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After seeing a similar thread in the 40k subforum, I was just curious as to what people's favourite armies to face are, and conversely, your least favourite? In the 40k boards it was quite predictable, and I know a bit less about fantasy and how the different armies rate. And it might help me pick my armies finally!

I haven't actually played fantasy (except a demo game about...8 years ago?) so I can't really kick off, sorry!

I would make this a poll but my vote is dark elves.............

Well there's kind of 2 questions so a poll wouldn't work.

For me it's less the army & more the build.

A solidly balanced army of any race is good. It's when people min/max or take completely 1 dimensional armies I start to not like it.

I hate dwarf gunline where it's max war machines. Thunderers/quarrelers and maybe some copters then they just sit there & play 40k. It's not that I can't beat it, I can and do. It's that it's boring.

But there are other dwarf armies that yes, have a lot of shooting, but also have units to move & position.

Basically just make the game fun, try not to have that one-trick army that can only do that one thing.

See fantasy doesn't have the same problem 40k has. In fantasy movement & positioning are critical. A good player with an army rated say 2/10 can beat a gak player with an 8/10 easily. My 130 point skeleton unit can kill that 500 pt super elite cavalry unit if I position right because of static combat res. A flank charge with 3 ranks puts me at winning the combat by 5. Now you have 3 models to kill 5 skeletons to just NOT LOSE and that's IF my 10 attacks don't score any wounds.

Fantasy is less "bring wraithknights or die" because movement, positioning & planning for your next turn is crucial. A knight can stand in cover literally ALL GAME and still shoot things off the board. Our big nasties (ok nagash summons other gak) have to go out & expose themselves to combat to do their damage.

Big nasty things also tend to get shot off the board by cannons.

Sure, your 600 point Lord on a Dragon with all the cool swag will murder if he makes it into melee. But my cannons should shoot him down before he gets there.

Least:
Warrior of Chaos.
Because it makes me deploy a bzillion of models to fight a dozen.
Because in today's armies the Chaos Lords rise from a pool of ... noone, as they are close to be the only human-thing around. They're champions among just themselves, and what I see on the table doesn't make any sense.
And because there is nothing about the classic GW chaos lore that I like.
Sadly, they're the most common around here.

Dwarfs.
I like their background a lot. But on the green carpet they are steady, tough, armored, and do shoot. They have the tendancy to forcely make you get into their meta.

Favourite?
I don't know. I haven't fought many in variety. But ... I belive I'd like fighting goblins or skavens. Hurray for the hordes.

As a Beastmen player the new LOC rules have helped this some but here is who I love hate.

Love
1. Ogre kingdoms with the exception of the hellheart nothing really drives me nuts about them.
2. Vampire Counts just the antithesis of my army and they are my main opponent.
3. Lizardmen I have just done well against them.

Hate
1. Dwarfes damn gunlines...
2. WOC anything I can do they can do better...
3. Any elves m fers

The evil Dark Elf in me loves games against High Elves the most. I find they are the best mix of challenge and fluff fun.

I hate playing dwarfs. I challenge anyone to find a top end dwarf list that is fun.

I love playing ogres. That way I can yell "pew pew pew" whilst avoiding combat and taking models off.

Lots of people saying Dwarfs haha, doesn't surprise me. I've always thought Dwarfs seem very boring, both to play and play against.

Dwarves and Wood Elves but that is because both the players at my club of those armies play 95% purely sit back and shoot with them, never been a fun game so far even when i have won.

My favourite is Skaven, they have so much craziness going on and our player really embraces the fun of them, win or lose, its always a laugh.

 ImAGeek wrote:
Lots of people saying Dwarfs haha, doesn't surprise me. I've always thought Dwarfs seem very boring, both to play and play against.

To be fair, dwarfs don't actually play warhammer.

 thedarkavenger wrote:

 ImAGeek wrote:
Lots of people saying Dwarfs haha, doesn't surprise me. I've always thought Dwarfs seem very boring, both to play and play against.

To be fair, dwarfs don't actually play warhammer.

They can Just the most efficient build generally don't. my UL can stand up to gunline dwarfs well. I bubble nagash & bubble nehekaan spells for the extra movement, it's just not that fun.

Is the general consensus then that armies which sit back and shoot are boring to play against while armies that engage in combat is entertaining?

I love playing against Skaven. "Suspiciously off target" is probably my favorite thing in this entire game.

Shaso_Keo wrote:
Is the general consensus then that armies which sit back and shoot are boring to play against while armies that engage in combat is entertaining?

No. Armies that give your opponent more than "I move forward, I take my toys off." for six turns are the entertaining ones. Now. I make no claims that my style of play, for anyone who pays attention to that, is fun to play against, but at least it gives people chances to capitalise on my mistakes and make moves of their own.

The Dwarf book has a major disconnect from what classical Fantasy dwarves are/should be and what they are portrayed within the book itself.

