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See title. I'd like to know what people think every faction should focus on. This includes both what they are GOOD at, and what they are BAD at.

Marines: badass at shooting & melee
Orks: bad @ shooting, killer in melee
Nids: kinda do everything ok
Eldar: fast and fragile
Tau: fishy @ everything
Chaos: chaos'y

that's basically what I can come up w off the top of my head.

Marines: Extreme lightning strike (not alpha strike per-say, but that's part of it). Hit where they need to, and hit it hard. Deep strike would be fairly common I think, or something to allow them to get where they need to be easily.

Orks: Zerging with low shooting accuracy (different than bad obviously), lots of bodies, some whacky rules for their crazier units (i.e. shokk attack gun), along with more customizable vehicle options.

Nids: Adaptable, fast melee focus, each hive fleet focus giving a bonus to a different play style (i.e. big bugs, swarm, etc). They'd play somewhat similar to orks I imagine (I mean, you can only differentiate horde melee armies so much)

Eldar: Depends on the build, but obviously an army of specialists good for certain tasks and not much outside of it.

Tau: Mobile mid range shooting

Chaos: regular/generic CSM similar to SM, however DG would have more durability and less mobile options, while TS would focus more on psykers and utility based on the cult of each unit, alongside fewer vanilla units. Daemons depend on the God

Necrons: Durable, undead reviving robots

IG: Depends on the regiment for preferred tactics, but most would be along the lines "Send in the next wave!" mentality.

Admech: Crazy wacky gadgets and weapons the rest of the Imperium doesn't get, while less elite than Marines, but more elite than Guard

DE: Fast, mobile shooting, generally no penalties to moving and firing.

Marines: above average at everything, great at nothing. Marines will never be in a position where they suck and utterly fail, but they'll never match up against the best specialists in a faction. Durability per model is high, but so is their point cost.

IG: awesome tanks supported by buckets of infantry dice. IG will win most tank fights and can throw out tons of firepower, but are limited in mobility (outside of glass cannon specialists like storm troopers), worthless in melee, and have few clever tricks if a straightforward "we have more guns than you" approach doesn't work.

Orks: GREEN TIDE WAAAAAAGH. One ork is no threat. Too bad they brought hundreds of them. They're melee focused, and everything revolves around drowning you in bodies.

Eldar: fast glass cannon specialists. The exact opposite of marines in executing the "elite army" concept, Eldar have limited durability but lots of speed and their specialists will always be the best in their particular role at the cost of being borderline worthless if you get them into the wrong situation.

CSM: see marines, but with more melee units (though still keeping a strong shooting element) and cultist hordes compensating for some of the loss of flexibility. They can't shoot you as well as loyalist marines, but they can tie you down with expendable units while the elites move in for the kill.

Tau: hybrid of IG and Eldar. Much less raw speed than Eldar, but the ability to JSJ and fire on the move with their whole army. Less firepower than IG as a static gunline, but not locked into a one-dimensional gunline strategy. Scary as hell shooting with elite models, but don't even have the sheer body count of IG to save them if anything gets into charge range.

Tyranids: some interesting aesthetic options for your ork army. Tyranids overlap almost 100% with orks, especially now that 8th edition has removed the differences between vehicles and MCs, and have no reason to exist. Consider them a variant species of ork.

Admech: some interesting aesthetic options for your IG army. Just do what everyone else did before GW's obsession with printing a million special snowflake codices and paint your guardsmen red.

DE: some interesting aesthetic options for your Eldar army, and perhaps a unit or two in the Eldar codex. They're space elves with almost 100% overlap in role, they don't need a separate codex.

Demons: summoning options for a CSM army, and greatly reduced in unit count. Go back to WHFB where you belong.

Necrons: who knows. TBH I don't hate them, but I don't see any real design role for them that isn't "space marines with silver paint". Re-fluff their resurrection ability as a FNP save for chapter tactics and can you honestly tell the difference between the two armies?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
That's game roles, but what about fluff roles?

