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Doa is Decent of angels its for blood angels and mech is a heavy mech list alot of tanks.

DoA was and is my first list for warhammer 40k and i love it. its very flexible. anti tank and anti troops. as well as some great support for the troops.

I highly suggest starting slow for an army get a 500-1000 point army.

usually starting players go marines they are very forgiven if you make a mistake.

id go with a basic list like this if you want sm i prefer blood angels codex.

hq: Librarian-100, shield and rage.

elites: Priest-50 points

5x assault marines 1x flamers 1x pf-130

5x assault marines 1x flamer 1x pf-130

2x razorbacks-20 with tl lascannon

thats 500 point even

put libby in one tank and the priest in the other.

stileprojekt wrote:Doa is Decent of angels its for blood angels and mech is a heavy mech list alot of tanks.

DoA was and is my first list for warhammer 40k and i love it. its very flexible. anti tank and anti troops. as well as some great support for the troops.

I highly suggest starting slow for an army get a 500-1000 point army.

usually starting players go marines they are very forgiven if you make a mistake.

id go with a basic list like this if you want sm i prefer blood angels codex.

hq: Librarian-100, shield and rage.

elites: Priest-50 points

5x assault marines 1x flamers 1x pf-130

5x assault marines 1x flamer 1x pf-130

2x razorbacks-20 with tl lascannon

thats 500 point even

put libby in one tank and the priest in the other.

Well i'm choosing between Blood Angels and Space Marines.

I don't know alot about the Blood Angels. Could you post a link of a website where I can get all i need to know about them please?

If I remember rightly, you were going to send me some pictures of some of you DA?

Thanks for your help .

If you want to see pictures, go onto the dakka gallery and search blood angels.

Here is a picture of some Blood Angels I just found:

RaptorsTallon wrote:

Jedend1 wrote:

RaptorsTallon wrote:Mech is using lots of vehicles.

Descent of Angels is, AFAIK, deep striking.

Thanks. I wouldn't perticulally like an army with lots of vehicles to be honest. I prefer all out infantry. Would you say Blood angels or Space marines had alot of vehicles if so, are they important to have?

And Marzillius, you said all you play against is Space Marines, well not every Space marine player has the EXACT same army... They may have the same units but each SM player will have diffrent sized army or some tactics you have never come across, therefore it can be challenging and is certainly diffrent whenever you play diffrent 40K players.

Space Marines can do both infantry and vehicals well. All depends on how you build them.

Oh ok, Well I would perhaos buy ine or two tanks if I needed them but I am just getting started as you know.

Perhaps I should give you a little insight into how Space Marines work from an army division standpoint, so you can understand what we mean when we say "Play this Chapter or that Chapter depending on what you like."

Space Marines as a whole are divided into smaller forces called Chapters, and each Chapter has their own flavor. These chapters operate independently, and have their own recruitment structure, their own homeworlds, their own characters, and basically treat eachother as family. Many Space Marine Chapters have their own political structures when it comes to other chapters as well. By-and-large they regard Space Marines from other Chapters as cousins or good friends, and will usually support eachother, but with any family there are rivalries and falling-outs. Some chapters are bitter enemies and will fight one another if they have no common enemy. Most times, if a greater evil is present though, even these rival Chapters will temporarily set aside their differences and work together to overcome the more important foe before going back to their squabbles.

So that begs the question.....what is a Chapter? Originally Space Marines were organized into Legions. Tens of thousands of Space Marines fighting under the command of their Primarchs (Sons of the Emperor), spanning huge portions of the galaxy and fighting against the enemies of man. Horus, one of the Primarchs and favored son of the Emperor, turned to Chaos and took fully half of the Space Marine Legions with him, an event later called the Horus Heresy. In the days immediately following the Horus Heresy, the Space Marine Legions were divided into smaller sections of roughly 1,000 soldiers, called Chapters, and Robute Guillaman, the Primarch for the Ultramarines, wrote the Codex Astartes which described the composition and battle doctrines that all of these Chapters were supposed to follow. This was done to prevent another Horus Heresy from happening. If one Chapter went rogue, they were much smaller and easier to deal with than an entire Legion. Over time, each of the Chapters has taken the Codex Astartes and changed it slightly to fit their unique fighting style, but by-and-large most of them follow it to a reasonable degree. We call these chapters "Codex Chapters" and in game terms those are the ones you will see in Codex: Space Marines. The Ultramarines, the Salamanders, the Imperial Fists, the Crimson Fists, etc...all of them are "Codex Chapters" and they for the most part follow the Codex Astartes and have many similarities with a few minor differences.

