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I play orks and also have Tau/SM codexes, none of them seem complicated. When I'm at the gamestore I often feel I wouldn't play this game if I had started with Eldar or Daemons. I don't know if that is a testimonial that can be used to provide the "Who is dead 'ard to play" answer.

Every game I play, I sit down and make a list. Succesful lists tend to be 'Spam it' and 'Moar Boyz'. Are we saying who is hard to win with here? or are we trying to say which armies learning curve is too much?

Every army has a simple way to play that will work effectively against others. Granted my local Meta uses a lot of tau and terminator armies. Or the stacked chapter master tactics. So my gk list vs tau is hard (I don't draigo. I use Crowe) while my necrons eat up tau and sm.

If you are gonna say hard armies. I'm gonna say sm.

Overpriced units. Added in starting a sm army you buildaround a core set of units. Army flexibility in game is horrible. Oh my flyers are dead? Gg you win

De are glass cannons but your not foot slogging across a field. You use guerilla tactics. Keeping out of los cover saves and hit n run tactics.

The biggest thing I've found that makes armies hard. Is my person like of them.. I hate nids. I find them hard to play cos I hate the models

 Rismonite wrote:
I play orks and also have Tau/SM codexes, none of them seem complicated. When I'm at the gamestore I often feel I wouldn't play this game if I had started with Eldar or Daemons. I don't know if that is a testimonial that can be used to provide the "Who is dead 'ard to play" answer.

Every game I play, I sit down and make a list. Succesful lists tend to be 'Spam it' and 'Moar Boyz'. Are we saying who is hard to win with here? or are we trying to say which armies learning curve is too much?

Ya that's what I was wondering too.

As far as who has the steepest learning curve, I would probably agree with most of the people who said de, but once you learn the synergy between their units and how to use them effectively they are actually quite competitive even without their not so cool Eldar brothers.

The army that's hardest to win with would probably go to anything sm.

lots of you people are getting a hard army to play and a strong/weak army list confused.

Marines are not a hard army to play, they have average stat lines, hardy saves, lots of fire power, they are quintessential middle ground and always will be. they are designed for new players. please get your heads out of your asses..

Daemons have no regular saves, low model count, high point cost, high risk high reward. Similarly I put DE and Eldar in the same catagories though they obviously have regular saves, they are weak defensively high costing elite armies than when played by a bad will be TERRIBLE, even space marines played by a bad will be semi durable.

I would like to reiterate, this is not about what lists are strong/weak it is about what army is the hardest to play well.

IMO no army is hard to play. The easiest army to play is close enough to the hardest army to play that it doesn't really matter. Maybe Daemons gets a pass due to all the pre-game rolling and stuff.

What's more important than "how hard is my faction to play" is how good you are at playing the game itself. If you aren't aware of the more advanced tactics and never use things like focus fire, then it won't matter what army you play.

Admiral General Aladeen wrote:


Daemons have no regular saves, low model count, high point cost, high risk high reward.

With the notable exception of the khorne dog rush list. But yes I agree with your overall statement.

XXXX

Orks are pretty much useless to the extent that some games against Tau in particular are foregone conclusions as defeats because literally the only thing Orks have that can take down a Riptide is catching it in CC or rolling double sixes on the Shokk Attak Gun.

Good luck accomplishing either. The only Power Klaw delivery mechanism that is reliable enough to even reach a Riptide are Nob Bikerz, but that leaves you open to defeat in rock-paper-scissors match ups and being a deathstar you have to base your list around them, making playing Orks pretty monotonous.

Other than that, its probably a toss up between Chaos Space Marines and Dark Angels. In terms of the intelligent thinking you need to write and use a decent army, I'd say its considerably harder than Sisters. A ridiculous proportion of the units in both books are garbage, most notably Chaos Space Marine squads and Tactical Squads. They're just outclassed and not that good at anything.

Particularly because people who just bought Dark Vengeance get curb stomped without understanding why fielding some of the crappiest units imaginable (non TH/SS Deathwing, DA Tacticals, Hellbrutes, mixed CC weapon Chosen and that Chaos Lord with the terrible loadout) aren't effective.

