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Hi all, my name is Steven and I'm a alcohol.. wait that's for the other group I joined..

Greetings everyone,

I've been lurking the forum for a while, mainly the battle report section which is awesome, love the pics.

I would like to gather some straight-from-the-battlefield info from you (veterans or not) guys in order to choose a Warhammer 40k army. Back in the day (2nd-3rd edition) I used to play Catachan Imperial Guard but I didn't like either them or their Cadian brothers very much power-wise speaking, I just felt as if once the main tanks (ie Lemann-Russes) were gone, the battle was over.

I'm now thinking on picking the hobby up again so I'd like to ask you a few questions about some armies, mainly related to how they play and how much will it cost on average to gather a decent (1000pt) army. I'd like you to reply to my questions as accurately as possible, "tl;dr" is not a problem for me. I'd also like to know how much did you spend to collect a fairly sized army (1500pt max).

I cannot go to a "Local friendly store" or "Local GW store" to ask and browse because in my city there are few of these and players mostly field - guess what - the tedious space marine (in all their variants) or armies I don't like (Chaos, eldar...), so until now I couldn't gather much info and I relied mainly on battle reports on the web and codices.

I'm not a "must-win" guy but neither a "the-good-thing-is-participating-not-winning" one. I'd like to get an army which forgives small tactical mistakes and lets me win say 1/3 of the games I play just to keep the morale up. I'm torn between these:

Imperial guard: I love the miniatures and the tanks, the various camo patterns I can imagine to paint are just a lot. The new codex looks really good but I'm still feeling the army relies too much on mechanized support which money-wise will result in huge expenses. So the questions are:
- Does the new "Orders" special rule play out well? AKA do you people really get an advantage from it?
- The new Hellhound looks wicked but is it really that strong?
- I feel as if a mechanized company - possibly with the "Chimelta" spam - is the way to go and everything else is not just as competitive, is it true?

Ork: I really like their looks and they seem to be a really fun army but it feels like if some units are just not even worth considering:
- I'm bugged by this: Trukks look good, they're fast, they're open-topped which is good for assault and they have the Ramshackle rule which I think it's cool so why don't people carry their orks in it? Is it because they only carry 12 models and orks rely on high numbers for morale? I would think an assault army would take great advantage of vehicles like this.
- In my mind an ork army with mobs of Boyz on Trukks and Deffkoptas and/or Kans and maybe a Battlewagon (just because I cannot stop thinking at how much the deffrolla looks powerful) as support should be strong but no one seems to be using one so I'm left wondering..

Tyranids: Don't really like the miniatures, they look like far too complicated to paint too. Like the fact that their creatures are really powerful and bloodthirsty:
- Does the synapse rule cause troubles? It looks like you should be careful about how many synapse creatures you've got and how to move them
- Do the units get to CC fast on average? Without CC you're as good as dead with this army

As of now I'm more leaned towards the Orks as they really look fun but I feel their low "dissaplin" is a major problem as even in great numbers they can be crunched down really fast without proper support (either "Kan wall" or embarked on some transport).

Thanks for your replies, regards!

ps: English is not my native language so forgive my (if any) mistakes

Orks are great if you want to be able to laugh at yourself. Tactics wise, if you use trukks, you have to use alot of them. if you footslog, you have to use big groups. Shooty Orks are rare, but if you tend to roll well, than Lootas are a good choice. (personally, i have yet to get more than 1 shot each out of them) but the most important thing to remember about Orks, is that they never lose. if they win, they won. if the die, than they died fighting, so that doesnt count. and if they run away, than they lived so they can have another go!

grog wrote:
Imperial guard: I love the miniatures and the tanks, the various camo patterns I can imagine to paint are just a lot. The new codex looks really good but I'm still feeling the army relies too much on mechanized support which money-wise will result in huge expenses. So the questions are:
- Does the new "Orders" special rule play out well? AKA do you people really get an advantage from it?
- The new Hellhound looks wicked but is it really that strong?
- I feel as if a mechanized company - possibly with the "Chimelta" spam - is the way to go and everything else is not just as competitive, is it true?

