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It will be my daughters 8th birthday soon, and she has been BEGGING to learn the game. ive given her some books to read, and she has done very well at that, and is in the process of looking over the selection of armies, and deciding wich she wants. for now, must get her some small games to learn the rules and get some general tatics and process down.

i have literally a ton of armies. DE, SM, GK, nids, tau, Ig, orks, crons.

i want to start her off with a 500 pt game, wich will be VERY basic in its ideas. army should have a good mix of everything, while avoiding super complicated stuff.

for that end i am thinking space marines vrs tau. but what to put in the armies? obviously i dont want a tourney caliber setup, or a force that will utterly ahnilate the other side. both sides need to be "even"
suggestions on some lists would be much apreciated. i will be following standard force org rules tho, so commanders need to be legal, but not 'crazy'

im thinking for the tau, 2 units of firewarriors, no drones.. a simple commander in a suit, and maybe a devilfish if i can fit it in. for the marines, 2 tac squads with hev/spec weapons a lowbie captain with maybe a special wepaon like plasma etc, then a razorback?

That'd sound about right to me. You could also leave out commanders at that level.

Start with Tau for sure. They are very forgiving.

tau.

1 cmd+2 suit
1 firewarriors
1 pathy
1 broadside

For the first game I would recommend some IG (you) versus SM (her). Assuming you don't mind loosing give the SM a mix of their weapons and give the IG minimal special weapons and a single chimera. This will let your daughter kill a lot of stuff (which is fun) and give her experience against cover, armour, and infantry. Don't take a lord commissar so she can see how the morale mechanism works.

Tau are not quite as fun as the battle tends to be static (unless you bring lots of suits). Also whatever you do don't bring fortifications as you want the learning battles to involve a more mobile gun fight with units darting about terrain. I recommend avoiding anything even remotely static gunline until someone is firmly entrenched into the hobby.

agreed. i was thinking my tau vrs her SM ...and then a switch, tau bring a nice mix of moving shooting and some special rules, while the marines bring in the "big guns" and whatnot. plus a pair of light tanks/transports can show off the vehicle rules and transport etc etc. heres the SM list:

captain, combi plasma, relic blade.

10 man tac squad, missile, plasma razorback
10 man tac squad, missile, melta

vrs tau:

commander, twl plasma, missile
crisis team (3 men) plasma/fusion,
10 fire warriors
10 fire warriors
devilfish, sms

the points equal out around 550 each. im a touch worried that the tau has too much plasma but they need a way to deal with the razorback (when its her turn to use them) i was thinking maybe give them missile pods, but i want to sort of show the tau ability to jump in and out, and missiles tend to lead to hiding in the backfield. maybe give them fusion/burst cannons instead? (leaving the commander as is)

I'll be honest that many people don't like to play against Tau (old or new) due to the jumping in and out of LoS and the relatively static nature of the units.

I usually take joke lists against new players. I would recommend a minimum of AP3 or less weapons as it is dispiriting to remove casualties with not save. You do need enough to give her a taste of cover saves but as is you have a good chance to kill half a squad every turn with no armour saves. If possible try to give her a LC rather than ML. That will let her have a better shot at cracking the transport and honestly ML are not great.

How about something like;
[550 pts]
Chapter Tactics: Ravenguard
+HQ+
Libby (70 pts); Melta Bomb
+Troops+
TAC Squad (140 pts); 4 men+Sarge, Plasma, Razorback w/ HF
TAC Squad (140 pts); 4 men+Sarge, Plasma, Razorback w/ HF
TAC Squad (205 pts); 9 men+Sarge, Melta, Razorback w/ HF

This list lets he experience scout redeploy, vehicles, plasma, melta, template weapons, and psychic powers. One the other hand your list will have a fair chance to beat her but if she uses this right she could actually table you by turn 3.

Space marines are no longer a beginner army. I'd stick with Tau.

the reason i like space marines, is they are one of the more common armies out there. and the "good guys" so to speak. and since most armies are tooled up to fight space marines, essentially - they make a good choice. plus i have a bunch just chilling.

once we have played a few demo games and she has the hang of things, she will pick her own army, and start work on it - and that will be 100% her call on what she thinks she wants etc etc.