With CSM, you don't have ATSKNF so leadership is a considerable issue, you don't get access to reliable delivery mechanisms like Drop Pods and victory seems to quite often come down to specific list anchor units like Helldrakes, Daemon Princes, deathstars and such doing well.

Upon reflection I honestly believe daemons are the most difficult army to play. DE are one of the hardest to make work. The amount of variables that the Daemon force must endure can be overwhelming. Such as rolling for a random item on a table when you upgrade your characters (although I never really use many of them), such as rolling a dice each turn that had the potential to possibly cripple your force. There are obviously builds that mitigate these random factors *cough Fateweaver but it still makes them the most complex force to currently play.


XXXX

Dark Eldar are only exceptionally hard if you've made some brain dead choices like buying Kabalites without transports or taking too many different units, if you're lacking in experience on how to effectively play 40k, or if you're playing an army that is pretty damn competitive and robust.

When I first played Dark Eldar, I had literally no experience with playing a fast, fragile army before, as I'd only played Space Marine mech, a tiny bit of Guard and a fair bit of Ork hordes.

I don't like to boast but the first and only 8 or 9 games I've played with them have been without a single defeat or draw. Unlike other Codexes they get very easy and convenient sources of AT, high strength AP2 and Anti-Infantry that absolutely decimate what they shoot, set up properly. Sure, it crumbles fast if your alpha strike was terrible or your list had too little redundancy, but there are a number of good tactics/fail safes like flicker/night fields, holding your fast forces in reserve to mitigate alpha strikes, putting a shadowfield Archon at the front of a group to soak up wounds, etc.

 Mr.Omega wrote:
Dark Eldar are only hard if you've made some brain dead choices like buying Kabalites without transports, if you're lacking in experience on how to effectively play 40k, or if you're playing an army that is pretty damn competitive and robust.

When I first played Dark Eldar, I had literally no experience with playing a fast, fragile army before, as I'd only played Space Marine mech, a tiny bit of Guard and a fair bit of Ork hordes.

I don't like to boast but the first and only 8 or 9 games I've played with them have been without a single defeat or draw. Unlike other Codexes they get very easy and convenient sources of AT, high strength AP2 and Anti-Infantry that absolutely decimate what they shoot, set up properly. Sure, it crumbles fast if your alpha strike was terrible or your list had too little redundancy, but there are a number of good tactics/fail safes like flicker/night fields, holding your fast forces in reserve to mitigate alpha strikes, putting a shadowfield Archon at the front of a group to soak up wounds, etc.

No they really are not. They suffer from a distinct lack of AA, their only real competitive list is blasterborn in venoms/beaststar and even these lists really do require a Farseer with shard on Anaris to function properly. Their own flyer is mediocre, typically coming in to late game according to its abilities to have a significant impact on the game. The only real reliable unit for holding objectives is wracks.
They lack the wealth of exceptional FA units you would expect form an army that runs like DE.
By the way an archon is near enough useless. His court sucks, he sucks in combat and will only kill 1 or 2 models a turn, the only real competitive application of a shadowfield is the one on the Barron for tanking hits on the beaststar.
A haemoculi is a far better hq choice, he allows wracks to score and become troops, he can also bring the horrific shattershard/Liquifier gun/crucible and grants FnP.
They are by no means an easy army to use of compete with. Not saying there aren't less capable armies but many of these have far more stable lists that don't require such fine tuning and impeccable playstyles.

XXXX

GoingtoHell wrote:

 Mr.Omega wrote:
Dark Eldar are only hard if you've made some brain dead choices like buying Kabalites without transports, if you're lacking in experience on how to effectively play 40k, or if you're playing an army that is pretty damn competitive and robust.

When I first played Dark Eldar, I had literally no experience with playing a fast, fragile army before, as I'd only played Space Marine mech, a tiny bit of Guard and a fair bit of Ork hordes.

