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I've only been playing 40k for a little over a year now and at first I though Space Wolves were totally my guys; but then I started picking up other armies along the way and think I've confused myself a bit. I can find joy in almost any of the lore for 40k armies but I just haven't found that one army that sings to me. So far I've plowed through Tyranids, Eldar, Space Wolves, Crimson Fists, and Tau; I'm wondering if anyone else has had the problem of not finding "their" army or when you had that moment of "this is my kinda thing". I remember when I first got into it that Chaos looked super cool but I think I'm getting to the point where I can't really support another army. Just curious about peoples thoughts on this.

Took me playing nids, then dark eldar, then tau, then Orks. Finally played the original army I wanted which was sisters. That army is "my" army. I play chaos space marines now and each time I pack up to go to play at the flgs I have to choose between the 2. So just need to find what works for you. Sisters are a lot of fun to play, but suffer diversity. Chaos space marines are my most recent I started since the new codex. They have an amazing new codex to me. Try procuring a codex and trying an army out thru proxying and hope to find one that "fits" you. Took me a few armies.

Oddly enough I don't play the army that I love the most.

Fluff wise all things Tzeentch are my favorite, but Chaos got diluted in 7th edition and messed with the entire dynamic. The army just hasn't been in a place that I've felt was worth investing in.

For 40k, I found my ideal army as the Red Hunters. They are obscure enough that I won't likely end up facing another RH player, and they gave me an excuse to use GK heads and armor for everything in a regular SM army. Sadly most people will see me take them out of the transport and think that they are BA.

Haha, same here! Reading any codex/enough fluff convinces me that [insert army here] are the coolest ever! I've been through a few 40k armies, started with vanilla marines, then orks, tyranids, and between me and my friends we would trade/sell each other half finished armies so we dabbled in a bit of everything. The Ultramarines were my first and I'm sentimentally attached to the MODELS for that reason, but marines don't grab me gaming-wise

But I took a different root with fantasy. When I VERY first got into GW I had like 5 high elf spearmen and a bolt thrower (along with my first few marines) and I traded them with my friend for a dwarf cannon and a few warriors because he wanted the elves and I didn't care. I added to them now and again, played a little in 6th ed but was always a 40k guy. But I dropped out of the hobby for a while, came back a couple of years later when I met some new friends who played fantasy. I dug out my half a dwarf army and got playing and....I completely fell in love with them!

Love the way the play-style and fluff are about sturdy guys with no tricks, no flashy powers, no mighty quest, just guys who are proud of where they come from, good at what they do and don't take any S**T!!!. I am now just shy of 6000 points and don't feel like I'm done.

And all because by best buddy wanted a few elf toys when we were 12!

I recently wrote an article on a different site on how to choose your faction, unfortunately it was for a different game. Still, I think some of the core concepts are universal.

You need to decide what mix of attributes you really want to give weight when you choose any new army. How important is the gameplay, the aesthetics, and the story to you? Usually it is a combination of these factors in varying degrees that draw people to an army and it can help a lot if you take the time to get to know yourself.
Special factors should also be considered. There may be an army you like a great deal but it may get spoiled by all their units looking homogenous and not being varied enough. In the case of GW games internal and external balance vary wildly and become two new factors to add to the mix. There might even be really strange factors like loving an army's designs but hating how they were sculpted, or the absence of strong character personalities that could draw you in or push you away.

I was first inspired to play Skaven by "The Loathsome Ratmen And All Their Vile Kin". I read the book and just instantly thought "I want to start warhammer and this is the perfect army for me". That was 6-7 years ago and i now have 3-4.5K of rats and i have not regretted that decision once.

I am a massive treadhead and i have wanted to play guard for years now. Admittedly i was an SM fan in my early years but who wasnt? As it is i have got a 1.5K(2K in apoc) force and am planning on expanding it. Ironically i was given over 3Ks worth of SMs a few months back but i still love my IG and will always pick them over SMs any day.

I play Cryx because i do enjoy playing the evil force and i like there models and playing style. i have got a small force of them and i am planning on expandng it soon.