In terms of monetary cost, IG is expensive. Both all-foot, hybrid, and full-mech run a similar price-tag so really it's your preference here.

1) Eh, it's nice to have but isn't a game winner in anyway. Really benefits gunline lists the most.....and I find those very boring.

2) Hellhound is a very nice vehicle to have, but whether or not you take one depends on what the rest of the army composition is.

3) I actually find that hybrid or non-standard mech is strong. Chimelta spam will when you most games, but in tournaments where you have experienced opponents who are expecting this kind of army and know how to handle it, you may not get as much mileage. I usually max out at 3 melta squads up to 1750 and maybe add some melta stormtroopers after that.

Ork: I really like their looks and they seem to be a really fun army but it feels like if some units are just not even worth considering:
- I'm bugged by this: Trukks look good, they're fast, they're open-topped which is good for assault and they have the Ramshackle rule which I think it's cool so why don't people carry their orks in it? Is it because they only carry 12 models and orks rely on high numbers for morale? I would think an assault army would take great advantage of vehicles like this.
- In my mind an ork army with mobs of Boyz on Trukks and Deffkoptas and/or Kans and maybe a Battlewagon (just because I cannot stop thinking at how much the deffrolla looks powerful) as support should be strong but no one seems to be using one so I'm left wondering..

Orks can be fun, but can run up in price as well with as many models as they are able to field.

1) Because they are tissue paper vehicles that fall apart if you sneeze at them, they can only hold 12 orks, and if you lose half of them in one turn can leave your army strung across the field. I don't play orks, but every time I've fought against them with a trukk heavy list I've won.

2) If you're going battlewagons, take at least 2-3. AV 14 is decent, but they are still open-topped with low side armor. They aren't that hard to kill.

Tyranids: Don't really like the miniatures, they look like far too complicated to paint too. Like the fact that their creatures are really powerful and bloodthirsty:
- Does the synapse rule cause troubles? It looks like you should be careful about how many synapse creatures you've got and how to move them
- Do the units get to CC fast on average? Without CC you're as good as dead with this army

Tyranids are in the midfield price range, but can get up there. Painting them isn't that difficult, washes, inks, or dips are your friend here. I've had a much more difficult time painting my Imperial Guard than my Tyranids.

1) Not really. You'll want synapse cover for a turn or two to get the smaller critters into combat (fearless can be a good or bad thing for the small ones in CC). If you fail a synapse test most of the time the shooting ones will head for cover and shoot stuff and the CC ones will run at the closest unit to beat up on.......so pretty much what you want them to do anyway, you just don't have as much choice in what units they can attack.

2) Don't think that CC is the be-all-end-all for nids. They need a strong shooting element to bust open transports as well. If you are relying 100% on CC to win then you're doing it wrong. As for speed, hormagaunts, Trygons, anything with wings, and ravagers can close into CC pretty damn fast (turn 2 or 3).

As of now I'm more leaned towards the Orks as they really look fun but I feel their low "dissaplin" is a major problem as even in great numbers they can be crunched down really fast without proper support (either "Kan wall" or embarked on some transport).

The 'disaplin' issues only come into play when you number about 7-8 models or less....at which point you really don't care about that unit anyway and the enemy is probably shooting at more dangerous targets anyway so it isn't a huge issue. Don't forget that orks are stupid cheap in the points department.

ps: English is not my native language so forgive my (if any) mistakes

Me either. You're English is better than a lot of native English speakers. No problems with communication at all.

What army do you like the look of the most, and will have the most fun collecting and painting? That's the army you should go for!

I vote orks, I love playing them. Are they the best, probably not, but are they the worst, absolutely not.

I recently ran 6 30 ork squads, and boy...my opponent just couldn't manage to kill enough before he was completely over run. That sort of thing, to me epitomizes what a 40k war should be, hundreds of poorly armed and armored troops just throwing themselves into a smaller more elite force Stalin style.