I don't like to boast but the first and only 8 or 9 games I've played with them have been without a single defeat or draw. Unlike other Codexes they get very easy and convenient sources of AT, high strength AP2 and Anti-Infantry that absolutely decimate what they shoot, set up properly. Sure, it crumbles fast if your alpha strike was terrible or your list had too little redundancy, but there are a number of good tactics/fail safes like flicker/night fields, holding your fast forces in reserve to mitigate alpha strikes, putting a shadowfield Archon at the front of a group to soak up wounds, etc.

No they really are not. They suffer from a distinct lack of AA, their only real competitive list is blasterborn in venoms/beaststar and even these lists really do require a Farseer with shard on Anaris to function properly. Their own flyer is mediocre, typically coming in to late game according to its abilities to have a significant impact on the game. The only real reliable unit for holding objectives is wracks.
They lack the wealth of exceptional FA units you would expect form an army that runs like DE.
By the way an archon is near enough useless. His court sucks, he sucks in combat and will only kill 1 or 2 models a turn, the only real competitive application of a shadowfield is the one on the Barron for tanking hits on the beaststar.
A haemoculi is a far better hq choice, he allows wracks to score and become troops, he can also bring the horrific shattershard/Liquifier gun/crucible and grants FnP.
They are by no means an easy army to use of compete with. Not saying there aren't less capable armies but many of these have far more stable lists that don't require such fine tuning and impeccable playstyles.

XXXX

This is a one track, theoretical mindset.

The Razorwing is far from a bad unit, and while the Archon is more of a semi-competitive/casual choice, I've literally had a game at a tournament where I lost because 800 points worth of Imperial Guard tanks, infantry and flyers couldn't kill an Archon with a Shadow Field, the last model on the board, in the Relic, when he had two VP's and I had one from secondaries. Go figure.

The Razorwing has the versatility of being able to add additional hurt to infantry, it can easily attempt to kill any vehicle in the game at least semi-reliably, in an alpha strike , and while it isn't fantastic at killing other flyers two of them is sufficient to down most others. An ADL can be thrown in for more AA and a DL Ravager probably still has at least a 50:50 chance of scoring one hit.

The ignorance of claiming that the only competitive lists are blasterborn (good luck tackling Riptide/Wave Serpent spam there bud) or Beast Stars which I won't deny are effective astounds me. In the majority of those 9 games I used Gunboat Kabalites and Splinter Cannonborns in Venoms, typically with Reavers for turbo-boosting on 36'' from reserves and mincing a unit, absorbing fire and adding AP2/AT fire and the odd Razorwing.

At the last 5/6 Tournaments I went to, the only flyer spam armies that stick out to me are A) FMC circuses, only one of which won one of said tournaments, before the drop of Eldar B) This one chap who brought 3 Storm Talons, 2 Storm Ravens and still lost 3/5 games, and C) At a 600 points doubles event, one guy spent most of his points on 3 Dakka Jets, and went on to lose 2 games out of 3.

Now bearing in mind that's a varied sample, with two of those being GW Tournaments with players from several stores in a large radius attending, one being practice for an ETC team, and the others being at a popular gaming venue where the majority of the nastiest lists were fielded, I'd say that says a lot.

They're not easy to compete with, they're just not nearly as hard to play as Dark Angels (well, non Ravenwing, and even that's sub optimal to begin with), Orks or Chaos Space Marines are in their current states. With decent application of common sense they're easily very effective, and its a time honoured tale that people who've never faced DE before get white-washed for good reason.

I completely agree with OMEGA on the subject of Dark Eldar. They're certainly not the army I would recommend for a newcomer to 40K (unless they had previous experience with glass cannon armies in other games) but any decent player with a bit of experience will do well with them. I think they are clearly a top end tier 2 army at the very least, and while they don't seem to win many tournaments, they frequently do very well. In fact, more often than not, when they do turn up they often play "Kingmaker" by tearing apart MC heavy top tear lists like Riptide or Wraith Knight spam and Flying Circus lists. I honestly believe that if you see a tournament won by a non-tier one army (Tau, Eldar or Daemons) chances are good it's because there was a Dark Eldar player there. The DE player might not win the tournament himself, but if he's there there's at least a decent chance that another Tier 2 army might take the prize.

