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I've been trying to get into 40k for a few months and have come to regret my indecision now that GW's production has shut down until further notice, so I want to get my army choice sorted before production continues again so that I can get right into painting cool minis. The armies I think are cool and have nice looking miniatures so far are:

>Necrons - For being spooky Egyptian skeletons in space that can stand back up after getting shot by a baneblade.

>Craftworld Eldar - I love their wraithbone ghost robots, especially the giant mechs.

>Genestealer Cults - I'm a sucker for masterminds and this faction is that with cool, varied models such as the kelermorph to boot.

>Grey Knights - Space wizard crusaders. And I also love medieval full plate armour which a lot of their miniatures emulate.

>Space Marine chapter: Salamanders - I like the concept of volcano planets and these guys love them.

>Adeptus Mechanicus - Rangers, dragoons and infiltrators look very nice and each forge world's lore is also interesting as they are all so unique.

>Chaos Space Marines - specifically Alpha Legion due to the aforementioned love of mastermind tropes, however the army as a whole gives a lot of variety and options with all the different legions.

>Thousand Sons - I love their backstory and Magnus. They also have a cool Egyptian aesthetic like the necrons and the concepts of armoured, hollow automata (Rubric Marines) as well as space wizards are also nice.

With all these options I have been overwhelmed, especially since I have no way of finding my playstyle on the tabletop in order to narrow down the options even more and that I have nobody else I know that plays 40k. I have tried watching battle reports however I don't know how I can tell whether I would enjoy each army's style of play just from watching someone else play them. So any advice on how I could narrow down my decision to just one army would be much appreciated as I can only afford to collect one army, and i'd rather not collect kill teams as I want to have a 'main' army.

Right now? Go on your store of choice (Waylandgames - Firstormgames - Elementgames - ebay - elsewhere) and see what you can actually get your hands on.


If all the armies are equal in weight then basically you can't go wrong with any choice, so go with what you find in stock. Grab a Codex and some models and try it out.


I think you're at the "just jump on in" phase of the choice. You've boiled it down a bit, but now the only way you'll progress is to actually get stuck in. Sure your first choice could be perfect; or rubbish. you won't know till you try and you can always pass on the models secondhand if you find you really don't like them.

There's no shame in that at all. And just think second time around your building and painting skills will be all the greater .

Kill Team is also an option: allows you to get a squad box of something and try it out. It's not the same thing as 40k though, but you can gleam some things from it.

But yeah, best suggestion would be to pick something and get a small amount of it to see how you like assembling, painting, and playing it. If you don't like that faction in terms of any of those enough to where you don't want to play them anymore, sell them and repeat with another faction.

As above.

If you have a couple of factions you like, see if you can find a unit or two on the cheap, like used.

Then you can try painting them, and playing a game of Kill Team or two. Gives you a feel for a 40k like game... it’s pretty close, just at a smaller scale. This way, you can see if you like painting, see if you like the style of game, and lastly you’d have two sets of models, that you can entice other people to play, or have options for games against people with their own models.

DONT buy in too deep, too fast. You might not like the modeling of some factions, or not like the way they play. Kill Team is great for this, to give you a taste before you build 500 or 1000 points and discover you don’t like it!

That said! Both Thousand Sons and Grey Knights can build most of, if not all of the options they can use in “standard” Kill Team, If you’re buying new, then those two boxes give you everything you’d need in one box. Chaos Marines can build a solid team from a box of normal marines and a 5-pack of Cultists, which is also a pretty cheap entry. Necrons want a box of Immortals and the guys with Warscythes... Lychguard? I’d say a very strong Salamander team can be built from a box of tactical s and the scouts with sniper rifles and missile launcher.

I do not know about GSC, Mechanicus, or Eldar.

 greatbigtree wrote:
Then you can try painting them, and playing a game of Kill Team or two. Gives you a feel for a 40k like game... it’s pretty close, just at a smaller scale. This way, you can see if you like painting, see if you like the style of game, and lastly you’d have two sets of models, that you can entice other people to play, or have options for games against people with their own models.

DONT buy in too deep, too fast. You might not like the modeling of some factions, or not like the way they play. Kill Team is great for this, to give you a taste before you build 500 or 1000 points and discover you don’t like it!

That said! Both Thousand Sons and Grey Knights can build most of, if not all of the options they can use in “standard” Kill Team, If you’re buying new, then those two boxes give you everything you’d need in one box. Chaos Marines can build a solid team from a box of normal marines and a 5-pack of Cultists, which is also a pretty cheap entry. Necrons want a box of Immortals and the guys with Warscythes... Lychguard? I’d say a very strong Salamander team can be built from a box of tactical s and the scouts with sniper rifles and missile launcher.

I do not know about GSC, Mechanicus, or Eldar.

Completely agree on taking it slow. I have seen time and time again players rush to get 2000pts of models, build them and get far too overwhelmed when they start to paint a single squad. More often than not that army is going to look like that for years from my experience. Less if the player gets bored of the game which is much easier since they only invested money instead of both time and creativity to get them painted. Not to say painting completely staves off bordem of the game. It usually does make you more invested in it as your army is Your Dudes (TM).

As for Kill Team, I think it is a decent way to play a game as you build up a larger collection. Do note, that Kill Team is based on full 40k rules, but does have a bunch of changes that makes it is own game. Additionally, many factions work very differently and can be considerably more/less effective in Kill Team than full 40k. If your goal is to have a full 40k army, I would treat Kill Team as something to do with your collection until get to the point you can play small games. I wouldn't necessarily treat it as a proving grounds to which army you should start based on how if functions in Kill Team.