In a non competitive setting where you play with friends or family SM are incredibly forgiving. It is only when riptides, helldrakes, and serpent start getting spammed that SM becomes a finesse army.

Darthspader? Your not going to do a Ovesa Star against your daughter are you?

I've had luck with Marines vs. Tyranids - it can be 'tailored' to be an even game pretty easily. Warriors and Termagants vs. Tac squads and a few heavy weapons?

Yeah, I'm seeing a very "6th edition sloped" game being built here. You're putting guns against guns, and take it from someone who was given lots of books to read before they ever played a game (they're a lot cheaper than plastic crack) reading all that Bolter and chainsword porn gets you revved up for close combat. If you deliver 0 of that in her first game, it's going to feel a lot less heroic, you're missing out on a third of the game and I'm guessing she's going to be sorely disappointed in the game itself. (Kind of like I was after getting shot off the board a couple times before making it to CC)

So what I'm saying, is either swap one of your troops for something more rip-and-tear oriented, or add an assault squad or run Nids or Orks or something instead of Tau. So what if she falls in love with assaulting and smashing things? So what if it's not competitive? This games about having fun. Not making enough tournament prize money to support the addiction. I play fething Blood Angels even though they're an elite, not very tanky, assault-y army in a game of huge, durable shooty units. Why? Cause it's fun and I like it. Give new players, relatives or not, the opportunity to decide that for themselves. Don't constrain them to moving and shooting the whole game.

actually played first game today. she took:

captain w/ relic blade and bolter, 10man tac squad missile, plasma, another 10 man tac squad, missile and melta, and a razorback. i took my crons, overlord w/ warscythe, weave 10 immortals, 12 warriors, and an annihlation barge. points came out to 525 for the marines, and 521 for the crons.

played a simple game of she had to defend a building from me getting next to it. plus normal killpoints and side objectives. she combat squadded both tac squads, (after i explained what that does) in the end:

i killed 4 marines from 1 combat squad, leaving the plasma gunner alive, and another 3 basic ones from the second, leaving the srg+melta gun alive. everything else survived unscathed. she killed: all my warriors (swept them in combat) my overlord (died to relic blade in same combat, then failed EL to get up) 4 of my immortals, and on her first shot exploded my barge. she also got first blood, line breaker and warlord. not bad!

The most important part is missing. Did you both have fun? If so mission accomplished. (that is unless you were playing for her allowance, then mission failed for you )

she had a blast. already asking for game 2. lol. all in all not a bad way to spend some time with the kids. (and my youngest who is 5 sat by and watched the whole thing totally riveted and thrilled to be watching)

Well, here is a idea. I got my 9 year old cousin into 40k by playing small games that have huge stories behind them.

like Nidz vs IG. I'm pretty good at making up stories on the spot but I ended up basically creating stories about the Nidz invading a planet (me) and the 864th Blue caps (him) repelling the fleet and becoming Heroes of the Imperioum.

I'm pretty sure this is what Wargaming is all about Gentleman. I'm absolutely crawling with proud warm fuzzies. Keep it up mates, this thread might turn into a "accomplishing a Noble goal" story thread.

Excellent. I am glad to hear it went so well.

Okay: So this is a Dark Angel List and A tau list I put together for a similar purpose, but didn't get to use. I'm sure some minor modifications it can work with vanilla marines.

Dark Angels:
Libarian with Foesmitter and combat shield
Dreadnaught with Multi-melta/ccw
2x 10 man tactical squads, with flamer and heavy bolter


Tau:
Commander with/ Drone controller 2x stim injector iridium armor
12 firewarriors with Sargent
20 kroot (( no sniper ammo))
and 7 gun drones.

----------------------------------------------------

So with this you have a vehicle ((in the dreadnought) a Psyker ((libarian)) a few differnt types of infantry, and some Jet-pack units.