Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

So who had the best mono faction codex? By best I’m talking strongest. Is topping those tournaments in the top 5 pretty consistent. Not the “but I like this army cause its the one I play” best. Vote and post you’re reasons!

Tau, Craftworlds and Drukhari. I think the 3 are fairly evenly matched with plenty of strengths and a couple weaknesses, Guard may be up there with them as well.

I'd also agree with Tau, Craftworlds, and Drukhari. Guard is close, but a notch under those 3 IMO.

Guard by far. CWE is great and so are Tau, Orkz, and DE, but nothing beats guard in terms of power OR flexibility.

Voted Astra Militarum for a chance for them to get nerfed instead of my own army.

1.Astra Militarum
2.Craftworlds
3 Drukhari
4 Tau
5 Orks
everybody else
Blood Angels
Grey Knights

But the cool thing is, we have seen really good lists from almost every faction, so while there is a disparity in power lever between the top 3 or 4 and everyone else, there are still, for the most part, competitive builds for almost any army save for BA and GK

Seabass wrote:
1.Astra Militarum
2.Craftworlds
3 Drukhari
4 Tau
5 Orks
everybody else
Blood Angels
Grey Knights

But the cool thing is, we have seen really good lists from almost every faction, so while there is a disparity in power lever between the top 3 or 4 and everyone else, there are still, for the most part, competitive builds for almost any army save for BA and GK

Um... Why put BA so low? They have pretty much all the tools that SM have, plus the best Smash Captains in the game.

I'd say Guard simply because of its depth.

A lot of people say Craftworld, but as a mono-codex, the book would consist of about 5-6 datasheets being spammed. There are a ton of datasheets/units which you would never ever put on the table - you can see this by watching tournaments. You know precisely what Eldar units are showing up.

Guard have no such issue. If they have something that's a bit underwhelming they're still dirt cheap. They have options/solutions for almost everything. They have fewer "mega units" when compared to a book like Craftworld Eldar, but their book is friggin' solid.

I think if you collected one army, and one book and wanted to game a long time with a bunch of builds and a lot of depth, the Guard codex is really hard to beat.

Tyranids seem like a strong contender to me, that army can do a lot.

 Insectum7 wrote:
Tyranids seem like a strong contender to me, that army can do a lot.

They aren't even the best mono army in their own keyword. And there's only 2 armies in their keyword.

Solo Tyranids vs solo AM, Drukhari, Craftworlds, Tau ? I just don't see it.

 SHUPPET wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
Tyranids seem like a strong contender to me, that army can do a lot.

They aren't even the best mono army in their own keyword. And there's only 2 armies in their keyword.

Solo Tyranids vs solo AM, Drukhari, Craftworlds, Tau ? I just don't see it.

Possibly, though I'm consistently impressed by the diversity of options in there.

 Insectum7 wrote:

 SHUPPET wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
Tyranids seem like a strong contender to me, that army can do a lot.

They aren't even the best mono army in their own keyword. And there's only 2 armies in their keyword.

Solo Tyranids vs solo AM, Drukhari, Craftworlds, Tau ? I just don't see it.

Possibly, though I'm consistently impressed by the diversity of options in there.

I love that we have a handful of top armies. I remember when it was 2, necrons and craftwolrds. That was 5th, 6th edition in a nutshell

If you're talking purely competitive tournament play that'd be tough, almost no one runs a "pure" army. The big power players like Eldar and IG still tend to have allies.

Ironically I'd bet by this metric the answer would be something like Tau or nids, a book that can't take allies. So they may have like 10 tournament wins but they are true pure wins whereas guard may have like 50 but the vast majority allied knights/assassins/marines etc.

That said, guard and Eldar have very powerful mono builds, it's just allies are way too tempting so you won't see a truly pure army in many events. If events went to forced single codex lists tomorrow, I think guard would see a resurgence. They really do have a tool for everything, even if it's not the best in the game. The one exception being a fast, elite cqc unit. The thing is there's 0 downsides to allies so you'd be stupid not to run them.

