What made you choose your current main army?

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**Mythra**

I played board games all the time. I had all the Space Hulks which meant about 100 Genestealers. My friend who played 40k told me all I needed was a HQ and codex and I was good to go.

I really believe he told me a half truth.

At least I won a lot in 5th with my list -- 1 Alpha, 70 to 90 Stealers, and 1 Trygon. That is all I owned but it worked well.

**Necronboy**

I thought Necrons were cool, and bought a box of warriors. I really liked the look and play style of the army back with the 3rd edition codex. Really I just decided to play Necrons.

**-Loki-**

Tyranids.

I've always picked armies based on their appearance, since I do like to look at these models. If a model is bad, I won't have the motivation to paint it. The Tyranid model range is absolutely fantastic and the best realised 'bug' range on the market. There was a lot of thought that went into making them look like a unified, coherent race with the 3rd and 4th edition redesigns, with some very simple styles to stick to - the number of carapace ridges on the head and back, the number of limbs, tails, chitin striations and joins, etc.

It's easy to make yet another humanoid race, because you have the basics of the physiology down already. We are humanoid, afterall. Just adding hooved feet, bald with blue skin and vagina foreheads gives you an entirely new humanoid race with the Tau.

The Tyranids, however, required a lot of thought, and even two editions of models to get the aesthetic down pat, and it was worth it. It resulted in the most unique looking army available in 28mm games you can buy.

The downside is a lot of 3rd party developers, even when they try to make not-Tyranid replacement models, completely ignore some of these design decisions, and the models end up sticking out in a bad way.

**Wilytank**

Space Wolves. I'm a giant metal head and the biggest reason I chose Space Wolves is to live out my pagan metal fantasies.

I've since picked up Orks as well since their reckless nature goes with the metal attitude as well, though more toward a death/thrash genre; and I've also been eyeing up Dark Eldar for the same reason. Surely those of you who are also familiar with the genre can easily imagine three Dark Eldar dressed up in Kabalite Warrior armor playing Venom's "Black Metal" in some club somewhere in Commorragh.

**Frankenberry**

Imperial Guard.

I loved reading about the generic Joe's donning cardboard armor and laser pointers to fight demons. It also appeals to my 'last stand' tick in the back of my head.

And who doesn't love a Baneblade?

**Jimsolo**

I picked Space Marines because that was the army that the taxi driver offered to sell me one night at my gas station.

I picked Salamanders based on how easy they were to paint. I wanted to do Imperial Fists, but it turns out yellow is the hardest color to paint. The I tried White Scars, but take a wild guess what the second hardest color is... Fortunately, green is really easy to paint!

**jifel**

Tyranids. I like overwhelming my opponent, and I also am very fond of attrition style warfare. However, Orks seemed too brutal whereas Nids were cunning and totally alien. Not to mention, that plastic Fex was a beauty back in 4th...

Now, I also am starting Irow Warriors, because siege warfare is just too fun!

**ace101**

Space Marines, because of Relic:

Played DoW 1 and loved the 40k universe, it was much more exciting (maybe HL2 ist better at the time) than any thing in fiction i encountered. I played DoW 1 & DoW 2, and I figured out 3 years ago this hobby existed, and I started the hobby last year with Space Marines (I don't care if their poster boys are Mary Sues!). I was deciding between BT, Raven Guard, and Blood Ravens, but it all came down to DoW, Blood Ravens was my choice.

**bocatt**

Selym wrote:
Many people play multiple armies in 40k, whilst some others stick with one. There are thousands of people for each faction, even non-canon factions have their support (sometimes).
Each army is painted and played in a different (or similar way) according to the player/modeler/collector.
But what I think makes each army truly unique is the reason for it's existence.

So, I ask of you Dakkanoughts, what is the reason you chose your current/main/favourite army and/or faction?
These reasons could be simple, like loving the look of the models, to more complicated reasons that require detail to explain.

For example, my reason:

Spoiler:

I play Chaos Marines. But I didn't start with them.

My first army was the Ultramarines, a faction that I played because my friend who introduced me to the game also played, and encouraged me to join him. It was also the most economical at the time, due to the AOBR box set costing only £40 (!!) at the time.
Anyways. I built myself an army of Ultramarines, including a Land Raider Crusader, and a lot of Tactical Marines. I enjoyed the army quite a bit. I would absolutely steamroll any horde/foot army I met, due to the crusader, and my tactical marines bringing the free missile launcher and flamethrower upgrades. After a while, I started noticing my army was kinda lacking in flavour, and I had gotten to know the vanilla marine codex so well that I could practically read it with my eyes closed. So I started looking at other things from GW.

