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So here's the deal. I've been into WHFB and 40K for about 15 years now. I mainly collected models for fun, just to paint up, only played a few times. all fun, but never got into the actual gaming aspect. As of recent, i figure i'll give it a shot, and chose fantasy.

Now the question is....armies. There are SOOOO many to choose from. It's not like 40 K where half the armies are all Space marine or imperium influenced...you have alot of unique armies.

out of all i've looked over, im really down to trying O+G, WoC or Skaven. Problem is, alot of people all say O+G are not worth getting into due to the old and not overly great codex. WoC have great models, but strategy from what i've seen is basicly Charge, hack, repeat, AKA boring.

So basicly it goes down to Skaven. I know they just recently had a new rule book released. models look pretty sweet. how is the playability? Im sure with any army its down to the player and how well they strategize, but would they be a good starting army? I find the biggest thing with me whenever i collected for fun before was paintability. If models just became redundant and boring, i would lose interest. Im questioning if painting 100+ slaves and/or clanrats will get....tedious.

Skaven can be played in lots of styles. The main 2 are horde army of an army with lots of big creatures / machines. Horde armies have 100s of clan rats with the occasional powerful unit used to helped them.

From your post it seems like you would prefer an elite skaven army. These usually contain storm vermin, HPA, Rat ogres and all kinds of other machines. This will have less models to paint than normal skaven armies so you can spend more time on each one and still not get bored, plus storm vermin look great. This build is perfectly competitive as your core are reasonaby tough and the other units are small but dangerous. As with all skaven armies they can bve a bit unpredictable due to low ld. Once your Storm vermin start taking casulties they will run.

Awesome, thanks for the reply. I didnt even consider playing a more elite skaven army. I always thought of skaven as a horde heavy army, but I personally love the unpredictability of the warmachines, shooting into your own troops, etc. If I ran an elite army i wouldnt go warmachine crazy though...shooting into a unit of 80+ slaves wont do much, but 20-30 storm vermin could break morale quick. Thanks for the input!

There are enough warmachines that don't kill your own guys they are just less fun. In an elite combat army doomflayers could be pretty useful. Doomwheels are also safe to use. Hell pit abominations are fun to make and are one of the best units skaven have.

Whew, skaven are certainly a tough first army imho, with so many models to paint! But 4M2A has a great suggestion.

Boss_Salvage has a cool skaven list (with battle reports) here which doesn't look like it has too many models (HPA and the Vermin Lord take up quite a few points). However, a unit or two of plague censer bearers are really, really good (he doesn't include them in what is a pretty reasonable/friendly list, imho, but could still be effective, as shown by his record).

I wouldn't rock more than about 40 slaves (2 units of 20), otherwise it will be just too depressing painting a whole box of clanrats, only to realize that your army is 40 points larger at the end of it. Doing this twice is OK... more than that, I think not!

Agreed, my slaves the first unit I painted in my ratmen army. They took forever and when they were finished, I was basically still at square one! At this stage I painted the Deathmaster to cheer myself up and get a decent points boost.

haha. sounds like slaves could be a real pain for sure. only reason id even wanna have a unit or two of them is just to get into combat so i can shoot into them. clanrats do the same job, but why waste a few points more when you can do it for 1 or 2 points.

I was sorta thinking an army similar to a hellpit one. I find alot of skaven units have lots of possibilities, but in some circumstances can be very limited in how useful they really are. I guess all armies are like that though!

thanks for the replies. Its made me seriously consider perhaps another army to look into. as cool as the ratmen are, maybe i should choose a more idiot-proof army to start off with to get used to playing WHFB and then get into more strategic armies. Maybe i'll look into WoC or Dark elves perhaps!

Don't forget, there's supposedly a new O&G book out in a couple months, too.

New O&G book eh? That would be pretty sweet. May be worth checking out for sure! Granted im not sure if I wanna wait around for several months before I start collecting. I got a box of NG awhile back to just paint for the hell of it. I could just collect the models anyway, I highly doubt there's gonna be major changes to the O+G model line anytime soon. Something to keep in mind! thanks!

*usually* when a new book is released they retouch some of the models. if O&G are getting a new book, i would expect them to retouch some core choices, maybe convert some existing popular metal models to plastic, and add some lord/hero options. id also expect 1 or 2 larger special/rare releases akin to the plague furnace etc.

Actually I thought that new Orc book was confirmed by GW already. They come out in May.

ONLY NEW MODELS.

Not a new book.

Karon wrote:ONLY NEW MODELS.

Not a new book.

This, and this again.

RZ

thought i was in a different post!