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Hi there, I'm looking to get into 40k and am struggling on which army I should go with. I used to play fantasy as tombkings. I know each army will be good and bad in different peoples eyes and am not asking for any heated debates on how xxx can kick xxxs ass and vice versa ^^

I'm afraid I know very little on the armys but am looking for something that's forgiving to play and a good starter to get the key rules? obviously fun is important and I have to admit I do like the idea of orks, but I don't know how they fair (except in fantasy, I'm guessing they have a rule like animosity as in fantasy?)

I won't be able to go Tau, or Necrons though as two of my friends have gone them as we like to keep it varied, everything else is fair game so any advice fora noobie like me would be appreciated thanks (BTW, I'm not sure what all these abbreviations mean yet either eheh, I'm currently reading through the main rulebook)

Imperial Guard are good, because there's lots of variety in troops, the kitbashing possibilities are near endless and they can truly be your own in terms of customizing, painting and such. Thy're also great fun to use and easy too. There are many different tactics available to them, although they chiefly use their superior numbers and sheer firepower to win the day.
With regard to Orks, my personal experience of them is that they can be quite a hit or miss ( sometimes in the most literal sense) on the battlefield. However, they are great for converting and painting, and again, kitbashing is aplenty.
Space Marines are good for a beginner to 40K. Although they aren't as much fun to paint or make as Guard or Orks, they are much easier to use on the field, and are therefore ideal for a beginner to the game. They're pretty good as far as troops go, boasting high armour saves and above average toughness. They're tactically diverse, as they are handy at both shooting and close combat.

Space Marines are probably the most forgiving army, due to their good statline and special rules and some other stuff that I'm honestly not qualified to know. They're also apparently a decent starter army, being relatively light on the wallet.

Orks do not have an animosity-like rule in WH40k currently, at least not that I'm aware of. So far as I know, Orks can do decently well - at least, I haven't heard much about Ork players saying their army is underpowered - but the trick is to go with one style for your army - so basically a footslogger army where all you have are Orks on foot, or a fast army with lots of transports and bikes, and I think there are a couple of others. Balanced Ork armies that do a little of everything apparently don't do too well, or so I've been told. You can also get some Ork Boyz petty cheap via the Assault on Black Reach Ork minis being sold on eBay or something like that.

And the only other piece of advice I can really give is to go with an army that suits whatever criteria - playstyle, looks, fluff, or anything else - will help you enjoy the game the most.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/393374.page#3264269
That is all.

40k orks don't suffer animosity like in fantasy. In fact, they have some fun rules:

Mob Rule - the leadership of the unit is equal to the number of boyz in the squad (max 10 of course). So a unit of 20 boyz has Ld 10 for all purposes. 11+ models in a unit gives you Fearless as well.

Waaaaagh - you can give boyz fleet for 1 turn each game which is handy.

Usually the best starter army is either Space Marines or Orks because AOBR comes with a ton of models for both. And they are fairly easy to learn the basics with, yet both armies can do a lot of advanced stuff once you learn how it all works.

Basically, I agree with everyone else. IG/Orks/Vanilla SM are for you. Pretty much, decide on if you want Shooty, Choppy, or a Balance between, and you'll know where to start.

Orks is a great place to start; they're fun to play, they aren't bogged down with too many special rules to remember, chaotic, and fun to paint and convert.

I'm not sure how orks are in the fantasy setting, but they have 3 main special rules.

1. Mob Rule: any unit of Orks can use the number of orks in the unit in place of there Leadership value and if the unit has 11 or more models they have the Fearless USR.

2. Furious Charge: Any unit with Furious Charge receives a +1 bonus to Initiative and Strength when they initiate an assault.

3. and finally WAAAGH!: An ork player can declare a Waaagh! once per game at the beginning of their shooting phase and not on the first turn. All units with the Waaagh! special rule gain the Fleet USR, but if you roll a 1 for the run move the unit suffers a wound. The Waagh! last for one player turn.

The Warhammer 40k orks a all about large mobz and close combat (with some exceptions of course) and I have fun with them whether I win or lose.

I'm going to stick my neck out and say Orks can very forgiving for a beginner.

They don't have the discipline problems of their WFB counterparts - no animosity, the only uncontrollable units are Tankbustas (who at any rate are generally considered a poor choice) and Mad Dok Grotsnik (who will run head-first at the enemy and drag any unit he accompanies with him).

If a unit has more than 10 models, it becomes Fearless. This makes hordes of footsloggers a solid backbone for the army, that can't be pinned or broken.

Tooled-up Nobz are a very powerful hammer unit with few speedbumps and fewer counters. Led by a Warboos, they can claim objectives (your goal in 2/3 of games). Even if they ride bikes.

Kommandos and Deffkoptas are great flanking units that can easily cause havoc or herd enemies into killing fields.

