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Hello all, I just joined the site recently as I got back into warhammer. Years ago a friend tried getting me into it, I ended up buying a box of Imperial Guard troops and didn't work on them much. So recently I had the urge to learn how the game is properly played and start up my own army. I read up some stuff online and saw the assault on black reach starter set, so I am currently waiting on that to be delivered.

The problem is I have no idea what army I want to invest in.
I liked the Imperial Guard because they gave that ''army man'' feel we all loved as kids. But I see how their armies seem larger, which means alot more painting.

With the starter set I will want to know more about Space Marines...but with the variations like Space Wovles and whatnot I would want to know which one is better.

I also really like the Eldar for their cool futuristic look and sleek style.


If anybody would mind giving their opinion as to what the pros/cons are for the 40k armies.

Thank you for your time

Imperial Guard - Lots to paint/buy. Many vehicles are good. Put out a lot of shots per turn with a lower ballistic score but probability typically weighs in your favor.

Space Marines - Nearly all units in plastic and available. Very good starting army as they're tough and can dish out the pain pretty well. I did not like the army but it doesn't mean you won't. Good at shooting, melee, and not dying.

Space Wolves - One of the top three armies. One of the most effective units in the game come from this army. Can be done numerous ways successfully. Good at shooting, melee, and not dying.

Blood Angels - One of the top three armies. One of the best HQ in the game. Some fairly interesting interactions between units (Sanguinary Guard). Good at shooting, melee, and not dying.

Tyranids: Very complicated to build your own effective list without a lot of research. Many, many options. More models to paint than there are options. Decent at shooting, great at melee, will lose a lot of units per turn but who cares you have tons more where they came from.

Eldar: Not the most competitive but not a bad army. I don't know much about them as they hold no interest to me.

Dark Eldar: Very unique mechanics. Fragile but bring massive amount of pain. From what I understand lots of things in the new codex do not have models.

Witchhunters: Do you own a fortune 500 company? If the answer is no skip this army.

Daemonhunters: If you were to start two months from now this could be a really solid army. So far what's out about them looks interesting and new armies are always fun.

Tau: You like losing? They're not as terrible as most people say but they have limited good units and to be competitive you will likely be copying someone's list off the net. Good at shooting, range from meh at melee to absolutely terrible, not good at staying alive.

Chaos Space Marines: Evil Space Marines with one of the most versatile units in the game (Obliterators). Most people think the recent fluff behind the army is kind of bland and really you'll almost be strong-armed in to running Obliterators. Good at shooting, melee, and not dying.

Necrons: Do you like losing a whole lot? Do you enjoy it when all of a sudden on turn 3 the game is over and you lost? Do you like paying a boatload of money for one guy? If yes to all of those then look no further, this is the army for you. Really awesome at being killed but sometimes they get back up!

To pick an army you need to really like the models, playstyle, and possibly the fluff (if you don't like the fluff you can always make up some of your own).

stalkerzero wrote:Tau: You like losing? They're not as terrible as most people say but they have limited good units and to be competitive you will likely be copying someone's list off the net. Good at shooting, range from meh at melee to absolutely terrible, not good at staying alive.

Tau: Are you willing to lose a few games as you learn in order to become a better tactician as a whole? Or would you prefer to go with the crowd, and hide behind power armor and extremely forgiving survivability. Tau already dominate the shooting phase. To win games, however, you must dominate the movement phase, and avoid the assault phase. Also, our models look awesome!

Fixed. For the greater good!

stalkerzero wrote:Imperial Guard - Lots to paint/buy. Many vehicles are good. Put out a lot of shots per turn with a lower ballistic score but probability typically weighs in your favor.

Space Marines - Nearly all units in plastic and available. Very good starting army as they're tough and can dish out the pain pretty well. I did not like the army but it doesn't mean you won't. Good at shooting, melee, and not dying.

Space Wolves - One of the top three armies. One of the most effective units in the game come from this army. Can be done numerous ways successfully. Good at shooting, melee, and not dying.

