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Thinking about getting back into fantasy, but kind of at a standstill about which army to play. I really want to get a feel for what kind of list each army usually brings in a tournament setting so I can have a better idea on which to choose. If anyone can offer up a list and some tactics on each armys best all comers list, it would be much appreciated.... Thank You

Slaan lizardmen.
Skaven long ranged
Teklik with some other points filled out
Daemons

WoC can be nasty (8th ed book should tone down). But Niiai got the other high contenders.

As much as I'm not a fan of the direction they took with 8th I am impressed that none of the 8th books show up in threads like this.

They seem to be doing a very good job of releasing balanced army books in this edition.

Oh I would love to say an 8th book but you're right, the OP ones are the 7th edition ones...Not saying 8th ed army books aren't competitive, you just have to be an able tactician to win

 riverhawks32 wrote:
Oh I would love to say an 8th book but you're right, the OP ones are the 7th edition ones...Not saying 8th ed army books aren't competitive, you just have to be an able tactician to win

Totally just wrong...

Would you like to elaborate please?

 Poppabear wrote:

 riverhawks32 wrote:
Oh I would love to say an 8th book but you're right, the OP ones are the 7th edition ones...Not saying 8th ed army books aren't competitive, you just have to be an able tactician to win

Totally just wrong...

I don't know if the 7th ones are the OP ones but the 8th are all very nicely balanced.

Daemons were 7th but 8th brought them back down a fair bit (I haven't played them but nothing screams broken at me). If the high elf book was 7th then yea I agree that one is OP.

Skaven, nearly irregardless of composition will be extremely nasty, what with decoy drops, tarpits, diverters, magic attacks, poison, great skirmishers, strong magic, millions of wounds and attacks, super monsters, immunity to Ld tests, great shooting, loads of armour ignoring stuff, dozens of templates etc. simply because they've got a solid, reliable counter to everything.

Empire often brings a Steam Tank, a horde or two, some diverters, buffers (Warrior Priests, buff wagons), Inner Circle Knights and those new Demigriffons I gather. Nasty with a good general, pretty middle of the road otherwise.

HE with White Lion hordes, champ with OTS, strong magic.

Vampire blender Lord who can mince units on his own, tarpits, Knights, 'cereals. Lots of possibilities to buff units (looks like a stronger trend with newer books).

WoC with Tzeentch L4 on disc, Tzeentch shield Warriors, Khorne Halberdiers, Chosen + 2 Shrines or 200 GW Marauders.

DE with Assassin (KB, poison, +d3 attacks, possibly mindrazored), mindrazored Corsairs, double Hydra, strong magic (can throw as many dice as they like on a spell for example).

 Poppabear wrote:

 riverhawks32 wrote:
Oh I would love to say an 8th book but you're right, the OP ones are the 7th edition ones...Not saying 8th ed army books aren't competitive, you just have to be an able tactician to win

Totally just wrong...

How? Ogres are not OP. Tomb Kings obviously not. Empire middle of the road usually.OnG can be countered. ETC.
Tzeentch WoC is nasty, demons are practically autowin, need I go on?

Ogres are a strong contender. It is a strong armybook, but there is a diference between a strong book and the strongest list.

8th edition armies are balanced. I only play tomb kings and enjoy them a lott. Are they the best armybook out there? Far from it. But they do bring some very unique feathures. Casket, My will be Done, Chariot units, T8 monsters. Fun fun fun. But the tomb guards are crap compared to Vampier grave guards. I am going of topic here, but it seems to me that in fantasy it is mutch more the general then the army list. This is a posetive diference from 40k where armylist is veyr important.

So to the original poster please just pick whatever army you think would be funn. As long as you stay away from dwarfs, wood elves and bretonias* you should be having a funn time and you can build a good army with any armybook. If you take the copy paste "best" internett lists you will soon find you runn out of oponents. If you become good with your own armylist you will get mutch more funn out of your army, and you will probably be abel to outplay even the "best" lists after a while.

