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This is something that I am really stuck on. I just want two know everybody's two cents on this subject: should I start wit IG or SM? Based on what I know, they are both good starter armies. I can't choose them based on looks, because I think both look awesome. I can't choose them based on strategy either, because I like how both play (massed troops and awesome armor for the former, elite infantry for the latter). And because of these reasons, I can not choose an army. Are there any reasons why I should take one over the other?

Thanks for your input.

I'm about to start IG for two reasons.
The first is I want an army with which I would be able to send wave after wave of my own men at the enemy
The second is with IG, if a foot list doesn't work (or most other lists for that matter) you can mech up and go from there.

I would go IG because i play both and it does kind of suck when you go places and there is always a space marine play other then yourself. The IG, like BB Lucifer said it does give you some options and isnt it nice to send 142 men in a single troop choice. It brings an army out not many take and it is fun to play IG so long story short start IG.

Imperial Guard. They have a variety of builds that all have character while retaining varying degrees of competitiveness. The models are sweet, the rules are great while not being written purely in cheese paste, and there's plenty of ways to fluff an army out.

The ONLY downside is the physical cost of the army.

And moving 150 models if you play foot guard.

Guard hands down. The only problem is the expense (though you can find large lots of infantry, and often tanks, quite cheap second hand) and that the infantry models are ugly, but Space Marines cost significantly more per model and don't look any better.

Well, I guess that is IG then. Thanks guys!

Been a guardsman I'd warn you that guard is a steep learning curve. You can't take advise from players other than guardsman because a guard army works differently to most armies. You have to learn how to sacrifice units, favourite ones or not, to pull of victories. But if you sacirfice too many you'll find yourself quickly becoming outnumbered which is a big no no. The answer to most questions that arise in guard armies is simple, get more boots on the ground. If your like me, you'll never play another army after guard. I tried my hand at blood angels in an older edition. I was in shock at how few troops, heavy weapons and vehicles I was restricted to. It made me feel vulnerable. A guard army to me is about the feeling of been able to crush your enemy in turn 1 and then watching it all go horribly wrong, removing hands full of close combat casualties and snatching victory by sheer luck in heat of the moment actions by single heroic units of poor bloodied guardsman.

Still interested? Then fall in trooper! We'll make a guardsman of you yet!

Well, I could add in my chime pro-guard, but lots of it has been said already. Instead, I'd make an anti-marine case.

Marines are an army that has very few specialized units, which means you're always spending too much for whatever you're trying to accomplish, while always wasting some part of your units' capabilities. It's an inefficient army, which is bad for beginners.

Furthermore, SM as a whole is a shooty army. Not only are shooty armies less good in 5th ed than they were in 4th, but SM is a pretty cruddy shooty army by shooty army standards.

Finally, there are a LOT of marine players out there. This means that everybody that you're going to be playing against likely has a fair amount of practice against marines, and likely has stuff in their list built specifically to counter some of your units (because the odds of them running into marines at some point are high).

Marines can be played competitively, but it's really tough, and along the way you're going to face off against people who have had experience trashing your kind of army.

Not a good starter at all.

Definitely the guard, the look on your opponent's face when you outnumber them, in tanks and men, 5 to 1 is absolutely priceless.

Will20017

Id say Guard

mainly because they are so much more fun.

Marines are ok..but you dont get many for your points, they cost alot money wise to (because of their popularity) and...well who wouldnt want guard with loads of expendable troops and guns and TANKS!!!

did I mention lots of TANKS!!

Two words: Death Korps

Do spess mahreens get the cool WW2 army? No? Nuff said

*Plays Devil's Advocate*

I don't think IG are a very good starter army. As a COMPETITIVE army, they are very, very good, but as a starter army they lack certain qualities that Marines have.

Flexibility - IG are highly specialised, whilst Marines can do a little bit of everything. In competitive play specialisation (for the most part) reigns supreme but again, if you're just starting out Marines give you the capability to do a little bit of shooting and a little bit of assault and generally allows you to get a stronger grasp of the game mechanics because of this.

Survivability - IG die in droves. You will be scooping models off the table pretty much from the opening salvo. Marines have the statline and the armour to allow them to emerge (comparatively) unscathed from most firefights. Again, as a beginner this is a good thing as your guys don't die as fast so you get more play-time out of them and so learn quicker.

Forgiving - Following on from the above, the inherent toughness and armour of the Marines allows players to make a few mistakes throughout the course of the game and still pull out a close-fought win/draw. As a beginner you *will* make mistakes, why choose an army that punishes you more because of this when you don't really know any better?

Expense - Marines are relatively inexpensive compared to IG. You'll be dropping a TON of money on infantry and tanks when compared to how 'cheap' Marine kits are; again an important thing to note when starting out.

Painting - Marines are easier to paint (this is entirely subjective based upon your skills as a modeller).

