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So, the group I'm gaming with is busting out with Fantasy and I'm without. I currently play Space Marines and Blood Angels in 40k and I'm looking at starting a WHFB army. I'd like something that plays fundamentally different than my BA's do. I'm open to any army that isn't getting played much in my group. This totally disqualifies: High Elves, Tomb Kings, Vampire Counts, and Warriors of Chaos for sure and potentially disqualifies Skaven, Dark Elves and Dwarves (which belong to guys that come out and play but not all the time.)

If my math is right, that leaves: Orcs and Goblins, Beastmen, Daemons, Brettonia, Lizardmen, Ogre Kingdoms, The Empire and Wood Elves. I'd be open to Dwarves and Skaven also.

I'm looking for something fun to play, generally competitive, and with a different feel on the board then Space Marines and Blood Angels. Thanks!

Well out of those you have left to choose from bretonnia,ogres and wood elfs are not that competetive, you can still win ofc but your going to need luck.

If you want a nice variety of magic and really hard hitting close combat i would go for daemons or lizardmen, if you like the look of a more shooty list then you can go for empire or dwarfs.

What about Orcs and Beastmen? I'm looking for something which is more horde based I guess, as I'm used to small, elite armies. I've been looking at Lizards, Orcs and Skaven.

If you really want to paint a lot of models, Skaven can get some massive slave units for extremely cheap, and then buy some toys on top of those.

We don't have too many Beastmen players around here, so I'm not sure I can comment too much on their play style. Orcs will require some patience in order to deal with some of their randomness- in particular, animosity. If you have the right temperament, they can be a lot of fun.

RZ

Try out skaven. IoB really helps them out and they are very different from marines

Beastmen are, for the most part, a get in and smash face army.

They have pretty much zero ranged choices (some BS3 18inch skirmishers, and a mosnter that acts as a stone thrower)

However, while expensive, their lord level combat characters can rip apart units like they are nothing.

Due to this however, if your get hit hard by magic/shooting in the first one or two turns before you can get into combat you might have some issues recovering.

OnG are much better with the new rules and are a very fun army to play, however if you want a lot of control over your army discount them. If you want to play and have fun then for sure OnG are a solid choice.

Skaven are a horde army. They are very good and have a lot of options. But that is A LOT of models to buy, assemble and paint. More so than probably any other army. So take that into consideration.

Orcs can be a lot of fun. However they do have Animosity which can at times interfere with your plans or give you a nice movement bonus. This can also a high model count army.

Lizardmen are probably the most forgiving new person army. Their main core troop (saurus) are very solid. The Slaan are some of the best magic users in the game. They have good support units as well. However if anything were to play like space marines it would be Lizardmen. Their saurus are S&T 4 and have good armor for infantry. They are hard to break due to a special leadership rule.

Beasmen are somewhat horde-ish. They have next to no shooting or armor. They make up for it in numbers. Oh and minotaurs. Minotaurs with great weapons can do a lot of damage. They don't like to be shot though. Still they have an ambush ability which can put pressure on war machines and archers so it isn't all bad.

Well, right now I'm really liking the idea of the magic power of the Slann. I liked the idea of the O&G Randomness, but now I'm seeing that their magic is bunk, so I'm eliminating them. 2 questions:

1) What is the magic of the Skaven like? Are they using the rulebook magic or their own? How well/interesting/fun is it?
2) Is it possible to horde lizardmen? If so, how? If not, why not?

1) Skaven have their own magic. I am not familiar with it but from the anecdotes I've gleaned it can be nasty.

2) The closest you can get to horde lizardmen is if you take a lot of skinks. Even so the cheapest skink is more than some other armies cheapest guys. A base skink is double that of a skaven slave for instance. Heck a skink is more than a base empire state troop or a chaos marauder. Skinks are fast and have poisoned ranged weapons but are only T2. They can be backed up with Kroxigors in the same unit though. Generally skink themed armies also run multiple stegodons for punch. You can still take a slaan and have him run around on his own. You have the ability to make him immune to non magic stuff. Even so the numbers won't be anything like skaven or O&G with goblins.

Typical lizardmen have 2ish blocks of saurus, or possibly one one very large group, one Temple Guard housing the Slaan. Sprinkle in some skink skirmishers / chameleons and salamanders (which are simply amazing) and/or stegodons and it's a very potent army. The most popular lore is life which gives you the ability to bring back casualties, make your guys super tough, give them regen, give the slaan miscast protection, and one of the big deadly spells.

After flipping through the skaven codex, I'm starting to lean toward them. Do the higher cost spells get played often? I've not yet played but those do seem nasty. My concern would be they would be hard to get in play whereas the Slann seems to be able to just put any sort of magic out there pretty easily (from what I've read.)