Imperium: the protagonists of the story. Let's be honest, 40k is a game about the Imperium first and all the other factions second. From a thematic point of view the fluff revolves around the various ways that the Imperium can die, and the desperate fight to put off that choice for one more day. Each other faction symbolizes one of these paths towards inevitable destruction.

Chaos: the enemy within. Most similar to the Imperium, arguably exactly the same as the Imperium except for having eight-pointed stars instead of skulls on everything. Many units and fluff elements are copied from Imperial factions, representing the fact that no matter how many victories the Imperium wins they only strengthen Chaos in the process by giving it more to feed from.

Eldar: the ancient power beyond mortal knowledge. Long before mere humans existed the Eldar ruled the universe, and they know power the Imperium can only dream of. Eldar specialists laugh at humanity's weak attempts to be elite, brushing them aside with no more thought than they'd give to killing an insect. Perhaps the Eldar are in decline and will precede humanity into final oblivion, but there will always be something lurking in the shadows of long-forgotten history, ready to be uncovered and remind humanity just how small they really are.

Orks: the numberless horde. As a good first approximation the universe is orks. Not owned by the orks, composed of orks. No matter how many victories the Imperium wins against orks at the end of the war there will be more orks than there were at the start. What hope of survival exists against such a foe? Such overwhelming numbers can only be delayed, not defeated.

Tau: the rising threat. The Imperium may have power now, but it is a power in decline. Innovation and progress are foulest heresy, science and engineering are the path to damnation. Sheer numbers alone can win the war today, but what happens when the Tau progress to become a grimdark Culture equivalent and a single gun drone can effortlessly slaughter a titan legion? And even if the Tau are defeated there will always be another threat rising to take their place. Surrounded and overwhelmed by so many enemies the Imperium can not hope to crush every threat, and it is only a matter of delaying the inevitable before one of them develops to a point where even temporary victory is impossible.

This is the other problem with Tyranids and Necrons, they're both redundant from a thematic point of view. Tryanids fill the same fluff role as orks, just as they overlap with the ork rules, while Necrons are Eldar with silver paint.

Orks: Weight of dice from their basic cheap infantry with their vehicles and elite infantry being the ones with some survive-ability and heavy hitting weapons. The iconic poor BS of the Orks is offset by volume of shots and cheaper weapons fielded in larger numbers. Strength in numbers and embolden by a sea of green but also by the brutal savagery of the Nobz and especially their Warboss. More RNG than most other factions but the RNG must be properly rewarding for the added unreliability that extra RNG gives.

Space Marines: Generally durable with lots of options for specialist weapons mixed into their units. Average at everything but excel when utilizing their special weapons and chapter tactics for their correct purpose.

Guard: Cheap and disposable infantry supported by vehicles. Can bring volume of dice and/or specialist weapons in their infantry units but generally not as good at shooting (compared to space marines) and fairly ineffective at close combat damage dealing (can tarpit well). Vehicles and artillery are the real heavy hitters but can be vulnerable when left undefended by the infantry. Reliant on orders to get the most out of their infantry so they must protect their command structure or else become vulnerable to morale problems and generally becoming less effective.

Eldar (Craftworld): Fast units that are either highly effective specialist units but lack individual versatility or mobile general purpose units that lack the efficiency of their more specialist counterparts. Very powerful when played well and hitting the right targets but pay a heavy price when used ineffectively.

Dark Eldar: Fast and fragile that excel at dealing damage but at the general cost of longevity. Built to dictate the flow of battle but fall apart when bogged down or caught out. The covens units are their more tanky, tarpit options.

Tau: Focused on unit synergy with ranged combat but ineffective at dealing damage in close combat. Individually fragile and ineffective but through unity and technology they can overcome their individual weakness and succeed as a whole. Like guard but less reliant on officers but more reliant on their fellow Tau, tech wargear, and systems like markerlights to maximize their combat effectiveness. Infantry and vehicles have good general purpose firepower while the battle suits are the surgical knife that hits the vitals of the enemy. Ethereals reinforce their resolve and unlock the potential of Tau infantry while the commanders are generally leading the surgical strikes and being the mobile synergy for other suits when operating away from the influence of the ethereals and markerlights. The Tau auxiliary of Kroot and Vespids are the more in your face units that can ambush and tangle up softer targets in melee or buy time for the proper Tau forces to reposition or eliminate priority threats.

