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Me and my friends were discussing new player friendly army that isn't space marines or equivalents. I thought orks, another said tau, two thought IG/AM.

What do you guys think?

Necrons.

I think Necrons. Nice and durable and the Codex has aspects of most of the core gameplay in it except Pskyer. Grey Knights are decent too.

I would say Orks tbh

Necrons would be good yea. Some of it can be funky but just about any army has its issues with wording or uses.

Grey Knights would fall under space marines, and theyre also a FORTUNE to play lol (almost as bad as sisters).

Orks with the soon-to-be-outdated codex are fun as hell to build/play but they are the least competitive army atm. That may change by the end of the month. If you like to build/personalize things especially bikes and vehicles, go orks. Not joking.

Tau/IG are both gunline armies. They can be played differently but until you know what youre doing and having plenty of experience you wont do anything other than stand back and go "Come at me brah!" - i fiddled with my tau for quite some time before i could break away from the gunline aspect.

As others have said, either Necrons or Tau. They have a fair few measures of shrugging off or outright avoiding damage. For instance, Tau have good ranges on everything, even the basic infantry rifle and Necrons have AV13 on pretty much all vehicles. The disadvantage with the former is that Tau lack long range (as in, 36''+) guns while the Necrons only get the AV13 until the vehicle suffers a penetrating hit.

Plus, they're fairly simple to work out, as with Necrons it seems to be move forward and kill everything, with Tau its stand back, point and click at things until they die. More experienced players will try to downplay the simplicity of them and may even mention the odd tactic that is as 2+3=5 is to the 2+2=4 gameplay with things like Riptides and Firewarriors, but for the most part they're pretty simple.

Tau are good for a beginner because its difficult to not build a shooty force capable of blowing even some experienced players off the board. Necrons are good for beginners because unlike Tau if you slip up or fail to shoot them off the board, or the enemy reaches you in melee, you're not screwed. That said, given every Tau non-vehicle gets to link overwatch fire against charging units, and you have enough firepower to basically invalidate melee units, that shouldn't be an issue.

Orks, given they're getting a new Codex in less than a month, will probably also be an equally good beginners choice actually

I'd suggest Tau, since the army has very few terrible units, so someone who's buying what they think looks cool are unlikely to spend $200 bucks on a pair of worthless units. Similarly, the army is very good at the thing it is themed around, but has the tools to break that mold and shake up play style.

It's got lots of neat options, lots of neat variant Crisis suits from Forgeworld, the amazing Riptide kit, and the models all have lots of hard lines. That means a sprayed base coat, a wash, and some edge highlighting can turn out pretty decent looking models.

I would ONLY recommend Tau if the player wanted to play a 'shooty' army (or really liked battlesuits)

It's hard to screw up Tau. You wanna play shooty, so buy something. It will be shooty.

Many other armies are difficult for a new player to distinguish the units which will support his desired play style.

However, most importantly, make sure the player likes the models. If he likes Tanks, pick IG instead. If he likes alien gribblies, don't go Tau--go Tyranids. There's no point in picking up a beginner army that you don't want to own. You'll buy one codex, but you'll buy boxes of models, and keep them through the next codex (hopefully).

I would say Necrons, you have a army that can be really easy to paint, has tons of fire power and some of the most durable units in the entire game.

Also, with the 7th edition rules, necron command barges are phenomenal at the moment.

I would pick scions. Their a small army with limited units. So buying a wide variety if things to be effective isn't an issue. Your army is nice and simple in design while still being an effective fighting force. You might not have the flair of the eldar or the model count of the orks but what you do have is simplicity and sometimes that can be your biggest strength.

Often 40k players get so into their army building that they omit important core things out. They might spend all their points to make a wall of tank popping doom but make it horribly immobile or make and infantry impossible. And this is how the scions exploit and win. And they have the tools for the job.

I hope in the future scions are expanded into a more flushed out army. I want to see them rise and shine like a star baby!

 ionusx wrote:
I would pick scions. Their a small army with limited units. So buying a wide variety if things to be effective isn't an issue. Your army is nice and simple in design while still being an effective fighting force. You might not have the flair of the eldar or the model count of the orks but what you do have is simplicity and sometimes that can be your biggest strength.

Often 40k players get so into their army building that they omit important core things out. They might spend all their points to make a wall of tank popping doom but make it horribly immobile or make and infantry impossible. And this is how the scions exploit and win. And they have the tools for the job.

I hope in the future scions are expanded into a more flushed out army. I want to see them rise and shine like a star baby!