I have both IG and SM. The SM because they were the first army I bought all those years ago, I got rid of most of them about a year ago then got some more in a trade. The IG I started because I love the idea of being the underdog and fielding hundreds of infantry troops.

I have always liked elves (insert elf manlyness joke here!) ever since I first read the Hobbit and LOTR back in... the stone age.
And from the Warhammer "Elveses", the lore I liked best was the HE's so... that was that.
They were also my first army

As for 40k, I didn't want to play a frail T3 bound army (even though I do have a fatal attraction for the Dark Eldar) so I went for SM's. Of those I always liked the Dark Angels, and the rest is history. I must admit the robes helped.

This is a good question, when I first started wargaming I was given a Imperial Guard army. from that point I was addicted although I did stray from the humble Guardsmen. I have tried most of the 40k armies except Nids and Orks but I have always come back to my Guard army that has been the one solid thing that will always remain in my collection.

And as for Fantasy there has been several armies that have caugth my eye and wallet. Some of these are omb Kings, Bretonnia, Beastmen, Ogres and Chaos Dwarfs. Granted I have never found a army that makes me all giddy in Fantasy but I enjoy the armies I have, so I think the answer for my part is that finding "your" army" takes time and a lot of time spent playing.

I like Cygnar- they shoot lightning!

I find it's not even necessirly the "Army" (Codex) that makes it your army. Sometimes it's just as simple as discovering how much fun one or another unit is, and seeing the expressions on people's faces when that worthless junk unit exceeds performance expectations. I see plenty of smirks and eyebrows each time I hammer my LOTD onto the table. I don't like terminators. Massive footprint, and with the slightest of fumbles, and oops, there goes half the squad. LOTD are compact, with a smaller footprint, and have the advantage of coming with a useful heavy weapon and still cost the same as a squad of stock terminators.

I also enjoy seeing the look of amusment become one of consternation when that squad of pesky penal legionaires does something unexpectedly useful.

Then there's the story of the kroot-heavy tau player. Tournament setting, and he was playing against a biker white scar army. The entire white scar army went in reserve. Kroot player won by default simple because he charged every single table edge, lined up his models with exactly 2" between them all and won the game without the white scar player even putting anything on the table.

It's also about building an army list that makes you go "squee".

The first army I started is probably "my army", which would be Eldar. I loved them in the Video Games I played, and I loved them as my start into 40k. They have the ability to deal with everything and the ability to be one of the least "to chance" armies out there. I like that quite a bit from a starting and playing stand point. The next army I started was IG due to reading the Siege of Vraks. I still like them, and someday will make another IG army but they will be DKoK models and rules. I found regular IG to be really boring as far as everything went, from rules to style. I kept them and also started BT with a tax return check of mine, and I LOVE them. They would not have been the army I would have wanted to start with, as their rules pull you into playing a certain way. However as far as my second army goes I have really loved them for how brutal they are on table top/lore and how much character they have. I sold my IG to push to 3k with both of my armies and do not regret it at all. Always a fun experience finding your play style and army.

I've settled somewhere between Slaaneshi CSM and Orks. Luckily with the new allies rules, I can use both at the same time...

I've been playing, er, 7 years now and I've yet to find "my" army. Gotta say it's starting to just get exhausting.

I liked one of the old Unreal games that had the sci-fi Egyptian maps and when I borrowed an old 40k rulebook and saw the Thousand Sons I think I was done-in from that point on.

It takes a real stubborn (or stupid) individual to keep playing the same army for 10 years.

I didn't choose Tyranids... Tyranids chose me..

Just kidding.

But for real. I just went through all the armies on the GW site, and picked whatever one had the coolest looking models. So I settled on 'Nids, and that was that.

However I am starting to get into Imperial Guard. I have always loved tanks, and have wanted to start an armored regiment for IG. One of these days..

When I started 40k, I initially started with Vanilla marines (Raven Guard, but never got Shrike), changed their paint scheme. I eventually picked up Nids, then Guard, and finally a Typhus led nurgle marine army.... of all of them, my favorite armies are my Nurgle marines, and my Guard.