Nids: Lots of fast and cheap units with volume of attacks or big stompy monsters that hit like a truck. Big leader bugs keep the little bugs from going crazy and becoming uncoordinated animals.

Crons: Extremely durable but lacks in the overwhelming firepower department. Will grind their enemy down through attrition as a drawn out battle means more time for fallen crons to get back up. Their games tend to almost always go the full game length. Units are specialized but not so specialized that they can't be effective outside of fighting their ideal targets but they are also not as burst heavy as you would find from Tau or Eldar specialist units. Most units are generally slow but steady but with a handful of mobile units to act as assault or flanking units.

Chaos Space Marines: Generally a bit less gear dependent than their IoM counterparts and lack the same degree of tactical skill (chapter tactics) but make up for that with their chaos marks and other such boons.

Daemons: A wide variety of playstyles based on the units patron god with nurgle being the resilient one, khorne being raw melee power, tzeench being psyker heavy, and slaanesh being fast and best at bypassing saves.

Space Marines should be elite generalists, whose troops are generally worth 2 or more of everyone else's troops. but balance that with being generalsits. Ideally space Marines should be about tatical flexability. where a space marine player when confronted with a shooty army such as Tau or Guard will push into melee range and defeat them with melee. yet when facing a melee focused list (such as Orks) will have the ranged tools to deal with Orks with a ranged list. Space Marines won't be the best in any field, but will be such an army that in the hands of a reasonably "not stupid" commander they'll be very compeitive by being able to adapt to the weaknesses of their opponent.

Just disagreeing with some comments above regarding tyranids. I don't actually see tyranids as a primarily melee army. In every edition I've used them they've had at least as great a focus on shooting. Maybe people just don't expect it, given the aesthetics of the army.
Their shooting is often quite powerful, but just happens to mostly be short ranged and focused on anti-infantry. 8th is one of the few times they've had some viable ranged anti-vehicle weaponry.
In melee they're frequently outperformed by factions with a real focus on it.


I'd say the difference between nids and orks is that orks are a true horde army, where the boyz are the core of the army. They have plenty of fun toys to back them up, but the focus is always on the boyz to do the heavy lifting for the faction.
Tyranids on the other hand put their real strength into the big bugs. The little guys are a distraction, a bullet sponge, a screen, surrounding a core of big centerpiece models designed to do the real work. Once those core models are taken away, the little guys crumble.

There are exceptions in both cases of course. But that's how I think both armies are primarily designed.

I'm not sure that much of this really applies to the actual game of Warhammer 40k. It's very hard to give unique identities to all the factions within the rules, without substantially redesigning things.

Like: people want Marines to be generalists that beat ranged armies in CC and CC armies at range, but how would you even make this work? A Guard army's whole plan for killing an Ork horde is going to be to shoot it to death, and the balance there has to be such that that's about the level of shooting you need, so if Marines don't have that kind of shooting then they're going to get stuck in CC where the Orks have a huge advantage. You can give Marines all the CC ability you want and it won't matter too much since it won't make sense for them to slog across the table to get there and it won't matter when they get hit by CC specialists who strike first on the charge.

Eldar are supposed to be fast and fragile, making up for their fragility with their ability to dodge fire and hit where they want to hit, but again you can't actually represent this in-game. There's no hiding from a Guard gunline. Weapon ranges are so long that speed on a shooting unit is not even that valuable. And so in the actual game Eldar don't end up being more fragile than anyone else. Sure, they have some fragile units, but these just don't get played unless they can guarantee an alpha strike by deep-striking or getting out of a (very durable) transport. They sometimes rely on hit mods for durability, and this is sort of a fluffy kind of durability for a fast-but-physically-fragile faction, but it's functionally just durability.