Once you figure out how to play keep-away and learn to kill the other guys scoring units first, DE are actually fairly simple to play.

On the other hand, CSM and DA are clearly tier 3 armies. Even many 5th edition codices consistently out-perform them at tournaments. They suffer from all the complaints made about SM armies (in particular, playing a premium for a 3+ armour save in a meta full of AP3 and/or rending weapons) but with bells on. Basic CSM's are too expensive even compared with normal tactical marines, especially if you pay the extra points required to make then effective. How often do you see CSM's rather than cultists? Even in non-tournament games. Sure Helldrakes and Oblits are good at what they do, but the current tier ones have plenty of ways to take them out of the game almost as soon as they appear on the board.

Flame Shield up. I am treating this question literally, who is the most difficult to play NOT to mean who is the hardest to win with (Lord knows we have enough of those).

In my opinion, it's Guard. Between Command Squads and Companies and Platoons and Orders and monochromatic paint jobs most of the time and shooting phases that take forever and, you need like 4 differnt colors of dice or it takes longer. I suppose it fits the fluff of the Guard; Bureaucratic!

Matches using or fighting against Guard always feels like a trip to the DMV.

Deathwing, hands down is the hardest army to play.

I don't agree with CSM and DA being especially difficult to play. The challenge with CSM and DA is list-building, mainly because their codex's just suck. Once you have a good list going they aren't hard to actually play on the battlefield though, insofar as things like positioning and on-board strategy. They play... like marines.

I give Dark Eldar the vote. Even if you manage to get a good list out there, the amount of micro-management it takes to keep your frail, expensive guys alive can be quite intensive. Eldar are similar, but Dark Eldar don't have battle focus to help with their mobility, nor do they have nigh unkillable troop transports or high-durability jump MC weapon platforms.

@omega
You think marines and chaos are harder to play? Tactical squads have ATSKNF,and chaos space marines have t4... Sisters are t3 with no ATSKNF. I don't see how the latter two are worse than a sister battle squad...

I'd say either Dark Eldar or Sisters of Battle. Dark Eldar are a solid codex, don't get me wrong, but they require a very delicate balancing act to get right. Sisters are just so limited it really gives them almost no room to maneuver.

Outside of a few ridiculously spammy options, Necrons can suffer from being hard to figure out. Like Dark Eldar, they tend to operate best from short range, so it can be an onerous task to find the sweet spot where you can hammer your opponent with your full firepower, but not get your face torn off by a chainsword.

And out of the armies I play, Dark Eldar take it hands down. It's like walking a highwire. From list-building to deployment to every turn of the game, there is zero room for error. Every point, every move seems like it matters. It makes for a much more challenging game.

Tactix is never hard. It's either cunning or stupid. It's cunning when u're using distractions, when you trick an opponent, when u're using some non-straight forward and constantly changing tactical approach, when an opponent can't predict your moves. And stupid tactics is when it's predictable. Usually it's gunline cause an opponent can be 100% sure what u're doing next. So armies that allow you go unpredictable need some 'taktikul genyus'. Almost every army provides such opportunities. The problem is it's not as easy and effective like a single deathstar, serpentspam or triptides with broadsides.

 Mr.Omega wrote:

At the last 5/6 Tournaments I went to, the only flyer spam armies that stick out to me are A) FMC circuses, only one of which won one of said tournaments, before the drop of Eldar B) This one chap who brought 3 Storm Talons, 2 Storm Ravens and still lost 3/5 games, and C) At a 600 points doubles event, one guy spent most of his points on 3 Dakka Jets, and went on to lose 2 games out of 3.