@HiveFleetCollossus, I would strongly suggest looking at a "cheaper" company for your infantry, if you do the guard armored regiment the way that I did.... my 2k list features 11 Chimera transports and between 3 and 4 Leman Russ variants.

I am hoping that in starting WM, I don't go through the same growing pains, but I don't think I will, as I chose Mercs, since they have the coolest Jacks and coolest casters.

Malifaux was almost a no brainer for me... I am a huge fan of burlesque, vaudeville and old theater like that, and when I saw Collette (and Arcanists), I knew exactly who I was playing with.

Don't even get me started on Malifaux, I have about 15 or so crews.

For 40k, it comes down to a few questions for me:

- What's the one army that you seem to fall back on despite the army hopping that can happen?

- What's the army whose models you enjoy the most?

- What's the army whose battle cry you feel a sense of power when you chant it while playing?

- What army doesn't completely suck in combat?


Chaos Space Marines is my army. I only tossed it aside since I came into the game during 5th edition and used the craptastic Cavatore/Thorpe book. When the latest book came out, I pounced immediately. Haven't looked back since. I have a huge distaste for armies that aren't great in combat as it's my favorite phase of the game, which prevented me from dabbling a huge portion of the armies.

For Fantasy, there are no doubts. Warriors of Chaos click on every single level for me. The fluff, the models, the playstyle, I had a momentary sway towards Orcs and Goblins, but I am still extremely steadfast for Warriors of Chaos. I actually prefer WoC's background compared to CSM.



As you can tell, a process such as discovering "your" army is an extremely personal thing. To bluntly put it, you'll know which army is yours.

I started back when I was young - a friend had 5 fire dragons he didn't want. I made an army - lost a LOT and went to space wolves (still in 2nd ed)....I sold most of my eldar and started again from scratch. I'm up to about 12,000pts of eldar now (couldn't stay away) and there are still things I want. I also got into chaos in 5th.
I feel more attached to my eldar than either of the others - not because they were first, but because I find them harder to play and I've invested so much more time and effort learning to try to use them properly. And not just get splatted in 6th because of the almost complete lack of viable assault options (IMO)

Coming back to the game so many years after I'd left, it was easy for me. I came back just as Brian Nelson redesigned and finally made orks look amazing. I'd always loved the background for the Blood Axe clan and so it was a simple decision to 'go green'.

Recently, having come to find a good comfort zone of playing the Orks for about 5 years, I decided to embark on my second army, again, this was at the time of a redesign/overhaul and this time to an army I had previously (model wise) hated, the Dark Eldar, into the amazing models we have now. It appealed to me because playing them will be entirely different to my orks and I wanted the challenge of a totally different playstyle (I find folks with multiple marine armies odd because, for me, it's like playing the same thing with a different coloured army).


My first priority, therefore, in picking an army, is always 'do I like the models'. This is followed by 'do I like the background' and lastly by 'is the army powerful'. Although I must confess the nerfbat to the face that dark eldar took in the shift to 6th has really slowed my Dark Eldar building and left me also pondering my orks rebuild (do I rebuild for 6th or wait for the codex and then start?).

I found my army in the back seat of an unlocked car.

I began with Orks. It let me get better at building and custom sculpting, and that's where most of my fun was. Didn't get to play for a long time due to work and time constraints.

Finally checked out Eldar because I wanted some more detailed models to paint. Decided I loved the harlequin models, and the farseers... The rangers. Wraithlords and wraithguard... And so on. I just kept going, and putting together a list with them just felt far more intuitive. I'm a decent (if unconventional) Ork player, but the Eldar just feel more organic in style to me. I'm really excited for the new codex that we're supposed to expect soon, because it's an excuse to get some new models to paint and to field.

Not gonna drop my wraithguard/harlies list, though.

Orks are fun, definitely. But Eldar are just where it's at.

This is exactly how I feel to this day. I've jumped around, buying codex after codex, squad after squad of different factions and I just couldn't find my niche. It's like a puzzle with a piece that wont fit no matter what. Guess I just have to find out which way to turn it.

For the time being Grey Knights are my favorite but Tau and Dark Eldar aren't far behind. I might adopt Deldar if they were a little bit more competitive. (Or I knew how to play them competitively)