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The rules of 40k are rarely balanace, in edtion codex or the tactics of.

So who had it the worst? Name an army and edition and tell what made them the worst of all time

Now, I don't know of all editions, but for 8th, in my own honest opinion, Corsairs.


They are literally an unplayable faction in 8th.

RnH or GK of the playable factions. GK are getting point decreases though, RnH are still guard with less options, worse units for the same price, and no regiments/orders/relics/strats/any codex stuff. Only good thing is they give other armies access to the broken guard stuff I guess.

RnH also lost Devotions, the thing that made them, well, them. It made them extremely fluffy and customizable, and now we have... covenants that all but one really do anything?

Guess Nurgle can be useful if I play against TS.

Squats and 4th edition....

Worst of all time? Thats hard to nail down, especially with how fast GW has been moving and how many new factions we got over the last few years.

I'd say 3E/4E Daemonhunters and Imperial Guard were both pretty bad, 5E Necrons pre-codex were pretty awful, as were Dark Eldar and Tyranids before their books. For anything after that, with editions changes every couple years and stuff coming out every month, it gets harder to nail down.

Legion of the Damned, 7th Edition

They lost the game on turn one, because they didn't have models on the field.

I would almost agree that it was IG in 3rd and 4th. Facing but Rhino Rush, First turn CC, and smaoked on my anything Tau. and nothing can stop a carnifex from eating yout tanks

The only saveing grace I founf was to take 3 tanks in every game and drom pie plates of death on marinies and necrons/

I've only played since 6th but in that time there have been some truly abysmal armies. Dark Eldar were a joke. Blood Angels were almost unusable. Standard CSM pre-Cabal star and post Heldrake nerf were pretty awful.

Special mention though, goes to the Imperial Agents 'Codex' that came out at the end of 7th. Now, it wasn't necessarily the weakest book ever to come out, despite the fact that the way it was written meant that certain units didn't actually do anything. What it WAS though, was a book that came out at the tail end of 7th edition. AFTER Angels of Death and Black Legion and the Traitor Legions supplement people loved and after Magnus and infinite split horrors.

This book came out at a time where 40k was at the absolute PEAK of its codex creep. A period of time where a 50pt unit of blue horrors could be made literally unkillable outside of D weapons, and the book changed almost nothing and gave no significant bonuses to any of it's units or factions.

They basically reprinted the old 5th-6th Inquisition and SoB codexes with some forgotten guard units and some gathering storm stuff and released it out into the wild. Into a world where you could go up against half the factions in the game with a 900pt handicap, and still not even kill a single model.

Out of the main factions in the game my vote would be Orks. With honourable mention to Dark Eldar.

Orks did not get a codex update for 9 years and when they did the newer codex was arguably weaker than the old one. For years they were the joke dark comdeic army in 40k relegated to those who played orks for fun or those who mistakenly collected a thematic army and didn't realise until thed played them a dozen times that maybe we're not losing cos we're bad at 40k.

I say honourable mention to Dark Eldar because they didn't have a codex for almost 12 years and there were pretty strong rumours back in 6th that they were gonna get axed. However even in the dark days of dark eldar they were still stronger than orks.

Orks are rock hard now and the dark days of 40k are now a fading memory but I would say they were the weakest for the longest period of time. They also had the most expensive £/pt model in the game.

 Sir Heckington wrote:
Now, I don't know of all editions, but for 8th, in my own honest opinion, Corsairs.


They are literally an unplayable faction in 8th.

They were my favourite army in 7th.

It's gotta be Sisters of Battle, right? The last time they had a rulebook that wasn't a phoned in stopgap just to keep the army legal was 2003.

Edit: Oh lawdy, didn't realize the gap between books for Dark Eldar was 1998 and 2010. That's... pretty incredible, honestly.

 Crimson Devil wrote:
Legion of the Damned, 7th Edition

They lost the game on turn one, because they didn't have models on the field.

We have a winner right here. No matter how bad an army list is, build in auto lose in your own rules is just too good in a competition like this one.

ERJAK wrote:Special mention though, goes to the Imperial Agents 'Codex' that came out at the end of 7th. Now, it wasn't necessarily the weakest book ever to come out, despite the fact that the way it was written meant that certain units didn't actually do anything. What it WAS though, was a book that came out at the tail end of 7th edition. AFTER Angels of Death and Black Legion and the Traitor Legions supplement people loved and after Magnus and infinite split horrors.

This book came out at a time where 40k was at the absolute PEAK of its codex creep. A period of time where a 50pt unit of blue horrors could be made literally unkillable outside of D weapons, and the book changed almost nothing and gave no significant bonuses to any of it's units or factions.

It was even worse, actually. DW and GK units in it got big nerfs despite being ported from awful books, blunting 2 out of 3 of the only semi-serious threats the book had...

Karol wrote:

 Crimson Devil wrote:
Legion of the Damned, 7th Edition

They lost the game on turn one, because they didn't have models on the field.

