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I am considering getting back into 40k. I haven't bought anything new in at least a year.

I've got

Eldar
Tau
Chaos

Whats the best overall army and whats the best army if its not one of those three?

The best army is the one you have the most fun with. Or the one you like the look of best.

If you're asking which army you will have the best chance of humiliating your opponents with and WINNING!!!!!!!!111 then the consensus seems to be that Necron (possibly allied with Chaos Space Marines, Grey Knights, or some other such nonsense) is the way to go.

Necrons or Grey Knights.

Screw it, Necrons WITH Grey Knights.

There we go.

Go Tau, then next month, go back to Eldar, if the codex turns out good.

I still dont see how necrons are top

 Xenocidal Maniac wrote:
The best army is the one you have the most fun with. Or the one you like the look of best.

QFT. If you hate the look and feel, winning will wear out it's charm very quickly.

lynxstrife wrote:
I still dont see how necrons are top

Haters gonna hate dude.

The best army is Imperial Guard with any one of a number of allies. Virtually no weaknesses once you include allies into a well build IG list.

lynxstrife wrote:
I still dont see how necrons are top

Nightscythe deployed troops
Silly tough and hard hitting for their points wraiths
Destroyer lords are among the most powerful melee and tanking models in the game
Annihilation barges are amazing anti-infantry, anti-light tank and anti-flyer. Unbelievably good for their points cost in fact.

Speedy, tough, hitting power, anti-air, and air power...they have literally everything needed to be successful in 6th.

Not "hating" as you are putting it just curious. I play necrons and lose more then win and see them loose a lot more then win.

lynxstrife wrote:
Not "hating" as you are putting it just curious. I play necrons and lose more then win and see them loose a lot more then win.

lol, and I wasn't saying that YOU where hating. Other people hate, that's why they think Necrons are the best. I know no one hates Necrons, they do however "hate on" Necrons, to use the slang terminology.

Dont take spendy HQs or Royal Courts.

Take more Flyers, AV13, or Wraiths. Your choice of mix. I run almost all AV13. If the enemy is lacking S8+, they are hosed. CSM are an example that usually have a ton of S7, including Hell Turkeys, but I just laugh with my Quantum Shielding.

Personally, I think that the armies are all balanced enough that personal experience will trump any amount of difference between the codex strength.

That being said, that's just my opinion, and it's the minority one. Based on the volume of messages I see here on Dakka, the strongest army is Necrons or Tau.

However, I think that any army you select will perform excellently if you put the time and research into them. Experience will give you an army which is able to compete no matter what the fad codex is. Good luck, and I hope that helps!

A necron air force list

Or the Imperial Guard codex.


Back in 5th GK used to be top tier, but now they are just to squishy to capture many objectives.
-though henchman based gk lists are pretty strong.

This is the most balanced I've seen the meta in my time playing, but Necrons edge it out as the Wraith-Air combo is very solid. It has enough counters though to not be dominant.

As above people have said, if you don't like the feel or look of your army winning will get boring...

I played Necrons (started at 5th ed.) purely because we didn't have a Necron player in the group. But now I have 4K of points I want to move onto another army, even though my Necron's are a pretty good force I want to play something I like better!

 TheKbob wrote:
Dont take spendy HQs or Royal Courts.

Take more Flyers, AV13, or Wraiths. Your choice of mix. I run almost all AV13. If the enemy is lacking S8+, they are hosed. CSM are an example that usually have a ton of S7, including Hell Turkeys, but I just laugh with my Quantum Shielding.

2 lords
Cryptec
Ghost ark
2 night scythes
12 scarabs
36 warriors
3 destroyers
Cano spider
5 death marks
5 immortals
5 lychguard

That is my army as it sits right now. I won't have $$$ for quite a few months so this is what I got to work with.

CSM with Necron Allies.

Or vice versa for any combination of Heldrakes, Wraiths, Daemon Princes with Black Mace or Destroyer Lords and Scythes or Annihilation Barges.

Necrons with GK allies or vice versa is a close second IMO.

IG or Tau or a combination of both.

Guess I'll get back into the swing of things with my Tau, hopefully the Eldar are colorful when their codex comes out. The last chaos codex (previous to current one) and the last eldar codex were so bland that I lost interest in playing partway through 5th ed. Tau at least were never super diversified in the past so I never felt the blanderizer treatment with them.

