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But I’m back. It’s been ages! I’ll get to it!!

Looking to get back into warhammer 40k. I have no idea what the landscape of the hobby is anymore...it’s been 12 years since I collected and played.

Aside from space marines, what’s a great starter force these days? I like Chaos space marines, eldar/dark eldar the most, along with orks. Would also consider grey knights or maybe even nids!

I have zero interest in Loyalist marines, guard, mechanicum etc. Traitors and Xenos are my thing!

Any suggestions would be great! Thanks!

Although they're not on your list, necrons are getting a pretty big revamp (big compared to other non marine factions) and the
Models look pretty Amazing.

The Eldar factions have been virtually ignored for theast few editions, but play ok with some optimised builds.

Genestealer Cults have been fully fleshed out as their own army at this point. There's some debate as to their viability as a 9th faction since the stuff they used to do doesn't work anymore (there is argument that they have new strategies that do work but I'm not experienced enough in the faction to elaborate on that) but if nothing else they're a sick hobby project.

As far as Chaos goes, the CSM line has seen plenty of major recent updates, and Death Guard and Thousand Sons have both been separated out into their own armies with their own codexes. Death Guard was the enemy faction for the 8th edition starter so it's pretty easy to find kits for them.

Hellbore- yeah....I honestly love eldar but their models are out dated. Many have been around since early 2000’s...And I don’t care much for the newer ones anyway. A shame but life moves on! And crons do look awesome. The real line is great. But I also don’t wanna show up to a store to play and have there be 5 other necron players who all bought indomitus as well! But still awesome models.

Arachnofiend- sounds like chaos has had some love. My issue is I really wanna do a night lords themed force. But I’m guessing I’d have to hit up forge world orders for pauldrons/helmets that don’t look like garbage. Which may get costly.

I don’t care much for death guard...but thousand sons line looks great. I may do them!

Sadly Chaos has been shafted hard by 9th, as well as a lackluster codex and PAs.

That said I think I’m gonna go with chaos anyway. Their model range is much more recent and I like conversion options.

But yeah I’ve heard online from some posts that they were screwed over. Big surprise.

IMHO The best way to do Chaos now is Iron Warriors. Lots of powerful stratagems via PA and not taking daemons is lore accurate.

If painting is a significant thing for you, you might want to try either buying some “3-man” push-fit packs, or trying the second hand market to try painting a few models before committing to a faction.

My oft-repeated line is that while I love playing with and building Ork models, I *hate* painting them. So I wouldn’t want to commit to an army’s worth. Painting an Ork Kill Team (well, 90% of a team) almost broke me. Whereas most other armies I can grind through, I’m almost certain to never buy into Orks on a significant scale.

I strongly suggest trying at a small scale before diving in full steam ahead.

 Gorgarak wrote:
That said I think I’m gonna go with chaos anyway. Their model range is much more recent and I like conversion options.

But yeah I’ve heard online from some posts that they were screwed over. Big surprise.

Hey and welcome back!

You are in luck as you are coming in in the wake of a new edition.
Whatever army you pick theres bound to be a new codex sooner rather than later.

For the time being you can get all the 8th books from the new app if you subscribe.

The "chaos" umbrella has a lot of different potential builds and armies that you can make so certainly there is a wealth of options to pick from

New army wise the general answer is Space Marines but personally I’d go with Death Guard. You can snatch up some cheap starter kits, there are still copies of conquest floating around, the easy to builds are good choices for the army. Death Guard is also in a good place with the new meta, with durable units great at holding objectives.