* Dwarfs, Brets and Wood elves can still be good but you would have to focus on very narrow armylists. Most of everything else can work if you only learn how.

This will depend to a certain extent on whether you play with comp. Assuming you play with light/no comp, the top books and lists will be Ogres, Skaven and Lizardmen as they're simply the strongest books in the game at the moment with Empire and Daemons following along closely behind. Without comp Dark Elves become a top tier book, as soon as you take away their unlimited dice for each casting them become very middle of the road as the current metagame hurts them a lot.

Listwise, you can expect to see things like:

Ogres- SMaster, Bruiser BSB, Firebelly in Gutstar. Small bull unit to round out core. 2-3 units of MFang and 1-2 Ironblasters (these will likely be maxed out as far as the comp allows), with leadbelchers and maneaters filling in elsewhere.

Even with light comp, Ogres are still bent. It's just an integrally strong book with multiple undercosted choices.

Skaven- double Seer is a bit old school, Bell lists are the current filth.

Lizardmen- double Slann is extremely strong, as is the single Party Frog who is frequently running Lore of Death with Bane Head and Feedback scroll to shutdown your own magic and snipe your characters. Whichever it is, Lizards lists will usually be a million skinks, salamanders and then sometimes a Saurus unit and a Skink-krox unit (if they're running Light magic). Depending on who you play with/against you might also run into a Life Slann in Temple Guard and 2 massive Saurus blocks, but this hasn't been a top list for about 2 years.

Daemons- 3x30 Bloodletters with Heralds, it just walks forwards and kills stuff.

Empire- war machines and Demigryphs. Usually running either Light magic or Heavens, which they completely and utterly break.

High Elves- double S8 Banishment with 2x30 White Lions.

O&G- big block of Savage Big'Uns backed up by all the war machines and chaff with another big unit.

Dark Elves- this'll vary depending on comp as I mentioned. Old school is Shadow magic + Corsairs, newer lists are moving towards the Cold One Knight bus as it's less reliant on Shadow magic to be a strong list.

VC- Black Knight bus with 2-3 Vampires in there with ASF and Red Fury, to basically kill entire units on their own. Usually accompanied by an army of chaff.

Warriors- the Chosenstar with double war shrine, or a Knight Star also often with double war shrine. Skullcrushers may also become prevalent.

I mostly agree with the above post..Except for the Empire..Of course :p
Demigryph are a must for competitiveness. Warmachines can be done without. However, the key to making a competitive Empire list is the synergy of hordes of infantry, force multiplying warmachines, hard hitting cav units, and wizards/priests with their mobiles buffing your whole army

Daemons have one unit, bloodletters who are OP. 60% of the book is crap. They're a zillion WS/S/I infantry with KB and a ward save. If you don't take Bloods, DoC is a medium army at best, they require a good player. They aren't bad, they just have a lot of sucky units and to make the most of their good units you have to be sneaky.

Comment on O&G, savage big 'uns generally are the core of your army. Good cheap axillaries are wolf and spider riders, depending on likely terrain. Night goblins with fanatics (don't always buy all 3) are good defensive weapons for your weak flank. It is a mid-tier army currently.

DukeRustfield wrote:
If you don't take Bloods, DoC is a medium army at best, they require a good player. They aren't bad, they just have a lot of sucky units and to make the most of their good units you have to be sneaky.

This is an extremely controversial view, and one that I think you need to qualify.

Ogres are competitive, but they have multiple list options. Ironblasters may seem undercosted, but given they are a Rare choice it balances out.

They book does have plenty of overcosted and bad units too. As a result they never see play. Yhetees, Hunters, Gorgers, and all but 1 of the SCs are complete garbage for the most part.

Overall its a very strong but well balanced book. Many cries of OP just come from players that have 7th edition lists that weren't built to take on MI and refuse to adapt to the changing Meta. Tactical Tip: Ogres hate magic, any army with access to Death, Shadow, or Life magic has the tools to bork ogres. Skaven also have tons of multi-wound weapons that are stupidly effective.


Some common lists are the Gutstar, Gunline, and MMU.