Blood Angels - One of the top three armies. One of the best HQ in the game. Some fairly interesting interactions between units (Sanguinary Guard). Good at shooting, melee, and not dying.

Tyranids: Very complicated to build your own effective list without a lot of research. Many, many options. More models to paint than there are options. Decent at shooting, great at melee, will lose a lot of units per turn but who cares you have tons more where they came from.

Eldar: Not the most competitive but not a bad army. I don't know much about them as they hold no interest to me.

Dark Eldar: Very unique mechanics. Fragile but bring massive amount of pain. From what I understand lots of things in the new codex do not have models.

Witchhunters: Do you own a fortune 500 company? If the answer is no skip this army.

Daemonhunters: If you were to start two months from now this could be a really solid army. So far what's out about them looks interesting and new armies are always fun.

Tau: You like losing? They're not as terrible as most people say but they have limited good units and to be competitive you will likely be copying someone's list off the net. Good at shooting, range from meh at melee to absolutely terrible, not good at staying alive.

Chaos Space Marines: Evil Space Marines with one of the most versatile units in the game (Obliterators). Most people think the recent fluff behind the army is kind of bland and really you'll almost be strong-armed in to running Obliterators. Good at shooting, melee, and not dying.

Necrons: Do you like losing a whole lot? Do you enjoy it when all of a sudden on turn 3 the game is over and you lost? Do you like paying a boatload of money for one guy? If yes to all of those then look no further, this is the army for you. Really awesome at being killed but sometimes they get back up!

To pick an army you need to really like the models, playstyle, and possibly the fluff (if you don't like the fluff you can always make up some of your own).

Hah, thanks man. That gave me some input with a bit of humor .
When I posted it I was thinking of SM or Blood Ravens...Now I have to add Chaos and Space Wolves to my list of consideration.



Anybody else feel free to add your opinions as well.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

Cottonjaw wrote:

stalkerzero wrote:Tau: You like losing? They're not as terrible as most people say but they have limited good units and to be competitive you will likely be copying someone's list off the net. Good at shooting, range from meh at melee to absolutely terrible, not good at staying alive.

Tau: Are you willing to lose a few games as you learn in order to become a better tactician as a whole? Or would you prefer to go with the crowd, and hide behind power armor and extremely forgiving survivability. Tau already dominate the shooting phase. To win games, however, you must dominate the movement phase, and avoid the assault phase. Also, our models look awesome!

Fixed. For the greater good!

Grrr...Call me a noob for this but I completely forgot what Tau looked like until your post made me check them out again...they do look really badass. I just don't know much about them....or any army at that point.

If you're just getting into the game, Space Marines are a solid starter army - not to mention the Black Reach box gives you a good selection of core models to get started.
As a loooooong time Space Wolves player, I can tell you I really love this army but:
1) the Black Reach models don't really work for Space Wolves ('Wolves are a very different type of Space Marine)
2) There are many other great choices for which Space Marine Chapter you might choose - Blood Angels are another popular favourite, but there is a lot to be said for a "Codex Army" like Ultramarines

In the Black Reach box, you will also find some very cool Orc models (which Stalker somehow missed in his great post above). Orcs are an army with a lot to love... but winning usually isn't one of them. They're a strong melee army, but poor at shooting and low armour - so you will usually loose a lot of your army running across the board in the first few turns until you get into melee range. They also require a large outlay of $$ for models and a lot of painting

It's hard to really sum up alll the 40k armies...they're jsut so many of them, and each one can be played in so many different ways. You can get the stereotypes of each force down pretty well, but beyond that it all depends on the way you play. You can get Imperial Guardsmen handing Marines their asses in close combat, Orks who can outshoot Tau, etc. etc. But I can try and draw the basics out for you....starting with your top 3.

Imperial Guard

The Imperial Guard's biggest strength is simple spamming. Spam Infantry, spam Mechanized Veterans, spam air support, spam artillery, spam tanks etc. You can just put so much down on the table that your enemy's biggest problem is being unable to deal with in. In all honesty, you have more men than he has bullets, and more tanks than he has anti tank rounds.