Dwarves are supposed to be these stalwart durable buggers who don't give an inch in combat and wear the heaviest of armor. Yet the basic dwarf warrior is hardly this image. He's T4, but he has at best a 4+ armor save. Not bad, but its not good enough for his points if he's in melee.

Instead, Dwarves end up playing the gunline. While it is fluffy for Warhammer dwarves, the fact they really can't use melee except as a mopping up of what survives their shooting is a little silly. And boring.

I hate any army that's used purely as a way for someone to measure the size of their man-dollie penis.

there is a guy at my shop who actually plays a well rounded dwarf army and its quite fun to play against, i think its more the list someone makes rather then an actual army thats bad to play against

The list rather than the army is fair enough, but the Dwarf codex seems suited to make boring armies, in my opinion. I think it's the M3, just seems naff, I like mobile armies generally (more than that anyway!) and I don't really like war machines. And I like magic. And monsters. And cavalry.

The Dwarf models are cool though. Love the Gyrocopter. And Chaos Dwarfs are quite cool (that's quite hypocritical though haha).

yeah then its not an army that would attract you haha i dont play them myself but like you said they have some nice models

I haven't gotten a chance to play all the armies (haven't played demons, beastmen or dark elves) so maybe that might put a little bias in this but I'd have to say:

Least favourite army to play against:
ogre kingdoms
- the times I've played against them it was just kind of boring because he just had a big huge block of iron guts, some maneaters, a cannon and then some leadbelchers. Just was kind of a boring army to play against because of the lack of units of the table. Most times I've played were similar lists

Favourite army to play against:
Brettonia
- only played them twice so again not a lot of experience against them but was just a super fun few games and I liked facing mostly knights it was cool

The army I've played against the most is probably Empire and Lizardmen and I enjoy playing them too. In all honesty tho I still like playing every army because playing the game is super fun!

Least favorite army:

Elves of any kind and Lizardmen.

Anything skaven can do lizardmen can do better with the exception of hordes, initiative and war machines but many of the things they do well (leadership, weapons teams, monsters and poisoned skirmishers) they do better than skaven. They also have things skaven don't even have such as flyers, cavalry, heavily armored units and good melee fighters. Skaven must rely on the abomination and similar for combat or massive weight of numbers and still lose combat every time. Lizardmen win combats with their basic guys and have plenty of good or decent fighters.

Elves just annoy me. High elves never used to be good at shooting and then they were. Generally fast cavalry and fast moving armies became a thing and you could never catch the magical elf fast cavalry or the BotWD unit that won't die. Seriously unless you have decent shooting magical elf fast cavalry will beat you and even with it wood elves will outrange you. I mean with skaven i need warlocks and possible jezzails or similar just to maybe win and the average tactic for me is still probably just move from one side of the board to the other. It's so frustrating and this isn't even considering wood elf ambushers. Have you guys ever seen a command unit of sisters of thorn with the magic resistance 2 hero or similar? They just can't die unless you use good shooting on them. Problem with skaven is all of our high damage units are fragile with the exception of the abomination and some war machines which can be destroyed by cannons. There's almost no way to get it away from the elf shooting. You almost want to take slaves with slings or night runners to go around that problem but they're not that good even if they are core. It's funny though as it seems to scare opponents until they realize how useless their shooting is. That said in the grind of shot vs shot i get the feeling slaves would eventually take down wood elves even if the wood elves went into light or heavy cover. It's all about toughness 3 sling units for 2 and a half points per model versus wood elves with special arrows for a crap ton more.

Favourite
1) Bretonnia: Because bad Bretonnian players are fun to bait into silly traps and just crush, while good Bretonnian players will give you an amazing, tactical, and challenging game.

2) Orcs and Goblins: Lot's of moving parts, lot's of different and interesting units, games always seem to be very close.

3) Warriors of Chaos: Yeah that's right. I love playing Warriors. I didn't when I played TK, but they're a clean, straightforward match for my VC now. I have a counter to everything they bring, and the match is about whether I can deliver those counters while dodging their attempts to knock me out. It's like a boxing match where I have a poisoned needle and he's 300 lbs, 6'8" with brass knuckles.

Least Favourite
1) Skaven: Because fighting Skaven has more to do with whether their toys hit and roll high S than it does about how well you play the game. I just rush forward and punch them in the dick, and pray that their dice don't show up.

2) Because playing a dick-punch combat list against an army that will not, and need not, ever fight you is just plain infuriating. It's a very challenging, intellectual game but it's not a particularly fun one.

3) High Elves: Because I always feel much the same way about them. I feel more like I'm being beaten by frost phoenixes, ASF, and BotWD than I am by their actual generalship. That said I've begun tailoring my list around tackling those aspects and I'm feeling much more confident about this matchup...so it might do a reverse like Warriors did.