Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Hey,

I'm a Fantasy player but me and a few friends thought we'd try 40k out because it requires smaller armies. There is one thing I absolutely hate with 40k though, tanks. Therefor I'm wondering which armies are viable to play without those abominable blocks of plastic.

Cheers.

well the only army that doesn't have tanks would be tyranids but thats cause they have monstrous creatures that act like their tanks. Tanks are kind of a big part of 40k just about every army has them and your options are very limited if you don't want to use vehicles. Eldar, tau, guard, even space marines usually have some vehicles to assist on the battlefield.

Are you opposed to mech walkers? You could take a footlogging boy list, or a footdar list.
Else tyranids are your main option. You could take, Necrons, too, as their only tanks are giant pyramid mother-ships.

You can also run a marine or eldar bike list

Blood Angels is another good choice. You can built a fast army where everything has a Jump Pack.

Just a question, what’s the beef on tanks. I understand you are a fantasy player and they aren’t in your comfort zone. But, they add a very important part to the game.

As for a response to your question, I would go with nids. If your wanting to play pick ups and friendly games there great, have no tanks and still have a lot of options. The down side is if you want to play competitive games there codex is sitting on the lower end of the totem poll.

You could also pick up demons, there codex only has one vehicle and its not really all that fantastic. You can run vehicle void list and not feel like your fighting an uphill battle every time. And they can couple as a 2ed fantasy force for you. Down side, still not that high on the totem poll in competitive (although in most cases there better then bugs). And to be good with they take a lot of talent and practice.

Both of theses codex are very hard to play in the current meta due to there lack of armor. Most competitive lists out there force the opposing player to eliminate there list in phases, giving that player the ability to isolate and monopolize on limiting the firepower of there opponent. When you take the tank out of the equation, it shoots your opponent right past the first phase of hitting your force. there are obvious exceptions to this rule, but IMHO I feel this is why these two codex are only seen rarely at the winners table.

another option to run would be a Deathwing list...

you can runa competitive list with only TDA marines and a few speeders/bikes...

Space wolves can also run a competitive list with no vehicles with a Wolfstar build...
or for fun... a Canis wolftide type list which wrecks face but can't claim an objective...

Imperial guard also be a tough nut to crack with their "blob-with-Autocannon" spam or various other foot slogging human tide lists...
also if you want to run an air cav list... no tanks but with valks etc...

Also Blood Angels you can do a credible Sanguinary Guard or Decent of Angels list with no vehicles...

I understand your lack of love for the whole tank warfare idea, but the biggest reason competitive lists are mech are:

1) Mobility
2) Heavy firepower

so running without them you are handicaping yourself in 2 of the 3 phases... your ememy can out manouver you and in general can out-shoot you... So if you are going non mech you need to deny movement and shooting or minimise your oponents advantage (hence the reason a IG infantry platoon of about 50 models sitting on objective is competitive as they don't need to move and it is dificult to chew through that unit while being blasted apart by focused Autocannon fire)

hope this helps!

To be honest, you can run nearly any list without vehicles and it has a chance to be competitive. I run foot Guard, Eldar, and Vanilla marines and I do fine.

At the end of the day, pick a army and make it non-vehicle and play it/tweak it till your happy with it.

Points are points.

I think tyranids would be mostly in your comfort zone, because the big monsters are more like fantasy than tanks. but as others have said before on this thread, it is perfectly viable to run armies that have access to tanks without using them. Foot eldar or guard as some have said. All terminator armies like DW, or all bike armies like Ravenwing or Jetdar. You could also look at Dark Eldar vehicles if you want, they're not so much big blocks of plastic.

Lord Rogukiel wrote:I think tyranids would be mostly in your comfort zone, because the big monsters are more like fantasy than tanks. but as others have said before on this thread, it is perfectly viable to run armies that have access to tanks without using them. Foot eldar or guard as some have said. All terminator armies like DW, or all bike armies like Ravenwing or Jetdar. You could also look at Dark Eldar vehicles if you want, they're not so much big blocks of plastic.

yes... More like paper planes!!

Thanks for the advice, I should explain that the reason I don't like the tanks is because I love the painting aspect of Warhammer and tanks don't exactly inspire you to do good painting :/ I Have no gripes with walker-mech's and such, but I feel Warhammer is more fun when you manage infantry around rather than just remove things from the board after firing your death star cannon.

Daemons is another option.

tyranids dont have tanks..
they do have big bad-ass monsters, but no tanks..

So I think I might go for a Jump Pack BA army, and poking around the forum here I ended up with a list something like;

Librarian with a Jump Pack

2 Priests with Jump Packs

3 squads of 10 Assault Marines

(and equipment ofc, but that's less important at this point)

I'm just wondering then, do you stick those characters in one squad each?