Sure enough, there were some much better looking models around. I was intrigued, but I was an Ultramarine at heart. So I continued.
As 5th edition went on, more and more MEQ/Mech armies were appearing, and out of all the gamers that I knew, only one person played with a substantial number of troops. And I could very rarely get a game against him.
So it came to be that my army would get ROFL-stomped 9 times out of 10, and that other one time was a close loss. Lacking the money to improve my forces to tackle all the armour effectively, I tried to change tact with my army.

As it turns out, unless you have a wide variety of units/models from the vanilla codex, it's very hard to change they way your army plays. And that was something I didn't particularly enjoy.
I'm the kind of person who can get bored rather quickly, and this was beginning to wear my patience thin.

Looking into the fluff of other things in the 40k universe, I started to notice a lot of depth in the universe where grimdark, humans and bad-guys were concerned, but whenever I met a Space Marine in the fluff, it always seemed to read as follows:
"Space Marine murders bunch of aliens. Gets shot at by uber-powerful-weapon-that-should-have-killed-him but survived through sheer willpower/faith in the emprah".
They always seemed kinda flat, and in many cases, mary sue-ish.

It was around here that I started seeing Ultramarines (and the other loyal marines) absolutely everywhere that had anything to do with 40k. On the covers of books, battle reports, new releases, all GW stores I went into, even in pictures of other armies there were Ultramarines. I was starting to get sick of that damnable blue colour. And the fact that all the models seemed almost exactly the same (Tank = box with some sticks on it for guns. Trooper = faceless metal man. Leader = faceless metal man. Elite choice = faceless metal man. Fast attack = faceless metal man in a box with wings. Or sitting on a motorbike). There wasn't much for my imagination to go on anymore.

Further than that, I started to get an overload of pro-IOM every time I went near the hobby. Which made me start to hate it, because repetitiveness gets old quickly with me.

After this, I decided to take a break from the hobby, and learn how to paint (With a Daemon Prince, because it seemed one of the easier options to paint on as it has a huge surface [it's the plastic one], and looked excellent [The angular spikiness attracted me]).

I did a reasonable job, considering it was my first reasonable attempt at properly painting something. I used the colours I had around, ofc, and ended up with a Daemon Prince who wore boltgun-metal power armour, with gold trim, and had blue flesh (and glowing yellow eyes). It being my first reasonable paintjob, I decided to name it. Completely out of ideas for names, I decided to go with something from a song I had been listening to while painting him.
This song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzWUCiypeGA

I took the word "Sixteen" and converted it to latin. And thus named my Daemon "Sedecim".

It turns out that when you paint and name a Daemon Prince, and then place it on your desk opposite your bed, facing you as you sleep [creepy, right?], it starts to get stuck in your brain.

It was around this time that I started watching Miniwargaming's videos, especially "Slaughter's Rejects". I loved Dave's enthusiasm for chaos, and midway through one of his chaos tactica videos, I looked over at my Daemon Prince, and thought to myself, "Let's get a better look into this".

Sticking my head around in various places, I gathered as much knowledge as I could about the fluff for chaos, the army's gameplay, and some character background.
I had found a faction that had: insane blood crazed maniacs, nigh-indestructible automatonic warriors who fire MEQ-massacring bolts, fun-loving disease-ridden badasses who could laugh off wounds that could have felled even the mightiest hero of the Imperium, madness-inflicting horrors from beyond reality, and the ability to kit out everything for any situation.
I loved it.

So, with Sedecim at my side, I set about getting back at the IOM for the frustration and boredom it had inflicted upon me. The first act was to convert my Ultras to chaos. Not hard, really. The fluff is that Sedecim corrupted an entire company of Ultramarines (LOL), and nicked a good portion of the armoury, too. I found some new paints, and newbishly covered the majority of the marines in the colours of Nurgle, and some in the colours of Sedecim (they love Tzeentch). The painting worked as intended, firstly separating my marines from the Ultras, and then slowly adding chaos models and conversions to them (still a WIP), to make them chaossy.
I stuck some lascannons on the old crusader, got myself a Predator Annihilator, and started kicking the IOM's ass.

And I never looked back!
(Thank you for taking your time to read this)

This story was actually heart warming

thanks for sharing. May the Gods ever smile upon you and Sedecim

**PunkNeverDie110**

prophet102 wrote:
I chose grey knights because I was always a huge fan of the Ancient Greek Spartans. And just the whole "Best of the Best" reminded me of them. Also i dig halberds.