 TheCrazyCryptek wrote:

lynxstrife wrote:
Not "hating" as you are putting it just curious. I play necrons and lose more then win and see them loose a lot more then win.

lol, and I wasn't saying that YOU where hating. Other people hate, that's why they think Necrons are the best. I know no one hates Necrons, they do however "hate on" Necrons, to use the slang terminology.

Check the winners of major tournaments this year - plenty of necrons in the top 10 every time - whether pure or allied with something else. If you get 4 or 5 top 10 finishes in almost every tournament then there must be something there.

Ruminator is right. But the winners were always very good players. So just considering the army is not enough. It should fit your playstyle.

Top five armies IMO when looked at as pure (no allies) are:
1) necrons
2) GK
3) tyranids
4) IG
5) SW/CSM/daemons/tau

With allies it gets different. Every loyalist marines book (excluding Templar and BA) when backed by IG is top tier. Necrons and GK allied together is really strong. CSM and Daemons have great synergies.

Tau + Eldar ( for psykers ) i heard is a decent combination

 Carnage43 wrote:

Nightscythe deployed troops
Silly tough and hard hitting for their points wraiths
Destroyer lords are among the most powerful melee and tanking models in the game
Annihilation barges are amazing anti-infantry, anti-light tank and anti-flyer. Unbelievably good for their points cost in fact.

Speedy, tough, hitting power, anti-air, and air power...they have literally everything needed to be successful in 6th.

Do you have trouble with Drop Pod deployed troops? Or Deep Striking Troops? Or are you bemoaning the Nightscythe itself?

Wraiths are a solid unit choice. But, they are essentially a 12 man squad of Space Marines when you shoot them.

You mean that guy who gets no Invulnerable save and strikes at I2? Even with T5 and 3W, most competent HQs can take him.

They are indeed all that. But you forget that they are limited to a 24" range and have to move 6" a turn to avoid Snap-Firing. An effective 30" threat bubble can be mitigated through pre-measuring.

Necrons are undoubtedly a very strong codex in 6th, however, with more and more codexes getting answers to flyers, I predict the days of the Flying French Bakery are becoming more and more numbered.

Iranna.

In my experience with the last two tournaments I've been to and the results I've seen posted from the major ones:

1.) Necrons, usually with GK or CSM Allies
2.) GK, usually with Necron Allies
3.) IG, allied in or allied to a multitude of armies
4.) New Tau, though with more familiarity this could change
5.) CSM, which is shocking with how many DA players there are

My advice is to try each army you have, and see which one you enjoy.

 Iranna wrote:

Do you have trouble with Drop Pod deployed troops? Or Deep Striking Troops? Or are you bemoaning the Nightscythe itself?

I don't have anymore problems with deepstriking than anyone else I suppose, but Nightscythe are most certainly not at all similar to deepstriking. No scatter, they can, and WILL be deployed late game instead of turn 2/3 so are either impossible or at best difficult to counter. The nightscythe itself isn't over the top, but the number of flyer/transport rules it ignores is rather irritating, and it has a non-trivial amount of effective against EVERYTHING firepower. It's the combination of good firepower, tough to kill and being able to drop troops late game unmolested onto objectives that make them great.

Wraiths are a solid unit choice. But, they are essentially a 12 man squad of Space Marines when you shoot them.

Of course, torrent'ing marines isn't all that bad. It should only take 108 BS4 bolter shots to kill a squad....which you will have to manage in 1 or 2 shooting phases if you don't want to lose a couple of squads. S8 or S9 firepower with AP3 or worse will be bounced off the destroyer lord's 2+ save...so your missiles/hive guard/ and other high strength bad AP weapons will be largely ineffective here and in return the wraiths will eat the plasma/melta/lascannon fire for the destroyer lord, making sure that no matter what weapon you use will be less then super effective. Not saying the squad is broken or over powered, as there's ways to speed bump/block or just wear them down, but they are a solid and resilient unit.

You mean that guy who gets no Invulnerable save and strikes at I2? Even with T5 and 3W, most competent HQs can take him.

