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So I have one of those rare cute girlfriends who is so interested in my 40k playing that she wants to start her own army. She has painted models for awhile and distinctly says she doesn't want to collect, she wants to learn how to play. She also needs that strong attachment to an army or else she just won't consider it. She loves dinosaurs and dragons, so she immediately wanted Lizardmen but when I described the difference between 40k and Fantasy (which I don't play) she had no interest in it. The only army that she has showed interest in is Chaos Daemons, because she likes the models like the winged Daemon prince, Bloodcrushers, and Seekers of Slaanesh. This has two problems: that Chaos daemons don't seem like they're as easy to play right off the bat (though I may be very wrong) and that the army might not be as easy to run strategically (I'm sexist and assume girls and can't run strategy as well as men genetically. Not saying every guy is better, just that some things come easier to different genders) as if she was doing something like a Tau or IG gunline army.

Would you guys have any suggestions on models to show her? Personalized/custom jobs even more so appreciated! She's VERY good with crafts and will be able to convert models better than I can.

And would you guys have any armies to try and steer her to that would be easy to run strategically? She doesn't need to win all the time, but she has to win SOMETIME if she wants to play haha and she has no interest at all in playing in serious tournaments.

The other thing is I wanted to find a way to talk her into IG so that I could play with her guys too haha But she isn't gonna go for that

If she likes deamons and wings show her csm or blood angels. Good luck.

If she likes Daemons, why not let her play daemons? It'd have more of a chance of getting her to stay with it if she likes the models. The army is a little tricky to play, but that's mainly from the deep striking other than that it seems somewhat straight forward.

She sounds like she's into fantasy-looking armies. What are her problems with the other armies?

I've got nothing aginst her playing Daemons I'm just unsure how hard it would be for her. I'm unfamiliar with the army and I know they have a lot of special rules, do you think they'd be easy to pickup other than the goofy deployment? Obviously if she picks up the codex I can read through it and help a lot, but not sure how much silliness they have. Also is the Battleforce worth it? It doesn't seem like it would give many points but I'm ignorant if the models themselves are good.

I'm not too fussed about the battle force, though I have the older view of chaos where I think the forces of multiple gods shouldn't mix. I believe the best mixes were Khorne and Nurgle and Tzeentch and Nurgle. You'd have to wait for someone better to come along and give you the basics, but to me they look like a fairly straight up assault army.

Daemons are a tough army to master and they have some really hard match-ups. I don't know what you mean by silliness, but they all have invul. saves. They have good abilities with their units, though some of the units can get pretty expensive in points. All in all, the daemons mostly have rigid roles and you can either excel in one or work together. But with so many people playing Grey Knights now daemons have an uphill battle.

Battleforces are always worth it price wise.

About the only suggestion I can make at the moment is: don't patronise your girl and assume she "can't run strategy as well as men genetically", or try to get her an "easy" army to play. Yes, that's sexist, and I know a couple of girl gamers who'd be pretty offended at that. And then probably proceed to kick your ass on the table.

Anyway, that aside - if she likes the look of the daemon army, give her a decent amount of info on it, then let her decide for herself. The main thing I'd probably mention is the whole everything deepstrikes in, and that it can be risky sometimes. If she's okay with that, it's all good. Maybe proxy a game or two - not just with daemons, but maybe with other armies, see which ones she likes the feel of playing best.

Is she into the fluff at all? She might decide on an army based on the fluff as well, not just how it looks or how it plays.

If she decides the daemons aren't for her after all, maybe the Salamanders. They've got a pretty nifty dragon theme going on for them, which'd also provide plenty of customising opportunities. Customising up a heavy flamer to look like a dragon head spewing out fire would be pretty cool. Or adding scales/other dragon motifs on like this nifty Salamander Terminator:

In short: Don't try to patronise her or "steer" her - give her the info she needs and let her decide for herself.

lizardman that count as "?????". Mod the shiite out of them.

felixander wrote:This has two problems: that Chaos daemons don't seem like they're as easy to play right off the bat (though I may be very wrong) and that the army might not be as easy to run strategically (I'm sexist and assume girls and can't run strategy as well as men genetically. Not saying every guy is better, just that some things come easier to different genders) as if she was doing something like a Tau or IG gunline army.

Please, pleeeeeease tell me that you're joking here.

newtoncain wrote:lizardman that count as "?????". Mod the shiite out of them.

