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Hello gents,

I have been playing 40k for years and I now want to dabble into Fantasy a bit. I was wondering if Fantasy has obvious tiers of armies like 40k arguably does and if so what are they? I obviously don't want to pick an army because of its strength alone, I want an army I will enjoy playing and painting. I would just hate to blindly grab an army and start playing without realizing I snagged the Sisters of Battle equivalent in WHFB :p Thank you for any help or advice you guys have.

PS by look and feel of armies alone I was looking at Warriors of Chaos or Orcs & Goblins

No obviously, it is a LOT better than in 40k.

I am sure a lot of other people will have some very different opinions but in my experience Dark Elves, Dwarves (although my mate complains that while they are good they are restrictive) and Vampires are on the top. High Elves, Warriors of Chaos, Daemons and I think Ogers are the next tier. I know Beastmen are seen as the being on the lower end and every one agrees Brettonians and Wood Elves are bottom tier. Having said that in fantasy bottom tier basically just means you will struggle against some armies and you are limited on the number of effective builds, Wood Elves and Bretts can still win you tournaments, you will juts have to use similar lists and tactics to every other competitive breet/WE player.

Personal opinion. There's very little difference between Great, Good and Alright.

Great: Ogres, Dark Elves, Daemons of Chaos, Skaven
Good: Everyone else not named above or below.
Alright: Beastmen, Orcs and Goblins, Tomb Kings
Can struggle without a very specific army list: Wood Elves, Brettonians

For the most part there are 3 tiers for WFB:
Top
Mid
Bottom

For the top, armies can more or less take damn near anything in the book and do well, or at least the army has very few drawbacks. An example is Dark Elves, who only have 1 unit in the book that isn't quite worth it's points(RBT) which is offset by the low cost of Hydra. There are many ways to win with an army in the top tier. Current top tier favorites are: Dark Elves, Skaven, Ogres, and Daemons(although more restricted in terms of power than the others).

For mid tier, armies perform most tasks decently, but require some modicum of skill in order to win consistently. These armies require a little more planning and forethought in list design and deployment. The vast majority of books are currently in this tier. These armies are considered the most balanced, though some do have builds that are quite difficult to beat. Any army that isn't listed as top or bottom, is of course a middle tier army.

For bottom tier, armies struggle to win due to several factors. First, most armies in the bottom are vastly outdated. Bretonnians are the worst case of this, whose book was written 9 years ago. Also, these armies require significant skill in order to win with, both in the list design and in the strategy used on the field. Lastly, these books may contain units which are over priced for the performance they give. The current bottom tier armies are Bretonnians, Wood Elves and Beastmen.

As books are released, the armies may shift in tiers of course. Vampire Counts were top tier when 7th edition was out, and 8th edition saw them down to mid tier. Ogres were updated last year and rose to top tier. Certain armies will almost certainly never be top tier, such as Empire and Orcs & Goblins. The Empire in general is viewed as the baseline for which strength is compared, as most of their units(certainly all of their infantry) are very middle of the road.

Aerethan wrote:For the most part there are 3 tiers for WFB:
Top
Mid
Bottom

For the top, armies can more or less take damn near anything in the book and do well, or at least the army has very few drawbacks. An example is Dark Elves, who only have 1 unit in the book that isn't quite worth it's points(RBT) which is offset by the low cost of Hydra. There are many ways to win with an army in the top tier. Current top tier favorites are: Dark Elves, Skaven, Ogres, and Daemons(although more restricted in terms of power than the others).

For mid tier, armies perform most tasks decently, but require some modicum of skill in order to win consistently. These armies require a little more planning and forethought in list design and deployment. The vast majority of books are currently in this tier. These armies are considered the most balanced, though some do have builds that are quite difficult to beat. Any army that isn't listed as top or bottom, is of course a middle tier army.

For bottom tier, armies struggle to win due to several factors. First, most armies in the bottom are vastly outdated. Bretonnians are the worst case of this, whose book was written 9 years ago. Also, these armies require significant skill in order to win with, both in the list design and in the strategy used on the field. Lastly, these books may contain units which are over priced for the performance they give. The current bottom tier armies are Bretonnians, Wood Elves and Beastmen.