There are some Chapters, however, that do not follow the Codex Astartes quite as narrowly. Usually this is due to some genetic mutation that lends itself to a style of fighting that cannot fit completely within the Codex, or a chapter organization that is well outside the norm. These chapters are called "Non-Codex Chapters" and in game terms they have their own Codex and use their own set of rules. They are still Space Marines, and still have many of the same features as standard Space Marines, but often they have a different set of special rules and different weapon/wargear options. These chapters include the Dark Angels, the Blood Angels, the Space Wolves, the Black Templars, and technically the Grey Knights (though strictly speaking the Grey Knights are not listed amongst the Astartes). Each of these "Chapters" has their own unique flavor and style that give you different options for play, but with the exception of the Grey Knights, you can usually use any of the Codices with any collection of Space Marine models. For instance, I play Space Wolves, but I often use my Space Wolves models and the Blood Angels or Vanilla Space Marine codices depending on how I'm feeling. Space Wolves almost never field Terminators because they are just not cost effective, but if I am in the mood to use my Terminator models, I field a Vanilla list using Vulkan and 5 Assault Terminators in a Land Raider, and break out my Vindicators and Dreadnoughts to support them, which I also don't field in most Space Wolves lists.

So if you are interested in playing a durable army with a ton of options and want to be able to play it many different ways, Space Marines are a pretty solid option (This is by design. GW makes most of their money off of sales of Space Marine models, so of course they have the widest selection of rules and models). You can buy a core of infantry and vehicles that will appear in almost all codices, then buy all of the books available and play whichever rules set you want. This works very well if you develop your own paint scheme and aesthetic because you are basically just fielding a "counts-as" army with whatever rules you want to use at any given time. As long as it's clear to your opponent what rules you are using before the game starts, no reasonable player will have a problem with this.

Anyway, sorry for the history lesson, but most new players have no idea what a Chapter is, or why one is different than another so I figured it was best to explain why there are multiple different Space Marine books available but only one of each of the other armies.

wow! Thanks for all that history and I didnt have a clue what a chapter was so all that information has helped me so much, thanks What would you personaly prefer SM or DA? Thanks again

Dark Angles ARE Space Marines. They are simply one Chapter of Space Marines and have their own codex. A friend of mine plays them and they have a good back story, as well as decent rules. Play Dark Angels if you like fielding a lot of Terminators, but if you want a more standard build and just like the Dark Angels Aesthetic, I would say use the Space Marines Codex and paint your models Dark Angels colors. Eventually, when a new Dark Angels codex is released, you can use that codex or stick with the Vanilla Codex.

If you are interested in trying your hand at modeling, it might be worthwhile to look into Chaos Space Marines as well.

As noted by Aldarionn's history lesson these are the Marines who followed Horus and rebelled against the Emperor.

In a lot of ways the Chaos Space Marines are like Vanilla Space Marines + Demonic influence. As a result there are a lot of fun conversion possibilities.

Do your Marines worship Nurgle- the god of pestilence and decay? You now can now model their rotting bodies, and vicious pus stained bodies bursting through their decaying power armor.

Or maybe they worship Slaanesh- the god of pleasure and excess? These marines carry weapons called sonic blasters, and you may not be able to resist modeling them with things that look like Prince's electric guitars.

Strictly speaking, the Chaos Space Marine codex is a bit older than the current Loyalist Marine Codexes, and as a result is not as competitive as they are.

