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I am building 2 armies and a smaller one for the wife. The first is a Dark Angels army. The second, a Tau. The smaller one will be a Chaos SM.

I would like some input on a few models I am getting as far as load outs for them or whether you just dont like them.

Dark Angels - Land Speeder Vengence/Darkshroud. I was thinking of just going with the Vengence, but has anyone had some real luck with the Darkshroud. Will be facing mainly Tau.

Tau - Riptide. From what I heard from a lot of friends, this is a must for a Tau army. What load outs do you recommend? How hard is it to take out?

Chaos SM - Forgefiend/Maulerfiend. Dont really know much about this model. My wife just thought it looked cool and it would be fun painting.

I use two forgefiends and I do have to say they were the funnest models to paint. On the board they are not the most optimal choice, but I'v never regretted taking them.

My wife was trying to choose between that and a Helldrake. I told her both would be fun to paint. I heard helldrakes are pretty good for the battlefield.

The heldrake is an unparalleled MEQ or lesser infantry killer for a combination of reasons. But mauler/forgefiends are neat too. I magnetized mine to swap back and forth. One is basically giant anti-tank beast (literally, it moves like a beast) and the other is a giant daemonic horse with big guns everywhere (either s8 24"plasma cannons, or s8 26"autocannons) and they can do a number. I think they are work really well (I play a lot of necrons so ap4 is a beautiful thing, and the ap2 plasma cannons make short work of termies and light vehicles).

I wouldn't take a Darkshroud if facing Tau. Its just an AV 10 landspeeder that gives cover to models around it. None of those are an issue for Tau. Hell their base infantry can pen it. The other version doesn't look to be too much better. Sure they are fast vehicles and all, but they don't have the armor to stay on the field for long and don't do anything you can't already do and the Tau are pretty well suited to drop 'em. They are cool models, but I would lean more towards a landraider for the squad with the banner of devastation (I highly recommend that banner) and even as a transport for those terminators.

For the riptide, throw the interceptor upgrade on it. With a DA around, it is nice to get to intercept those terminators with a large blast when they are all nice and clumped together. I can't remember names but my friend runs his with what I believe to be the Tau plasma equivalent.

Awesome. My choices for the models are really based on Painting and Modelling than Gaming, but not a huge difference. I like to paint more since I can take breaks with work schedule to wear playing, I cant really leave the game set up to try and finish with friend since I play at home.