It's also worth noting that Guard have some of the most in-practice mobile tanks in the game, with Leman Russes being much happier to move and shoot than their equivalents in other factions. They're also one of the only shooting armies that's really happy to have its basic infantry moving all over the table rather than bunkering down somewhere or cheating its way right into the enemy's face. Tau are just slightly-elite Guard, and it's a little hard to see what you even do with them that's not either basically Guard or basically Eldar.

I don't mean to be complaining. I want to just say that when we talk about what factions should be good at, it's probably helpful to keep in mind what the rules can actually do. In the context of the 8th edition rules, Marines are probably always going to be Guard, but with BS3+ T4 3+ instead of BS4+ T3 5+. Eldar are probably always going to be surprisingly durable and without much use for all their speed.

Imperial
Space Marines - Average. Jack of all Trades, Master of None.
Imperial Guard - Focus on Shooting, favored units are vehicles. Orders make a unit’s shooting better, can only be used once a turn.
Adeptus Mechanicus - Focus on Shooting/Survivability, favorited units are infantry. Canticles make all units shooting better, each can only be used once a game.
Sisters of Battle - Average, favored units are infantry. Acts of Faith buff a unit, can only be used once a turn.
Inquisition - Focus on supporting Imperial units. Favored units are infantry. No special rule, but have support aura buffs.
Chaos:
Chaos - Khorne - Focus on Melee. Favored unit infantry. Mark of Khorne buffs Melee.
Chaos - Nurgle - Focus on Survivability. Favored unit infantry. Mark of Nurgle buffs resilience.
Chaos - Tzch - Focus on Psykers. Favored unit infantry. Mark of Tzch buffs psychic powers.
Chaos - Slaaanesh - Focus on Speed. Favored Unit Infantry. Mark of Slaaanesh buffs movement speed/when attacks hit.
Chaos Space Marines - Average. Jack of all Trades, Master of None
Xenos:
Orks - Focus on Melee/Wacky Rules. Favored unit infantry. Mob rule should buff units with large numbers.
Tyranids - Focus on Melee. Favored unit Infantry/Monsters. Synapse should buff units near Synapse creatures.
Genestealer Cult - Focus on Shooting/Ambushing. Favored unit Infantry. Should have a way to ambush enemy lines.
Necrons - Focus on Shooting/Survivability. Favored unit Infantry. Living Metal should allow Models to ignore wounds.
Tau - Focus on Shooting. Favored unit infantry. Marker lights should give buffs to attacking target affected by it.

Think of this as a competitive curve, with 5 being the average, and a standard deviation of 2, with a max score of 10 and and a minimum score of 0.

How I feel things are vs how they should be.

Eldar
Movement: 7/10, should be: 7/10
Shooting: 6/10, should be: 6/10
Assault: 4/10, should be: 4/10
Defense: 3/10, should be: 3/10
Psychic: 6/10, should be: 6/10
Strengths are fairly mobile, good shooting, with situational assault, and low defense. Outside of dark reapers this codex feels like it's got those things. Ynnari complicate matters, i've elected not to include them here. I don't feel SoD is balanced even in the slightest bit.

Space Marines
Movement: 6/10, should be: 6/10
Shooting: 5/10, should be: 5/10
Assault: 1/10, should be: 5/10
Defense: 5/10, should be: 7/10
Psychic: 3/10, should be: 5/10
Defensive generalists who can perform decent in any phase of the game. Their defense doesn't justify their cost in 8th edition, and their assault is a complete joke. Major issues with this faction lie in these areas. Their tactical flexibility sucks, because they have the worst stratagems out of any major area.

Imperial Guard
Movement: 5/10, should be: 5/10
Shooting: 9/10, should be: 7/10
Assault: 3/10, should be: 3/10
Defense: 7/10, should be: 5/10
Psychic: 7/10, should be: 2/10
Imperial Guard shooting is too strong. They are the most efficient shooters in the entire game, and their body count makes up for any defensive deficiency they might have. Their stratagems are very very good, probably the best of all the factions, and their units are so cheap, they have incredible flexibility and can make a brilliant TAC list.