Image a tournament with standard points, etc, but all lists are limited to a single Codex Faction (plus forgeword).

I think Necrons would actually do better in that kinda thing.

 MrMoustaffa wrote:
If you're talking purely competitive tournament play that'd be tough, almost no one runs a "pure" army. The big power players like Eldar and IG still tend to have allies.

Ironically I'd bet by this metric the answer would be something like Tau or nids, a book that can't take allies. So they may have like 10 tournament wins but they are true pure wins whereas guard may have like 50 but the vast majority allied knights/assassins/marines etc.

That said, guard and Eldar have very powerful mono builds, it's just allies are way too tempting so you won't see a truly pure army in many events. If events went to forced single codex lists tomorrow, I think guard would see a resurgence. They really do have a tool for everything, even if it's not the best in the game. The one exception being a fast, elite cqc unit. The thing is there's 0 downsides to allies so you'd be stupid not to run them.

Reason I don't think you'd see Guard dominating in single codex events is because Eldar just shut it down hard. -1 or -2 to hit flyers are almost impossible to kill for Guard when you're hitting on 5's or 6's. Alaitoc Craftworlds just utterly dominates Guard.

Green Tide Orks smashes Guard pretty hard as well. Good luck dealing with 60-90 boyz in your front line turn 2. If Guard tool up specifically to beat this they can do it, but if you're doing a TAC list... yea it's not gonna end well.

Tau also smash Guard up real good... they get a solid turn or two of removing shield drones before any real damage can be done to them, so all they need to do is remove the Tank Commanders before that happens.

Guard really needs allies to help it. It's a solid codex, but it's certainly not going to win tournaments against most Xenos lists (other than Necrons).

 Blndmage wrote:
Image a tournament with standard points, etc, but all lists are limited to a single Codex Faction (plus forgeword).

I think Necrons would actually do better in that kinda thing.

We've done that a few times locally. It's a nice change of pace. It screws over armies that depend on strats but don't generate CP very well, but it's a refreshing change of pace for most factions.

The game would be so much better like that, and I say that as a dirty souper.

 Horst wrote:

Green Tide Orks smashes Guard pretty hard as well. Good luck dealing with 60-90 boyz in your front line turn 2. If Guard tool up specifically to beat this they can do it, but if you're doing a TAC list... yea it's not gonna end well.

Wyvern with shoot twice vaporizes 30 boyz unit rather easily. 9 mortars also does wonders. Neither is really tooling up even...

Playing orks I see 60+ orks die in 1 turn constantly. 90 boyz is nothing. You need 120 AND green tide stratagem.

tneva82 wrote:

 Horst wrote:

Green Tide Orks smashes Guard pretty hard as well. Good luck dealing with 60-90 boyz in your front line turn 2. If Guard tool up specifically to beat this they can do it, but if you're doing a TAC list... yea it's not gonna end well.

Wyvern with shoot twice vaporizes 30 boyz unit rather easily. 9 mortars also does wonders. Neither is really tooling up even...

Playing orks I see 60+ orks die in 1 turn constantly. 90 boyz is nothing. You need 120 AND green tide stratagem.

Assume the ork player has a KFF, as all good ork players do. A double firing wyvern will get 8d6 shots, or 3.5x8, 28 shots. Half hit, so 14 hits. 75% wound, so 10 wounds. 5++ means about 7 dead. Mortars are about as effective. You'd need 9 mortars, a double firing wyvern, and at least one punisher to kill 30 boys. 30 boys under a KFF is surprising hard for Guard to remove.

I voted for Grey Knights because what's the point of having a poll for "best" mono-codex if you can select multiple options.

But the real answer is Imperial Guard, followed by Dark Eldar.

AM, Drukhari, Craftworlds are the pick in my book.
I was surprised that the Drukhari codex got so good.
But the HQs are a bit one-dimensional. No fast Archons in there.

Did you forget Orks? I don't see them in the poll.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Did you forget Orks? I don't see them in the poll.