Their weakness is the obvious, one Guardsman kinda sucks, and one Leman Russ can be killed with massed lascannons, or melta guns, or assault....lots of things. If I had to pin down IGs biggest weakness its over reliance on numbers. You have to spam in one category, or your lakc of quality will bring you down. One Guardsman isn't a threat, 50 are. One Leman Russ isn't a threat, 3 are, so on and so forth.

Space Marines
The Space Marine's biggest schtick is that they are the The Mario of 40k factions. They can do almost anything decently, and are very forgiving. With Guard (and especially with Eldar) if you screw up a bit, it's going to snowball and it WILL feth you hard in the end. The Marines can tolerate the kind of mistakes you're going to make in the early days of the game, and will stil be kicking fine.

The downside of the Space Marines is more a meta one than in an ingame one. They are so prevalent that people ALWAYS include gratuitous amount of material for killing Marines, and have a plan for killing Marines.

Eldar
The Eldar's thing is two fold: mobility, and specialization. Eldar transports are fast, and can rapidly put squads where and when they need them. More importantly, they're survivable, and can easily be made much tougher than their initial value of AV12 would imply. Eldar infantry also tend to be the best at what they do in a particular area. Fire Dragons will eat tank squadrons whole, Howling Banshees will shread Marines, while Striking Scorpions hack and slahs their way through horders.

Of course, this leads to some of the Eldar's big weaknesses. They're specialized. A squad of firedragons won't help much if the enemy has a horder of infantry, and all the fancy upgrades for Wave Serpents won't save you from a massed barrage of autocannon or missile launcher fire. More importantly, their modls are all very expensive for what they do...expect to be heavily out numbered. FInally, they are a very unforgiving faction. If you screw up...misjudge a charge, melta range, or something else? Your army will crumple. The Eldar can't afford to make a mistake.

Just a warning if you decide to play Space Puppies: Be prepared to hear lots of complaining about how you are playing an OP army, how you are just playing them because they are the "army of the month" and all that. I picked up a SW army because honestly I like their fluff and loved them in their 3rd ed codex, and have been regretting it ever since because I'm sick to death of all the complaining.

That said, they are a fun army to play, even if you stay away from what are considered the OP lists(ML/MSU spam).

ChrisWWII wrote:It's hard to really sum up alll the 40k armies...they're jsut so many of them, and each one can be played in so many different ways. You can get the stereotypes of each force down pretty well, but beyond that it all depends on the way you play. You can get Imperial Guardsmen handing Marines their asses in close combat, Orks who can outshoot Tau, etc. etc. But I can try and draw the basics out for you....starting with your top 3.

Imperial Guard

The Imperial Guard's biggest strength is simple spamming. Spam Infantry, spam Mechanized Veterans, spam air support, spam artillery, spam tanks etc. You can just put so much down on the table that your enemy's biggest problem is being unable to deal with in. In all honesty, you have more men than he has bullets, and more tanks than he has anti tank rounds.

Their weakness is the obvious, one Guardsman kinda sucks, and one Leman Russ can be killed with massed lascannons, or melta guns, or assault....lots of things. If I had to pin down IGs biggest weakness its over reliance on numbers. You have to spam in one category, or your lakc of quality will bring you down. One Guardsman isn't a threat, 50 are. One Leman Russ isn't a threat, 3 are, so on and so forth.

Space Marines
The Space Marine's biggest schtick is that they are the The Mario of 40k factions. They can do almost anything decently, and are very forgiving. With Guard (and especially with Eldar) if you screw up a bit, it's going to snowball and it WILL feth you hard in the end. The Marines can tolerate the kind of mistakes you're going to make in the early days of the game, and will stil be kicking fine.

The downside of the Space Marines is more a meta one than in an ingame one. They are so prevalent that people ALWAYS include gratuitous amount of material for killing Marines, and have a plan for killing Marines.