OT here: o_o but GK aren't supposed to be the 40k version of the medieval knights? Look, King Arthur etc etc etc
if you like Greek Spartans Minotaurs are better, IMHO

**Condas**

PunkNeverDie110 wrote:
prophet102 wrote:
I chose grey knights because I was always a huge fan of the Ancient Greek Spartans. And just the whole "Best of the Best" reminded me of them. Also i dig halberds.

OT here: o_o but GK aren't supposed to be the 40k version of the medieval knights? Look, King Arthur etc etc etc
if you like Greek Spartans Minotaurs are better, IMHO

I think he is referring to skill level rather than style.

**Anfauglir**

Simple. Two questions.

1) Do I like the models? Will I enjoy building/painting them?
2) Do I like the fluff? Is there character and situations in there that could lend life to the aforementioned models?

If the answer to both of those things is yes, then I consider collecting them.

**Evileyes**

Started with blackreach. Played with orks for a little while, then moved to the space marines, and had them for longer. Then, on a total whim, I started daemons, and loved it so much I now play them exclusively

They played in a unique way, and I could screw with my opponent's minds, which was very appealing to me, and still is with the new book

**FuzzyLogik**

Blood Angels when I first started, no real reason behind it.

When I started again I chose Grey Knights because i like the looks of them and they were release at about the same time as I stopped playing with Blood Angels and I wanted them then too.

**kronk**

I wanted to play Orks but mom told me real men play Black Templars and she threw my ork models in the trash and took away all sodas and candy bars for a month.

I now only play Black Templars.

**PunkNeverDie110**

kronk wrote:
I wanted to play Orks but mom told me real men play Black Templars and she threw my ork models in the trash and took away all sodas and candy bars for a month.

I now only play Black Templars.

^This, makes my day.

**SupremeDalek**

I wanted to play Orks but mom told me real stallions play Black Templars and she threw my ork models in the trash and took away all sodas and candy bars for a month. I now only play Black Templars.

I have mixed feelings about this (if it's true). I feel really bad for the Orks but your mom is awesome.

**Kaiserbudheim**

I chose Imperial Guard as my first army because my friends said I couldn't do it and make them a competitive force. In fact, one friend in particular couldn't stand the look of the Catachans, so I chose them to wage psychological warfare. Oh have I enjoy crushing them with Imperial might over the years!

My second army is Blood Angels. Always loved how they look, and they were my Chapter of choice in Epic Space Marine, so the transition was natural. So funny that among a group of friends our loyalties to the Chapters never crossed - an Ultra, a Dark Angel, a Space Wolf and BAs (...sounds like the start of a bad bar joke....).

**PunkNeverDie110**

Kaiserbudheim wrote:

My second army is Blood Angels. Always loved how they look, and they were my Chapter of choice in Epic Space Marine, so the transition was natural. So funny that among a group of friends our loyalties to the Chapters never crossed - an Ultra, a Dark Angel, a Space Wolf and BAs (...sounds like the start of a bad bar joke....).

There were an Ultramarine, a Dark Angel, a Space Wolf and a Blood Angels at a bar.
The Ultramarine was like: "We are the greatest chapter, you're a bunch of half traitor, werewolf-vikings and spriklin' vampire scum"
and the Dark Angel was like: "but we have Knights Terminator and a Land Dj-set! Brother Tiesto, drop the Emprah bass on these heretics!"
and the Wolf was like: "At least we have fun, beer and bitches"
and the Blood Angels was like: "We have Deepstrikin' Landriders, and Assoult Marines and Sanguinary Guard that don't scatter, and we have fuckin' MEPHISTON!"
needless to say, the Ultramarine felt really ashamed that day.

Ok, so not a joke, but still!

**wilsjur**

The avatar model and stats.

Also, I didn't want to be fascist (Imperium), anarchist (Chaos/Dark Eldar), or communist (Tau)

Automatically Appended Next Post:
Now I am tau, though

**Kaiserbudheim**

Works for me =D!

**theman99808**

Right now my main army is deathwing and I would have to guess the reason for that is because I a man crush on them. I started loving them with my first army (black templar) and have loved them ever since. Between my two armys I have close too 100 of the buggers.

**StarHunter25**

When I first started up, I went to a local hobby shop with my buddies whom already played. They gave me some pointers on what units where what, what armies did in general, etc. etc. Speehs murens gave me no interest what soever. What immediately grabbed my attention was the tyranids. Unfortunately for me, this was the beginning of 5th ed, which had almost literally been released like two weeks prior. That meant the horrors of nidzilla from the 4e dex were still turning everyone's corn flakes yellow. So after the four of them basically shaming the newbie into not getting the army he wanted, I went with Tau. They told me "Tau are awesome at shooting, its super hard to even get to them. Yeah, they're weak in CC, but they shoot REALLY WELL".

