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I have to stay that I recently started using Daemons Flying Circus and it is a MUCH harder army to play than any I have played before, by a wide margin. I played a tournament yesterday and I felt mentally and physically drained afterwards. There was just so much to keep track of and you have to place everything just right in the movement phase.

Orks are the simplest army from a list building perspective, but a win with Orks is like that one time you were asleep and were dreaming you could fly and could control the dream. It's like sipping a Mai Tai on waikiki with your swimsuit model girlfriend. It's like saving puppies from a house fire. It's like winning the Super Bowl with a junior varsity high school team.

Mostly playing Orks are like an eternal Monday at a cubicle farm in Mumbai. And despite having a PhD the person on the other end of the phone thinks you're an idiot.

Daemons are the ones that look like the most complicated to play (most rules, most random element etc). But they do have a lot of good competitive units and the random elements can go for the player as well as against.

I think Necrons are the hardest to play in terms of dealing with other players hatred.

sob for the previous reasons plus no dedicated anti flyer in the list, no effective delivery method for your only effective assult unit which only has a 5+ invul. they are guard in power armour without the long range firepower! The exorcist is variable and can't do much vs av 14, dominions are solid but rely on reserve rolls which we can't modify and basic sisters are overpriced.
this edition has so many benefits derived from psychic powers and our faith system doesn't match it at all!
having played them since they came out i have to say gw just doesn't seem to get them or care.
the repressor in all its fluff is an assault vehicle, hell it even says assault ramps in one description. make the reprssor an assault vehicle, give uriah and kyrinof access to raiders and price them halfway between guards man and marines and I can live without the anti flyer.
i would say sob and orcs the hardest 2 hands down to win with!

Keeping to only learning the rules of the game on, I would agree that sisters are hard, but I don't know any of their rules. Based on what I know though, it would definitely be IG. The main reason being that they have an extra phase. If you forget about it, even for just a turn, you're sunk.

 hippesthippo wrote:

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.

Well the priests do allow you to take plasma guns, and also fix the lack of ATSKNF by making the sisters fearless. but at that point with the 40ish point priest you're paying for the unit regular marine prices per model for T3 marines which still do still die a lot easier, and the 6+ save doesn't make up for it. They do also suffer however from a lack of range which is a severe disadvantage from the usual suspects, Eldar. And no effective skyfire other than the lucky exorcist + prescience result in which an AP1 pen gets through. Of course assuming the exorcists survive the fliers coming on board in the first place.

In terms of which army is hardest to play without regards to winning, the answer would be Daemons. There are just so many tables and random effects to keep up with.

With regards to winning my money would be on Deathwing.

Dark Eldar, for all the reasons stated previously i.e glass hammer and very unforgiving of mistakes.

Cardboard skimmer armour and PVC bikinis don't offer much survivability.

I also play Sisters and although they are not easy to win with they are a lot more straightforward than DE.

Just my twopence worth though.

Dark Eldar are the hardest. It´s already a challenge to transport those flimsy vehicles without breaking everything...

If you played a full venom/raider mounted DE army, I'm pretty sure it should come out on top of a deathwing list.

You have massed weight of fire for the infantry, and lances for any landraiders.

Tau before the update (and they are now one of the easiest to play, go figure). Before the new codex, you had to know all the loopholes and rule abuses to be able to win, and one small mistake could end in disaster. I had to memorize the rulebook in minute detail to be able to win. When I think about it that might be one of the reason tha tau are such a power house noe, because you have lots of players who had to be extremely tactically smart to win, and who now have an extremely powerful codex.,

Yeah, I just don't see Sisters as hard to play, more just hard to win. DE is herding cats while playing Magic, Sisters is more like heartache, as you know you're being cheated on, but just can't prove it... Orks is the charge of the light brigade. BA is being a Cubs fan. Poor CSM is just the MAC champion playing the SEC champ in a bowl game.

No one else mentioned Dark Angels? I guess they are not "hard to play" per se, they are just really bad. We're gimped space marines, that have ONE worthwhile unique unit in our Ravenwing Black Knights, but then again they are 42 points a freakin' dude and are just T5 3+ dudes with skilled rider. They die quick; they just put the hurt on things before sputtering out spectacularly.