But in general, the chaos legions have much more compelling back stories. Just going through the Black Library books, detailing the stories of how somebody as pure and noble as a Primarch- the children of the God Emperor himself, could become corrupted and eventually turn on their own father. The tales of their falls give the chaos legions deep character, that- despite the best efforts of the authors- the loyalist legions could never hope to achieve. Because quite frankly a story about an unbeatable good guy just isn't as engaging as a tragedy about a fall from grace.

Also the only thing more badass then a genetically engineered superhuman is a genetically engineered superhuman who has ascended into a deamon prince...

ohh I understand, I am looking through tje chapters in the space marine codex but I cannot find the blood angels chapter, is it not in there because there is a seperate codex?

They are mentioned in the SM codex, but there won't be much about them because, as you said, they have their own codex.

Thanks Akaean for more information on the space marine chapters.

There of alot of armies to choose from here thanks to the dakka forums I will certainly take a look at all the SM chapter which will hopefully help me choose what army i go for along with all your information.

On the painting side of things I will look at, not onlythe chapters but even some other colour schemes.

RaptorsTallon wrote:They are mentioned in the SM codex, but there won't be much about them because, as you said, they have their own codex.

I have been looking at the Blood Angels and have read about Dark Angels.

What do you think of DA tacics? Easy to learn? Good army count?

DA are an older, and therefore less competetive book.
They have a different play style to normal marines, from what I have seen Deathwing is the most popular.

Oh okay, well most of this morning I have been reading about the Blood Angels on the GW website and I think I will have them as my army,


What do you think?

Go for it!

Blood Angels have great models, rules and background.

Agreed! As you know they have a codex for the Blood Angels, is there a new addition to it coming out, if so when?

Before choosing an army read the fluff, I'm sorry but how can you hope to make a good SM army if you don't even know what a chapter is.

for the record i started with Daemons, often thought of as the worst army for beginners due to their unpredictability, and i LOVE them. Go read the background look at the models on GW, research their playstyle and make an informed choice yourself. Dont just think 'I build spess Marines!' hope this helped

I know what a chapter is... and i have reasearched background of the SM...

Jedend1 wrote:Agreed! As you know they have a codex for the Blood Angels, is there a new addition to it coming out, if so when?

I doubt there will be a codex update for the BA soon, seeing as it was only relasesd in April (I think) 2010.

The current rumors are that the main rulebook will recive an update sometime towards the end of next year.

oh okay thanks and I found this on the GW its an update for it see what you think: http://www.games-workshop.com/MEDIA_CustomProductCatalog/m1180159_Blood_Angels_Codex_and_FAQ_2007-08_5th_Edition.pdf

Yeah, that is the White Dwarf update for the old BA codex.
It is now obsalete because their is a new Codex out.
That was writen in 2007 to update the old BA codex, and a totaly new version was released in 2010.

Oh okay I understand now. Have you had any experience withthe BA? E.G. Battled them?

I don't remember having faced the Blood Angels, but I have been allied with them.
They were really effective, especialy the Storm Raven.

ohh good good, they sound like a good army to choose from what I have read.

Is there any starter packs for the BA?

There is the battleforce:
http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/productDetail.jsp?catId=cat440190a&prodId=prod900148a
It will save you quite a lot of money. If you get that, a codex and a HQ choice, you should be able to make at leased 500pts, if not 750.

Jedend1 wrote:

RaptorsTallon wrote:Mech is using lots of vehicles.

Descent of Angels is, AFAIK, deep striking.

Thanks. I wouldn't perticulally like an army with lots of vehicles to be honest. I prefer all out infantry. Would you say Blood angels or Space marines had alot of vehicles if so, are they important to have?

And Marzillius, you said all you play against is Space Marines, well not every Space marine player has the EXACT same army... They may have the same units but each SM player will have diffrent sized army or some tactics you have never come across, therefore it can be challenging and is certainly diffrent whenever you play diffrent 40K players.

To be honest, if you're thinking of one of the 'variant' Marine chapters, then BA are one of the LEAST shooty ones. Though they can be taken as a shooty army, all their fluff is about being crazy about getting into close combat.