Was that war of the roses by any chance bud?. Was that the one the fmc player won it?, whats your name feel free to pm? .

toocool61 wrote:
@omega
You think marines and chaos are harder to play? Tactical squads have ATSKNF,and chaos space marines have t4... Sisters are t3 with no ATSKNF. I don't see how the latter two are worse than a sister battle squad...

ATSKNF has stopped being a large factor in my games as my marines just end up DEAD, not running away. Quit pimping ATSKNF because it doesn't much help anymore. It's almost always better to just have more bullet catchers now.

@martel732
How did I pimp it? I stated they have the rule, which is more useful than not having it at all.it helps in assault to not get run down, and you can auto regroup. Sisters at LD8 and I3 would really benefit from that. Stats wise sisters are way inferior to marines of any kind. I'm sure marine players don't have to worry about being swept in combat while sister players have to try their hardest to make sure they never get into combat. That's all I'm saying is that there is less liability if marines are in assault because unless they aren't swept, they'll stay in combat, and if they run away they'll just come back to fight. No pimping, just stating the rule and showing the benefits it has versus not having it

Owning quite a few (see sig) and having a club that features all the ones I don't own...

Tough Ten:

DE = wow, from list building, to SRs, to tactics, so much room for error

Sisters = so much on timing and positioning, though list building isn't that bad.

Orks = CAN do well, but you are squeezing every drop out to make it work. But if you know your local meta, orks can counter meta build better than any other bottom tier dex.

BA, DA, and CSM = just under powered for the meta. I don't put BA below the other too, as non-traditional builds can do well enough to only be as bad as DA (which is a good, just eclipsed dex) and CSM which has some good builds, but not many good units and horrible internal balance

Daemons (but not screamer or Dog Star) = so much risk and synergy work required to do well, Belakor has helped.

IG (not flyer spam) = lots to keep track of, tons of 6th ed nerfs, so many things that screw them over (drakes, FMC with great invulns, Death Stars, LR as heavy, etc).

Heresy era = we have quite a few of these and they're just under powered as a whole. Great units in some spots, but CSM bad troops.

Space Marines = there actually is a fairly high curve on winning with SM against anything not on this list and a decent challenge in facing many on this list. I might also note that list building a non-bike army seems to really cause players problem with this dex too.

 Lobukia wrote:
Owning quite a few (see sig) and having a club that features all the ones I don't own...

Tough Ten:

DE = wow, from list building, to SRs, to tactics, so much room for error

Sisters = so much on timing and positioning, though list building isn't that bad.

Orks = CAN do well, but you are squeezing every drop out to make it work. But if you know your local meta, orks can counter meta build better than any other bottom tier dex.

BA, DA, and CSM = just under powered for the meta. I don't put BA below the other too, as non-traditional builds can do well enough to only be as bad as DA (which is a good, just eclipsed dex) and CSM which has some good builds, but not many good units and horrible internal balance

Daemons (but not screamer or Dog Star) = so much risk and synergy work required to do well, Belakor has helped.

IG (not flyer spam) = lots to keep track of, tons of 6th ed nerfs, so many things that screw them over (drakes, FMC with great invulns, Death Stars, LR as heavy, etc).

Heresy era = we have quite a few of these and they're just under powered as a whole. Great units in some spots, but CSM bad troops.

Space Marines = there actually is a fairly high curve on winning with SM against anything not on this list and a decent challenge in facing many on this list. I might also note that list building a non-bike army seems to really cause players problem with this dex too.

I largely agree with this, but BA are hands down the worst codex in the game.

Martel732 wrote:

 Lobukia wrote:
Owning quite a few (see sig) and having a club that features all the ones I don't own...

Tough Ten:

DE = wow, from list building, to SRs, to tactics, so much room for error

Sisters = so much on timing and positioning, though list building isn't that bad.

Orks = CAN do well, but you are squeezing every drop out to make it work. But if you know your local meta, orks can counter meta build better than any other bottom tier dex.

BA, DA, and CSM = just under powered for the meta. I don't put BA below the other too, as non-traditional builds can do well enough to only be as bad as DA (which is a good, just eclipsed dex) and CSM which has some good builds, but not many good units and horrible internal balance

Daemons (but not screamer or Dog Star) = so much risk and synergy work required to do well, Belakor has helped.