It is really hard to help someone pick a faction. Most everyone has their own preferences and bias on the factions, and we don't really know you, or any new player, that well as to help you/them make an informed decision. The best that can be done is answering more specific questions on the factions you are interested in. That said:

Necrons are in a tough spot and have been there for an uncomfortably long time. Reanimation Protocols seem like a good thing until you realize that it is fairly easy for your opponent to shut down without really changing how they play. The upside is they are really, really easy to paint and look nice. You are also very unlikely to walk into any gaming place that is saturated with Necron players.

Craftworld Eldar really, really need to get their models updated. From the prices on the few that have, they look like they are going to be a pretty penny when they do though. I am told they are pretty good on the table but they take some work to get the most out of them. They seem to also have a habit of rotating effective units as 40k changes. At then of the day they are fast and hit hard, or at least that is what I think as I haven't played against them.

Genestealer Cults may be the most expensive army to collect at the moment. They are a horde army with kinda expensive models, and eBay has mostly run out of the cheap box set stuff. I should know, I have been starting up an army of them and kinda regret not getting more on sprue stuff at half or better price. GSC are a close range/melee horde army that is usually character focused while eschewing vehicles for the most part. While getting Command Points which are used to activate special abilities called Stratagems isn't difficult for this faction, it is CP hungry enough to use them all up in a couple of rounds just the same.

Grey Knights spent much of the edition being the poster boy of poor rules. It sounds like this is less the case with their Pyschic Awakening book. An issue with the Grey Knights is they don't have much model kit options, and that isn't likely to change anytime soon. They kinda suffer from being a specialized micro faction which could limit them. That's not completely true, but it isn't completely false either.

Space Marines are usually touted as the beginner friendly faction which is true. They have the widest selection of models and are relatively easy to learn the game with. They are most common faction. Even going with Salamanders which will influence the play style of your army, marines are still marines and play like marines.

AdMech I really only know from Kill Team and seeing one of the players at my FLGS play them. Currently, the Dune Crawler seems to be a big part of that army from what I have seen. However, AdMech are getting a bunch new stuff which is likely to give the faction a bunch different options to how they can be used.

Chaos Space Marines was my first army. They are okay, but I often find them to be a bit disappointing in that cultists are point-for-point far better than marines and little in the army feels as brutal in melee as it should. Alpha Legion are the best of a meh bunch though. I don't know if you are going to feel all that much like a mastermind playing them though as Chaos Space Marines kinda play a certain way. I suppose if you like cultist malarkey you got something a little different.

Thousand Sons seem like a fair starting point. Their models are quite detailed and can take some work to look nice, but they are kinda small model count army. At a casual level where I play my group's TS player has been doing pretty well with the PA book. You definitely have to learn the Psychic Phase with them. They hit pretty hard with spells and warp-weapons. They don't have a lot of wounds but nearly everything has an Invulnerable Save giving them some protection.

I bet someone in here could talk you through setting up the online game 40k thing, so you could try a few games with armies (find them in the forum area) from different races.
Also, go watch a bunch or a couple at least of the various "battle report" videos, and maybe get a sense of what you want before you pick, buy, glue, paint, and then throw away in disgust 4 different races, eh?

Just be cautious how competitive the opponents you pick online cause the people I know who do that are very, very competitive.

Go to your LGS (once quarantines are lifted obviously) and let the other players know you're having a hard time choosing an army. It's a safe bet that A) you'll get a lot of advice about which things will work well in the local meta and B) people will be willing to bring down spare armies so you can give them a try before you get too far invested into buying things.

I would say definitely start small. Sometimes what seems like an attractive army can be a bigger problem to assemble and paint than expected.

For example I had considered doing a Necron army but putting together a unit of warriors bored me to tears - it may seem like they're easy but the repetition of so many similar models with no distinguishing features or cool bits to add was just not my thing.

That's not to say Necrons are bad, they just don't suit my personal preferences when it comes to assembling and painting.

Perhaps I am wrong, but I am thinking you want a fairly low entry cost. As such the Genestealer Cults and Adeptus Mechanicus might not be your best bet. Those tend to have high model counts which means increased cost in money and painting time. They are both really cool armies, though, and if I was suddenly given $1,000 that I could only spend on 40K I would probably buy a Genestealer Cult army. And some Nuln Oil because I just ran out.

I am thinking that Thousand Sons or Necrons are for you since you began and ended with the Egyptian aesthetic, leaning towards Thousand Sons. At the end of the day follow your gut but be ready to make adjustments. Buy a squad and paint it, perhaps following an on-line tutorial. If you hate painting them then take a moment and reflect. While it is good to finish what you start it is also not good to put good money after bad.

Follow your instincts. My first 40K army some 25 years ago is still my main army. In Flames of War I wanted to collect a Panzer Company when I was looking at the boxes but I thought that an infantry company would be cheaper and my wife was not happy that I was starting a new miniatures game. Boy was I wrong. After a year of collecting, painting and playing I ditched my more expensive infantry army for a Panzer Company.

So yeah, Thousand Sons. Or one of the other ones.

I would ask the OP, do you currently play any RTS or Turn Based Strategy/Tactical games? If so, what are your favorite games to play and which factions do you prefer?

That being said, have you done much modelling/ hobby crafting before? Slapping infantry models together is similar enough. But some vehicles can be a challenge if you have never done that before. How do you feel about painting miniatures in general?