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After hitting 2500 points of Grey Knights a couple weeks ago. Ive been looking into starting a new army. Ive finally narrowed it down to three choices. I was hoping that you guys could help me make a final decision. Ive tried to get far from grey knights in playstyle so here we go.

Eldar
Pros: Look awesome, Jetbikes, new codex next year, tactical
Cons: Another elite army, hard to play, out of date codex until next year.

IG (i wanted to do foot guard do to the fact that my GK army is highly mech)
Pros: Imperium of Man. Low Point Cost per Soldier. Catachans are mini rambos.
Cons: Look too... plain, hard on the wallet.

Tyranids
Pros: Look like "Aliens". completely different play style. look really fun.
Cons: From what ive seen one of the more frustrating armies.

Hopefully you guys can help me decide. Thanks

Guard have so many different options, such varying customizability, and are incredibly slow to build up a large army of them; which is rewarding in it's own right. It's a collector's dream, and makes a perfect secondary army. Not to mention they're awesome as allies for (almost) any army you pick up in the future.

^ this

 prophet102 wrote:
Tyranids
Pros: Look like "Aliens". completely different play style. look really fun.
Cons: From what ive seen one of the more frustrating armies.

Enjoying playing Tyranids comes down purely to the competitiveness of your local meta. There's nasty builds out there that can straight up murder them, but these are builds you don't usually see outside of the tournament scene.

If your gaming group is more casual, Tyranids are perfectly fine. With 6th editions boosts (FMCs, psychic powers, etc), they sit about mid teir.

TheCaptain wrote:Guard have so many different options, such varying customizability, and are incredibly slow to build up a large army of them; which is rewarding in it's own right. It's a collector's dream, and makes a perfect secondary army. Not to mention they're awesome as allies for (almost) any army you pick up in the future.

And thats the main reason I liked the idea of them. Im really into the modeling front of the game so IG really appealed to me. I can play games with my grey knights while i build up a force of IG large enough to play with. How does FootGuard do. My LGS is mostly MEQ so i dont want to be wrecked every single game. Would a footguard list hold its own?

 prophet102 wrote:

TheCaptain wrote:Guard have so many different options, such varying customizability, and are incredibly slow to build up a large army of them; which is rewarding in it's own right. It's a collector's dream, and makes a perfect secondary army. Not to mention they're awesome as allies for (almost) any army you pick up in the future.

And thats the main reason I liked the idea of them. Im really into the modeling front of the game so IG really appealed to me. I can play games with my grey knights while i build up a force of IG large enough to play with. How does FootGuard do. My LGS is mostly MEQ so i dont want to be wrecked every single game. Would a footguard list hold its own?

It's how I win tourneys

Footguard backed by tanks make for an incredible shooty-army. Tack on a couple of aircav-vets, or stormtroopers, and you've got a good level of board-control.

 TheCaptain wrote:

 prophet102 wrote:

TheCaptain wrote:Guard have so many different options, such varying customizability, and are incredibly slow to build up a large army of them; which is rewarding in it's own right. It's a collector's dream, and makes a perfect secondary army. Not to mention they're awesome as allies for (almost) any army you pick up in the future.

And thats the main reason I liked the idea of them. Im really into the modeling front of the game so IG really appealed to me. I can play games with my grey knights while i build up a force of IG large enough to play with. How does FootGuard do. My LGS is mostly MEQ so i dont want to be wrecked every single game. Would a footguard list hold its own?

It's how I win tourneys

Footguard backed by tanks make for an incredible shooty-army. Tack on a couple of aircav-vets, or stormtroopers, and you've got a good level of board-control.

Do you use aegis lines. Ive heard that they are good for footguard. Or just shock troops and leman russ'

They're stupid-good. Guard benefit from the 4+ save more than most, because they have the guns with reach that make sitting behind it not a huge deal. I plop a Plasma+AC blob behind the aegis, with a couple HWS's. When something goes to ground, the 2+ save is hilarious, and our HQ can issue an order to units that have gone to ground, allowing them to act as if they hadn't gone to ground if it is received.

Putting a couple tanks behind it with camo-nets is great too; 3+ save on an AV14 tank is filthy, and AFAIK there's no STR8+ weapons that ignore cover too. Super hard to kill.

As far as I'm concerned, gunline guard auto-includes ADL.

 TheCaptain wrote:
They're stupid-good. Guard benefit from the 4+ save more than most, because they have the guns with reach that make sitting behind it not a huge deal. I plop a Plasma+AC blob behind the aegis, with a couple HWS's. When something goes to ground, the 2+ save is hilarious, and our HQ can issue an order to units that have gone to ground, allowing them to act as if they hadn't gone to ground if it is received.