If you're looking at non-standard marine codexes, there are four options.

SPACE WOLVES - Can field pretty much anything, very elite, but also very viking-raaaa-close combat
BLOOD ANGELS - Jump Troops, Fast attack, Vampires, but also very raaa-vampire-close combat
BLACK TEMPLARS - Crusaders. Again, can be built to be shooty, but the rules favour close combat. VERY easy colour scheme for beginners!
DARK ANGELS - The only marine variant whose backstory doesn't favour close combat. Monastic. Stubborn. They have an old codex which was considered very weak until the release of a download FAW, available on the GW site, which has made them much more competitive. However, makes the rules slightly more complex to start with as it's two documents...

Remember, also, that the standard SPACE MARINE codex is very versatile. You can easily build a more 'specialised' army using some of it's special rules. For example, if you take a Master of the Forge as your HW, you can take up to six dreadnoughts, reaulting in a potentially very shooty robot army. Or, if you take a Captain on a Bike, then Bike Squads become Troops, so you can have an entirely bike mounted army. And of course, the various space marine special characters make your army play in different ways...

So would you say BA specialise in close combat? Or are they a mixture of range and CC?
I do like the Jump Troops/Packs with the BA. I'm not to fussy on whether its a shooty army or not but as you say they can be taken as a shooty army.
I have looked at information on the Space Marines but then I realised that so many poeple have then so I thought i might aswell go for sonthing diffrent but similar, like the Blood Angels.

Okay...so, first of all, some of the advice / what direction you seem to be taking it is a little weird.

I'll start from the beginning:

First of all, do you want to play competitively? If not, then honestly just do whatever army you think looks cool, and paint/play as you see fit. Not everyone likes to be competitive with this hobby, and that's fine. Winning is everything, and quite frankly shouldn't be.

If you do want to be competitive, then keep reading.

First off: Warhammer 40k is a shooting game. Yes, some armies can pull off being mostly close combat, but most cannot, and none can ignore it completely and hope to be very competitive. So, it's good that you want a shooty army.

Secondly, to play this game, you have to pick a codex to build your army from. They are:

Space Marines
Blood Angels
Imperial Guard
Space Wolves
Black Templar
Dark Angels
Grey Knights
Chaos Space Marines
Chaos Deamons
Tau
Eldar
Dark Eldar
Tyranids
Orks
Sisters of Battle

You cannot mix these codexes. So, pick one that you like, and go with it. If you want to win a lot of games, i'd suggest choosing from:

SW
IG
SM
GK
DE
BA
DA

Though not necessarily in that order. All of these books are about as good as one another, and a step above the rest in competitiveness. Black Templars are almost in this charagory as well, IMO, but i'm not sure i'd bother with them until they get updated unless i was really in love with their army/fluff/look. And, it isn't that the books not mentioned here are bad, exactly, they are just as new, and not as well designed for the fifth edition. Sad, but true.

Before you pick one of these armies, there are some things you need to understand about this game, and how it works, since they each have different tactics and playstyles.

First of all, in 5th edition 40k (what we're playing), Mech is King. What that means is, mechanized armies with lots of tanks and transports are very very good. Almost all armies should have a large number of tanks, or have a very good reason not to.

IMO, if you do not have a lot of transports, you had better be at least one, and probably a mixture of the following:

Very fast
Very hard to kill

If you are too slow, you will die before you get to the enemy, or can capture objectives. Speed can allow you close the distance soon enough to kill the enemy without dying yourself.

If you are not hard enough to kill, and are not protected by transports, you will get shot to death. Simple as that.

So, i'll try to give you a decent idea of what the different "competitive" codexes can do, and what sort of armies they generally build.

--Space Marines: This codex probably has the most variety of all the others. You can make:

Bike armies: A SM captain on a bike lets you take bikes as troops. Bikes are reasonably hard to kill because they have toughness 5 and can get a 3+ cover when they move over 18". Bike armies don't really need transports because they are fast/tough enough.