Eldar
The Eldar's thing is two fold: mobility, and specialization. Eldar transports are fast, and can rapidly put squads where and when they need them. More importantly, they're survivable, and can easily be made much tougher than their initial value of AV12 would imply. Eldar infantry also tend to be the best at what they do in a particular area. Fire Dragons will eat tank squadrons whole, Howling Banshees will shread Marines, while Striking Scorpions hack and slahs their way through horders.

Of course, this leads to some of the Eldar's big weaknesses. They're specialized. A squad of firedragons won't help much if the enemy has a horder of infantry, and all the fancy upgrades for Wave Serpents won't save you from a massed barrage of autocannon or missile launcher fire. More importantly, their modls are all very expensive for what they do...expect to be heavily out numbered. FInally, they are a very unforgiving faction. If you screw up...misjudge a charge, melta range, or something else? Your army will crumple. The Eldar can't afford to make a mistake.

Thanks for the input bro.
That's what I figured as far as IG go, I like their look and numbers....I just don't have that much cash nor time to paint THAT many troops especially if they aren't very powerful by themselves.

Space marines is the ''army'' I'm thinkin...just really boils down to Space Wolf/ Chaos / Blood Raven / or regular UM

Khisanth Magus wrote:Just a warning if you decide to play Space Puppies: Be prepared to hear lots of complaining about how you are playing an OP army, how you are just playing them because they are the "army of the month" and all that. I picked up a SW army because honestly I like their fluff and loved them in their 3rd ed codex, and have been regretting it ever since because I'm sick to death of all the complaining.

That said, they are a fun army to play, even if you stay away from what are considered the OP lists(ML/MSU spam).

I'd be more worried about picking up Blood Angels than Space Puppies to be honest...and I'd be even MORE worried about people stockpiing Grey Knights models. But as for competitiveness....the Blood Angels codex is the most powerful out there right now. Take that and you'll likely win a lot of games, but not get a lot of friends (unless you run it very, VERY fluffy and are a very good sport about the whole thing). Same with Space Puppies...but less so now. As long as you don't do Thunderwolf Calvary or Long Fang ML spam, you should be good.

Orks anyone? they have that scrap together, stress free , whatever wwors, bigga iz betta feel; thats why i chose them, you dont have to spam with them like the IG, cuz they have awesome gun wagons, batle fortresses, and conversions are super easy; you can take any model you like, add big loud guns, a few orky glyphs, and your set

Pick an army that you like the look of and do not be intimidated by the size of said army. Remeber: this is a hobby, not a race to see who can kick who's ass faster. Picking one you like will also dramatically speed up the painting and modelling process, as you will enjoy it rather than anguish (I have at least 1000 points of each army now, and honestly I've had alot of fun assembling my horde of 120 orks than I did my company of 60 marines, despite the latter taking me only about 2 hours while the former took 3 days).

I love my Tau I just played blood Angels today at 1250 and won due to stealing the initiative lol yay 1 hit k.o. Stormraven lol drop furrioso librarian and death company 36in from me lol Deathrain ftw!

Khisanth Magus wrote:Just a warning if you decide to play Space Puppies: Be prepared to hear lots of complaining about how you are playing an OP army, how you are just playing them because they are the "army of the month" and all that. I picked up a SW army because honestly I like their fluff and loved them in their 3rd ed codex, and have been regretting it ever since because I'm sick to death of all the complaining.
That said, they are a fun army to play, even if you stay away from what are considered the OP lists(ML/MSU spam).

I've been playing Space Wolves for about 20 years, and I used to work at Games Workshop (so met and spoken with a lot of people), and certain people around the hobby have *always* whined they're an over powered army. The thing is, I've only ever been a social player, not a tournament player, and so I've almost always picked a balanced army that I felt was in the spirit of things rather than the most beardy minimaxed technical rules loophole powergaming sadface army - like a lot of people often do with all the codecies. Those people are a lot easier to avoid if you don't play in tournaments - if you mostly play with friends (or at least you can work on adjusting your friend's sense of fair play)

MechaEmperor7000 wrote:Pick an army that you like the look of and do not be intimidated by the size of said army. Remeber: this is a hobby, not a race to see who can kick who's ass faster...etc

Well said. Really it depends on why you want to get into playing 40K. Do you know a few people who play, that you will be playing with? As long as you approach this as a hobby with friends, your honest-to-god best bet is to pick a team that captures your imagination, and then start collecting it at your own speed. 500 points is plenty enough in the current rules to play a small but enjoyable tactical battle - enough to get you started and see if you like it. If you're enjoying things you can always start to add one purchase at a time. I would advise against buying too much too quickly - it's expensive and daunting and you just end up with a bucket load of unfinished projects.