Definately go with Orks. They're more durable for the cost you pay and are awesome in combat, and do decently well in shooting if you upgrade them for it (Shoota boyz are actually quite balanaced in terms of shooting and assault tbh, given their point cost). They also have quite a few builds (Kan Wall, Green Tide, Nob Bikerz, Burna Boyz, etc...) that are both fun and moderately competitive. Finally, their tanks are dirt cheap, since you can build them out of toy scraps!

@Big Mek Dattrukk: I had the chance to play as Orks vs SM out of a AoBR box a friend of mine bought and TBH I liked them. I'm just wondering if those other 2 armies I listed would be less expensive while still being fun to play (aka you can win even without fielding a cheesy or "competitive" list once in a while)

@Nungunz: Thank you, so far you gave me most of the info I was looking for

@gazelle: You sure have a point which I second but think of it as this: I loved how IG looked and could be painted (I'm a camo fan, if it was for me I'd paint even the SM with a camo pattern) and spent quite the money on them and yet, I could not enjoy the games I played regardless of the result and I felt like "God I'd really love to field just these Sentinels and Lemann-Russes and leave all these other folks at home"

@narceron: I feel like that army you just described is a little pricey being 16£ every 10 PLASTIC miniatures..

@MechaEmperor7000: Thanks for your advice, it has been noted

Thanks everyone, if anyone else has something to add please do, if anything, just for the records.

Have a nice day

With Ork Boyz, you can get breakdowns from Assault on Black Reach fairly cheaply on Ebay (at least in the United States). I'm not sure about vehicles, but the nice thing about orks is that you can turn basically anything into an ork vehicle.

IG are an expensive army, but they're my favorite. I played nothing but Marine armies for years, and I can say without a doubt that the Guard are the most fun army I have to play and paint. I even enjoy them more than my Orks.

Guard may rely on their armor, but their armor is incredible. Leman Russ tanks are tough as nails, really strong, and fairly cheap. You can cram 9 of them into an army list if you're playing a big enough game. The orders system is a fantastic booster, and really makes your officers important. Getting to reroll missed shots, automatically regroup, shoot more with their lasguns, or any number of other things are really useful. You can even give orders from the relative safety of a Chimera.

One tactic that doesn't rely on armor for Guard is a solid infantry horde. You can just take big, mobbed up squads of 50 guys with as many power weapons and commissars as you can fit. With the right commander, it can be a pretty solid assault army.

Don't just go the veterans with melta guns in vehicles route. If you do that you'll be no better and no less "samey" than the legions of Marines at your semi-local gamestore.

Go with orks. You can find assault on black reach boyz and nobz for cheap, and all those guys are very use able. The battleforce for orks is also pretty good.

If you get a complete assault on black reach, and a battleforce, you will have around 750 points, for less than 150 USD. Bump up your nobz, maybe add some more boyz, get lootas, and your looking at around 1000 points for something like 250 USD. Thats not bad. Because orks come in AoBR, you can get a lot of bodies really cheap, and they are really easy to convert to other units.

Of the three you're interested IG is by far the strongest, but building up an IG army is mind numbingly expensive.

IG has lots of options, you can go tank heavy, artillery heavy, Air Cav (with or without underrated Stormtroopers), field solid cavalry units, go mech heavy with veterans in Chimeras, field a blob of light infantry. The only thing IG doesn't do really well is CC, but they can make up for their deficiencies in that depart with numbers.

Orks are somewhat the opposite of IG. There units are better in CC, but they can have good shooting via massive numbers of shots. The biggest weakness with Orks is their inability to handle AV14 from range. Orks shouldn't be too bad to start out it with, you should be able to get AoBR boyz and nobz for a decent price.

I don't know enough about current Tyranids to say, I've only seen them played a few times. They have a lot of options in all departments. You can field an army of elite, multiwound creatues, a horde of guants, a 'stealthy' list with Lictors and Genestealers, and they even have some very solid pyskers. They also have strong CC and decent enough shooting.

Thanks for the replies,

yes, I agree that Orks are the less expensive due to all the points you highligthed and IG are the most pricey as usual. What about Tyranids, do they fall in the middle based on your playstile or are they just as expensive?