I think you severely under estimate just how good a destroyer lord is. First off, it's T6 W3, 2+ save, so your non-monstrous creatures will need to beat that toughness and 2+ save and are likely going to have to resort to either a power axe or fist, meaning him having I2 is more then enough, especially when he's with whipcoil wraiths. Assuming you even pass that 50/50 MSS test and don't end up stabbing yourself in the face that is. His weapon is also S7 AP1 armourbane...that's basically one of the best melee weapon in the entire game. Even monstrous creatures swinging at S6+ are going to only wound 50-66% of the time, and only even get to attack 50% of the time or less. The only REAL threats to a destroyer lord in HTH are the top shelf melee characters (Abaddon, Wolf Lords, Chaos Lords, anything with a high strength/poison swing at initiative AP2 weapon and LD10) and the better monstrous creatures (Swarmlord, Demon princes, Greater Demons, maybe a dreadknight). That is a very short list, and we both know that a lot of the things on the list aren't really tournament viable units. Throw on top of that he's fairly fast, and hidden in a unit of 12 wounds of 3++ invul, and he's a pain to shoot to death as well. Again, hardly game breaking, but it's hard to argue he's not an excellent unit especially with the synergy he brings to wraith with preferred enemy and his 2+ save tanking S8/9 weapons.

They are indeed all that. But you forget that they are limited to a 24" range and have to move 6" a turn to avoid Snap-Firing. An effective 30" threat bubble can be mitigated through pre-measuring.

I don't completely disagree here...it's possible to out range 24" guns on a 6" movement platform but we both know that when playing objective games 95% of the time SOMETHING will be in range of them. Their gun is effective against basically everything as well, be it horde troops, MeQ, vehicles or flyers. You really can't argue that they aren't solid vehicles in almost any situation they may face, especially for their paltry 90 points.

Necrons are undoubtedly a very strong codex in 6th, however, with more and more codexes getting answers to flyers, I predict the days of the Flying French Bakery are becoming more and more numbered.

I'm not so sure about this really. Every 6th codex so far as had some options for anti-aircraft via flakk missiles, vector strikes or skyfire, but the quantity and quality of them have been crap frankly. Building an all comers army that is capably of dealing with 3-4 nightscythes is difficult even for the 6th edition books in my opinion.

Also, there have been no less then 4 codicies released since Necrons, and they have yet to be de-throned from top dogs in 6th, and I frankly don't see Eldar doing it either, so they will continue to reign for the next 3+ months until we see what the Space Marine codex will hold (and I'm not holding my breath here either).

Nothing individually in the Necron book is "pants on head stupid" (like say, the Helldrake), but their best units compliment each other extremely well, and they ally with other armies fairly easily as well. They aren't broken....but they are the best there is at the moment.

lynxstrife wrote:

 TheKbob wrote:
Dont take spendy HQs or Royal Courts.

Take more Flyers, AV13, or Wraiths. Your choice of mix. I run almost all AV13. If the enemy is lacking S8+, they are hosed. CSM are an example that usually have a ton of S7, including Hell Turkeys, but I just laugh with my Quantum Shielding.

2 lords
Cryptec
Ghost ark
2 night scythes
12 scarabs
36 warriors
3 destroyers
Cano spider
5 death marks
5 immortals
5 lychguard

That is my army as it sits right now. I won't have $$$ for quite a few months so this is what I got to work with.

Nice. That should work well - lots of combos in there.

I also agree with Jifel that suprisingly the game is quite balanced at the moment. Obviously there are those match-ups where you see people get totally demolished but I'd say that goes for everyone's codex right now in which in most cases they were facing their anti (there is at least one anti for each army right now which makes sense as some armies should be stronger against others)The addition of allies really helps out what would be a sure sinker army such as orks, and brings them into being competitive most commonly orks/tau. However I took the liberty of doing this some time ago as to drawing up the probable teirs right now I'd say in my best and unbiased opinion.

T1
NECS
NIDS

LOWER T1- TOP T2
GK
IG
Chaos

T2
DE/ELDAR
Daemons
SW
TAU
ORKS/TAU
DA

T3
BA
BT
Orks by themselves

And in the teir sheet the order doesn't matter I'm just saying they are what I'd consider to be the top/ in between top/middle / middle/ lower teir armies

**I wouldnt know where to put sisters of battle because in all the time I've been in this hobby I've yet to play one

As I mentioned though their are alot of middle ground armies and what I'd say only two top armies and even those two what I'd consider top armies have a chance to lose against a couple of those middle ground armies( Against the T1-T2 armies as well)

Nids- can have serious problems fighting SW from the rune preist and LF, I'd say daemons with all the re-rollable goodness for saves and shooting which can also give them some trouble
Necs- can have trouble with DE/ELDAR, and even have trouble against BA down in the lower teir when BA are outfitted with alot of FNP

but for the most part I'd say that the first post was right, the best army is the one you have the most fun with

Particularly nasty one i've seen is Grey Knights with Tau. heavy broadsides with the melee power of the GK is annoying.

as for what us truly the "best', must agree with several posts above. its what you like best.