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Hey dark eldar were my favorite army and even though it was hard and i lost alot i now win alot. Granted I dont win every game but who does. Whoever thinks that dark eldar are ig on steriods have to remember that they are quite skilled to make up for it with a skill level rivaling space marines. And their weapons are so good their unethical. Lets see, standard semi-sharp bayonet vs. sword that sucks out your soul and lifeforce leaving you a husk. I rest my case.

Brother Heinrich wrote:I won't tell you what to to buy, but I will tell you this, space wolves, just another face on the bandwagon, dark eldar, steep and unfriendly learning curve that will have you hating this hobby out of the gate. but as aforementioned, look into the backgrounds, model range, and feel of each race, and let that be your deciding factor, that way when you win it feels that much more like your personal accomplishment, and not, "hey look what the rules did for me on autopilot!"

QFT


Automatically Appended Next Post:

theamericanos wrote:Hey dark eldar were my favorite army and even though it was hard and i lost alot i now win alot. Granted I dont win every game but who does. Whoever thinks that dark eldar are ig on steriods have to remember that they are quite skilled to make up for it with a skill level rivaling space marines. And their weapons are so good their unethical. Lets see, standard semi-sharp bayonet vs. sword that sucks out your soul and lifeforce leaving you a husk. I rest my case.

Just warning the guy/gal about that "lost alot" phase with DE thats all

Trust me I was an eldar player for a long time... I know...I know

than you know of the satisfying feeling when you take out 3 squads of fire warriors with basic squad of wyches or take on a force commander with your commander and scare off his precious retuine before you flay him in a most intertaining fashion. Since it is a rarely used army most people dont have a stop to it if your good. Although now with the new edition everybody seems to have one. You said you were interested in eldar? well dark eldar are esentially that except faster, shootier and have no limits.

Space Wolves are the best army in the game right now, IMO, followed very closely by IG.

Eldar are good but they require a high level of skill to win with. I would recommend Wolves first as they are great at shooting, assault, easy to paint and fun.

Wolves are the top tournament performer as well, followed closely by IG.

Other armies that do well in tournaments:

Blood Angels
Dark Eldar (they are coming on strong around her,e but next year's tournament results will tell us a lot)
Nids in good hands
Chaos can still get it done although they struggle a bit at 2,000 points against tooled out shooting armies.

theamericanos wrote: faster, shootier and have no limits.

except everything in that book is made of eggshell.

This might not answer your questions exactly but the truth is that the "hot" tournament army changes quite frequently. You are better off playing an army you enjoy playing and painting.

::cought:: daemons ::cough::

Stick to the pups. Flexible enough to competitively play in a variety of playstyles and marines, so easier to count as other meq codices if you don't perfect gel.

Ignore eldar suggestions. Wait until they get a new sex in a few years and you're more comfy with the game.

Don't understand folks freaking and suggesting old armies in a thread asking in relation tl tournament capability.

im pretty sure dark eldar just had a new edition buddy

He didn't say Dark Eldar, theamericanos.

theamericanos wrote:im pretty sure dark eldar just had a new edition buddy

What Mannahnin said, buddy.

Yeah, the OP quite clearly asked for recommendations on strong tournament armies. I don't see why people are telling him to play armies based on fluff.

For some people it is fun to play the strong lists competitively, for others, it's more about the back story. Please do not try and push your point of view on others when they ask a very specific question. It's OK to voice your point of view of course, but don't push it when it's not pertinent to the discussion.

CaptMateyo wrote: I want an army known to win tournaments across the board. The two armies im currently looking at are Eldar and, Space Wolves.

Thanks Everyone! - Mate

It looks like you have narrowed it down already to two armies that you like the fluff, or look of.

Of those 2 armies the Space Wolves are by far the superior tournament army, and at this time they have been the best tournament army for quite a while.

Yea, when picking an army go with what looks the coolest/has the best story.

I love the Tau. They were my first army, but now I am picking up Dark Eldar. While I love the Tau, the Dark Eldar just appeal to my personality. The cackling meglomanic in me just screamed when I read their codex.

Well, from all the posts going back and forth about which Army is better, SW vs Eldar vs DE vs IG vs Daemons (yes I saw you too haha) I would say if this is your first time into the hobby, pick up the SW's. Any marine army is forgiving to beginners and if your looking to jump right into the tourney scene you can't go wrong with them.

Of course, nothing is to stop you from collecting the above mentioned armies after you have a SW force started, so go back and read all the posts these fine Dakkites have given you and consider their wisdom.