I've played a few games with both Orks and IG (though I only played IG in 2nd-3rd edition) and yes, Ork have a pretty bad time at dealing with decent AV vehicles (12+) since their most common and powerful weapons are just S8, and in CC the best I have is S9 (Nob with PK in Boyz mob assaulting) the first round then is just the usual S8. How would you suggest to deal with the high AV problem in an efficient way?

So far I liked the fact that the can move and shoot while readying themselves for assault and Ld seems not to be a problem provided you have a huge mob and the mandatory bosspole. Yes, you will lose a fair amount of troops in the meantime but using cover and having 2A each usually makes up for that deficit. I just cannot understand why one of the most bashing oriented army has troops with S3 like normal humans, even SM scouts have S4!

However, area and template weapons are their doom, if your opponent deploys really far in his zone, he can still sit and shoot at you while you are pretty much forced to try to run at him in assault since thinking of just shooting at him it's not good with BS2 average.

Regarding IG, I liked that their tanks and walkers have a pretty good weaponry and usually I got the most from them but they're not invulnerable and you just need a little "crew shaken" to have a useless tank for that turn.

Speaking about troops, unless embarked on transports, they are pretty useless but for meatshields IMHO since they don't have this much firepower as they can carry 1 HW maximum and getting them to CC would mean throw them to their death since they're max 10 guardsmen squads with Ld8. And yes, you can combine them but only if you don't embark them on a transport which means either make their lives longer until the moment they disembark and do some damage before being slaugthered or make them a huge squad who can take a lot of damage while struggling to return decent fire (a 30 man squad at 24" gets 10 wounds on average vs T4 never negating saves IF you manage to get the order through, else it's just 5) and considered the new LOS rules, you may not even be able to get every men in the squad to shoot.

I still feel IG has to be mechanized to be decent.

Anyone care to comment and maybe expand a little on Tyranids (how they play well, how they play bad..) please?

Bear in mind, I'm not asking "which army is the strongest between these" but rather "which army gets a decent play while still not being too pricey to collect up to 1500pt?"

By decent play I mean "mech IG is ok or Kan wall is good or all-foot IG is good if you do this and this while it's a no-go if you do that, etc.."

Thanks for your time

Playing Tyranids is a radically different mind set from many armies. The only way to be competitive with the army is to be a 'big picture thinker'. Everything must work well together and you must work well with what you choose. You will literally lose the game before you even start if you put together the wrong elements. Even once you have gone through the gauntlet of choosing your parts you then have to execute them as a flowing, table-wide organism all working together.

That being said it's not a Herculean task not meant to be attempted by mortals or anything of the sort. It is after all pushing plastic around the table and rolling dice. It just has to be done in a way that is not immediately obvious and will only come with a lot of practice with the army. Once you're practiced it actually does become a lot of fun. It's really cool to be knows as 'the nid guy' and have people actively seek you out because you're not playing another home-brew chapter of space marines that changes to whatever the latest overpowered codex is this month.

There is, unfortunately, a need to be Fox News Fair and Balanced about the issue though. If you pick up the Tyranid army, GW hates you. A lot. You will get hosed left, right and center on rules/models/pricing and when extra documentation comes out to clarify those rules you'll end up wishing it hadn't. Then whenever a new codex comes out there is invariably something in there that just screams 'Screw you. Twice' There is also 1/3 of the entire codex that does not have an official model. There are many conventions about what is in the current line of models and how they can be adapted into what is needed, but your modeling skills will be tested with the army. Of course once you overcome the challenge you end up with one of the most visually distinct armies in the 40k universe and the one that looks the best in my (biased) opinion.

Nids are a powerful army...you just have to learn the small nuances of the rules. First and foremost they are an assault army, but we rely on our ranged weapons to pop and stun transports. Getting to the passengers is what it's all about.

Assaulting into cover can be a killer since so much of the army lacks grenades. You have to be careful how you assault or try to take some preventative measures (FnP on genestealers for example).