Tyranids
Movement: 8/10, should be: 8/10
Shooting: 3/10, should be: 3/10
Assault: 7/10, should be: 7/10
Defense: 3/10, should be: 3/10
Psychic: 6/10, should be: 6/10
Tyranids seem well balanced in 8th edition. You can easily destroy literally anything they put on the table, but they're fast and dangerous up close, with enough shooting to make an impact, but not enough to lopside your army in favor of it.

Tau
Movement: 7/10, should be 8/10
Shooting: 6/10, should be 7/10
Assault: 5/10, should be 3/10
Defense: 5/10, should be 5/10
Psychic: 0/10, should be 3/10
Tau are a mobile shooting army, and they have the range to control the fight. The problem is that FLY in 8th edition has given them way too much to combat assault, coupled with overwatch on 5s army wide. Drones make them more defensible than they should be, as well. My prediction is this codex will be very, very good. Their rating of 5 in assault stems from the fact that they can leave combat effortlessly. Some psychic defense is needed in stratagems.

Orks
Movement: 5/10, should be 5/10
Shooting: 0/10, should be 1/10
Assault: 9/10, should be 9/10
Defense: 5/10, should be 5/10
Psychic: 3/10, should be 4/10
None of orks issues stem from their statlines, but more from an inflexibility in tactics due to a lack of codex, and also, current -1 to hit modifiers make their shooting almost non-existent with BS5+. A general "always hits on 6s" rules needs to be in place for Orks. Their assault is second to none - the amount of bodies they can field, and the attacks that come with them, is unreal. I still feel boyz are the best single troop unit - melee, or otherwise - in the game. Weirdboyz are strong but Orks are psyker blobs. They need more powers which they will get.

Chaos Space Marines
Movement: 7/10, should be: 6/10
Shooting: 5/10, should be: 5/10
Assault: 5/10, should be: 5/10
Defense: 7/10, should be: 7/10
Psychic: 7/10, should be 5/10
These guys kind of are what marines should be. They've got resilient units with higher toughness & FNP, they've got units that are super choppy, and they've got super shooty units in Oblits and others. Their stratagems are somewhat lackluster but this is also true of marines. Everyone plays Alpha Legion to use a stratagem that circumvents the movement phase. Berzerkers *are* a good unit, but they're not the unkillable death ball people have made them out to be. They're just one piece in a very effective army. Primarchs are too strong, but that's nothing new. Probably have the best psychic powers in the game.

I'd elaborate (and doubtlessly piss fanboys off) but the reality is that GW is in the business of selling models. Reducing armies unit counts and reducing the way they play flies in the face of that, so I see little point in discussing it. Armies today generally have far too much "me too" capability.

Looking at game mechanics, we have movement, psychic powers, shooting and assault. We also have thematic approaches, such as hordes vs elites. Glass Cannons vs Concrete Walls. Focus on certain types of models, and overall "Feel" to a faction.

So, for Guard, I'd say...

Slower side, but able to make a grinding advance. Minor to Medium Psychic strength with a focus on buffs / destruction. Strong shooting. Weak assault potential, but characters that can help hold the line. Overall, a Horde-ish army with infantry, and Tough vehicles. Overall feel should be one of being able to slowly but surely grind down opposition, while still able to advance to objectives as needed.

Biggest challenge is to build a list that isn't afraid to move forward, despite the advantage of keeping maximum distance from assault units. Be it ability to win through attrition, or protected inside metal boxes, avoid creating a "Static Gunline" force, as it's boring to play with / against but also creates the problem they had in 7th, where it was nigh impossible to build a list that was able to move forward while maintaining firepower.

I'd say SM should be average all over. They are the measurement against wich the rest of the game is measured.

CW should be specialists , much as they have some high mobility they also have some low mobility high durability.

High speed glas cannon is the domain of DE and harlequins.

Guard are in a good place. When I played them, I would lose units every turn and still win on objectives. Mediocre across the board, whether in movement, shooting, psychic, or assault but also mediocre in points meant that you could take a carp ton of them.

Dang autocorrect.