A Big Mek can have a Kustom Force Field that projects a bubble of cover. A wall of Killa Kans with 4+ cover saves is very dangerous, and the models are IMO some of the best GWW have done.

Your only weaknesses are Ld7 (countered by taking large mobs) and no long-range powerful anti-tank. Your options for dealing with Land Raiders and Monoliths are to run Kans up to them and tip them, run Nobs up to them and tip them, drive Battlewagons up to them and squash them, or ignore them and kill everything else.

And if it all goes wrong, there's always fun to be had with a parting rude gesture backed up by dakka.

I would agree on Marines. They are rather forgiving and good in most places. The painting and modeling is simple.
Also further down the road if you figure out you want to focus on a specific aspect of combat(shooting,close combat, fast attack, etc.) it will not be harm to switch them over. With a few new symbols you basic space marines can become any of the other separate factions( black templars, space wolves, blood angels, just not Grey knights) with a little imagination and creativity.

First Aviod Dark Eldar and Sisters they are way to hard and unforgiiving for newbees. I find Space wolves are a good choice for new players as are orks really comes down to how do you want to play close combat or shooty, balanced with both or heavy tank?

I would go either Orks or SM(or both) Get the Assault on Black Reach box and your chosen faction's Battleforce that will give you a fairly large starting force with lots of options.

lindsay40k wrote:Your only weaknesses are Ld7 (countered by taking large mobs) and no long-range powerful anti-tank. Your options for dealing with Land Raiders and Monoliths are to run Kans up to them and tip them, run Nobs up to them and tip them, drive Battlewagons up to them and squash them, or ignore them and kill everything else.

Long range AT? We have Kannons, Zzap Guns, Weirdboyz, Rokkit Launchas, Kill Kannons, and Kustom Mega Blastas (good up to AV13). All of those except the KMB can glance or penetrate AV14.

I specified 'powerful'. None of the things you list are remotely reliable at neutralising Land Raiders. And this isn't an Ork tactica thread, it's a 'give a beginner an idea of what armies are good for beginners and how they play' thread.

lindsay40k wrote:And this isn't an Ork tactica thread, it's a 'give a beginner an idea of what armies are good for beginners and how they play' thread.

I'm not sure what the difference is........?

Space marines imho. They really are the baseline of 40k. Forgiving due to a 3+ armor save, and once you have figured out your play style, if you decide to switch armies there are 4 other marine codexes to choose from.

Please, for the love of god, don't play Space Marines, Blood Angels, Grey Knights, Space Wolves, or Chaos Space Marines. If not for god, than for the sake of the War Gaming Community. They are very overplayed, so i would recommend waiting for the new necron codex to come out (November) and maybe try them if your looking to emulate TKs (at least somewhat in fluff). However, if your looking for a change of pace, then Orks or IG are a great alternative.

lindsay40k wrote:I specified 'powerful'. None of the things you list are remotely reliable at neutralising Land Raiders. And this isn't an Ork tactica thread, it's a 'give a beginner an idea of what armies are good for beginners and how they play' thread.

Since when have orks had anything that is reliable?

I'd go with whatever army you like best. If your friends are going necron and tau, you probably don't have to worry about getting an underpowered army thats going to get whooped all the time

If you're really stuck, I'd recommend orks. Fun and can make some tough lists. Also fun. Lots of conversion opportunities. Did I mention they were fun?

Lunar Eclipse wrote:

lindsay40k wrote:Your only weaknesses are Ld7 (countered by taking large mobs) and no long-range powerful anti-tank. Your options for dealing with Land Raiders and Monoliths are to run Kans up to them and tip them, run Nobs up to them and tip them, drive Battlewagons up to them and squash them, or ignore them and kill everything else.

Long range AT? We have Kannons, Zzap Guns, Weirdboyz, Rokkit Launchas, Kill Kannons, and Kustom Mega Blastas (good up to AV13). All of those except the KMB can glance or penetrate AV14.

Lindsay is pretty much right on this, and nothing on your list will ever kill a landraider, save for the weirdboy. THe KMB is also S8.

If you are unsure which army to pick, just go to your local store and watch some games, go to GWs homepage and figure out which models you like most and get those, or read the codices of those armies appealing to you and pick whoever's fluff you like most.

As I've brought many players to the game and seen many players start, I'll summarize my opinion on different armies for beginners.

Faily uncomplicated armies are:

Space Marines
They all have the same statline and only a few upgrades/weapons per unit. Most characters are straight forward. Due to AOBR you can start them failry cheap. Special characters allow for multiple sub-armies within one codex, like White Scars or Salamanders.
Army is pretty good at shooting and not that good at assaults, while easy to learn many players who started out as SM feel their army is inferior compared to blood angels and space wolves.