Putting a couple tanks behind it with camo-nets is great too; 3+ save on an AV14 tank is filthy, and AFAIK there's no STR8+ weapons that ignore cover too. Super hard to kill.

As far as I'm concerned, gunline guard auto-includes ADL.

Cool man. Thanks alot. I think I am gonna go with guard now after hearing your take. Helps me out alot.

 prophet102 wrote:

 TheCaptain wrote:
They're stupid-good. Guard benefit from the 4+ save more than most, because they have the guns with reach that make sitting behind it not a huge deal. I plop a Plasma+AC blob behind the aegis, with a couple HWS's. When something goes to ground, the 2+ save is hilarious, and our HQ can issue an order to units that have gone to ground, allowing them to act as if they hadn't gone to ground if it is received.

Putting a couple tanks behind it with camo-nets is great too; 3+ save on an AV14 tank is filthy, and AFAIK there's no STR8+ weapons that ignore cover too. Super hard to kill.

As far as I'm concerned, gunline guard auto-includes ADL.

Cool man. Thanks alot. I think I am gonna go with guard now after hearing your take. Helps me out alot.

Any other questions, shoot me a PM. Always happy to help new Guard players!

 TheCaptain wrote:

 prophet102 wrote:

 TheCaptain wrote:
They're stupid-good. Guard benefit from the 4+ save more than most, because they have the guns with reach that make sitting behind it not a huge deal. I plop a Plasma+AC blob behind the aegis, with a couple HWS's. When something goes to ground, the 2+ save is hilarious, and our HQ can issue an order to units that have gone to ground, allowing them to act as if they hadn't gone to ground if it is received.

Putting a couple tanks behind it with camo-nets is great too; 3+ save on an AV14 tank is filthy, and AFAIK there's no STR8+ weapons that ignore cover too. Super hard to kill.

As far as I'm concerned, gunline guard auto-includes ADL.

Cool man. Thanks alot. I think I am gonna go with guard now after hearing your take. Helps me out alot.

Any other questions, shoot me a PM. Always happy to help new Guard players!

Thanks Man

I wouldn't recommend starting Eldar this year. Its better to wait until the new codex comes out.

Honestly, you're going to have a pretty tough time out of all of those options.

I agree with wustenfux that a 4th ed codex in a 6th ed world is going to be extremely uphill. That you don't want to play an army with "elite" units is two strikes against it. It wouldn't take too much creativity to find a third, but in any case, I think I'd choose this option last.

Foot guard got thrown into an absolute tailspin by 6th ed. Lots and lots of rules changes have really hurt the durability of guardsmen, especially in close combat, and the recent codices that have come out are able to pretty easily outshoot foot guard. You may feel cool showing up with a bunch of heavy weapon squads and a big pile of guys, and then you discover that the HWSs are instantly liquefied by rifleman dreads, psycannon spam, splinter cannon spam, and tesla destructor spam. Seriously, putting out long-range S6+ lots-o-shots is pretty easy for most newer codices. Meanwhile, you're going to come across twin-linked splinter guns, storm bolter spam, and tesla spam, etc. Combine all of this with worse cover, and a foot guard list just doesn't have the oomph to handle large quantities of vehicular threats anymore, especially on foot.

I'd probably suggest guard still, though, because mech guard is nearly as viable as it was before, so you could always start a guard army and switch it over to foot later.

As for tyranid, you're stuck with an army that has no real fluff, no character, no real motivation, etc. The only way it appears that they have much fluff is to steal it from other sources (like star ship troopers or starcraft). More interestingly, some tyranid players don't WANT fluff.

Then you're also stuck with an army that has some rather questionable models on the cool scale (the big ones are just fine, but they're not all big ones), and they're stuck with an old codex, which means problems on the tabletop, and they're not due for a new codex any time soon. I'd probably pass on them unless you really knew you wanted to play tyranid.

 Ailaros wrote:
You may feel cool showing up with a bunch of heavy weapon squads and a big pile of guys, and then you discover that the HWSs are instantly liquefied by rifleman dreads, psycannon spam, splinter cannon spam, and tesla destructor spam.

But foot-guard should have plenty of toys to liquefy these aforementioned threats.

 TheCaptain wrote:

 Ailaros wrote:
You may feel cool showing up with a bunch of heavy weapon squads and a big pile of guys, and then you discover that the HWSs are instantly liquefied by rifleman dreads, psycannon spam, splinter cannon spam, and tesla destructor spam.

