebook now. Honestly i believe 75% of doing well in this game is knowing what your enemy can do. Nothing worse then running into units, getting stomped, then going oh gak, i didnt know they could do that...

So on to my question. Is there a decent place/site where i can find the general information on armies and units, so i can at least be somewhat prepared for what i am facing.

Or do i have to sit in a FLGS and read through all the codexes and play games to learn what is going on...

You make playing games sound like a chore.

I'd recommend talking to your opponents to find out general ideas of what their armies are capable of before games.

And play more games, since generally they're pretty fun.

Playing games isnt a chore at all, they are a lot of fun.

However i do tend to enjoy games more if i know whats going on, and it helps to know whats going on. Especially when the kiddies come out on the weekends, they tend to make up/missunderstand a lot of rules...

I enjoy doing the research and learning about other things, and honestly a game is less fun if I am getting slaughtered cause i have no idea whats going on

Well, I tend to use Army Builder to make lists for armies I'm just getting to know... however, it's only really helped me understand armies that I already own the army book for. It gives you the stats of units, but not their special rules, etc.

If I were more elite, I could probably figure out how good something is just from the stat line... but I'm not

Case in point- in a tournament a few weeks ago, I faced Daemons for the first time. I intentionally bypassed charging some units of horrors, to go after a unit of nurgle-plague-things. This was with a 1000 point unit of my own.

After my unit was nearly wiped out on the charge, I realized I should have gone after the comparatively-easy-to-kill horror unit, instead. Who knew? (probably everyone who's played for/against daemons before, including myself, now )

But I do think browsing through the unit options in AB is a good way to get a little bit of the gist for an army, even though it won't give you the whole picture.

Yeah i plan to get army build eventually. However im using paper and book at the moment. Dont want to pull the i just spent 300 bucks finishing my army, but need to spend another 50ish on AB line on my wife when the pen and paper works just fine.

I read sarcasm into your statement about playing games... I hope, afterall that is why most of us are doing this. Are you just hoping not to learn at the school of hard knocks?

I would agree that playing games would be the best experience. However, I do think I saw a thread or few around here that already has a list of general information about each army. Most of the "starting fantasy, which army should I choose?"threads cover a lot of the generic ideas to the armies. I think I saw one thread somewhere that someone gave a more detailed list of the army they had the most experience with and others added their own thoughts about whichever army they played. I wish I could track it down, it was a pretty good thread.

Man I am a slow typer. There were three more answers before I finished. lol

boogeyman wrote:I read sarcasm into your statement about playing games... I hope, afterall that is why most of us are doing this. Are you just hoping not to learn at the school of hard knocks?

I would agree that playing games would be the best experience. However, I do think I saw a thread or few around here that already has a list of general information about each army. Most of the "starting fantasy, which army should I choose?"threads cover a lot of the generic ideas to the armies. I think I saw one thread somewhere that someone gave a more detailed list of the army they had the most experience with and others added their own thoughts about whichever army they played. I wish I could track it down, it was a pretty good thread.

Man I am a slow typer. There were three more answers before I finished. lol

I wasnt intending to come across as not wanting to play games, as that is why i started playing.

I agree that playing games IS the best way to learn everything, i was just hoping for basic knowledge of the other armies before i go waltzing in playing.

I also dont want to sit there saying, "what does that do" or "how did you do that" 10x every single phase, as im sure its annoying.

You can download army builder for free, you just can't add more than a few units (I think it's 3) to a list.

So just delete them and load up other units to check out each

I think it's a great way to get a general feel for things. I can totally understand wanting to do that before getting in games! I was paranoid about playing, read through the rulebook several times, tried to inhale the army book before subjecting myself to humiliation of not knowing my own rules! So I can totally understand.

Now, I've noticed that I need to learn some of my opponent's rules, too, since not everyone seems to . And for what it's worth, I didn't detect sarcasm or a negative view of playing games from your post... just a desire to know as much as possible before doing so which I can totally relate to...

RiTides wrote:

Now, I've noticed that I need to learn some of my opponent's rules, too, since not everyone seems to . And for what it's worth, I didn't detect sarcasm or a negative view of playing games from your post... just a desire to know as much as possible before doing so which I can totally relate to...

Yeah, i personally think knowing what your enemies units can do, and what they might be thinking is huge in winning a battle...

Also i hate having to say "whats that do" or "what are you doing" or " how did you do that" 20 times a turn.

I completely understand where you are coming from. The sarcasm I thought I read wasn't meant to be bad, I just thought you were implying that the only way you were going to get help was at the mercy of your enemies, so to speak. Anyway, I am going to search for that thread that gave a fairly detailed desription of each army. Has anyone seen the thread I am talking about? Are their specific questions about specific armies you have? I am by no means an expert on any of the armies, but I don't mind helping people out and don't mind 20 questions as long as they are not all the same one.

Ive learned a lot reading the army lists.

I dont care about specifics, just kinda brief overviews...

That way i know against this army try not to let this guy get with X inches.

Or dont charge those guys, whittle them down with range...

Theres some things that are givens, dont try to outshoot dwarfs etc. Im just reading posts and specifically the battles section. I can pick out most of it!