Essentially, if you were asking which army would be the best competitively, I think for once, practically the whole board would agree on IG. However, you are asking which would be best army to start with and on that basis I just Marines are the better choice here.

L. Wrex

In the previous codex i'd agree with Wrex 100% because you couldn't play guard with mistakes and hope to win. In the new codex its more forgiving than before. Everything in guard has repercussions. You need to spend a lot of time learning how to build an effective list by seperating the trash from the good stuff. Especially since there are so many options. You need to learn deployment methods that won't simply clog the table up. Painting them is hell if you go heavy on infantry. On the other hand, I find it a very rewarding army to play. It's a very common sense army where you need to think about how each decision will impact when you take your army to battle.

Space marines are a more suitible army for beginers but many people get bored of them rather quickly. Guards possibilities are almost endless.

As much as people can write up a speech to convince you, at the end of the day, you're the one that decides.

What's the best way to decide? Play both armies. Find a FLGS and see if you can either:

1. Have an IG/SM player show you how the army works or see if they even let you play with their army.

2. Watch a game with both armies fighting each other.

I have picked IG. What I just wish is that there were easier ways to make an army of Valhallans. But they cost more, and have less. I would like to see an improvement in that area. Although I could just use the models, but that is still $10 more then the Cadian squads.

Supplement metal Valhallans with plastic Great Coats from Wargames Factory. They're cheaper and they have cloaks...

If you want it to be unique, grab some heads from Pig Iron or West Wind Miniatures (Separate Head System: World War II) and kitbash those with the Great Coats. Voila: Space Russkies.

I'm going to be the guy with the impractical post here and say I went for Black Templars because 1) wanted a less shooty army than Tau 2) the fluff rocks and 3) loved the color scheme. Yep, black and white isn't as easy as it looks and it gives great practice on highlighting especially. So if there is a SM army you really love the look of, or the same for IG, no shame in going for the pretty!

Also, among the guys I play with one has Dark Angels, one Blood Angels, so we've got a lot of neat special SM codex armies to play with.

Yep, in the last codex guard had to be played to the tee in order to win. But with the new overall rules(OMG I can scatter grenade launchers instead of just missing?) and the new codex(OMG I have more than two variants of tanks?) IG are a very good starting army.

You do need to learn when to sacrifice and when to stay safe, but that's something dependent upon you. Do you use the ratlings with their +1 to cover saves to draw fire, or do you put them elsewhere to take out other units? sure my ratlings got slaughtered in CC with some terminators, but my opponent had to waste a deep strike unit to do so.

IG can handle hordes and they can handle specialist squads, and they boast the longest ranged weapons for a vehicle.

SM are fine and dandy as well, but there's the difference between the two armies; SM stay alive and IG sacrifice. If you want to play SM you want to keep them alive, but if you play IG you are willing to let some go for the overall battle. Look at Chenkov for example, that reusable conscript squad is a good tank shield.

i started out playing SM and it was the worst mistake i have ever make

The down sides of playing SM

(1) Half the time you will be playing against the same army.

(2) because a lot of people play SM every one else knows how to bet them

(3)They are an elite army. so they are harder IMO to start with

(4) SM army do not have the best resale value (At least at my FLGS)

The good things about a SM army

(1) most people can give you good advise about playing SM

(2) SM will be cheaper in the long run

As for finding good advice - the internet is a treasure trove. I started out playing Tau and by reading up on them on sites like http://advancedtautactica.com/ I was able to know them inside and out - my first two 1500 pt games ended up being a draw vs. BA and a win vs. Eldar. So do your homework and you can use any army to good effect right out of the starting gate.

IG are a great army to play, but they are a bad starter army.

1) They cost a lot more money than meq.

2) More models to paint, and more difficult to paint.

3) less newbie friendly with more complex tactics.

I love my IG, but its not a starter army. Its very expensive and can’t really bridge into a different army if you find out you don’t like the play style.

IG IS a far more competitive codex. It has a bit more of a learning curve then SM.

SM models can be used for more then one codex, so you can switch to SW/BA with out completely starting over. And as both of these codex are competitive in there own right.

I'm surprised that people are saying that the guard is more difficult to use. Every unit is a specialist, so you always know what each unit should be doing (this vet squad has 3x melta, so I should go attack a tank, etc.), and they're so cheap that you're always bringing at least two of anything, meaning that they're much more forgiving (oh, yeah? Let's see you take out these OTHER three power blobs!).

SM have units that are always mixed, and thus more confusing for how they should be used, and they are so expensive pointswise that it's rather unlikely that they'll have backups, meaning the loss of any one unit is going to hurt your strategy that much more.

Although it is true that SM armies take a lot less time and energy to go from boxes of sprue to tabletop.