Orks
Two different statlines, usually very few different weapons and rules to remember. All orks are decent in combat if they charge, less decent if they get charged. Most ork characters have funky special rules, so you'll look at your codex more often. As long as you focus on one thing, you can build many different armies. AOBR makes starting orks really, really cheap.
Orks are easy to play, but hard to master. Players who can't drop the "push everything forward and change"-mentality tend to get frustrated.

Imperial Guard
More stat lines to remember, other than orders no really complicated rules at all. Holding the line and shooting will get you pretty far with your game, it gets more tricky once your opponents learn to manage your army. A huge collection of possible units in the codex, though many of them are useless. Starting out is fairly expensive, due to high amount of vehicles required.
Guard players usually stay with their army, many tanks, ordnance weapons and action-hero style characters make a decent style. As they are arguably one of the best armies in the game, few find the urge to switch to a better army, like SM do.

Tyranids
A bunch of different stat lines, but most result in the bug in question either being good at shooting or charging. Using synapses require some learning, but most tyranids can be easily categorized combat, ranged or support, making it easy for a beginner to field a somewhat decent list. The only downside is the tyranids missing some models and thus making it difficult for someone untalented or unwilling to field the army he or she likes.
Anyways, I have yet to see a person starting with tyranids being unhappy about it. Many mourn the general overcostedness of their codex, but no one ever switched armies because of that.

Necrons
Due to an old codex with few choices, there isn't much complexity. While the current codex is good for beginners, the new one is around the corner. I would disencourage starting necrons right now.

Tau
I really don't know anything about tau other than them being exceptional good shots and that their kroot "close combat specialists" die to boyz.
New tau player tend to have a good time however, so I wouldn't discourage a beginner of starting them. Their new codex is in sight, too.

Advanced armies:

Chaos Space Marines
Similar to regular marines, most of them have the same stat line and few different weapons, however, daemons, marks and psykers add additional depth to their rules. Their characters all have a great deal of special rules and the whole army is more a balance of shooting and charging. A great army for fluff players, but the codex doesn't allow to stray far from certain default list without weakening your army notably. Cheaper to start than guard, but obviously more explensive than the two AOBR armies.

Dark Angels, Black Templars, Space Wolves, Blood Angels
Yeah, I'll probably start a crusade by throwing dem beakies all in one pot. But the truth is, they are all marines with a twist. Increasing in my list from DA to BA, they have more complicated and different rules. Dark Angels allow for Terminator and/or bike armies, Black Templars are better at close combat, missile launchers and can potentially field a horde of marines, Space Wolves are marines with wolves, strong characters and awesome heavy support marines, Blood Angels have great dreadnoughts and jump infantry, fast vehicles and excel at close combat. AOBR models can be used for most of those armies, making them not that expensive to start.
If a player picked up one of those four armies, they usually stayed with it. Sole exception are those who wanted to start "the bestest army!".

Eldar
Eldar are hard to learn, but once you get the hang of them, you aren't far from mastering them. If you don't get a hang for their mobile play style, you won't have any fun with them. The army allows for multiple different play styles, but most are looked at as inferior to other competitive armies. Starting them is kind of expensive, due to many vehicles or single models required for their army.
I've seen players both very happy and very unhappy when starting out with eldar, I suggest to watch a few games or even borrow models to play them yourself before picking eldar.

Expert armies:

Grey Knights
While they are still marines, they come with whole slew of special rules and weapons. Due to high point costs across the army and a lot of FOC manipulation, it is hard to grasp for a beginner how to build a working army with the GK codex. The low model count will also be very unforgiving in mistakes, both in army planing and tactics. While they are a great army for someone with experience in WH40k, I would never suggest them to a beginner.
I know only one person who started out with GK, but he is frustrated and confused all the times.

Dark Eldar
A lot of rules on every unit, tons of wargear, pain tokens, characters with very unique rules and a glass cannon army. While a netlist would be quite playable for a beginners, building a list yourself or even grasping the codex a whole is quite impossible. I have yet to see someone start out with dark eldar, so far I've seen only experienced players pick them up.

Daemons
A whole army deep striking, demonic gifts, weird rules and different stat lines everywhere and possibly losing simply based on luck. If someone really wants to start out with daemons, he or she should go for it, but realistically a lot of frustration lies that way, not at last due to the chaos daemon codex not being that great in the first place. Out of four players I know who started with daemons only one stayed with them.

Don't listen to these people, Space Wolves are a great newbie army. They're like regular Space Marines, but better.

I've recently been playing a Deathwing army. They are basically the Terminators from the Dark Angels codex. Normally, you can't make an all Terminator army but the Dark Angels can do it very well (there are a couple of others but the best by far is Deathwing).