Pick the army you think looks best. I did and i'm proud of it!

karlosovic wrote:...you just end up with a bucket load of unfinished projects.

Indeed this is the case with impulse buys in 40k. I currently have half a Daemon Army, two boxes of Hormagaunts, a Trygon, two WHFB Skeleton sets, a few metal models from each race, a whole Battle Force of Nids, and a Tank Company all unbulit and still on sprues. The Tank Company in particular, the sheer amount of sprues that came in the box overwhelmed my senses and 4-5 years later I still cant bring myself to start clipping them.

Thanks all for the input, it's nice to have helpful gaming forum.

Well I own the Black Reach starter set, a box of IG shock troops, and a box of misc. tyranid.

I asked a friend recently if they ever played and they told me they had a chaos marine army, his brother had a space wolves, and his dad had space marines. They also play his brothers friend who was Eldar.

I like the Blood Angels, Space Wolves, and Blood Raven...really space marine variants as my first army. (I eventually would like to branch off if I enjoy the game and experiment with new armies)

Once again, thanks all! I'll do some more reasearch...maybe check out my friends models and see how they handle in a game to see if its what I like.

If you choose BA or SW you'll probably recieve a lot of comments that you just use them because they are top tier codices. But really, dont let anyone tell you what to collect and where to spend your money, just go with what feels right.

Roughly this is how I did when I chose my army:
- I wanted a "good army", that excludes Chaos and DE and so on
- I wanted speed and manouverability, and to me this meant Tau (Jetpack/Transports), BA (Jumppack) or Eldar(Transport)
- Excluded Tau first because I dont like their models. That whole manga robot thing they got going just dont do it for me
- I liked the fluff and the model range for both Eldar and BA, but the fact that all the cool Eldar miniatures (Harly, Banshee, Hawks etc) are all metal made me go with BA.

Hope this helps!

I agree with the slow and steady approach: I (stupidly) thought i wanted a non imperial/chaos army so I bought the 'nid battleforce, codex and a can of skull white primer (i was going for a leviathan paint scheme), I sprayed the models, then while they were drying, read the codex. NOT GOOD! I realised this was massively different to my previous armies, but, hey ho, on with the show: then I sat down and tried to paint the warriors, failed completely(and I'm a fairly decent painter usually), got angrier than khorne himself and now I got 50£ worth of sprues under my bed collecting dust.

Dont just dive in, in other words.

(p.s, sorry for the verbiage, I'd been wanting to get that out of my system for a few months now.)

Codex is always the first place you should start since it gives you everything you'll want to know about the army. Read it in the store and look up the specific units you like.

So, marines and eldar are your favorate so far?


Black templars - Old redundant book, i would ignore them now for the sake of your own sanity.

Dark angels - As above, but with poor rules and points costs.

Blood angels - Still a flavour of the month army.
Able to drop 70 ton land raiders from the sky, and that is the normal part of the book.
Lots of amusing units, however, they are an elite army, so low number of models.
Great conversion possibilities aswell due to being 99% plastic.

space wolves - Pretty much the same as BA.
Some really random and amusing units and funky special rules.
Plenty of different styles of play, plenty of conversion possibilities.

Basic marines - Well, they are basic.
Tons of different builds though.






Eldar - A top tier army when used right, but you wont be doing that for a fair few games.
You need to spend alot of time working out how each unit will work along side another.
While this takes alot of time and work, it pays off well.
Aside from that, they have some great models and fluff.

