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I've recently ordered the Reclusiam edition of the Dark Angels codex, which im quite excited about! But before i start to divulge alot of money in the sons of the lion i wanted to make sure its the right option for me.

I dont currently own the codex for the Astra Militarum, but i do really like the idea of fielding alot of bodies and the orders you can give them. I also love the idea of fielding alot of tanks and artillery. From a gaming perspective i hear they're not all that great; and while that doesnt dissuade me alot, i do play with alot of Waac players. We dont do tournaments, but they love to win...

With Dark angels i love the Monastery-esque feel they have. I love chaplains, bikes, terminators and dreads, so naturally Dark angels appealed to me back when i first started playing, hadnt it been for my friend selling me a second hand ork army they would have been my first. I've read the leaked dex, and it seems fun!, so i really am struggling to make my mind up.

Can i ask for you as a community to help me make this decision?

Thanks

i say wait and see until the new dark angel codex drops, which is looking to be better than the current space marine codex, however the Guard to me are kind of a good choice since they can be very good in terms of competition if you try out lists people don't expect such as Airborne or mechanized and float away from the normal hammer and anvil tactic, but in terms of pure infantry it will be one hell of a uphill battle as guard infantry lists besides the death korps are pretty much suicide choice in a waac enviroment. but overall the dark angels are the best option as they look like space marines x2 with the same formations and some better units

I've been told Imperial guard are terrible at competitive levels?

What makes dark angels so strong though??

Azrael in a guard blob was good enough before and it will continue to be good with the new dex.

Do both.

currently they are bottom of the tier competitively, but that's mostly because of over priced units/gear, but the new codex should fix that bringing us inline cost wise with codex sm, while having black knights and deathwing knights and grim resolve becoming awesome

Imperial Guard for the sole reason that the Death Korps of Krieg are the most Grimdark in all of 40k
Plus they have good special rules as well (Guardsmen that are immune to fear?!?!?) And you can take a special rule where you get infinite platoons (as soon as a platoon is wiped out, it is placed into reserves) they also look Bada** AND their special units are awesome (Hades breaching drill can make mecha lists cry) (plus they have Chimeras with an AUTOCANNON AS STANDARD!!!)
Plus their Commisars are more Bada** then your average one (you will rarely need them though)

It's really difficult trying to choose between the two :/ they both seem really good


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The main I suppose I'd like most is the army that won't get wiped off the table from my waac friends :/

I love the imperial guard.

So much character and so many regiments to choose from.

I played vostroyans for a while, then got tired of the metal static poses and the WW1 look, so I've recently switched to Cadians.

However all the regiments are sweet. And you can mix and match and combine regiments.

As for power, they aren't top tier at the moment but if you squeeze some vendettas, wyverns, a pask command tank unit, and a big blob with 5 las cannon heavy weapon teams with a commissar, they can do work.

The power level of the army doesn't bother me as much. It's more to do with how ill pick them up as an army. Then if I can do well against my friends. I don't want to spend half the time I have shovelling them off the board because my friends just want to win

I'm biased to Dark Angels, but you could do both if you can't decide.

Azrael + guard blob for 4+ inv. seems to be sticking around.

Or ravenwing + guard tanks.

They are battle brothers so mixing both is very possible.

I voted IG, but my advice would be the mix-and-match of both.

Guard has so much variety of flavor, so you'll likely not get bored. But DA have some badass models and fluff as standard.

Besides character and fluff, as others have pointed out they can be rather competitive allied.

Have you thought about getting a DA/IG starter set or battleforce, then filling in gaps with models as you go?

I want to be more focused on one army, but I see what everyone's saying . I love the lore of both. I love the amount of templates guard can lay down. And the commands they get are really interesting

Like I said, I'd just like an army I don't get slapped about with by my waac mates haha

You can do both, if you like. Black Knights are now (even with the Rad Grenade nerf) one of the best units in the entire game. You don't really need to take the entire DA battle company or whatever, just the Ravenwing formation. It will give you 12 Fast Attack choices which will really help a guard army because

1. You don't auto-loose malestrom missions because you can only move 6" a turn. Ravenwing are one of the fastest armies in the game and are easily the fastest TOUGH army in the game.

2. Black Knights are vicious in assault with the no overwatch (if you rolled the list right) 2+ rerollable cover save on the way in, twin plasmas and 4 st 5 rending close combat attacks after the Hammer of Wrath when they get stuck in. Plus they can hit and run and continue to smash into stuff at will. They completely reverse the 'Guard suck balls' in assault paradigm. With their defensive mechanics in place, they are as survivable as wraiths, and more damaging. Plus, their damage comes from a combination of shooting and assault, which makes them hard to nullify, since they can shoot you and run away, attack you and run away, or do both and run away, depending on the target.