We have a winner right here. No matter how bad an army list is, build in auto lose in your own rules is just too good in a competition like this one.

See, I never got that rule lawyer meme. If you play some petty WAACer, sure, but any sensible opponent or tourney organizer would agree GW writer is dumb and the sudden death rule doesn't trigger until you had a chance to actually drop some units on the table.

Aside from the squads it would either be one of the current under-factions (like inquisition) or sisters during the two years late 2011 to late 2013 - you literally could not buy a codex and half the line had been discontinued.

 Arachnofiend wrote:
It's gotta be Sisters of Battle, right? The last time they had a rulebook that wasn't a phoned in stopgap just to keep the army legal was 2003.
Edit: Oh lawdy, didn't realize the gap between books for Dark Eldar was 1998 and 2010. That's... pretty incredible, honestly.

DE had a 3.5 codex in 2003 - it could spam dark lances like you wouldn't believe but it really fell off at higher points levels.

Witch Hunters was 2004 and was pretty good, even close to tournament-good with stormtrooper rhino/immolator spam in 5th after the points matching errata.
'Pure' GK were not good, but allied well.

Orks have been perma screwed since 5th edition, I'd say they win.

User name says it all.

Going to go out on a limb here and say Tyranids.

They've been in a similar position to Orks but each codex has always LOOKED good then eventually turned out to be awful in practice. They've also had their wargear options continually stripped away, which is supposed to be the main draw of the army. It's like being killed by a thousand cuts, except the person cutting you keeps putting on plasters then yanking them off or the plasters are made of glass or something.

Edit: Oh, and then they bring out a bunch of big bandages but the bandage is terrible and just goes all gunky and is itchy and doesn't help anything.

I would imagine this needs a bit of a caveat or environment.

I jokingly call tournament-poor books "Dakka bad", in that only math-hammer tournament goers argue that X, Y and Z are atrocious, crimes against gamers, and no one should ever field them or face dire consequences.

However, if you have an ounce of self-discipline, any army can be enjoyable vs. any other. This is particularly important with new gamers, or people who rarely get to game, etc. I'll assume, then, we're talking about hardcore tournament meta-driven "Dakka bad" books?

I can state from personal experience when I started, Chaos Daemons in 5th ed.

Two waves of equal sizes, roll a D6 at after deployment but before match begins, on a 3+ you got your preferred wave.

EVERYTHING deep struck, no charging after deepstrike, mishap table was 1/3 lethal, 1/3 you go back into warp to try again next round, 1/3 your opponent places your unit somewhere on the battlefield.

Oooh yes, it was brutal and hard. also 15 point daemons, so whilst blood letters were 15 pts, T4 and 5++ with a weapon which ignored ALL saves, damn if they didn't get exploded off the table with blast weapons as all deepstriking units NEEDED to be touching bases.

Then 5th ed grey knights came about and proceded to curb stomp everyone, but us incredibly rare daemon players harder than anyone.

Bright side Flamers of Tzeentch were broken as all gak with a flamer template than on a 4+ caused armour ignoring wound or a glancing blow.

It is honestly awesome how good Dark Eldar are now considering their history.

Hmm, beyond DE with their decade skip aswell as oldcrons i think Lost and the damned?

I mean that was 3rd edition, then came vraks, for 3 editions and then in 7th we got IA13, which was awesome and now we got 8th index R&H which is about as usefull beyond 2 units as used toilet paper.

Edit: also orkz, i mean, common their new Codex looks like fun but relies only on a gimmick for competitive? is that what good design looks like?

4th/5th Ed. Black Templars/Dark Angels.

Dark Angels and Drukhari had a lot of low points in their history. I can honestly say that 8th edition is the best place they've been in a very long time.

 Sir Heckington wrote:
Now, I don't know of all editions, but for 8th, in my own honest opinion, Corsairs.


They are literally an unplayable faction in 8th.

They can be taken in ynarri detachments as they have the aeldari keyword and don't lose anything for doing so. I bought yvraine solely for the purpose of painting up three squads of my old rogue trader era eldar as corsairs. They don't actually look bad, nothing amazing but similar to guardian defenders with potentially better guns and great pistols but lacking the ability to deepstrike which is where big blobs of guardians shine.

Vanilla marines/DA/BA in 2nd. Multiple games where they didn't get a turn.

Actually, What is the unit that had it the worst for the longest ammount of time?

I'd say Mandrakes.

Kingheff - Aeldari (and Ynnari) are not valid faction keywords for detatchments. So you can't actually do that.

That said, the most recent FAQ did give a way to run them with a CWE HQ. And the one before that gave them their Transports back.

That said, they're easily the most-boned army in 8th. Even more than GK. But some good points have been raised about why other factions were more boned in previous editions...

Imperial guard in 3rd/4th, and again in 7th. Not quite as bad as grey knights now in 8th, but the pain was real over 3 editions. Outside of small windows of competitiveness in 5th (due to vendetta spam) and 6th (due to parkinglot/leafblower lists), guard have pretty much sucked to varying degrees since 2nd edition. 8th edition is the first edition I would put them in the top 5 codices.

