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hello thanks for helping me out. I have a hard choice and hope you guys can help. Currently looking at imperial guards, Blood angles, black templar, chaos Marines. Something about myself real quick so you can get a feeling of what im thinking. I love templar code not in game but in real life I love the blood angles colors and I like the military feel of lots of soldiers and I love evil looking stuff. Now I hope you can help me out and why I can't choose between the four. Could you tell me which is better army, HQ, how they fight etc....

sorry if im not making an sense im typing this on a phone and im almost out of batteries.

Please no fan boys on armies I need honest opinion. Also I am not new to 40k I have been playing tyranids for a while. Just decides I want a second army.

Okay so if you want a shooty army, get either guard or tau. One has artillery, one has better armour and basic guns.

If you want melee MEQs (that seems to be what you want given BA, BT and CSM) Than BA are something if you want to get into melee REAL fast, BT manages to have MEQ hordes, and Chaos Space Marine get to come in all different flavour, from anti-MEQ, to melee, to indestructible etc.

All armies can be made to be competitive, and most power-armor armies are able to play in most play styles.

It looks like you're making this decision based purely on how the models look and to a lesser extent the fluff. We really can't help you with this.

I'd recommend Word Bearers Chaos Marines. Thier colors are close to Blood Angels only slightly darker red.

They were an ultra religious order that crusaded for the Emperor and now fight against the Imperium (somewhat related to the real life templars expect they got stabbed in the back and not the other way around.)

1. You are not new to 40K, so you should know the effort to build infantry-heavy IG. It's a whole other ball-park of hobby effort than a MEQ army for sure.

2. If you love the Blood Angel colours, why not go straight Blood Angels. A unit of Death Company and a Death-Company Dread might satisfy your "evil-looking"-itch.

3. Rumours abound of Chaos being in the makings and possibly out this year. Marines mainly, but there also rumours about possible cultists/traitors, etc.. that might tack along. Could be right up what you want to do, thus you might consider putting your money for 6 months someplace where it will bring in good interest and go on a new-army binge once the new Chaos is up for pre-order.

However, one wonderful thing I will say about Guard is extreme versatility; while as it was mentioned infantry-based Guard is EXTREMELY costly, it is also entirely possible to build a well-made army with only 30 infantry models (technically you could slip by with 20 for only 2 vet squads!) and load them to the gills with upgrades, and fill out the rest with the ever-present ordnance for which the IG is famous for. A few tanks, some artillery batteries, and then whatever fast attack voices and Chimeras you want and you'll have a tourney ready army in no time! Perhaps not as compact as an Eldar or SW strike list, but not every Guard army has to be a horde.

In addition, due to the countless planets across the Imperium and the individual armies raised on each, the options for paint schemes are limitless. Of course the same could be said for most any army now that I think of it... But there's far less Cadian 8th regiments running around out there than there are Ultramarines or Blood Ravens (relatively speaking) as far as I've seen.