But foot-guard should have plenty of toys to liquefy these aforementioned threats.

Exactly, if you can't kill the stuff that's aimed at your stuff, you either

A.) Didn't bring enough guns.

B.) Didn't bring enough dudes.

or C.) see A and B

HWSs are INSANELY fragile, unless, of course, you're Mr Moustaffa, and your opponents refuse to shoot at them for some reason. Without HWSs, you're looking at either russes or AV12 vehicles to do the killing. AV12 in an all foot list creates problems with durability as they will be your only vehicular targets. Russes create problems because, while they are generally rather survivable, their killing power per cost has always been mediocre. Plus, it's not like there are blasters or rending psycannons or anything necron out there...

As for the bringing enough dudes argument, weapon upgrades are no longer hidden, and cover is no longer by-unit. Nuff said.

So far, the only thing I can see that adequately handles these threats is vendettas. That's one option, though, rather than plenty.

 Ailaros wrote:
HWSs are INSANELY fragile, unless, of course, you're Mr Moustaffa, and your opponents refuse to shoot at them for some reason. Without HWSs, you're looking at either russes or AV12 vehicles to do the killing. AV12 in an all foot list creates problems with durability as they will be your only vehicular targets. Russes create problems because, while they are generally rather survivable, their killing power per cost has always been mediocre. Plus, it's not like there are blasters or rending psycannons or anything necron out there...

As for the bringing enough dudes argument, weapon upgrades are no longer hidden, and cover is no longer by-unit. Nuff said.

So far, the only thing I can see that adequately handles these threats is vendettas. That's one option, though, rather than plenty.

Couple Leman Russes (whatever variant you need), Aegis Defense Line, Camo Nets.

Boom. Power-Armour Equivalent tank that can probably keep its guns running the entire game.

Not to mention just having your HWS go to ground behind the aegis, and then catch "Get back into the fight" next round.

Aegis, Aegis, Aegis. Yeah, I'm 1 dimensional.

 Ailaros wrote:
The only way it appears that they have much fluff is to steal it from other sources (like star ship troopers or starcraft).

Because the rest of 40k fluff doesn't borrow heavily from other sources, right?

 Ailaros wrote:
More interestingly, some tyranid players don't WANT fluff.

So you didn't understand that thread at all then?

Tyranid players want fluff. Tyranid players want good fluff. Cruddace wrote bad fluff. Andy Chambers and Phil Kelly wrote good fluff.

Individualism with things like heroes doesn't equal fluff, it's just one type. What Tyranids had before Cruddace got a hold of the Tyranid codex was good fluff. What Tyranid players want is that good fluff back.

Just because you didn't get the answer you wanted in that thread, don't try and speak for a playerbase by openly insulting them.

 MrMoustaffa wrote:

 TheCaptain wrote:

 Ailaros wrote:
You may feel cool showing up with a bunch of heavy weapon squads and a big pile of guys, and then you discover that the HWSs are instantly liquefied by rifleman dreads, psycannon spam, splinter cannon spam, and tesla destructor spam.

But foot-guard should have plenty of toys to liquefy these aforementioned threats.

Exactly, if you can't kill the stuff that's aimed at your stuff, you either

A.) Didn't bring enough guns.

B.) Didn't bring enough dudes.

or C.) see A and B

this

 TheCaptain wrote:

 Ailaros wrote:
HWSs are INSANELY fragile, unless, of course, you're Mr Moustaffa, and your opponents refuse to shoot at them for some reason. Without HWSs, you're looking at either russes or AV12 vehicles to do the killing. AV12 in an all foot list creates problems with durability as they will be your only vehicular targets. Russes create problems because, while they are generally rather survivable, their killing power per cost has always been mediocre. Plus, it's not like there are blasters or rending psycannons or anything necron out there...

As for the bringing enough dudes argument, weapon upgrades are no longer hidden, and cover is no longer by-unit. Nuff said.

So far, the only thing I can see that adequately handles these threats is vendettas. That's one option, though, rather than plenty.

Couple Leman Russes (whatever variant you need), Aegis Defense Line, Camo Nets.

Boom. Power-Armour Equivalent tank that can probably keep its guns running the entire game.

Not to mention just having your HWS go to ground behind the aegis, and then catch "Get back into the fight" next round.

Aegis, Aegis, Aegis. Yeah, I'm 1 dimensional.

Yeah exactly.