DE were horrible for a long time too, and went something like 12 years without a codex.

Gir Spirit Bane wrote:
I can state from personal experience when I started, Chaos Daemons in 5th ed.

Two waves of equal sizes, roll a D6 at after deployment but before match begins, on a 3+ you got your preferred wave.

EVERYTHING deep struck, no charging after deepstrike, mishap table was 1/3 lethal, 1/3 you go back into warp to try again next round, 1/3 your opponent places your unit somewhere on the battlefield.

Oooh yes, it was brutal and hard. also 15 point daemons, so whilst blood letters were 15 pts, T4 and 5++ with a weapon which ignored ALL saves, damn if they didn't get exploded off the table with blast weapons as all deepstriking units NEEDED to be touching bases.

Then 5th ed grey knights came about and proceded to curb stomp everyone, but us incredibly rare daemon players harder than anyone.

Bright side Flamers of Tzeentch were broken as all gak with a flamer template than on a 4+ caused armour ignoring wound or a glancing blow.

Sorry if this causes offense, but if you think they were that bad, you were playing them wrong. In all the games I played with them in fifth, I lost two: one was at a local tournament, one was at a game convention tournament. I routed a Crimson Fist player turn one with them (he had a single guy left), and made a Dark Angels player bin his army, claiming Daemons were broken as hell (he competed and placed in the top ten tables at LVO the previous year, which was over a decade ago at this point). Necrons, Chaos SM, IG, etc. I brought Flamers, Seekers, triple Daemon Princes, two greater Daemons (BT and Kairos or KoS and Kairos), and wrecked everybody. They weren’t a point and click army, but if you got the hang of them, they were just shy of broken. I miss that book...

Anything that isn't Chaos Space Marines 3.5. It was probably the only codex I've ever used that made me want to try out everything in the codex, even a ridiculous unit like Tzeentch Possessed with Flight and Doom Bolt for everyone. I do still kind of wish GW had embraced that style of codex for everyone else. For all of its faults, it was just a fun book.

The original Tau codex was pretty bad. The only unit with any real options were Crisis Suits and a unit of Kroot could cost you up to 3 Force Org slots at once. Then you had 3rds melee combat on top of that.

 timetowaste85 wrote:

Gir Spirit Bane wrote:
I can state from personal experience when I started, Chaos Daemons in 5th ed.

Two waves of equal sizes, roll a D6 at after deployment but before match begins, on a 3+ you got your preferred wave.

EVERYTHING deep struck, no charging after deepstrike, mishap table was 1/3 lethal, 1/3 you go back into warp to try again next round, 1/3 your opponent places your unit somewhere on the battlefield.

Oooh yes, it was brutal and hard. also 15 point daemons, so whilst blood letters were 15 pts, T4 and 5++ with a weapon which ignored ALL saves, damn if they didn't get exploded off the table with blast weapons as all deepstriking units NEEDED to be touching bases.

Then 5th ed grey knights came about and proceded to curb stomp everyone, but us incredibly rare daemon players harder than anyone.

Bright side Flamers of Tzeentch were broken as all gak with a flamer template than on a 4+ caused armour ignoring wound or a glancing blow.

Sorry if this causes offense, but if you think they were that bad, you were playing them wrong. In all the games I played with them in fifth, I lost two: one was at a local tournament, one was at a game convention tournament. I routed a Crimson Fist player turn one with them (he had a single guy left), and made a Dark Angels player bin his army, claiming Daemons were broken as hell (he competed and placed in the top ten tables at LVO the previous year, which was over a decade ago at this point). Necrons, Chaos SM, IG, etc. I brought Flamers, Seekers, triple Daemon Princes, two greater Daemons (BT and Kairos or KoS and Kairos), and wrecked everybody. They weren’t a point and click army, but if you got the hang of them, they were just shy of broken. I miss that book...

Yup, can back up this. Played Mono Khorne* Daemons in 5th and did pretty damned good with them, even vs GKs. You had to mitigate the randomness of what half dropped by not putting all your eggs in one basket. If you plopped that unit of Nurglings down first then your GUO landed on top of them I've got no sympathy for you (you placed them in order of the unit you are least prepared to lost and so on). Admittedly you had to rely on counts-as a little (that's what the asterisk is for. I used Plaguebearers and Fiends converted from Chaos Warrior Chosen and Knight models respectively as custom Khorne Daemon models) as the codex wanted you to play with multiple gods.

Go to army for me was Skarbrand, Skulltaker on Jugger (occasionally a chariot), 3 Bloodcrushers all with different equipment ( ), 15 Plaguebearers with icon (stick them in cover and they were a bitch to shift) 2x 10 Bloodletters, 2x 1 Fiend (use these as missiles to fire at tanks. 6 rending attacks ruined pretty much any one of them) 2x Soulgrinder and a Prince with Daemonic Gaze for general harassment.