Lizardmen as Orks. Bam.

Lizard-orks? Might look a little funny. If she's good enough at converting....who knows?

infinite_array wrote:
Please, pleeeeeease tell me that you're joking here.

Well, at least he's honest

CuddlySquig wrote:Lizard-orks? Might look a little funny. If she's good enough at converting....who knows?

infinite_array wrote:
Please, pleeeeeease tell me that you're joking here.

Well, at least he's honest

If he is... could I get her number?

No, seriously. I know several famous women in history - Joan d'Arc and Boudica (who, for those who don't know, had the... testicular fortitude to give the Romans a run for their money while they were around their height of power) - who would disagree with him. And, of course, the situation changes drastically if she agrees with him.

Daemons are easy, at least for me. Let me explain.

Slaanesh: A missile that you point and click. It destroys what it hits and destroys its self in the process.
Tzeench: better invuls and extremly shooty.
Nurgle: war of attrition. Hard to kill units but slow.
Khorn: CC monsters. slow but hurt when you go to punch someone in the face.

Daemons are not that hard to learn. Pick two gods and go with it. A nurgle/khorne army is good, send in the Plauge Bearers first in 5-7 man units with an icon.

Once dropped, run them into a line where the shooting will come from.

Send the Blood Letters afterwards. DS near the icon, 10-15 BL's will do the trick. Thats a lot of power weapon attacks.

Invest in lesser demons. You can have a max of 4 of them. The Masque is good.

Blood Crushers are monsters, they need an icon in order to come down though. This is what the PB's are for. Small numbers rarely mishap. those coming in near the icon do not scatter.

Does she like cute things, does she care for ugly gross abominations?

Tau......stay away from tau as a beginner...they are NOT friendly.

If she likes dinosaurs, Tyranids man. Who doesn't love a rampaging Carnifex? Tyranids rely on hordes and synapse. They're a decent army to learn. Some key notes with them.

1. Keep things in synapse. It makes them think instead of being slowed.
2. Protect the heads of the army. The synapse creatures, if your opponent knows his grain of salt, will aim for them.
3. If you want to shoot, Termagaunts and Tervigons are nice. Termagaunts also dont do bad in CC with a tervigon nearby.
4. If you run Hormagaunts, I make them pricey. Giving them Toxin Sacs (4+ wound poison) and Adrenal Glands (Furious Charge) makes them Str 4 on the charge, when they attack models with T4 at Str 4 with poison, you can reroll failed wounds. Reroll 1's and failed wounds, come on. Thats a lot of wounds.

Those are the two I would recommend. Who says Tyranids can't be cute?

Abyssel wrote:
Who says Tyranids can't be cute?

Sorry. It had to be done.

Ninjaed me had the picture used in that motivation poster lined up and ready to go.

I'm a sucker for the cuddlefex

Exactly.

Don't force an army on her, let her read the codex, look at the models (they have pictures in the codex's), you try and see how the army works.

The worst thing you can do is to tell her "well you should run this army, it'll be easier on you." Let her know that some armies are harder than others. BUT, this is also a good thing, sense a hard army makes you a better player. Point and click armies will eventually be boring.

Tell her what an army does, its pro's and con's (every army has them) and see if she likes the style.

I have played a multitude of armies and have faced them all, as I'm sure everyone else has, there are many flavors of armies she can play. Does she want to get into someones face and punch their nose into their brain?

Does she want to reach out and touch someone?

In between?

Find a playstyle she likes..proxy alot, then ask her what she wants them to look like ( appearance is vital for the fairer sex, since usually its the main thing that keeps them attached to the army ) or so sayeth my spouse.

Then move heaven and hell to make her army look the way she wants, and go slow with the build, conversion work is your friend and can make a very visually appealing army.

And 40k Dino troops....here we go.






two of mine and not to terribly hard to do.

Make the little lady happy and count yourself lucky to have one that is even interested in your hobbies..its a rare thing.

@soo'va'cha You make me want to start a Tau dinosaur army


@OP what i would do is just let her do what she wants, let her get daemons and go easy on her when she plays so she sticks with it. But i urge not to buy anything for her, it'll be a sign of commitment if she gets the stuff herself. And play against her with your guys so she works her way into it and gets a feel for the game, instead of paying 110 dollars into a battle-force playing for five minutes then quitting forever.