As for some nice places to pick up discounted items here's a list.

Bitzbarn.com
Dicebucket.com (35% off bitz is nice for looking for certain gear)
Thewarstore.com (Awesome for large orders, only 5 dollar shipping)
chapterhousestudios.com (nice mod work)
ebay.com (your new best friend)
spikeybits.com

All these places are really good and you just have to shop around for the right deals atm.

As far as what you should buy... hurmm, I'd suggest a battleforce fo sho... then pick up an HQ and a couple Troop boxes to get you started. After that just build up the army you like to around 1850 pts.

Good luck, and welcome to the hobby

punkow wrote:NOOOOOOO!!!!!! PLEASE!!!! Don't choose Space wolves!!!! everybody use them !!!! You will find half of your opponents using your same army!!! ... and that's not so funny... I know you're new to the game and you justly want something easy to play but there's plenty of SW players out there...

Deliberately choosing not to collect an army you like just because "everyone uses them" is just as bad as picking an army just because they're the most popular. If that's what he wants then that's what he wants, you have no right to tell him he can't play SW just because in your opinion there's "too many" SW players already.

Laughing God wrote:If SW is YOUR army and not just the most COMPETATIVE army, then by all means buy away...

"But we'll still accuse you of picking them just because they're competitive."

j/k, but still, it seems like everyone says that. "Oh pick what you like the most!", "I want Space Wolves.", "STFU WAAC GAMER! You don't want Space Wolves you want Necrons!"

Brother Heinrich wrote:I won't tell you what to to buy, but I will tell you this, space wolves, just another face on the bandwagon, dark eldar, steep and unfriendly learning curve that will have you hating this hobby out of the gate. but as aforementioned, look into the backgrounds, model range, and feel of each race, and let that be your deciding factor, that way when you win it feels that much more like your personal accomplishment, and not, "hey look what the rules did for me on autopilot!"

There is no such thing as "autopilot". I really wish people would stop spewing out that bs.

Yeah, I realize that the older codices have a really hard time competing with the newer ones, because they were written for an older edition under a completely different mindset and only have one, maybe two army builds that are any good and everything that differs is almost guaranteed to lose. But GW only works so fast, so it's something you either have to accept and just play with them regardless, knowing it'll be an uphill battle and you'll have to be on top of your game to do well, or switch to a newer, more competently-written codex in the meantime, until your older army gets updated. It sucks, but that's the nature of the beast and what GW's chosen business model has resulted in.

Don't go the furry path. Come to the dark side. Death to the Emperor and all his followers!

I think there's a lot of silly talk building up in this thread. Aside from Necrons, just about every codex has a build or two at least that can win tournaments reliably in good hands.

If you're just starting, however, start with a Dex that has a greater variety and flexibility of competitiveness so that you aren't pigeon holed into playing just like everyone else.

The fact that some people think doing sw is following the crowd just highlights fundamental "un-think." By going with pups, guard, BA, or any of the other newer and more flexible dexes, you retain the freedom to be unique instead of abandoning it, especially if you see tournaments in your future game plan.

Sorry for my previous post.

Brandt's post is pure wisdom. All codices are playable at the competitive level bar Necrons.
As said, choose an army whose codex came out in the 5th ed.

Well, I guess it's time for me to jump into the fray and add my .02

Keep in mind, I'm not a tournament player and probably never will be. Just casual (although often very competitive games among my gaming group). And campaign / story driven games.

Buying a first army is painful. Your going to have the thought of 'Did I really make the right choice? Should I have just gone with DE?'. But once you get over that, and truly start getting into the hobby, it's awesome.

I think a lot of the guys on here will back me up when I say that your first army always tends to be your favorite. I used to get absolutely tabled by Chaos, Eldar, BA, and Bugs back when I first started playing circa 2001 with Orks. Constantly. But you learn and make adjustments to your list. And everything snowballs from there. I'd love to start another WAAAAAGGGH! but, I'm not all about having 2 mob armies...Anyway...

What ever you decide to go with (although I think Eldar are a little bit too unforgiving to start with), it's your decision. If you want a list thats going to smash faces in tournaments, go with what they said ^^. If you want something that's fun to play or you like the fluff/books, pick them. It's your choice.

Welcome to the hobby!

-Adam

The first rule of picking a first army is to always go with the army you have your heart set on, even if it's currently weak.

The second rule is that if you dont' have a strong preference for a single army, just play space marines. They are readily available, cheap to buy used, easy to build and paint to a table top standard, realatively forgivin in terms of playstyle, enormously flexible both between and within the codices, and can always be sold off with ease.

