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About once or twice a week, I see people asking this question. The answer to these question is almost always the same. So in an effort to be proactive in answering this persistent questions, I'm going to paraphrase all the different answers:

1: Do your research, and look at the models find the one you like.
2: Pick the army you want, Don't let others influence you decision
3: What sort of tactics do you want to use? Horde: Tyrnids or Ork: Gunline: Tau, or Necron, Highly Mobile: Eldar, Dark Eldar, ETC (Special note: There is no army that's "Good at everything" )
4: Your "Good Starter army" in most cases is going to be Space Marines of some variety.
5: Look at the rumor threads. If your army is expecting an update in the near future just start saving up your money to pick it up with the new update.
6: If your an experienced player looking to pick up a second or even third army: You should already know what you want to do.

My personal stock answer is:

Do your research and look at the models. Find that army that you can form a connection with. If you don't have that connection your not going to be happy with the army, you won't be motivated to paint it, and you will spend more money on an already expensive hobby as you switch between multiple armies. It doesn't matter if its considered competitive, or considered Overpowered.

I always give people two strategies:

Pick the army you like the look of the most & learn to adapt it to your tactics.

OR

Pick the army you like the tactics of the most & paint / convert it to look how you want.

Rails, your answer confuses me. Can you reword it in the form a flowchart that leads me to the army I should pick?

 davou wrote:
Rails, your answer confuses me. Can you reword it in the form a flowchart that leads me to the army I should pick?

Oh! And draw it in crayon! And present it using sock puppets!

EDIT: Just to be clear I'm not knocking the original point of this but rather making light of the fact that we need to say this all the time.

Ralis wrote:

(Special note: There is no army that's "Good at everything" )

Nuts, why do I have a battle company of marines then?

Seriously though, what aren't they good at? I've got ant-horde, vehicle, elite, MC, lists... I've got shooty, tarpit, and assault lists... I field good elites, spams, psykers, flyer lists... seem "good" at everything to me

 Lobukia wrote:

Ralis wrote:

(Special note: There is no army that's "Good at everything" )

Nuts, why do I have a battle company of marines then?

Seriously though, what aren't they good at? I've got ant-horde, vehicle, elite, MC, lists... I've got shooty, tarpit, and assault lists... I field good elites, spams, psykers, flyer lists... seem "good" at everything to me

Marines are good at any one of those tasks but they aren't the best. Plus to cover all possible contingencies leaves the army disjointed, unfocused and not really good at anything.

Point number 1 is extreamly difficult for the vast majority of people.

doing research = work, and no one wants to work. Instead they will ask simple (to them) questions and HOPE that someone will magically provide them with an answer they already know.

Blanket "what" questions a warning bell, and unfortunetly require a personal approach every time.


if anything, i would just make a colourful chart with pictures of the different armies and corresponding adjectives and tactic styles (maximum 5 words per army)

I don't mind the "what army" threads too much. If the OP takes the time to list their preferences and has managed to narrow potential armies down to two or three choices. At this point the OP has already done some research and is just torn - they consult us to get some personal input that has been tailored based on the info they've provided.

Sometimes I read the responses of others and see a point or two that I had never considered about the army in question. Though I'd be curious to see some stats on how often the feedback in the thread actually helps the OP choose an army. Sometimes you get the impression that the person had already made up their mind and is just asking for the sake of asking.

 Shas'O Dorian wrote:
I always give people two strategies:

Pick the army you like the look of the most & learn to adapt it to your tactics.

OR

Pick the army you like the tactics of the most & paint / convert it to look how you want.

This is basically what the question boils down to, in the end each person normally makes a choice based upon various influences of the above two points. For some its more visual and for others more tactical/gameplay style. There is also a third criteria for some which is cost, some armies are significantly more expensive to build competitive or at least good builds with than others and for those on budget this is often a key consideration.


You'll always get the threads though because for many people the act of asking others (and where better than a forum ) is part of their research process. Google is great, but it is the kind of thing where if you're very new to a subject its very hard to word the right question to get the right results and even harder still to sift through the vast number of results (and for GW games another factor is the changing rules in the core and codexs' old and popular articles will still rank high on google and could misslead people easily into thinking an army works very differently to how it does now).

Even if you've got all the materials asking helps sort them out as well, information overload is a concern when people do large scale short term research and discussing matters helps to put some structure to the research and what they've found.

I will also add that the ability to perform research on ones own is a skill in itself and not everyone has that skill set. It takes time to really learn how to properly research a topic; anyone can find the wiki-page - but that isn't research.

Finally people are social creatures and many of us require some form of group collaboration into making choices. It doesn't mean those people can't make a choice on their own, but they feel significantly better when they have the backup support from others in their choice. Even with all the research in the world its good to double check when you have the ability to do so.

ClockworkZion wrote:

 davou wrote:
Rails, your answer confuses me. Can you reword it in the form a flowchart that leads me to the army I should pick?

Oh! And draw it in crayon! And present it using sock puppets!

EDIT: Just to be clear I'm not knocking the original point of this but rather making light of the fact that we need to say this all the time.

No Worries.

The intention of this thread is to gather the most common answers to these threads.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 gossipmeng wrote:
I don't mind the "what army" threads too much. If the OP takes the time to list their preferences and has managed to narrow potential armies down to two or three choices. At this point the OP has already done some research and is just torn - they consult us to get some personal input that has been tailored based on the info they've provided.

Sometimes I read the responses of others and see a point or two that I had never considered about the army in question. Though I'd be curious to see some stats on how often the feedback in the thread actually helps the OP choose an army. Sometimes you get the impression that the person had already made up their mind and is just asking for the sake of asking.

I like reading though them as well.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Overread wrote:

 Shas'O Dorian wrote:
I always give people two strategies:

Pick the army you like the look of the most & learn to adapt it to your tactics.

OR

Pick the army you like the tactics of the most & paint / convert it to look how you want.

This is basically what the question boils down to, in the end each person normally makes a choice based upon various influences of the above two points. For some its more visual and for others more tactical/gameplay style. There is also a third criteria for some which is cost, some armies are significantly more expensive to build competitive or at least good builds with than others and for those on budget this is often a key consideration.


You'll always get the threads though because for many people the act of asking others (and where better than a forum ) is part of their research process. Google is great, but it is the kind of thing where if you're very new to a subject its very hard to word the right question to get the right results and even harder still to sift through the vast number of results (and for GW games another factor is the changing rules in the core and codexs' old and popular articles will still rank high on google and could misslead people easily into thinking an army works very differently to how it does now).

Even if you've got all the materials asking helps sort them out as well, information overload is a concern when people do large scale short term research and discussing matters helps to put some structure to the research and what they've found.

I will also add that the ability to perform research on ones own is a skill in itself and not everyone has that skill set. It takes time to really learn how to properly research a topic; anyone can find the wiki-page - but that isn't research.

Finally people are social creatures and many of us require some form of group collaboration into making choices. It doesn't mean those people can't make a choice on their own, but they feel significantly better when they have the backup support from others in their choice. Even with all the research in the world its good to double check when you have the ability to do so.

My intention isn't to discourage threads of this kind. But to provide the most common answers in a single location so people can narrow down what they want more information on.