I would strongly disagree with this, it would take a considerably experienced player to turn a force of Scions into something competitive or even particularly decent and frankly lack of model variety is a complete turn off, boring and impractical for a new player

Especially when building Scions you have very little variation in poses with the special equipment due to lack of bitz accumulated from other armies and kits -as it stands, if you want to build plasma gunners that aren't exercising their pointy fingers you have to convert them using spare plasma guns.

Yeah I would have to disagree with Scions for the pure fact taht it's hard to be excited about an army with 4 different models.

Necrons. They are very flexible, versatile and easy to pick up. Cheaper than a lot of other armies too.

Imperial Guard.

You can build very easy to play straightforward armies that are still effective to learn the game on and then later have a wide variety of units and allies to add in to suit your preferences.

As everyone else has said, Necrons. I started with them only because of Dawn of War and I loved them as soon as I laid eyes on them, but overall they're a very Tough army, their vehicles are by far some of the hardest to kill in the game, they lack a lot of options, but what they have is straight forward and easy to use.

Does CSM count as space marines for the purpose of this conversation? If not, I'd say them. They're a pretty low-model-count army, and the models tend not to suffer quite as badly from a crappy paint job as some other armies. Plus, being basically a marine army but better, their units are individually tough, and their armies can be made to be pretty forgiving.

If CSM does count as space marines, though, then I'd say orks. Yeah, they're getting a new codex, but they're one of the most firmly established armies in the game, so it's unlikely that the new version of the rules will change all that much (like the new guard codex). Meanwhile, orks are very easy to paint, and are rather modelling-friendly for a new player (they can always use toy trucks as regular trukks once you add some bits of plasticard and paint it red, for example), and they're probably the most fun army to play, and fun is a good way to get someone to stick with the game.

The only problem with orks is that they can require a lot of models, which may be intimidating. Thankfully, it is also possible to make reasonably low model count ork armies as well revolving around bikes or nobz. Of course, this might possibly change slightly in the new codex, so you might want to hold off for just a little bit to make sure the nobz and bikes, and the like will still count as troops (not that it strictly matters so much anymore), or you could just go for it.

For the rest, DE are notoriously difficult for new players (for good reasons), IG requires a huge number of models (not much you can do about it either), Eldar is likewise well-known for being fickle and difficult, and has some painting and modelling challenges, tau will get him annoyed at a lot, tyranid is going to put up crazy painting and modelling hurtles, and necron... unless you really like the fluff or playstyle are a tad... basic? Easy, yeah, but without quite as much space to expand out of once you graduate from the newcomer phase.

Otherwise, well, it's space marines. Without the restriction, I'd say the best new player starter armies are DK, SM, CSM, and GK, in roughly that order.

Necrons and Sisters are both good starter armies, assuming you have the money to play this game in the first place.

Sisters are a good balance between Guard and Marines, with a limited number of models able to fulfil pretty much any role in the army - if you want to play a game with more Dominions rather than Battle Sisters, just reorganise which squads your models are in, and so on. They're powerful, without being overly broken, and are a very nice and flavourful army that embodies what the Imperium of Man is really about. Because of the Shield and Power Armour, they're forgiving to mistakes - even more so than Marines, because they aren't punished as harshly by AP3 Ignores Cover.

Necrons have similar benefits, although an Immortal-based force is probably better for a beginner because they won't be scythed down by everyone with a heavy bolter or a hades autocannon.

They also cost a small castle for a decent sized army.

Necrons will be a better option. they can build really elite type armies, yet are quite forgiving for mistakes due to high natural survivability and the fact every gun doubles as AT

I'd go with Necrons. Nothing scares most a newcomer than seeing half his army dying in turns 1-2 (I've seen it a couple of times). Tau can shot a lot, but it's kinda fragile. Necrons hold their own a lot more.

Ever since the 5th edition Codex was released I've thought Necrons, rather than Space Marines, were the best starter army.

Necrons can be straight forward but IG are the easiest army to "get" imo. You have basic infantry with basic guns backed up by basic tanks and basic artillery. All easy to understand what does what and lenient on a novice player. You can lose 100 guardsmen and have another 100 behind them ; )

Necrons, they can even rise from the dead and basic weapons can glance tanks.

They are a good simple asrmy that can be built and made competitive too at higher levels.

Eldar.. I found them the easiest army by far..

when you want a particular role fulfilled, there's very little to choose from that works, making it much harder to make a wrong decision..

plus the wraithknight is badass