Dunno why people are like "OMG HWS are useless bcos they are sooo fraigle!". It's really not hard to make them more durable with minimal points. Regimental Standard, even Lord Commissar is a good idea now you can take ADL. And as a bonus he can fire the Quad Gun with WS5. Hell, take Creed, a Lord Commissar and an ADL and you can have 4 HWS's who get a cover save, get ld10 for morale checks and orders and each get an order per turn from Creed........What was that about being fragile?
Even if the opponent still wants to try gunning at them, that is his firepower being wasted on about 300pts of you army (stupid move), which leaves the vast majority of your army free to gun back at him ...More dakka wins.

Go with da bugs. In soviet 40k, bug squishes you.

To be entirely fair to the HWS haters, you have to run a ridiculous amount of them to get the survivability you need, or just provide more high profile threats to occupy the opponent's time. I still think they're a very viable unit that just needs the right strategy and considerations taken into account when you field them

Running only a couple is instant death for them. I like to take AT LEAST 4, if not more, in order to get enough redundancy that I'm not worried about losing them all turn one. Ideally I take 5 to 6, but it really depends on points, what other threats I have, and what I feel my weaknesses are.

Another interesting thing I learned about HWS's. The lower the value of the weapon you put on them, the worse value they are. What do I mean by this?

A x3 lascannon HWS is 105pts. To buy lascannons as upgrades for your infantry squads, they are 20pts a pop. This means that for the price of 5 lascannons separately, you can get 3 in a squad. Not too bad, and the efficiency with orders and targeting helps mitigate that point difference.

A x3 Autocannon HWS on the other hand is 75pts. With 70 pts, you could buy SEVEN AUTOCANNONS for PIS's. Meaning you are literally getting half the autocannons you could buy if you hadn't bought that autocannon squad. While this doesn't matter so much for armies like mech gaurd, where slots are at a premium, in a foot guard list, I can easily have 8 slots I can throw a cheap autocannon on and not really lose anything. Now I run all autocannons in infantry squads, and all lascannons in heavy weapon squads. We'll see how it works in a couple of weeks when I get to play again though. I'm sure alot of people already knew this, but might be an interesting thing for people to think about when writing their lists.

Hmm, that's a good point.

Of course, with PISs, you have to pay for the carriers (so they're still less efficient over all), but if you're in a position where you've got a bunch of empty heavy weapons slots and a bunch of weapons, it makes sense that they would go better into existing squads than to have to pay for even more carriers. Weapon upgrades are the most efficient way to increase killing power after all.

Plus, they won't instantly die horrible deaths.

Footguard are good, especially now they can glance vehicles to death. Also they can be combined with Aegis to transform your deployment zone into a fort.

You play Tyranids because you want to play Tyranids. If you aren't sure on them, then probably go with something else. I play Nid's because I love the models but my Win-Lose ratio with them is pretty poor, partly because of the codex and partly because I'm bad at the game. Yes the current fluff isn't good and can be summed up in two sentences (They are an alien race from another galaxy. They came to this galaxy to eat everything... The End.)

The group conciseness seems to be for Foot-Guard and if you can get past the huge number of models you have to paint, then they should be fun.

If you're set on foot guard, I'll offer my 5th ed battle reports for inspiration of how extremely awesome foot guard can be.



And then I'll also give you my 6th ed battle reports to serve as a warning about how crazy foot guard is at the moment.

Thanks guys.Im definetely going footguard. Ill let you all know how it turns out.

Welcome to the Guard! Keep outta trouble and don't lose your Imperial Infantryman's Uplifting Primer and you'll enjoy your stay. Look around on the tactics forum and there are a ton of IG threads on the first few pages that should be a big help to you. Just watch your back around those Commissars

that's how i learned, I dug through the forums, read battlereports, looked at Ailaros's site, and tried ideas of my own own. Footguard has a steep learning curve at first, but you will become a better player because of it. You'll learn a lot of things that most other players don't worry about as much, like firing lanes, field position, spacing (milk that 2" for all it's worth), and how weight of fire is just as valuable as a lascannon when used correctly.

Plus, as Ailaros's picture demonstrates, nothing beats the look of a well painted IG army on the table.

I'm actually selling my Guard because I find them boring to play. This is probably an issue with my local meta more than the actual codex, as the reason they are boring is because I can't seem to lose with them. Nobody around here can manage to beat them, and I don't even have to try that hard to win with them. Just bring the right list, and fire at the obvious choices. It can be really fun but I prefer the more challenging side of things with Eldar. However, hit me up if you wanna buy some!

Oh, trust me, if you want to make guard more challenging, you can make guard more challenging. If you're bored because you're wiping your local opponents with guard, the problem is with you, not with guard.