Mech Shooty lists. basically a mix of dreadnoughts, devastators, predators, sniper scouts, tac marines, and speeders. Terminators, bikes, and other units can be added as you like, but the basic strategy is to shoot the enemy to death and then take objectives with the tac squads. You will need rhinos/razorbacks for the tac squads/devastators, and need shooty vehicles like dreads and predators. HQs like Vulkan can make these lists better/different by adding their special chapter tactics. Just make sure you build the list around that characters ability (i.e., take meltas with vulkan, etc).

--Space Wolves: Despire their fluff, SW are primarily a shooting army, with good defensive CC elements. They really only have 2 main builds, though there is a lot of room for customization within them.

Mech: Lots of Grey Hunters, lots of Long Fangs, all with rhinos and razorbacks. You probably want a Rune Priest and wolf guard for your grey hunters as well. Besides that, you can choose what goes in your fast attack and elite choices, whether it be thunderwolf cavalry, speeders, scouts, lone wolves, more wolf guard, or dreadnoughts. You will probably need a lot of tanks fot this sort of list. I play SW and have 11 tanks at 2,000 points. It's just how things are.

Loganwing: Logan lets you take wolf guard as troops, which means you can have terminators as troops. Terminators in large numbers are hard to kill, and therefore don't really need vehicles in order to succeed. A logan list usually has 6 or so groups of wolf guard with some guys in terminator armor with cyclone missile launchers, backed by long fangs with more missiles. Then you pretty much pick your elite and fast attack choices however you want.

--Blood angels. Blood angels have 3 main builds: Mech, DoA, and hybrid. Blood angels are the most assault oriented of the space marine books, and can afford to feild a jumppack army because they have easy access to the Feel No Pain ability, which makes them considerably harder to kill. They do shoot, but usually just before they charge in and kill things in CC.

Mech has lots of razorbacks with assault squads in them, usually backed by devistators or predators (baal or otherwise).

DoA involves you taking 50-70+ jump pack troops and either deepstriking on the enemy, or just charging across the board in a tide of marine goodness. A librarian and some sang priests (they give FNP) are usually auto includes. Once you have 50 or so assault marines, you can either bring some vanguard veterans to have more jumpers, or bring devastators to provide fire support. Either one works
pretty good, just depends on the playstyle.

Hybrid BA is a mix of mech units and jump pack troops. Usually something like 50-60 jump troops and some predators or storm ravens.

No matter what, BA are an army with a lot of assault capibilites, and pretty decent shooting with meltas, pistols, predators, razorbacks, and missile launchers, depending on how you build the army.

--Dark Eldar are a primarily mech force, and are probably the hardest of the "competitive" armies to play, because they die pretty easily. You don't seem too interested in these, so i wont say too much about them. Basically, they are very fast, hit very hard, but die pretty easily. they have a few good CC units like beastmaster packs, but are primarily a shooting army.

--Imperial Guard Pretty much have to bring a lot of tanks in order to be any good. I suppose it's possible to pull off an all/mostly infantry list, but i wouldn't suggest it. In general, i good guard list will have 6+ troop units in chimeras with meltaguns, some artillery in the back, and flyers hunting tanks / providing fire support. They obviously have other units that can work as well, but chimeras + flyers + artillery is the norm. Guard are almost exclusively a shooty army.

--Dark Angels have 2 main builds i'd consider to be competitive, and neither one really used any/many vehicles.

Deathwing: You take Belial as your HQ, and he lets you take terminators as your troops. So, then you take 50 of them. 50 terminators are very hard to kill, so this works. Give each terminator group a cyclone missile launcher for firesupport, and charge at the enemy with 50 terminators. Most armies have a very hard time against this sort of list. This army just sort of walks towards the enemy shooting missiles at it, and then beats down whatever it left with hammers and fists.

Multi-Wing: A mix of Terminators and other units from the DA book, most notably speeders, bikes and predators. Having 25-30 or so terminators is still hard to get rid of, and having bikes or speeders with meltas lets you get rid of tanks pretty easily. Predators are cheap and help with the anti-tank and anti-infantry duties. Then the terminators kill whatever is left. This is also a shooty army.