Gutstar(or occasionally Bullstar) is with one unit of 16+ Ironguts(or Bulls) that all the armies characters go into. Usually a SM, 1-2 Butchers, and a BSB. One other combination is a Tyrant and a couple Firebellies instead of the SM and Butchers. The rest of the army can vary wildly. There may be a couple Stonehorns/TTs along with a couple units of Mournfangs. Or there could be 2 Ironblasters and a bunch of Leadbeltchers. Or maybe a giant unit of Maneaters.

Really the only predictable part of an Ogre army is the Core. There will be 2-3 units of Ironguts/Ogre Bulls.

This is probably a second issue people have with Ogres. There are so many variations the army can take, there isn't just one power build. This is actually the calling card of a balanced book.

tmarichards wrote:

DukeRustfield wrote:
If you don't take Bloods, DoC is a medium army at best, they require a good player. They aren't bad, they just have a lot of sucky units and to make the most of their good units you have to be sneaky.

This is an extremely controversial view, and one that I think you need to qualify.

No, it's not. Every all-comers DoC list has some Bloodletters at least. If you took every DoC army that placed in a tournament recently and swapped out their mandatory bloodletters with any of their other 3 Core, they wouldn't have done nearly as well all other things being equal (like player skill).. I don't think anyone who has access to a calculator can say the other Core are remotely as good as bloodletters. If you took NOTHING except Bloods and heralds and marched forward, you would still have a competitive army. Very few other armies in the game can say that. Like 150 bloodletters with 3 Heralds and Skulltaker is insanely scary. Boring as hell though.

I agree Blood letters are absurdly good, but you said 60% of the book is garbage which simply isn't true.

You also claimed that Deamons need a good general to win. I take this to mean more than other factions, which is also something I haven't heard before. Kairos, Heralds, 25 point magic items, multiple dispell scrolls...that's just off the top of my head but they have a lot of stuff going for them.

Okay, thanks for the advice so far guys. I have narrowed down my list to High Elves, Dark Elves, WoC, and/or one of the undead armies. Any thoughts would be much appreciated....Thanks

tmarichards wrote:
I agree Blood letters are absurdly good, but you said 60% of the book is garbage which simply isn't true.

Yeah, it's probably like 75%.

I started to go through it, but if you're going to argue the rest of the DoC book is good, nothing I say is probably going to change that.

 Poppabear wrote:

 riverhawks32 wrote:
Oh I would love to say an 8th book but you're right, the OP ones are the 7th edition ones...Not saying 8th ed army books aren't competitive, you just have to be an able tactician to win

Totally just wrong...

this guy gets it. despite what the internet may say 8th ed books are extremely strong and capable. ogres might be the best in the game and tomb kings have a few very nasty lists.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 riverhawks32 wrote:

 Poppabear wrote:

 riverhawks32 wrote:
Oh I would love to say an 8th book but you're right, the OP ones are the 7th edition ones...Not saying 8th ed army books aren't competitive, you just have to be an able tactician to win

Totally just wrong...

How? Ogres are not OP. Tomb Kings obviously not. Empire middle of the road usually.OnG can be countered. ETC.
Tzeentch WoC is nasty, demons are practically autowin, need I go on?

daemons are autowin??? lmao! please go on...tell me how a 7th ed book with no lvl 4s under 500 points and only one really good core unit and nothing else is "autowin".


Automatically Appended Next Post:

DukeRustfield wrote:
Daemons have one unit, bloodletters who are OP. 60% of the book is crap. They're a zillion WS/S/I infantry with KB and a ward save. If you don't take Bloods, DoC is a medium army at best, they require a good player. They aren't bad, they just have a lot of sucky units and to make the most of their good units you have to be sneaky.

wow, look. someone who has actually PLAYED DAEMONS IN 8TH! i'm so sick of "da daemonZ are OP, dooD!" posts. we have kairos and bloodletters. everything else is okay-crap.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

tmarichards wrote:
I agree Blood letters are absurdly good, but you said 60% of the book is garbage which simply isn't true.