The reason I suggest them as a starter army - you only need one HQ - Belial, 5 squads of terminators and 3 Land Speeders. You can make any army of exactly 1500 points with those that is very tough to stop and very strong both at range but especially up close and hand to hand combat. You'll also have only 26 Terminators on the table and 3 Land Speeders so it's cheap to purchase compared to a lot of other armies. It's also a very cool looking army and really quite competitive whilst also being pretty straightforward to use. Another bonus is that the Dark Angels have one of the oldest Codices out there so will be due an update sooner rather than later meaning that you can look forward to a shiny new army in the not too distant future (hopefully).

You should definitely check them out and if you do decide to go for them, buy the assault Terminators (the ones that come with Thunder hammers) and then source some cyclone missile launchers online (because sadly you can't get Terminator squads that come with both Thunderhammers and cyclone missile launchers). This is because you'll want your Deathwing Terminators to be equipped with Thunderhammers and storm shields and a cyclone missile launcher per squad. The cyclones are popular so you'll pay more than you'd like for them and they are definitely the biggest annoyance to collect for Deathwing but until you've got them, squads of Terminatos with Thunderhammers and Stormshields can handle themselves much better than those with powerfists and storm bolters (which is the default weapons loadout).

Then as you expand on the army, you can add Land Raiders which are the awesome tank equivalent of Terminators (i.e. where Terminators are the best Troops around, so Land Raiders are the best tanks) or bike squads equipped with teleport homers. Just to be clear, adding any units which are fast attack will disqualify you from stating you have a 'Pure' Deathwing army as you will techincally have a Deathwing/Ravenwing army. For some people that's an issue but each to their own. Go Deathwing!

I'd honestly avoid IG. It can be tough to get into because of the cost involved. A 1500pt army can need in excess of 150 models for a footsloging list or about 12 tanks and 70 some bodies for a Mech list.

Until you get a better idea of what you want to do, I'd look for a low model count army, or see if you can get some games in with a friends army before you commit.

I'd suggest SM for a starter army. Or Grey Knights for the low number of models needed.

It depends allot on how fast a learner you are, and how much help other players can offer.

Whatever you do don't pick an army because "its for beginners" This assumes that you are just using the army to get used to the rules, and you plan on dumping even more cash to pick up a more "advanced" army later. Bleugh. Pick your first army to be the army you want, you'll save money and be more interested in painting and getting your guys ready.

The best way to do that is to just peruse the codexes, take a look at all the rediculous flavors of Space Marines, or maybe some Xenos tickles your fancy? Or the ruinous powers? In any event all of the armies offer different aesthetics in both look and tactics. You should choose an army based on a combination of that one.

The first question I would ask you is do you want an army that plays more or less simililarly to your TK, or would you prefer an army that plays on the opposite end of the spectrum? Since I don't actually know how TK play, I'll place the major armies into catagories.

I) Generic armies- aka MEQ
These are your run of the mil 4s across the statline with 3+ armor save codexes.
to the best of my knowledge they are as follows:
Space Marines
Black Templars
Dark Angels
Blood Angels
Space Wolves
Grey Knights
Chaos Space Marines

In general they all have massive carry overs in units (as all are related to the Space Marines in one way or another). Some are more assaulty than others, and some have a bit better ranged. GW markets them as "elite" but they don't feel particularly so since a huge proportion of players play an MeQ army. That said they are pretty elite compared to some of the other codexes out there. In general thanks to the good stat line these armies are very forgiving which is why people always recommend them to beginners.

II) Precision
Dark Eldar
Eldar
Tau
Sisters of Battle
Necron
Chaos Deamons

These armies generally have less fire power than equivalent points values of MEQ, and far less durability. They often make up for it with speed, and/or a variety of neat tricks. These armies win by being capable of focusing their attacks quickly and applying pressure precisely where it is needed. Mistakes are often fatal and as a result they will quickly train you to be a good player.
Dark Eldar are the most recent codex and are currently very strong. Eldar and Tau are starting to show their age, but both can do well casually.

I put Sisters here because they have more in common with the Xeno then with other MeQ factions. They generally use short ranged fire type weapons, and a variety of special abilities. They have a 3+ save, in between statline, and I really don't know much about them.

Necron are here because despite their 3+ save and solid statline, they have a lot of weird upgrades and special abilities that absolutly need to be leveraged or you'll get wasted. Very tough and unforgiving army to play currently. OFC they are getting a new codex soon and they may migrate up to the MeQ level for forgiveness. You never know.

III) Horde
Imperial Guard
Orks
Tyranids

Horde armies overwhelm their opponents with things. Orcs have tons of boys, IG have either tons of tanks or tons of infantry, and Tyranids have hordes of small bugs and lots of big bugs. IG for example can put around 18 or so tanks into a 2000 point list. And all of the above armies can place well over a hundred infantry models on the table if they want.

So figure out what kind of army you are interested in, look at the codexes, and hopefully you'll fall in love with one of them.