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I've been going hard on my Blood Angels army for quite some time now and I'm getting slightly bored with painting red haha. So, I want to start a new army so I can switch back and forth for when I get bored with each. I love building and painting so far, I might not be the best at it but I find it interesting and rewarding. I want an army that will play differently than Blood Angels. I don't really want Imperial Guard though, they just seem uninteresting to me.
So what is different than Blood Angels that can be fun to collect, build, paint, and in end play with?
Any suggestions for me?

Almost all armies are going to be different from Blood Angels. What kind of play style are you looking for? Do you want power armor? Whats your favorite color? There's a LOT of options. The best way to get a good answer is to narrow it down a bit.

Tyranids are the best

Well I want an unusual color for the army, I know that much. I really like the look of the Salamander Space Marines, with their bright green armor. Or I was thinking Eldar and some bright colors. Even Tyranids have some great color schemes, but they seem like they would be such a hassle to paint.
My list of possibilities right now:
- Salamander Space Marines (love the color and the flamer/Multi-Melta theme)
- Imperial Fists Space Marines (strictly color as I don't know much about them, although yellow is tough to paint)
- Eldar (although I heard there's a new codex on the way)
- Dark Eldar
- Chaos Space Marines (love the models, but seems like they are very detailed and I'm not an excellent painter)
- Tyranids (alien swarm. Definitely different than my Blood Angels, but look extremely hard to paint)

As you can see I like Space Marines and I want to be able to paint them myself to a decent tabletop standard, without a crazy amount of difficulty with each model. I love the fluff of Warhammer 40k too.

This is going to be harder than I thought...

Help us help you...

Do you want to stay power armor?

Do you want a total shooty army that sucks at CC?

Do you want to dominate the psychics?

Really BA is one small aspect of the game so we need a little more info to assist you.

RickS1169 wrote:
Even Tyranids have some great color schemes, but they seem like they would be such a hassle to paint.

Tyranids are one of the easiest armies to paint to tabletop standard, because being mostly organic they take insanely well to washes.

Prime them white or a pale version of the colour you want. Get a darker wash of the same colour and slather them with the wash.If you want, do a bit of relayering of the original colour. For the armour, pick a colour, paint it, wash it darker, and feather a highlight onto it (this is that method you see a lot on Tyranids where you do the highlight as a series of stripes).

For example, this is scheme:



Was done by priming white, using Badab Black in the skin recesses and pink in the squidgy bits. Vermin Brown armour. Whole model washed Devlan mud. Then Bleached Bone feathered onto the armour edges.

This person also won numerous Best Painted and Best Tyranid Army awards in Australia, so not bad for such a simple method.

I'm thinking I should go either Salamanders or Tyranids. I even found some Tyranid models from a few years ago that are built but not primed or painted in my closet. So I guess I can give those few a whirl and see how I feel about it.
I've only had about 10 games in with my Blood Angels army and haven't played against Tyranids before.

How do they play?

I know just from general knowledge they have strictly CC oriented units and some heavy hitters but other than that I'm clueless.

RickS1169 wrote:
I know just from general knowledge they have strictly CC oriented units and some heavy hitters but other than that I'm clueless.

General knowledge is wrong in this case - Tyranids have never been an assault oriented army. While they have some heavy hitting assault units, they're primarily a short ranged army. They rely on impressive weight of fire at the 12"-24" range to inflict casualties before finishing units off with well timed assaults, with a few heavy hitting assault only units sneaking around in there waiting to pounce.

Go Nids or Dark Eldar.

Mainly because they are the two coolest.

I sold off my nids, but they were pretty easy to paint. I find large flat armor much harder than organic or cloth. All you need is some wash and some drybrushes.

If you're not cool enough to play Nids or DE, then wait for Eldar.

Tyranids are my choice, most fun to paint, offer a lot of different play styles. paint colors are fun to pick out too. just look at nature like the poison dart arrow frogs. ive seen simple paint jobs go great(like seen above) seen really basic, (brown carapace, lighter brown everything else) my favorite has been someone who used the metalic oil paint, purple to green oil sheen, on the carapace and gave it a beetle look. Ive played Dark Eldar too, but Nids were more fun for me.

With BA being so assault focussed, it's probably gonna be fun to pick a more shooting-based army. I'd say, the most interesting, different, army that can be shooting based, is dark eldar, Though tau are now new, good, and really cool in the model department

I would say make your own chapter! Come up with a crazy color combo that you like, and build it using Salamander Rules or really ANY power armor codex. I use my army as DA/BA/C:SM depending on what I feel like. It gives you a lot of freedom so you won't get bored. Just my .02

UnadoptedPuppy wrote:
I would say make your own chapter! Come up with a crazy color combo that you like, and build it using Salamander Rules or really ANY power armor codex. I use my army as DA/BA/C:SM depending on what I feel like. It gives you a lot of freedom so you won't get bored. Just my .02

When you're bored with a power armour army, the worst thing you can do is start another power armour army. While they all have little quirks, they're essentially the same. All you're doing is trading something you're bored with for something you're bored with.

 -Loki- wrote:

UnadoptedPuppy wrote:
I would say make your own chapter! Come up with a crazy color combo that you like, and build it using Salamander Rules or really ANY power armor codex. I use my army as DA/BA/C:SM depending on what I feel like. It gives you a lot of freedom so you won't get bored. Just my .02

When you're bored with a power armour army, the worst thing you can do is start another power armour army. While they all have little quirks, they're essentially the same. All you're doing is trading something you're bored with for something you're bored with.

He didn't say he was bored with power armor, just bored painting red. In fact, he said he likes Space Marines.

But there's a reason BA/DA/C:SM aren't in one big book, they all play differently. Yes, they are all essentially the same (power armor) but the army mechanics are different. With DA you have the DW/RW, which are unique (C:SM has bike lists, but they do NOT play the same as RW) and can be combined to his liking with each other or power armor. BA gives you the fast vehicles and assault if thats the route you want to take, and C:SM itself has a ton of different builds.

It comes down to Space Marines are easy to paint, which the OP says is sort of important, and that if you use different a different Codex every once and a while you can achieve completely different builds, keeping things interesting without having to buy a whole new army. And when creating your own chapter the color scheme is entirely up to the painter.

Eldar are the best. They can be anything, but are not anything like space marines (just wait for the new codex)