IG (not flyer spam) = lots to keep track of, tons of 6th ed nerfs, so many things that screw them over (drakes, FMC with great invulns, Death Stars, LR as heavy, etc).

Heresy era = we have quite a few of these and they're just under powered as a whole. Great units in some spots, but CSM bad troops.

Space Marines = there actually is a fairly high curve on winning with SM against anything not on this list and a decent challenge in facing many on this list. I might also note that list building a non-bike army seems to really cause players problem with this dex too.

I largely agree with this, but BA are hands down the worst codex in the game.

Ya I might have to agree with that mostly due to the other armies having at least that one unit that can swing the tide of the game like heldrakes (although nothing comes to mind for da, but at least they have cheaper dudes and wargear), ba have what? really expensive death company?

It's just a codex full of overcosted units that lack efficacy in practice. BA were expensive and elite in 5th and now they are just overpriced Eldar bait.

I think Eldar Corsairs might actually take the prize given they are like Dark Eldar but without all the little durability tricks... they miss out on most of the stronger Eldar stuff and two of their three main builds are extremely fragile elite amies that require absolutely precise application of firepower in decisive fashion to have any hope of winning. The third build is missing out on some stuff it would really like to have and not what comes to mind when you think of Corsairs.

But they are very much due an update so they might end up becoming easier than DE in the next few days.

Sisters are quite difficult. Their basic units are overpriced and the acts of faith took a Nerf bat in the face in their latest update. Also they suffer from a lack of assault transport access to try and deal with units like the Riptide. AFAIK even orks (mega nobz in bat wgn) and deldar (duke s) end up allied in with tourney competitive lists. Sisters best unit the exorcist is too unreliable for most tourney players who also don't want the troops and HQ choices to unlock it. Sometimes you'll get lucky with sisters and pull off some critical 6+ saves but you certainly can't count on them.

DE really aren't thaaaat hard to play. Sure, compared to Tau or Guard, yeah they're tricksy. Really though, just stay at the edge of your range band and focus fire things till they're dead. Next turn, run away to the edge of your range band and repeat. Try to hide your troops while keeping the opponent busy with a beast pack and hope to God you aren't playing against Necrons.

Hands down, it's SoB. Your a Marine army with t3 and no ATSKNF. Absolutely horrific, point for point, in combat, but your only 2 gun choices are 12" range or a flamer template. The only thing they really have going for them Exorcists (which while great for the points are unreliable), Bolter Spam (would have been a LOT better in the beginning of 6th ed), and some cool pieces of wargear/hq choices which mostly only function effectively as an allied detachment for Guard.

Another thing that really bothers me is everyone ranting on an on about how invincible Wave Serpents are. They're great, don't get me wrong, but what makes them so hard to kill? We all know how easy Rhino's are to kill right? Hullpoints and all.. AV12 isn't that big of a deal comparatively, and who the hell cares about the shield for defensive purposes? It only stays up if there's a meltagun in its face. Again.. hullpoints. +1AV and +1(over standard) Cover makes a transport invincible? Me thinks not.

Nobody is calling Devilfish invincible and they have AV12 with a 3+ cover save.

Wave Serpents are fast skimmers with a 36" and 60" gun. They get a 4+ cover save and are AV 12. The +1 AV and +1 cover make a huge difference in how much firepower it takes to glance them out, which is what most lists are forced to do.

And for lists with lots of lascannons, leaving them shield up IS an option, making the lascannon little better than a ML.

If the Eldar player wants to stay 60" away from me, that's fine. I'll gladly move up to center and take control of the board.

Otherwise, they are hardly any more difficult to kill than a Rhino behind a ruin. 90% of tournaments have at least two big ruins, usually three.

You kill Wave Serpents the same way you kill Rhinos; it really isn't that hard..

What decent list is spamming Lascannon's these days? Only one I can think of is FW IG.