i'll take the reigns here...

lets start with lords:

Bloodthirster: awesome combat monster, dies to one cannonball. EXPENSIVE 5/10

keeper of secrets: awesome combat monster, dies to one cannonball. EXPENSIVE 7/10

Lord of Change: our only viable lvl 4 wizard in games less than 2500 points, good in combat also dies to one cannonball. EXPENSIVE 5/10

Great unclean one: mediocre in combat. massive number of wounds. other than Kairos this is the only real viable monster in 8th ed. EXPENSIVE. 8/10

demon prince: possibly one of the worst things in any book there is NEVER ANY GOOD REASON TO TAKE ONE, EVER! 0/10
Kairos: the best thing in our book, one of the best wizards in the game and you can use him to metagame the hell out of people. the only OP thing in the entire book. cannot be used in games less than 2500 10/10 i would give him 11 out of 10 if i could.

skarbrand, ku'gath: no comment as i've never used them.



now on to the heros:

herald of khorne: very nice addition to bloodletters and costed well for the combat usefulness 8/10

herald of slaanesh: good in combat, too bad daemonettes are terrible without magic support 6/10

herald of tzeentch: another stand out unit. very good 8/10

herald of nurgle: decent at best. 7/10

skulltaker: Op against noobs, anyone who knows better just declines challenges and put all of their attacks on him so i find him worthless against anyone decent 5/10

epidemius: good in nurgle lists, worthless any other time 6/10

the masque: kind of broken, can lead to very broken lists against armies that aren't immune to psych 8/10

blue scribes: VERY situational 4/10

core:

Bloodletters: these guys are amazing for the cost. can be buffed to almost invincible levels with life or beast magic 10/10

Daemonettes: buff them or lose 5/10

pink horrors: good for bunkers, and nothing else. overcosted by at least 2 points 4/10

plaguebearers: can be decent with light magic support and herald 6/10

furies: ld 2 chaff and nothing more. i hate them 3/10

special:

seekers: trash, worthless trash. 1/10

flesh hounds: they have their uses, they hit hard and have decent toughness 7/10

nurglings: decent speedbumps, nothing more 4/10

flamers: used to be amazing, now they're terrible 4/10

screamers of tzeentch: these have their uses and can be used to some good effect, not op, not crap 7/10

rare:

Bloodcrushers: these things would be amazing IF they weren't so expensive, they have 2W and are about 15 points over costed. if you want to see for yourself why they suck just look at the rules for the WoC skullcrushers. i run them sometimes because they look cool 5/10

Fiends: another stand out in the codex. slightly overcosted, but very good at what they do 9/10

soul grinder: it's pretty meh, i use it sometimes because it's the only cheap monster we have 6/10

beasts of nurgle: never used one, i can tell you it's about 30points over costed 3/10

i haven't used the slaneesh chariots so i have no comment on them.

if you'd like to tell me why i'm wrong i'd love to hear it. 60% was exaggerating but i only count 7 units that i would even consider in a competitive list..

Three reasons come to mind: You're looking at units in isolation, you're ignoring magic and magic items, and you implicitly say that everyone else has so much more than 7-8 useful units. Looking at any random selection of army lists on any given forum gives me a few outliers but no drastically different number of units you see over and over (Skaven excepted). Complaints about a real or imagined "lack of internal balance" you will find in almost every faction's forum, too...

 Mike der Ritter wrote:
Three reasons come to mind: You're looking at units in isolation, you're ignoring magic and magic items, and you implicitly say that everyone else has so much more than 7-8 useful units. Looking at any random selection of army lists on any given forum gives me a few outliers but no drastically different number of units you see over and over (Skaven excepted). Complaints about a real or imagined "lack of internal balance" you will find in almost every faction's forum, too...

yeah, i'm ignoring magic, that's why i specifically mention it in many of the unit descriptions. daemons CAN'T take magical items. i never said other books have more than 7 useful units. WHAT i was agreeing with is that the majority of units in the daemon book are unusable trash. which they are. and guess what: in any competitive setting, most of those are banned or neutered.

