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Hi folks.

I'm still new to 40k, playing orks & thinking about my next army.

I'd love to see a comparative list of the basic strengths & weaknesses of each army... or even a spreadsheet comparing relative strengths in say speed/shooty/combat/anti-tank/meq etc. of each army. - Gather peoples options on which army is the best at different areas of war and strategy.

So give me your short paragraphs / one-liners on the strengths / weaknesses - pros / cons of the army you know best. Lets see if we can come up with a good comparative article together. Try for raw fact/stats rather than just opinions/preferences if you can - thanks!

h.

My goodness me that is a big ask! I can only really speak for the armies I play:

TYRANIDS:

Strengths:
- Close Combat
- Some ferocious large creatures
- Ability to swarm vast numbers of cannonfodder
- Lots of flyers which can be troublesome
- Almost every weapon is assault

Weaknesses:
- Poor armour saves
- Only one nid has an invulnerable save
- Poor AP on weapons
- Lack of customisability in many units

ELDAR:

Strengths:
- Wide variety of troops
- Powerful psychic powers and effects
- Several units capable of delivering a devastating charge
- Close range weaponry
- Excellent capabilities if well-handled, units cooperate well to deliver results

Weaknesses:
- Vehicles almost entirely BS3
- Low T
- Difficulty in deploying significant amounts of long range heavy weaponry over BS3

GREY KNIGHTS:

Strengths:
- Ability to deploy all terminator forces
- Every marine is a psyker
- Devastating short ranged heavy weapons
- Hugely powerful assault units
- Access to a range of dangerous vehicles (land raider, stormraven/flying brick)

Weaknesses:
- Low numbers due to huge cost of units
- Can be tar-pitted and stopped from operating
- Lack of cheaper vehicles and units limits sheer numbers
- Restricted access to marine armoury (e.g. no speeders, predators, vindicators, etc)
- Low access to more powerful long-range heavy weapons

That is off the top of my head, I'm sure there is more that can be said on all of these!

Chaos Space Marines:

+Durable troops that have specialized roles.
+Good availability of basic weapons (meltas, flamers, ccws) makes most infantry very versatile.
+Very cost-effective heavy-hitters such as Daemon Prince, Obliterators.
+Has decent options both for assault and ranged firepower.

-Many units/upgrades are quite overcosted and thus less effective. (!k Sons, Daemon Weapons, etc)
-Slow army: no fast vehicles anywhere, few flying units.
-HQs offer no tactical advantage to the army in general: all are CC beatsticks.
-No psychic defense, best psyker powers just got nerfed.

Tau

Strenghs:
- Strengh 5 standard weapons
- KROOT!!!!!!!
- Strengh 10 ap 1 weapons by the bucket load!
- Wide array of weapon loadouts for battlesuits
- Disruption pods (vehicles with 4+ cover)
- pretty much the only army that uses jet packs

Weakness:
- A lot of useless units
- only 1 character is passable at best
- they cant do close combat (exeption being o'shovah and kroot)
- fairly outdated codex
- battle suits have a stupid unit size

Blood Angels

Strenghs:
- Assault units as troops
- a nice selection of characters and play styles
- Dreadnaughts here, there and everywhere
- land raiders as dedicated transports
- power armor is always nice
- deepstrike specialists

Weakness:
- some units are rather expensive
- sanguinary guard are useless
- Terminators dont realy work as well as anyone elese for some reason
- deepstriking is verry risk vs reward
- not that much differant to normal marines

there just the armies i play (other than space squirrels) but they come under grey knights

IG
Strengths:
*can run mech, foot or hybrid
*mech varient is one of the strongest armies in the game
*lots of BS4 special weapons
*lots of tanks
* versatile troop choices

Weaknesses:
*Near universal T3 and I3
*5+ armour save
*Generally poor in close combat

Grey Knights:
Strengths:
-Everything

Weaknesses:
????

Space Marines
Strengths:
- High... everything! except numbers.
- Awesome Special Characters.
- vindicators.
- Hard to kill.
Weaknesses:
- Relatively low numbers.
- Blue Space Marines get mocked.

Imperial Guard
Strengths:
- High numbers.
- Dangerous tanks.
- Characters more awesome than Space marines(CREEEEEEEEEED!)
Weaknesses:
- standard units are weak.
- Predictable armies(armored column, hammer and anvil, tactical genius, Infantry galore, paratroopers)
-most elite infantry is lacking.

So, interestingly enough, GW is pushing this question into the realm of moot. In the past, armies had distinct strengths and weaknesses, but they have been pushing more balanced codeces over the last 5 years or so. For example, look at GK, they are able to do both shooty and choppy pretty well, and have both fast units and durable units. The same is true for orks, guard, and DE.

With the exception of the older codices, armies really don't have strengths and weaknesses, they just have different styles.

Most of what you're probably going to hear in this thread (and has already shown itself so far), is hackneyed stereotypes, now long past the point of being accurate.

Orks are a fairly balanced codex. They do have many themes to run with the army. Unfortunately they have no reliable long range AT. I also find that Orks arn't as powerful in CC as they used to be, especially with armies like Blood Angels, Space Wolves, and Grey Knights making lots of appearances.

Ailaros wrote:Most of what you're probably going to hear in this thread (and has already shown itself so far), is hackneyed stereotypes, now long past the point of being accurate.

Really? So people don't know the limitations of their armies? We're all ignorant?


Anyway,

Imperial Guard:

Strengths:

+ Weight of Firepower (special/heavy/standard weaponry)
+ Weight of Numbers
+ Tar Pits (Blob Guard)
+ Array of Tanks
+Reliable Fast Attack Choices
+ Some effective Characters

Weaknesses:
- Toughness 3
- Initiative 3
- Weak in CC
- Usually higher in Kill Points

KplKeegan wrote:Really? So people don't know the limitations of their armies? We're all ignorant?

I'm not saying that people are ignorant of strengths and weaknesses, I'm saying that there AREN'T strengths and weaknesses, at least not very pronounced ones. With older codices this is less true (tau have a real weakness in close combat, for example), but not so much for new ones.

Yes, guard WAS a stationary gunline army with great tanks, but that had basically no skill in close combat, but that's not true anymore. It hasn't been true for practically a decade now. Old stereotypes die hard...

Necrons:
+The basic infantry weapon can glance any vehicle
+All infantry have a sudo feel no pain
+Scarabs
+All infantry essentially have a marine stat line

-initiative 2
-Almost all weaponry have 24 range
-very low customization

Orks:
+very cheap and effective Infantry
+Vehicles also very cheap and effective
+Has the ability to be a very swift army
+Random fun!

-Tee-shirt save....
-No psychic defense
-Best ballistic skill is a 3.... everything else (even most of the vehicles) have a skill of 2...
-Random fun ...