@Polonius, MVBrandt, Sidstyler, sk52712

Well said.

Take what you want to take, don't listen to what other people want you to take.

It always bugs the gak out of me when people tell new players to bring something different. That is an essentially selfishly motivated statement. "Bring something different because I want to play different armies."

Someone who gives that advice doe snot have your best interests at heart. Take what you like, listen to advice that is based on rational thought process and have fun with it. So what if you are another MEQ player? That is a great place to start. From there, you can build your Necron all Pariah army if you want to, just don't start there because if you do you will hate it.

If you want to go to tournaments and Wolves was one of your main interests, my recommendation would be to go with that as they are a super fun, flexible and damn good army. No autopilot at all, that is the talk of someone who doesn't play in tournaments. It takes tremendous skill and a lot of luck to win a big event, the army just helps you along.

Reecius is correct, and effectively summarizes the points to be made.

ooooh guys!!!! come on!!! I'm just trying to reduce the SW spam out there...it's not funny to see every tournament final SW vs SW, just becaude SW are half of the armies present in the tournament, and I think that a new player should know this...anyway a new player will be beaten for the first games by experiened players even if they use 'crons. I also think that Eldars, at low points like 750 or 1000 are not so unforgiving ... The Avatar and the Seer Council are very strong hqs, very sturdy and the same can be said about wraithlords that are much more forgiving of vehicles of other armies with similar role (AKA dreddies)... Dire avengers surely aren't the best troop choice in the game but they can be used effectively without too much tricks... add the most resilient dedicated transport of the game (wave serpent) and you have a solid core for a bigger army that do not need a tremendously clever use to be effective and fun....
I know that this isn't what the OP asked but I think that his perpective was wrong and would like to tell him... Btw he can choose whatever he wants...

While there has been no stated want to play Necrons, I may mention that the 'necrons suck' opinions are about to be changed if the rumors are correct as they will be getting their 5th ed dex sometime this year. Just a thought anyway.

well imperial guard are brilliant for new players because you can field massive numbers for relatively little points and don't necessarily need any tactics to win with them

Ouch, gross generalization much?

Black Bear wrote:well imperial guard are brilliant for new players because you can field massive numbers for relatively little points and don't necessarily need any tactics to win with them

That's simply not true. I suppose if your experience is seeing bad players against good guard players, maybe you'd have that skewed view, but ... yeah, as Hulk said - erroneous and gross generalization.

Imperial guard is very strong but absolutely not forgiving for errors in my opinion... guardsmen tend to be wiped out pretty easily if you don't make good use of cover and theyr tanks have crappy side and rear armours that a good player can esaily reach... even the orders must be well managed or they are useless and the command squads must be protected because they can be wiped out in a single shooting phase when they are in open ground....

Sidstyler wrote:

Brother Heinrich wrote:I won't tell you what to to buy, but I will tell you this, space wolves, just another face on the bandwagon, dark eldar, steep and unfriendly learning curve that will have you hating this hobby out of the gate. but as aforementioned, look into the backgrounds, model range, and feel of each race, and let that be your deciding factor, that way when you win it feels that much more like your personal accomplishment, and not, "hey look what the rules did for me on autopilot!"

There is no such thing as "autopilot". I really wish people would stop spewing out that bs.

Yeah, I realize that the older codices have a really hard time competing with the newer ones, because they were written for an older edition under a completely different mindset and only have one, maybe two army builds that are any good and everything that differs is almost guaranteed to lose. But GW only works so fast, so it's something you either have to accept and just play with them regardless, knowing it'll be an uphill battle and you'll have to be on top of your game to do well, or switch to a newer, more competently-written codex in the meantime, until your older army gets updated. It sucks, but that's the nature of the beast and what GW's chosen business model has resulted in.

all of 40k is turning into auto-pilot, sorry that's just the way the game is going, I've spent the past month tabling/getting tabled every day I go to my FLGS, you know what that tells me? this game has gone out of orbit like a rogue planetary body, there is no balance there is either my codex crushes you or your codex crushes me, I've beat veteran players of 12+ years and had my ass handed to me by the kid who picked up the hobby and a box of space wolves three weeks ago. Sorry brother but 40k is rapidly turning into rock 'em sock 'em robots. And now with 6th on the horizon I fear this hobby is rapidly pushing out the old crowd and herding in the new, so like a good old wolf, I'll step out before it turns into magic the gathering where what your army looks like or the background behind it are irrelevant and its only about what the pieces do and how hard you can win.