I would take mostly infantry for your guard, and artillery carriages, rather than tanks. It requires an insane volume of fire to bring down even one Black Knight with all his defenses up, so taking a bunch of conscripts or sentry vets exacerbates that and makes the enemies anti-tank weaponry a liability. Bring Blobs and Vendettas (because the heldrake and flyrant make BK cry) in your guard and you should be all set.

FWIW, an all Ravenwing army will absolutely burn a Guard army to the ground. That's not even new to this codex, RW have always countered guard very strongly. So there is that.

The new dark angels codex is amazing from what I have seen. It will open up at least 4 distinct play styles for the book. The models are also still cheap and easy to get due to dark vengeance.

The IG codex was reasonably well designed last edition but is very poorly designed for score as you go missions. Making a decent army also costs way more than a DA force...however if you play with forgeworld and don't mind going in with a huge investment I have found that IG is one of the most rewarding armies to model, paint, and to play as. I absolutely love my DKoK and Stormtrooper armies. What really makes them fun to play as though are the rules and models put out by forgeworld. You will also find that without allies the codex IG will almost never win an objective mission unless they almost table the opponent.

Now the great news is that I can ally my DA with my IG and play an incredibly fluffy IoM army that also happens to be really good at winning.

If you just bought the collector's edition codex it sounds like you're really into Dark Angels. Maybe you should give them a shot, with some Kill Team or low-points games! Besides, they just got updated. You can always try Imperial Guard next time GW gets around to updating them.

Maybe field one of those demi-companies if you want to see lots of infantry on the table. ~_^ Or even ally with IG later on. There's no reason you can't!

I'm new to the game and only have only played 3 games at my FLGS. I was a bit worried playing guard as I seem to be the only one there playing them with everyone else playing very strong armies.

Last night I finally won my first game of the 3 I've played against 2 armies of nids and orks with necrons and SM as my allies.

I was running a tank heavy 1250 pt build with a platoon and squad of vets mixed in, my god did those tanks put the hurt on the nids.

Turn 3 tyranids drop a squad of 20 genestealers right behind my tank line, I had two large tyranid flyers in front of them with some anti-tank units moving up towards them. Pask in the punisher and his executioner escort absolutely destroyed the 20 genestealers in that single turn with the rest of my tanks easily taking out what was left of their anti-tank stuff. It was GG after that, everyone was pretty mind boggled at how effective I was able to use the guard.

I almost gave up on guard because of reading about how they are weaker tier on these forums but I'm glad I didn't. They have so much versatility and firepower its insane. Front armor 14 on virtually all my tanks is nothing to trifle with...

Oh I do really love the lore. I wasn't debating because I'm putt of by anything I've seen.. Out of all the chapters I love dark angels the most. I've actually got every edition codex and most of the novels. Their grim dark background is really appealing.

I just didn't want to throw all my eggs in one basket.. I've always liked guard so I wanted to see some pros and cons. I think I'll stick with DA though Thankyou for all your help!

 Andy140491 wrote:
I've been told Imperial guard are terrible at competitive levels?

What makes dark angels so strong though??

Our new Codex. First time in history that I know of that Dark Angels don't suck. Our librarians are downright evil trolls and Ravenwing is pretty damn good. Plus we got grav and full BS overwatch with formations, among many other things. So long as you don't build a Deathwing force, Greenwing and Ravenwing should outperform Guard.

I'm hoping to have a deathwing detachment... I like the DWK and belial too much to not use them!

 Andy140491 wrote:
I'm hoping to have a deathwing detachment... I like the DWK and belial too much to not use them!

I wouldn't cross your fingers at all. They're only good for support, not a main force.

 Wyzilla wrote:

 Andy140491 wrote:
I'm hoping to have a deathwing detachment... I like the DWK and belial too much to not use them!

I wouldn't cross your fingers at all. They're only good for support, not a main force.

Oh sorry that's what I meant! Never really been fussed about a whole deathwing army anyway. It's the Dualwing or a greenwing army I like

 Andy140491 wrote:

 Wyzilla wrote:

 Andy140491 wrote:
I'm hoping to have a deathwing detachment... I like the DWK and belial too much to not use them!

I wouldn't cross your fingers at all. They're only good for support, not a main force.

Oh sorry that's what I meant! Never really been fussed about a whole deathwing army anyway. It's the Dualwing or a greenwing army I like

Oh, in that case they're fine. Massive force of Ravenwing murderizes everything that creeps or crawls on their way to charge into the center of the board, then the Deathwing deepstrikes with a small support force including Belial (now packing TH/SS), a Deathwing Command Squad, and some Knights. Or a fethton of Venerable Dreadnoughts.

DA would be the better of the two for you since you have the Codex and it just updated but I'd recommend getting both eventually, you can ally them for some fun stuff and it'll give you additional flexibility.