Hive guard and Tervigons are considered to be some of the most powerful units in the codex. Bear in mind though there is no tervigon model (yet) so be prepared to do some converting in the meantime.

However there is a lot of room in the codex for taking a fluffy or themed army and still do well. Ymgarl genestealers are a fun unit but can be absolutely devastating against most things. A full deepstriking list is pretty fun to use, but does rely on going second a lot of the time. Tervigon spam is viable as is a pure genestealer horde.

Good luck with your choice.

Alphapod wrote:With Ork Boyz, you can get breakdowns from Assault on Black Reach fairly cheaply on Ebay (at least in the United States). I'm not sure about vehicles, but the nice thing about orks is that you can turn basically anything into an ork vehicle.

grog wrote:How would you suggest to deal with the high AV problem in an efficient way?
Thanks for your time

Deff Rollas. D6 S10 hits when you ram something. Oh, and Warbosses get S10 Klaws thanks to their base S5.

AlmightyWalrus wrote:

grog wrote:How would you suggest to deal with the high AV problem in an efficient way?
Thanks for your time

Deff Rollas. D6 S10 hits when you ram something. Oh, and Warbosses get S10 Klaws thanks to their base S5.

Plus you can have a unit of Nobz with 2 power klaws in there. That way you have 6 str 9 attacks on the charge. Those are pretty good chances to hit AV14.

On a side note, in my match yesterday against orks, my opponents warboss charged my rhino that had moved 4" the turn before. He rolled all 1's and 2's to hit.

Thank you all for your replies, I think I'll go Orks (mainly because I could find a lot of them for a fairly reasonable price).

Have a good day

With regards to Imperial Guard, the Orders are primarily for infantry based armies (where they work wonders), you may use them sometimes with mechanized armies but not often, but it does help.

You needn't go Veterans to have a competitive army, platoons work just as well, but are more expensive to buy, more time & effort to build and paint, etc. However yes I would suggest a mechanized force over a non-mechanized one, for two reasons. Mechanized I feel works better than pure footslogging (though infantry lists aren't bad either at all) but also still will generally have more infantry than most opponents, but also looks way more intimidating. There's nothing like coming to the board in a 2000pt game with 17 independent (non-squadroned) AV12 tanks, and then telling your opponent that yes, in fact there are also 85 infantry sitting in the tanks that can shoot out of them.


I would also counsel you, from a competitive perspective at least to go either fully mech or fully footslogging. Don't show up with a bunch of infantry and only like 4 tanks, show up with all tanks or no tanks. The reason for this is that if you go for a mix, your enemy will typically have enough units and special purpose weapons to deal with both your tanks an infantry. If you go all tanks, then they won't have enough AT guns to deal with a dozen or more tanks, and all of their anti-infantry weapons are practically useless, along with many of their assault troops that have nothing to do but try to clamp grenades on tanks or slap at them with basic attacks in hopes of inflicting glancing hits. If you go all infantry then they are sitting there with a bunch of lascannons and meltaguns with nothing but T3 5+sv infantry to shoot at and they likely won't have enough anti-infantry weaponry to deal with that many troops.

Imperial Guard of any stripe are going to be expensive to build, generally 2-4x as much as a similar points Space Marine army.

The Hellhound and its variants are "ok". They aren't stellar in terms of what you pay for them, but aren't garbage either. They could probably do with a 15-30pt price cut, but at the same time aren't useless. If you like them, take them. My personal favorite tank however, besides the Chimera (which is truly awesome in this edition) is the HS Hydra. *THOSE* are...amazing.

Thanks for your time, Vaktathi. I was torn between Orks and IG until the end. I decided to go with the first ones mainly for cost reasons.

Thank you all for your replies, cheers.

Slarg232 wrote:

Alphapod wrote:With Ork Boyz, you can get breakdowns from Assault on Black Reach fairly cheaply on Ebay (at least in the United States). I'm not sure about vehicles, but the nice thing about orks is that you can turn basically anything into an ork vehicle.

If I ever get a new army, I'm going Orks and building a Stompa that looks like that.

That thing is amazing!