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Hello all

My friends and i are looking to get into Sigmar due to the pretty models but i was just wondering what factions were considered the most powerful? we are all coming from Warmachine&Hords so we are generally pretty competitive and i don't want to pick up a very low powered army. I really have no idea what the balance is like, but seeing as it is GW i kinda assumed it would be similar to 40K.

Each grand alliance can be built competitively.
In general you can build any army that has a start to collect box or battletome competitively with exception of khorne bloodbound with whom you'll need to add khorne daemons (or another faction) to make them work (imho) .

That being said, maybe this can help?
https://www.warhammer-community.com/2016/11/29/top-5-lists-from-blood-glory/

Iirc it's a tie for first between order and chaos, followed by destruction, then death in dead(heh) last.

Right now it is likely if you use the GHB

1) Order (numerous competitive armies, units, and options)
2) Destruction (beastclaw raiders mainly also new orcs)
3) Chaos (only Khorne is competitive ATM) (Tzeench battletome could change this)
4) Death (If you add in the Tomb King units it goes to #2)

(Tzeench battletome could change this)

I see what you did there.

No place for the Skaven batallion in Chaos?

Baron Klatz wrote:

(Tzeench battletome could change this)

I see what you did there.

It is hard to know that battletome's impact or viability just yet. I think some people have seen it, but many have not gotten it yet.

If you are going just by faction, I would say Seraphon. The reason I say that is because they were the only complete army to make the change and not get broken into multiple factions. But that would be misleading. Most lists are a mix of multiple factions, as most are really incomplete and are missing solutions to certain problems.

Best advise would go with whatever army style and aesthetic appeals to you first, and then worry about making them competitive.

The top four lists right now IMHO, in no particular order;

Stormcast teleport bomb: storm casts pop in your face, charge and GG. Usually a mix between stormcast and extremis chamber factions. Hard hitting and resilient units. Only real weakness is a lack of casting, and that they focus on quality over quantity. This means that they can be easily outnumbered on objectives, and their losses tend to hurt more.

Skyre Fire: Battalion pops up and deals a crap ton of mortal wounds. Like the Storm casts it's an elite army. So army's that have lots of fodder to throw around can counter and out score it.

Tomb Kings: usually either chariot spam, necropolis nights, or some combination of the two. Fast moving, hard hitting, and very resilient. With their ability to regenerate multi wound models, they can take a huge pounding and bounce back hard.

Beast Claw raiders: another powerful and elite army. Recent top performers added in large bricks of grots for cheap bubble wrap fodder, that is battle line, and gives numbers for objective scoring.

Honorable mentions

Sylvaneth: these lists are finesse heavy lists, that can be punished for their mistakes. However they have a lot of tricks to play with, and kurnoth hunters wreck face.

Flesh Eater courts/mixed Death: essentially get the best of both worlds, nasty monsters and nice hordes of cheap fodder. Both are insanely resilient with healing and replenishment mechanics built into them in addition to other synergies. My local scene's secret hot sauce is to add Kemmler with a brick of zombies or skeletons. Kemmler heals the big monsters, can pass off wounds to the fodder bricks, and can replenish then in combat.

Bone Splitterz: insane amounts of short range shooting backed up with formations and units that can take multiple combat actions in a turn. The drawbacks is that they have 6+ saves and units like fulminators can shrug off their shots.

Mixed Khorne: cherry picks the best from Khorne demons and Blood Bound lists. It can be a surprisingly finesse army, needing to get the most out of its synergies for devastating results. Other times it just follows the age old tactic of throwing blood thirsters at a problem until it goes away.

I'd put Sylvaneth above Beast Claw Raiders, but other than that I mostly agree with Bonzai.

Why wouldn't you include tomb kings units in the death rankings?

 auticus wrote:
Why wouldn't you include tomb kings units in the death rankings?

I believe they are distinct enough to warrant a different entry. Tomb king lists do tend to be strictly tomb kings. They leverage their ability to bring back multi wound models, which move fast and hit hard, as well as other army synergies. Mixed death is more hammer and anvil style play with anvil battleline units like zombies and skeletons, and hammers like zombie dragons and terrorghiests. Very different feel and tactics.

EDIT: oh wait, you were referring to a different post. NM.

Age of Sigmar is definitely more what you do than what you take.

For instance, it's possible to take the Lion's share of casualties, but win because you stuck to bagging objectives.

Got a character heavy army with synergies to boost otherwise 'meh' troops? You'll have a hard time against 'snipey' armies, who can take down your characters.

Taken a snipey army? Much of your strategy fades if the opponent is relying on overwhelming numbers of relatively weedy units.

From what I've seen, there are no unbeatable lists to give any easy win - the game just doesn't work that way

I agree heavily with Mad Doc Grotsnik.

I played a 2k point tournament last weekend and took the stormcast bomb. 3 tournament rounds, 20 possible points per round.

First 2 games against Beastmen and then Sylvaneth I got 20 and 18 points per game. I was leading all players going into the third round.

Last game I played a mixed Destruction (savage orcs and ironjaws). I got whalloped (bad rolls, a failed stratagem with my archers round 1, good play by my opponent, etc.). I scored 0 points that round and got dropped to 3rd in the tournament.

Everyone was asking me what happened in the last game, but the truth was it mostly came down to an opponent who also used his army well and some really bad saves on my part.

The lesson PLAY WHAT LOOKS COOL and then make it competitive with your skill and some appropriate units added to what you like that add synergy.