Skaven excepted? all skaven lists look nearly identical. i'm just going to ignore you from now on. you just don't get it. if any army has a large number of very viable lists it's the 8th ed codices like vamps, ogres and empire.

let me ask you something bluntly...have you actually READ the daemon codex or ever attempted to make a list?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Mike der Ritter wrote:
You also claimed that Deamons need a good general to win. I take this to mean more than other factions, which is also something I haven't heard before. Kairos(USUALLY BANNED), Heralds (EVERY ARMY IN THE GAME ALSO HAS HEROES, PLEASE EXPLAIN HOW THIS IS A PERK), 25 point magic items(EVERY OTHER ARMY HAS ACCESS TO A MUCH BETTER LIST OF MAGICAL ITEMS FROM THE BRB), multiple dispel scrolls (COMPED 0-1 IN ALMOST EVERY TOURNEY)...that's just off the top of my head but they have a lot of stuff going for them.

basically in friendly games they're upper middle tier, nothing more.

So the Daemons of Chaos armybook isn't OP because half the book is comped in a lot (according to you) of tournaments? The entire reason Daemons get comped a lot is because a lot of the book is pretty OP?

Phoenixrisin, I think you're in danger of letting the debate cloud your judgement. Even though it wasn't directed at me, I'd be very hesitant about making statements like "I'm going to ignore you, you just don't get it". Just because you think one thing about the game, and someone else thinks another, doesn't necessarily mean you are right and they are wrong so it'd be worth keeping an open mind. For example, you make the argument that every army has access to better 25pt magic items than Daemons yet provide no comparisons- this isn't accurate, and illustrates that you maybe don't know as much about the game as you think you do? Siren Song, Master of Sorcery, Armour of Khorne, Firestorm Blade , Icon of Endless War, Immortal Fury and Collar of Khorne are amongst the best items in the game on their respective units and all weigh in at 25pts or less- I would be extremely interested to see which 25pt or less magic items you would consider better than these- I'm struggling, for example, to come up with an armour that is better than a 3+ for 15pts when the models also has a 5++ built into their statline.

The best thing about the Daemon book, and what is often being overlooked, is that is has insane internal synergy. Yes, Daemonettes don't do that much without magic- but you have access to a Loremaster Shadow Herald (for less than 150pts, making them one of the most cost-efficient and flexible casters in the game) so you're guaranteed to have access to magic support they need, and Siren Song is a cheap ability that can control your opponent's deployment and offers a whole new dimension to the defensive Mindrazor.

The units you say are awful also have uses which people don't seem to recognise- yes, Furies are ld2 so will die after any combat they lose. This isn't their role though, they're cheap ItP flyers who can redirect or support a greater daemon/war machine weak army to make sure you get to engage on favourable terms- there's no shooting 2 off and panicking the rest away as you can with other units of a similar pts cost (harpies, for example). Bloodcrushers might not make for a great stand-alone unit, but single Crushers are some of the best chaff in the game as they require a fair bit of fire to put them down, and can happily clean up smaller units and other chaff if left unchecked. Try running 2 singles of them as champions to support a greater daemon, or run them as musicians so they can take on smaller units and not auto-lose on a draw.

Giving a Bloodthirster 5/10 is an odd choice, especially rating the Kipper and GUO higher. Yes, it is vulnerable to war machines. Have you considered building a list around that weakness? The DoC book has access to multiple flying units who will make short work of war machines in the first 2/3 turns, at which point Billy can come out and wreak havoc in the late game. Alternatively, create a rush list with fewer chaff deployments so you're more likely to get the first turn and push it all forwards. If he dies, so be it but the rest of the army is left unchecked. If not, he gets into combat and wrecks stuff. Simply because something can die because you're not careful with it doesn't mean it's a bad unit. You're also overstating the presence of cannons and other war machines, only 4-5 armies are likely to have enough to really worry him (Skaven if they have a Doomwheel, Ogres, O&G, Empire and Dwarfs). In my opinion, the main reason you don't see them more is because they can turn tournament games into a rock-paper-scissors match- if you run into an army that can kill Billy you go down hard, which can damage your long term chances of doing well in the event.