As books are released, the armies may shift in tiers of course. Vampire Counts were top tier when 7th edition was out, and 8th edition saw them down to mid tier. Ogres were updated last year and rose to top tier. Certain armies will almost certainly never be top tier, such as Empire and Orcs & Goblins. The Empire in general is viewed as the baseline for which strength is compared, as most of their units(certainly all of their infantry) are very middle of the road.

qft

although I may have a different list of armies in those tiers. I'd also break down the mid-tier to 2 sections: upper-mid and lower-mid. But your descriptions are spot on, I even highlighted the parts I firmly agree with!

based on a combination of personal experience, analysis of Army Books, tourney results, and the consensus internet opinion (least weighted), I'd have it as (armies listed in no particular order):

Top - DE, Skaven, Lizardmen, Ogres, Demons
Mid (upper) - VC, WoC, HE, Empire
Mid (lower) - Beastmen, Dwarfs, O&G
Bottom - Brets, WE, TK

But again, don't take this too much to heart. You can be a WE player and still consistently beat Lizardmen. It's all about your tactics, list, and a little bit of luck.

Indeed. I don't have any experience with TK so I can't really condemn them to the bottom tier, but if they are that bad then so be it.

Lizardmen I'd place in upper mid. Salamanders and Slann are the only major beatsticks in that army. Don't get me wrong, I love them, but saurus are I1 which makes zero sense.

I'm fine with 4 tiers, as O&G really aren't as viable as Empire.

Either way, it is a shame that we have a few over and under performing armies. At least we don't have Grey Knights.

I would not put Brettonian at the bottom. They aren't at the top, but they have a couple of lists and are very good in the current meta. They have placed highly at some GPs - I faced them in ard boyz semi's last year.

I've won about 70% of my casual games with TK over the past year, and I am going to play in about 6 out of town events over the next year, and I do not think they are in the bottom, it's tricky but winable.

No one here said it was impossible to win with low tier armies. We said it required significantly more skill to win with them than with a higher tier army.

Sure, there might be some awesome Bretonnian army build out there. But the list itself doesn't mean a win in the case of low tier armies. It's the whole fact that you need BOTH the awesome list AND the awesome execution of ultimate strategery and tactics in order to win. With top tier armies you just throw a list together and watch the enemy try to not lose. I'm not saying that's a good thing, quite the opposite.

Let's look at it another way.
How many ways are there to win with Dark Elves?
How many ways are there to win with VC or Empire?
How many with O&G?
Now how many with TK, WE, Brets or Beastmen?
The numbers dwindle as we go down the list.

In an ideal world the game would be Rock, Paper, Scissors. Unfortunately the only way that will happen is if every army is 100% the same, leaving players to decide which form to make with their hands.

There are 15 armies in WFB. They will never all be perfectly balanced against each other. Some will always be at a disadvantage, but what we want is for that bottom rung army to be changed out every now and then.

But, this all assumes that balance is what GW is going for. Which it isn't. Rules and performance are granted to the army they think will sell best at the time. This is why the bottom 3 have remained the bottom 3 for quite some time now, they just aren't that popular.

"ways to win" is just one way of measuring the power of a codex. Daemons, for instance, really aren't all that great anymore, except they have a couple of really really powerful builds. But not anyway near as many different builds as in 7th.

Brets are good. If you haven't played against them in a while, you might think not. But knight buses backed up by peg knights and trebs are serious.

Keep underestimating Beastmen, please!

Thank you all very much for you're input. You all very much helped paint the picture while still pushing to remember that the player is more important than the army!

Aerethan wrote:No one here said it was impossible to win with low tier armies. We said it required significantly more skill to win with them than with a higher tier army.

exactly! Even I specified:

Dr. Cheesesteak wrote:But again, don't take this too much to heart. You can be a WE player and still consistently beat Lizardmen. It's all about your tactics, list, and a little bit of luck.

As you said, it's based mostly on flexibility of units, ways to win, mathhammer, etc. I know a WE player who wins 90% of his matches, vs me (Dwarfs), Lizardmen, a couple other Dwarf players, and O&G. But he's the exception, not the rule. If you just look at the WE army book, it's simply not as good, formulaically, compared to almost every other army book. Lots of low-stat, expensive units, tons of skirmishers, overcosted item upgrades, non-superpowerful magic, etc. But that doesn't mean that it's impossible to be successful w/ them. Just means it isn't as easy as Skaven or DE.

As for Lizardmen, my main quarrel w/ them is how broken Slann can be and how undercosted everything seems to be. 2500 pts can get you an unkillable Slann, like 80 Skinks, 2 Stegadons, 2 packs of Sallies, 2 big units of Saurus, and some cavalry. Just seems a bit much, given how strong some of those units are. Granted, I'm a former DE player, so I guess I can't complain TOO much about undercosted elite units... But yeah, those 7th Ed books need a balancing quickly!