I would go with SM.
IG little difficult army to start, it takes lots of money and you need years of experience to rise them to level, that is needed to tournaments. (This doesnt matter so much, playing is for fun, not to win!)
SM is simple strong and very versatile. Its also cheaper to start than IG and is not vunereable to assault and/or horde armies.

learn the rules, the tempo, and the flow on a space marine army. then start collecting ig. ig is very different from space marines.

PLUS if you switch to ig after playing marines, you'll know all the tricks of how to kill marines with ig, or how to win against marine equivalents.

everything in guard is weak by itself. guard is a horde army more than anything. hordes of tanks, infantry, etc. it is much easier to coordinate a small group of superstars than a hundred grunts. ask any real life military commander.

Ailaros wrote:I'm surprised that people are saying that the guard is more difficult to use. Every unit is a specialist, so you always know what each unit should be doing (this vet squad has 3x melta, so I should go attack a tank, etc.), and they're so cheap that you're always bringing at least two of anything, meaning that they're much more forgiving (oh, yeah? Let's see you take out these OTHER three power blobs!).

SM have units that are always mixed, and thus more confusing for how they should be used, and they are so expensive pointswise that it's rather unlikely that they'll have backups, meaning the loss of any one unit is going to hurt your strategy that much more.

Although it is true that SM armies take a lot less time and energy to go from boxes of sprue to tabletop.

You're approaching this topic from a competitive standpoint - not a beginners. How many brand-new players have access to 3 x meltaguns? (which don't come in any of the boxes bar the CCS ones) How many new players can afford to run three/four power blobs? Marines are simplified, streamlined, perform acceptably at every phase in the game, and are the most 'complete' army directly out of the box. Again competitive =/= beginner friendly, it just means competitive.

L. Wrex

I would agree with above and say SM. I love my IG army, but when it comes to forgivability, SM's are where it is at.

The SM's save, and also the 'non-specialization' is a huge boon. The save allows you to take risks and make mistakes and not lose a game for it, and the 'non-specialization' means redundancy. Something that every player needs, but with SM's it comes built in.

IG can be your dream army, but $$ and the safety of SM's allow you to progress faster. SM's are popular for a reason.

They have very different play stykles, and very different fluff, so they are pretty different. I prefer SM.






Or better yet, join the Tau Empire.

Lycaeus Wrex wrote:

Ailaros wrote:I'm surprised that people are saying that the guard is more difficult to use. Every unit is a specialist, so you always know what each unit should be doing (this vet squad has 3x melta, so I should go attack a tank, etc.), and they're so cheap that you're always bringing at least two of anything, meaning that they're much more forgiving (oh, yeah? Let's see you take out these OTHER three power blobs!).

SM have units that are always mixed, and thus more confusing for how they should be used, and they are so expensive pointswise that it's rather unlikely that they'll have backups, meaning the loss of any one unit is going to hurt your strategy that much more.

Although it is true that SM armies take a lot less time and energy to go from boxes of sprue to tabletop.

You're approaching this topic from a competitive standpoint - not a beginners. How many brand-new players have access to 3 x meltaguns? (which don't come in any of the boxes bar the CCS ones) How many new players can afford to run three/four power blobs? Marines are simplified, streamlined, perform acceptably at every phase in the game, and are the most 'complete' army directly out of the box. Again competitive =/= beginner friendly, it just means competitive.

L. Wrex

When a player masters an army using the army seems effortless, which often makes veteran players terrible newbie teachers. There a a lot of little tricks that go into playing ig that guys like Aliros don't even process on a concious level anymore, thus they have become standard operating procedure.

Newbies often have poor target priority, poor deployments, and poor objective planning. Ig is a top tier codex, but that alone doesn't make it good for newbies.

The other good reason sm is a good newbie army is most people play sm so a newbie can learn more by loosing sm on sm fights rather than getting crushed by a very different army.

Well, hey, I thought I was giving real reasons here, not some godlike message from on high.

Units that don't have a clear role are confusing. Marines have lots of units without good, clear roles. Guard have lots of units with units that are very straightforward. I'd assume that new players would want things that were less confusing. Likewise, I'd assume that new players would want to be able to make a mistake that sees them lose a unit, but have that be okay, because they have backups. Being more forgiving sounds like a better thing for new players.

New players may have serious problems, but it seems to me that a guard army helps with things like how to deploy or target units. New players will make mistakes, but it seems to me that it's easier to make mistakes with marines, and that they are less forgiving of mistakes. This would help newer players to be more competitive early on. I'm not talking about uber-players, but playing an army that sees you get whomped a lot early on doesn't seem to be a good starter army to me. That you have more players to give you advice seems to be offset by how much advice there is out there for how to beat marines.

Really, it's just the hobby aspect that is so pro-marines. It's cheaper and faster. How much of a consolation that will be when a new player whips out an army that's nothing but tac squads with missile launchers and flamers and gets destroyed over and over.