They lied. It was soon that I found out that many of the Tau's abilities were lacklustre, and the only real shiny thing they had where crisis suits (missile launcher bait) and railguns (intant primary!) I think in my first... eh.. twenty(?) games, I won two. I didnt get it at all. Really didnt help that all that I ever fought were drop pod SM and khorne berserker horde. About three weeks before the new dex was announced, I started a tyranid project in secret. Painted up a hive tyrant, got some warriors, got about twenty gribblies all painted up. Then the Crud-dex dropped. It took me a bit, but I started winning. Not all the time, but a pretty even mix of win/loss/draw. Then sixth dropped. Oh god did it drop on them. New psychic powers? Awesome. New MC rules? I GET COVER SAVES WITH MY TRYGON?!?!?! Wingaling tyrants are almost worth their point cost??? (before the whole 'Yes FMC get skyfire')

I haven't lost a game since.

Moral of the story? Friends are only friends until things get competitive.

**Adamantium**

I first started playing 4 months ago when my friend gave me some Tyranid models to start an army with.

At first, I didn't like them because I didn't understand how to use them and the game itself.

Now, nothing makes me happier than seeing my MCs destroy little humans. Truly a unique army with gorgeous models!

(although, my 40K first love will always be Space Wolves.... One day I will have enough to buy you)

**pwntallica**

Honestly, playing DA, it was my favorite colour. I love dark green! But to this day, after playing a few armies, I stay for the tactics (I also play my army as vanilla marines).

**tvih**

To make a quite long story short: originally because Space Marines have cool infantry armor. Then as I was thinking of starting I noticed they have cool-looking vehicles as well. Black Templars specifically because of the good color scheme and bad-ass fluff.

**Rippy**

I am new to 40k, and started collecting orks, as they seemed fun. After building a 500 point army, I was just looking through the games workshop armies for each faction, saw Typhus, did a lot of reading on the Death Guard, and now my orks are just collecting dust. Papa Nurgle is my true father now.

**Willi4mis**

Grey Knights, only for the fact that they are cheapest guys to get to table. When I started again after 10+ years of a pause and throwing all my old SM-minis somewhere, I had to start small and Gk had just gotten their cheesy dex. Starting to get fed up with them tho, im sick of painting steel. Maybe I start chaos next, rust and mutations everywhere!

**wolfmerc**

Inititially i was introduced to the hobby even before i was introduced to the hobby (um?). OK here is the story, my eldest brother was really interested in video gaming at the time (still is.) if there was a game he knew about it pretty much. so one day i see him playing a certain game. i hear these guys saying "GLORY FOR THE FIRST MAN TO DIE! CHAR..."
and i say to him, hey whats this game? I was about ten at that time so he made it pretty simple. "Its a sci-fi rts".

After he went to some sport's practice I would get home, hop on the computer, and fire up steam. I found the game called "Warhammer 40,000 Dawn of War ". I was quite enthused about playing the game. first thing i did was customize my own army (holy cow i can do that!?) I chose the most B.A thing that i found: ELDAR, kidding. I went with chaos. The lord looked sick!

I played 40k games for a while until i was told by one of my friends about it. I knew exactly what he was talking about, and an instant nerd fest occurred. This was about 2 years ago. Apparently from him I learned that there was a board game version of dawn of war. Boy was i surprised (i know, how could i play 40k without playing the real 40k!?). So he went with a couple metal guard, and he is still rocking that army to date. I went, obviously with chaos.

I just love being the GRIM DARKNESS of that faction. my first purchase was 5 chaos marines, and my army has grown from 5 models 10 over 1800 pts in the last 3 years. the 5 marines i have had for so long have been promoted to chosen.

When building my army and naming them i thought back to command and conquer, so I named them the Black Hand, and their colors are red and black. Im now getting Daemon allies, and i love the hobby part about 40k (converting, painting, stories)

TLDR: played Dow years and friend got me into it. 1800 pts strong.

So thats my story!

**AtomicEngineer**

I picked grey knights because I was tired of having weak units picked off by the other players. I prefer models with low count but hard hitting so i can micromanage more easy than say hordes of nids. I was also tired of seeing orks and nids blown up in there dozens by space marine fire. So I went to the extremes of finding the largest most armored most broken army I could find. So I bought Grey knights and some dredknights for safe measure.

Now I collect both grey knights and tau, because battlesuits are cool. Well honestly it was the sniper drone team that i love the most.