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So I find myself with time to actually play again. It's been several years since I last play so I'll be starting fresh with a new army. However I can't decide which army to do. I have it pretty much narrowed down to:

Eldar
Tau
Dark Angels
Space Marine - probably Salamanders

Now I'm looking to have fun, being the most competitive isn't super important to me. Infact I will probably never play in a tournament. Each army has something I like about it which is what is making the choice hard. So I'd like some feedback on each. How are they in this edition? I will say the only point sgainst Eldar is the amount of finecast in it, I kinda have a hatred for the stuff, but if I would have the most fun with them then I could overlook that. Any feed back, advice and opinions much appreciated. But please give more then simply saying 'x' army cause they are the newest op one.

I do dig the salamanders. Plus, they just got a new codex and some new toys, new models, etc. It's a pretty good time to hop into them.

All four of the listed armies are up to date and are very competitive. Tau/Eldar are considered "cheesy" nowadays, but if you build a fluffy list there should be few problems. I can't really say what you'd have the most fun with, but all are decent right now. Tau you can use almost any of their choices and come out with a good list, while Eldar have a few meh choices. Dark Angels may be weakest of the four.

I don't play eldar, but all my games against them have been very enjoyable, even when I lost.

I've been in a Xenos mood myself and am digging the style of the Eldar models, hence my vote. Salamanders a close second, again because of style.

All of those codexes have amazing ability to support many builds that will be solid (you don't have to take a "net" list of three triptides or six wave serpents).

tau offer a lot of fun builds once you throw in kroot or vespid (yes, I know they are not that great, but they can be a lot of fun).
The biggest limit to tau is very few transport options and the flyers while better than most people realize, are very fragile.

The DA of course give you marines, deathwing and raven wing. They have the best looking marine flyer in the game ...although its not very good statwise.

Salmanders might be fun, and offer a lot of cool conversion possibilities.

Eldar are amazingly versatile - and exceptionally mobile, and have psychic powers to boot!
Similar to tau however, they have exceptionally limited transport options (although, they have one of the best tanks in the game...the wave serpent- it just happens to be a dedicated transport as well).

I can say this - if you are used to T4 and BS4 - the tau and eldar will be quite a surprise to play. Yes, tau can use markerlights - but you will discover they are quite a fragile and limited resources. I you don't have tons of marine experience in your background it won't be such a shock - but a lot of my friends who went from mainres to tau (or eldar) had a difficult adjustment.
(I went from tau to marines - so I was in hog heaven with durable skillful troops who did not run away.).

Regardless, I think there are no bad answers one your list. read the books, and see which army "feels" better for you on the table.

best of luck and have fun!!!

Dark Angels. It's by far the cheapest army to "buy into" currently and with Deathwing, Ravenwing and Greenwing, there's something for everybody to have fun playing.

I would say DA because then you will never have to worry about accidentally taking uber units and its almost always fun to play with all choices.

Tau can get boring if you don't play crazy wierd lists since they basically just shoot, shoot more, run back if you have crisis suits, and shoot again.

Eldar can be quite fun but depending on what list you run you risk being called a waac op tfg or something crazy because you took a wave serpent for your squad of fragons or something silly like that

Salamanders are always fun but can get repetitive since they don't have many options while still staying within the salamander theme

I wouldn't choose dark angels as they aren't the greatest (I know competitiveness isn't the goal, but winning helps). If you wanted marines, salamanders offer much more balanced lists that will pull more variety of units into the army.

Between eldar or tau, I'd aim for eldar as they tend to have a bit more variety in their lists. Most tau armies are looking very much the same these days unless you went fully mechanized or farsight enclave.

Salamanders or eldar - ask yourself if you want to play marines or xenos (I find the xenos more rewarding) - right now eldar are flavour of the month, but this will die down in the next few months. The popularity of marine armies never dies down though, so you'll end up in more mirror matches in the long run if you choose salamanders.

I would go with whatever fluff appeals to you the most. Do you like being an advanced, Psychicly active race? Then the Eldar are for you.

If you like being the defenders of humanity, then either Salamaders or Dark Angels will be for you.

If you believe in the premise of an alien "greater good," then the Tau will be up your alley.

Failling at the fluff from persuading to one army or another. Look at the GW website, and get the models that appeal to your aesthetics. Pick the models that you will enjoy assembling and painting.

Tau are fun if you are not super competitive, and their fan-base is smaller than most, because they used to have a steep learning curve (they are much more popular now).
Eldar are a good army, that you can put a lot of verity in, and look very good painted up (fun to paint as well).

Picking an army can be hard. Whatever you pick start small. I started into the hobby and spent a lot of money on Tau. After about 5 games I found I did not like there play style. So it was money not well spent . In fact I would play a few games with borrowed models, or even scraps of paper to proxy just to get a feel for it before committing money.
That said here is my take on these armies (for what it's worth). I won't take fluff into consideration because I figure you would not have picked these armies unless you liked the fluff.
Eldar:
First thing to know about Eldar is they are fast! You will be much more mobile than most armies you will come up against and you are very strong on both psychic offence and defense. But that is about the only universal in the army. Most Eldar units do one or two things really really well. But are weak in other areas. So building an army is like a jigsaw puzzle to meet all your needs. Given the speed of the Eldar it is not hard to get the unit you need where you need it in short order. But you do need some redundancy in your army or you risk losing key units and having the tapestry of your army fall apart.
The main weakness if that your most Eldar units are fairly fragile in close combat and most of your infantry does not weather a lot of fire well. So you will need to rely on speed and positioning for defense. Also your reliance on psychic powers is a blessing and a curse. Thought your leadership is high enough you do not have too much to worry about there is a random aspect here an powers can fall at the most inopportune times.
Tau:
Tau are all about shooting and avoiding close combat like the plague. That can be frustrating for some players as it really pigeonholes your tactics. It is a fast army (In most cases the Eldar will be a bit faster but if you are going for speed it won't be by much) and fairly durable. The Tau are all about fire power and coordinating that fire power. To me the Tau feel more like playing chess than any other army. The whole game is about positioning you units in the right spot to use their field of fire to trap the enemy in place. Then focusing fire for the kill. It can be a really fun army to play but it requires good planning and proper deployment is very important.
The real down side of the Tau is by avoiding close combat you miss out on a fun part of the game. Also Tau armies tend to run like a German car. They are very reliable, efficient and stylish. But if something breaks it won't be cheap to fix. Interplay between units is so important to the Tau that if you lose a wrong units early in the game, if can be very hard to pull off a win.

Dark Angles:
Don't know much about them other then they can use a lot of light skimmer gunships and Terminators. If you are looking for a low model count army it might be a good choice.

Salamanders:
Pretty much your standard marines with a penchant for flamers and melta weapon (not a bad thing mind you). Marines are good at everything but great a nothing and very durable. They also can build a wide variety of armies fairly well. Pretty much you are going to need a reliable way to get close to your enemies if you are going to play Salamanders because where you will really shine is at short range and close combat. But being marines you have a lot of options for that. Be fast, go in transports or, deepstike. All would work.
Hope this helps!

It's gonna be a tough choice between Salamanders and Eldar. Maybe I'll do up a small force of both and see how things go.

 jifel wrote:
, while Eldar have a few meh choices. .

mmm excuse me? haha i do believe you mean "while Eldar have a few crazy good broken units, and a lot of good units, and the rest is meh, but still playable."