--Grey Knights have 3 main builds, 2 of which pretty much need tanks to be any good.

GK Mech: Lots of strike/purifier (all purifiers if you take crowe) squads with razorbacks, with either purgation squads or dreadnoughts backing them up. The three main things GK have in this sort of list are: lots of S6 Heavy bolters on razorbacks, lots of psycannons on troops, and S8 autocannons on the dreads. This is a lot of firepower that lots of armies have trouble handling. This is a very shooty army.

Coteaz Mech: The HQ choice Coteaz lets you take henchmen, which are basically imperial guardsmen, as troops. This gives you access to melta weapons you didn't have before, and lets you save points on troops in order to take more of the expensive elites and heavy support choices in the GK book. You still want lots of razorbacks, rhinos, or chimeras for this sort of list, and dreadnoughts are usually good to have around as well. This is a very shooty army.

Termy spam: Much like the dark angels, just take 50 terminators and an HQ and call it a day. I like a librarian to go with them as well to buff them. This army doesn't need tanks. If you wanted you could probably take 40 termies and some dreads, or replace some terminators with paladins, but it's really up to you. Some people have also had success with a mix of terminators and vehicles. This is a shooting army, as having 10 or so psycannons and lots of storm bolters puts out a lot of firepower, but you don't have to be afraid of the assault either.

So, thats my summing up of the codexes and their good builds. I'm sure there are other ways that i haven't mentioned, but i think i've got the main ones down, and you don't sound like your familiar enough with everything yet to really understand it all anyway. What it boils down to is, if you don't want a lot of tanks, you need to either do jump pack blood angels, space marine bikes, loganwing, or dark angels. Everything else usually wants something like 8-12 tanks at 2000 points (the regular point value in the US), and about 6-8 at 1500. If you don't like that (which is understandable as transports cost a lot--i know, i have 11 of them), then i'd go with one of the armies i just mentioned. If you think you can handle getting 8 or so tanks, than any of the other builds i mentioned will be good too.

Just as an example, a simple DoA type BA list would look like this at 1000 points:

Librairan, shield of sanguinious + one other spell, jump pack -- 125 points

2 Sang Priests, each with jump pack and hand flamer - 170 points

10 assault marines, 2 meltaguns, 1 powerfist on the sergeant - 235
10 assault marines, 2 meltaguns, 1 powerfist on the sergeant - 235
10 assault marines, 2 meltaguns, 1 powerfist on the sergeant - 235

=1000

Put the librarian in one squad, and the priests in the other 2 squads, and charge everything across the board together at the enemy. The librarian has the shield of sanguinious, which gives everything a 5+ cover save, and the 2 priests give everything Feel No Pain, which lets you ignore most failed armor saves on a roll of a 4+. When they get the enemy, the meltaguns break open enemy transports, and the priests give everyone Furious Charge, which gives you +1 Strength, so you cause more wounds, and +1 Initiative, which lets you hit before a lot of enemies, meaning that a lot of the time you kill them before they even get to hit back. To make this army bigger, i'd probably add another squad of 10 assault marines, take the hand flamers off the priests, and put in two 5 man squads of devastators with 4 missile launchers to help shoot the enemy before your jump packs get there. The list would be 1495 points, just under 1500, so i guess give the librarian or one of the priests meltabombs.

Hope that was somewhat helpful, and no, i don't have any pictures of my army that i can share. Sorry :-P

Wow, that is alot of information to take in there. But that is So So So helpfull, and yes I think I do wan to play competative. I am choosing Blood Angels as you may know from the past few posts above.

And don't worry about the pictures there are plenty on google and dakka

I will be reading your post alot over and over again when I need to so I get all that vital information in my head .

Thanks LOADS for you help!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
What colours do you think I should use? The typical red or what do you think about yellow ?

I would go with red. It looks good and I have heard many stories about how hard it is to paint yellow.