Describing a Herald of Khorne as "well costed" doesn't make a great deal of sense. For 115pts you get a model who gives Hatred to his unit, is WS7 with 3S6 attacks (with hatred), I6, T4, 3+ armour and 5++. He may only have 2W, but there's simply no way that is a reasonable cost- there is no other combat character in the game who does so much on their own for a similar number of points, nor adds such great synergy to an already strong unit. For 25pts extra, he can go up +1S and strip regen away before his unit swings, and has a whole unit behind him with S5 Killing Blow to focus on any 2+ vs flaming characters who try to hold him up.

Describing Horrors as "overcosted by at least 2 points" makes no sense. Why are they undercosted, because they don't have awesome combat stats? If so, you're trying to put them into a role that they're not meant to fulfill. They babysit your Herald, have a 4++ and have a very respectable spell deck of their own.

There are parts of the Daemon book that are average to poor, yes. But this isn't enough to neuter the strong choices, which are just too cost-efficient.

Almost no one takes Greater Daemons. They aren't 5/10. They are very good MONSTERS if you completely ignore their cost. But they aren't Rare Monsters. They are 450-650pt Lords. You could take 2 soulgrinders for the cost of a GD. Or the enemy could take 2 1/2 Necrosphinx or Terrorgheists or Aracknarok spiders.

They just aren't compatible with steadfast, cannon-toting, spells-of-doom, 8th edition. You can't have 1/4 of your points in one unit that can't hide or get LoS or otherwise protect itself.

Even my theoretical Nothing But Bloodletters army would beat a super buff Bloodthirster for cost (easily).

Saying the armies synergize so well assumes you have a chance to do so. If your spells are dispelled, they don't. If Epidemius is killed or your PB get kited, they don't. This is what I was saying earlier. You have to play a game really well to pull off a non-bloodletter army. And that has a corollary of your enemy not playing that well (or at least really well).

Ogre Bulls still kick ass without spells. O&G don't need spells. I'd say only TK really require it (don't know Vamps enough to say) but it's nearly impossible to shut down TK spellcasting.

edit: oh, and they have a cheap LEVEL 2 caster. But he's just +2. You get no extra dice unless you take PD special character or hero who does nothing except generate +1 PD. So if you roll low on your winds, you're cheap wizard is wasted. While it's nice to have a cheap loremaster, if you're going to try and dominate magic or rely on magic to make you actual army work, you have to have a reliable source of it. Like Slann or HE or TK. Because +2 off of base 2D6 winds isn't going to cut it.

One of the top players on Rankings HQ used a DP in a mono Khorne list, he won tonnes.

I do pretty well, winning events and placing high often with either a BT or GUO. Only 1 unit of Letters, 1 horrors, 1 slannesh, and spam 2--4 lvl 2's. Everything has a target. Daemonettes do well vs low T stuff, including bloodletters.

I generally take Life on my BSB and follow the GUO around, healing, and charging with static rez is needed.

I've also ran Light as a good lore, low casting values, cannon protection, and if pha's is up on a failed fear test then hello to 6's to hit. My last lore I take in a solo mage build is beasts, this allows the Herald to go all TOK if things get out of hand. Curse + siren song is nasty.

If I run a secondary mage, I've had great success with Life BSB+ Metal- Took 4th at Blood in the Sun last year with this, 1 Battle Point from best general. The GUO never died.

Life/light solid synergyl very defensive but it works.

I would like to run Life (BSB) Beasts now that I have ran beasts.

Basically Light unless GUO then Life.

However I also play TK and you are right the GD are over costed, I can get a warsphnix, necro sphnix, and even a Tomb scorpion at 1k. They don't have any power lists, but I'm taking them to all events in 2013.

Daemons were horribly OP in 7th edition. Now they are just a fairly strong book. They have some of the best magic in the game and their core are solid.

The only losers of the book are Plague Bearers because its now Ward Save or Regen.