D'awww! That skink is so cute!

:: scoops him up and hugs him tightly, then realizes the skink is now broken from tight huggles ::

I... um...

Maybe if I bury the body in the woods, they'll think he ran away?

Step 1 have her look at all the armies on GW website

Step 2 have her look at the army book in store for the armies that interested her from step 1

Step 3 explain to her how the army in step 2 works ( especially if she never played warhammer )

Step 4 tell her they can be painted and converted to how ever she like ( almost )

Step 5 by then she'll have a clear idea what she likes

Step 6 build army together

Step 7 <3


Its easy ?

If she likes dinosaurs and dragons, how about helping her convert an eldar exodite army using the dinosaurs from lizardmen, dragons from various ranges and dark elf cold ones? Most of the bits should be available on eBay.

There's always the Slann if they really want lizardmen and you can't do WHFB I guess. Pretty much the above Lizardmen conversion but using either the Eldar or Tau codex.

Pretty OOP so would have to be all conversions.

She wont like the frogs, they look scary @_@

But the left one does ballet.

SOB.
HAR HAR HAR.
...
Sorry about that.
Anyways, she showed interest in Lizards / Dragons, but not Tyranids? I almost assumed Tyranids. Also, women seem to like Tyranids (I assume it's due to it not being composed solely out of manly men).
Though, if she likes the Daemons, give her to in-depth info about Daemons and see if she decides upon them.

MEGA CONVERSIONTIME, look through the different armies and see which one she wants STRATEGICALLY then choose a unit or two and try to covert to dragon/lizard men, I thought a cool dragon themed dark eldar force would be cool using the dark elf fantasy dragon and stuff like that and who says that you have to follow the rules. Make that conversion represent a raider or ravager. I personally have no experience with Dark Eldar and dont know how they play. just suggesting....

I concur with the CSM but seing as you can have deamon looking troops and tanks in anything from IG to SCM and even SOB or GK just figure out what she wants to do, just remembrer that bolter volleys can be just as devestating as having a bloosthirster or baneblade drop on your head. And as to the harder to play ir learn the rules for, WH40K is difficult enough to learn for a beginner. If she wants to start an army, add the basics to any codex and the difficulty of learning is not that far from each other. I will say this though: force at least three basic games of SM vs orks on her and then start adding things like special chars to the games one or two at a 5ime. This will help show how to build an choose an army because it shows how it evolves. No worry about using IG if you have that allready as its very versatile. Even if all builds are not "pro".

Sorry for sloppy lingo. Posting from a mobile voxcaster.

Oh and about the sexist: the astrowebs are serius buissniss, its his girlfriend she can doesn't need your help. To kick him in the nuts if its offensive and lastly, he was clearly joking, not making a political statement. Go yell and punch at someone who meant it.

Dark Eldar might be a good fit though. They're monstrous enough allready, many look both scarier and creepier than CSM and the homonculus labs and mutilations can justify just about anything added or removed from/to anything. They're also forced to play versatile with hard hitting melle comming out of nowhere again. and again and warp gating/vehicle firing infantry. Strong as bloody f*** but you have to know what you're doing.

What's the problem with her simply taking daemons? No army is particularly more complicated to play than any other, daemons might even be one of the easier ones, due to them not even having vehicles outside of the soulgrinder. Just let her pick any army, a player who likes his army is much more likely to keep playing it, and that's your goal, right?

I'm also surprised about how many people suggest converting/scatchbuilding an entire army. I have never met a new player who spend months on building a completely converted army as his first army before playing his first game, outside of the obvious "These are Spacewolves/Blood Angels/Yadda Marines, but Chaos Marines look cooler".

Jidmah wrote:I'm also surprised about how many people suggest converting/scatchbuilding an entire army. I have never met a new player who spend months on building a completely converted army as his first army before playing his first game.

Then consider this.

We can ask the question of "whats helping to lure the GF in"?

"For the sake of gaming?" possibly, or it might be she want to spend time with her BF since a hobby does take a considerable chunk of free time.

or for the sake of some connection / link? e.g he did mention "she paints" implies shes accepting warhammer, using art as a link or familiar ground.

"she dont want to collect" perhaps price is an issue, OR it simply reinforces my analysis of the 2 points above ^

as OP also mentioned "strong attachment" aka the link i mentioned as well.