Stvafel wrote:If you choose BA or SW you'll probably recieve a lot of comments that you just use them because they are top tier codices. But really, dont let anyone tell you what to collect and where to spend your money, just go with what feels right.

Roughly this is how I did when I chose my army:
- I wanted a "good army", that excludes Chaos and DE and so on
- I wanted speed and manouverability, and to me this meant Tau (Jetpack/Transports), BA (Jumppack) or Eldar(Transport)
- Excluded Tau first because I dont like their models. That whole manga robot thing they got going just dont do it for me
- I liked the fluff and the model range for both Eldar and BA, but the fact that all the cool Eldar miniatures (Harly, Banshee, Hawks etc) are all metal made me go with BA.

Hope this helps!

Def helps man, I see alot of people say that other gamers will call BA an OP army and whatnot...but oh well. I've seen 'em lose and above somebody mentioned beating them with Eldar...so I guess it really depends on the player

Hows the BA army workin out for you?


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Dark Apostle 666 wrote:I agree with the slow and steady approach: I (stupidly) thought i wanted a non imperial/chaos army so I bought the 'nid battleforce, codex and a can of skull white primer (i was going for a leviathan paint scheme), I sprayed the models, then while they were drying, read the codex. NOT GOOD! I realised this was massively different to my previous armies, but, hey ho, on with the show: then I sat down and tried to paint the warriors, failed completely(and I'm a fairly decent painter usually), got angrier than khorne himself and now I got 50£ worth of sprues under my bed collecting dust.

Dont just dive in, in other words.

(p.s, sorry for the verbiage, I'd been wanting to get that out of my system for a few months now.)

Hah, all good bro. I'm sure many of us have bought figures we never use.

And to me Tyranid are a bit complex considering the upgrades AND I don't know much about the game.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

MechaEmperor7000 wrote:Codex is always the first place you should start since it gives you everything you'll want to know about the army. Read it in the store and look up the specific units you like.

I plan on going to a local store that sells warhammer soon with a few buddies...I can check 'em out there if they have any.

Hope codex prices didnt go up like the figures did.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

۞ Jack ۞ wrote:So, marines and eldar are your favorate so far?


Black templars - Old redundant book, i would ignore them now for the sake of your own sanity.

Dark angels - As above, but with poor rules and points costs.

Blood angels - Still a flavour of the month army.
Able to drop 70 ton land raiders from the sky, and that is the normal part of the book.
Lots of amusing units, however, they are an elite army, so low number of models.
Great conversion possibilities aswell due to being 99% plastic.

space wolves - Pretty much the same as BA.
Some really random and amusing units and funky special rules.
Plenty of different styles of play, plenty of conversion possibilities.

Basic marines - Well, they are basic.
Tons of different builds though.






Eldar - A top tier army when used right, but you wont be doing that for a fair few games.
You need to spend alot of time working out how each unit will work along side another.
While this takes alot of time and work, it pays off well.
Aside from that, they have some great models and fluff.

I see Eldar is another popular choice....I also heard they are for more advanced players and whatnot. I will probably watch some matches with them.

And the Eldar do have a cool look to them...but if they aren't my first primary army they will probably be my second.

Stvafel wrote:If you choose BA or SW you'll probably recieve a lot of comments that you just use them because they are top tier codices. But really, dont let anyone tell you what to collect and where to spend your money, just go with what feels right.

You will only get a lot of whining about "Top Tier" armies if you hang around gaming clubs, tournaments or forums (like this) because that's where all the "pro" gamers go to whine when they lost against someone better.

You'll also find that - even though there are many download lists and tactics etc on the net, the average social gamer isn't using them, or isn't using them properly - so your experiences playing actual games with your actual friends will vary a lot more than just "Space wolves > Mech IG > Blood Angels" or whatever other rock/scissors/paper combo seems flavour of the month.
(Which is not to say there's nothing to learn by reading actually considered opinions and constructive comments - this thread for instance has been wholely positive)

You sound like you're just starting a hobby with some mates, so the most important thing is do like Stvafel says and just pick an army that appeals to you, have some fun, and don't let all the serious beans warp your perspective