Ah, I was bound to miss an army, I honestly thought I had them all when I went through my head a few times. Let me add them in. I’d say they’d place around 5th as mono

Pain4Pleasure wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Did you forget Orks? I don't see them in the poll.

Ah, I was bound to miss an army, I honestly thought I had them all when I went through my head a few times. Let me add them in. I’d say they’d place around 5th as mono

Pure monoenvironment, if they don't run often into CW i'd say they got the tools to beat them all.

Yeah, Orks are pretty solid if you build them right. Pretty much all of the faction traits are useful.
By monofaction, we mean one race and one subfaction, right? Because Orks, Necrons and Tau can't ally with anyone.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Yeah, Orks are pretty solid if you build them right. Pretty much all of the faction traits are useful.
By monofaction, we mean one race and one subfaction, right? Because Orks, Necrons and Tau can't ally with anyone.

Orks are for sure strong, but a Craftworlds or Tau player that knows what to pick off will be just fine. But just mono codex

I have for a few editions thought Ork boyz were under rated heavily. The solid meat on the bone with Orks, is Orks. That isn't very flashy or exciting but a shed load of attacks hitting pretty reliable into a front line starting from turn 2 if not sooner, is a problem you have to deal with.

Not unstoppable but solid and KFF is a pain in the rear. I have found it annoying for editions as well.

I voted Guard however, I'd solidly say it before the nerf train hit some nice units. As is, they still have a lot of beef sitting down range, Double firing Tank commander punishers will rip apart large hordes, even with KFFsupport. Really goes down to rolls though but I've had about a 50 50 run vs them.

 JNAProductions wrote:

Seabass wrote:
1.Astra Militarum
2.Craftworlds
3 Drukhari
4 Tau
5 Orks
everybody else
Blood Angels
Grey Knights

But the cool thing is, we have seen really good lists from almost every faction, so while there is a disparity in power lever between the top 3 or 4 and everyone else, there are still, for the most part, competitive builds for almost any army save for BA and GK

Um... Why put BA so low? They have pretty much all the tools that SM have, plus the best Smash Captains in the game.

The real driving force behind competitive marines right now is Gulliman. Blood angels just don't have anything remotely close to that kind of power level available to them. Smash captains are solid, but unable to do anything on round one with all of their best units really puts them on the backfoot. The reversion of the charge rules for the fly keyword is awesome, but it isn't enough to put them back on the map, and honestly, with the game switching over to more horde style lists, capn smash just isn't as useful as he used to be, let alone multiples of them, and when that is the best model in yoru codex, i think you are in a relatively bad spot.

 JNAProductions wrote:

Seabass wrote:
1.Astra Militarum
2.Craftworlds
3 Drukhari
4 Tau
5 Orks
everybody else
Blood Angels
Grey Knights

But the cool thing is, we have seen really good lists from almost every faction, so while there is a disparity in power lever between the top 3 or 4 and everyone else, there are still, for the most part, competitive builds for almost any army save for BA and GK

Um... Why put BA so low? They have pretty much all the tools that SM have, plus the best Smash Captains in the game.

Because their win rate is significantly lower than vanilla. BA chapter tactic is truly awful in 8th ed as it turns out.

My local Warhammer Store is running a little league with 1 Detachement, 1.500 Points armies, tactical objectives. We all had 4 to 5 out of 6 games yet and the number one player is running an undefeated Imperial Guard army. Has to be said that it really helps him that the tables are only 48x48" big. So his Mortars will shoot whatever he wants. Plus GW-terrain without big LOS-blocker...

As you can use different armys and codices, I had ran Sororitas (Vs. Deathguard), Blood Angels (Vs. Orks) and Adeptus Custodes (Vs. DG again) and won all of them. My second game with Sororitas was against said IG so I obviously lost hard...

I think, Eldar, Tau and Genestealercults are on the top, too. But most armies can win against every other army. Of course this is just a small tournament in a small city with its own meta.