We have to pay a points premium on everything and unlike Blood Angels, Orks, Space Wolves, Necron and Dark Eldar, we don't have the fact the codex was written for an older edition in our favor.

Not to mention Tau eat us for breakfest. No cover saves = dead bikers. Mass units with interceptor = dead terminators. Our power armor space marines are clearly inferior to that of Codex Marines, therefore we're just not terribly good.

For me the hardest to play are dark eldar there just so squishy, though saying that if you get it right or are against an elite army there really nasty, make a mistake or get dismounted your dead. The next and possibly on level is deamons in this Shooty edition the codex is 90% cc though if your up to it there's the star and or flying circus builds.
These two are my hardest to play.

 tommse wrote:
Dark Eldar are the hardest. It´s already a challenge to transport those flimsy vehicles without breaking everything...

+1 for you hombre.

Pretty difficult to play with this guys with all their pointy bits that snag and break on the foam. I still thing the way the command structure of blob IG works makes a game tedious. Also took a read through the Daemon codex and it's warpstorm table, exalted / greater / lesser gift tables and some other stuff and said to myself, I ain't got time for that :p

I'm really trying to keep this from being another stale variant on "What's the hardest army to win with?"

 hippesthippo wrote:
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.

You can take this argument and apply it to any army. "Army X isn't so hard to plaaaaay. Just do Y and Z and you'll be okay!" Yes, that's how 40K works, you maximize your armies strengths while trying to prevent your enemy from capitalizing on their weaknesses. The question is how easy is it to maximize your army's strength while protecting its weaknesses? For Dark Eldar, it's pretty difficult. Boards are only so large, and almost every popular army in the game right now either has a plethora of long-range weaponry or moves fast enough to render your turtling pointless. By your own admission, Tau, IG and Necrons (though Eldar and Daemons should be added to that list) rock Dark Eldar socks. What's what? Oh right... those armies also make up like 75% of the competitive meta right now.

 BlaxicanX wrote:

 hippesthippo wrote:
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.

The question is how easy is it to maximize your army's strength while protecting its weaknesses?

Pfft are you kidding me? At the very least for the first part, the last thing any DE player is probably worried about is whether they can maximise enough strength or not.

The basic Venom transport with SC upgrade puts out 12 shots at BS4 that wound on 4's always, which is on average 4 wounds against anything. And that's before you even get to the occupants. The only reason it isn't an autotake is because you also get to choose between it and a transport that can carry even more killy passengers, and buff their shooting to absurd levels with a 10 pt upgrade, and can kill any vehicle in the game with its main AT weapon.

For 105 points, you get a skimmer that can reliably kill any vehicle without defensive ability shenanigans (possibly Serpents) in the game. And move 12'' and fire all weapons at full BS. That's mental. Seriously, AT/Anti-MC, issues which every other army frequently suffers from (latter more than the former) are barely an issue at all. The whole Codex is a wash with easy choices outside of your HQ selection, the only real challenge is making sure you utilize them effectively and don't fall prone to your weaknesses. The same can't be said for Dark Angels, where no unit is an easy choice and some units become far, far less useful instantly against certain lists, for instance.

For defensive actions, its as simple as buying Nightshields and/or Flickerfields, the latter as insurance you'll get a save and the former to make the odds of being bolter'd to death easily in a double tap attempt low. Failing that, the easiest, most convenient way of saving any unit is to not even put it on the table. Throw it in reserves and get an alpha strike, even if your opponent is defensive you're moving 12'' a turn alone in your skimmers in the movement phase, 6'' flat out and you also can purchase Aether Sails to make this tactic even more viable. This even increases your jink to a 50:50 chance of succeeding. Or, you could have taken a Web Way Portal and gained even more range.

Now you know how many decent defensive actions a Rhino can take? One. 5+ cover save from Smoke Launchers you get to use once, and have to sacrifice 6'' movement in the shooting phase to use. Driving on from reserves isn't viable. There's no nightshields, and you certainly cannot spam them and their respective squads effectively outside of Inquisition/SOB, maybe.

 hippesthippo wrote:
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.

Did I honestly just read that a wave serpent is as easy to kill as a rhino??? Really???


Automatically Appended Next Post:
First of all, what is a rhino doing behind a ruin? Shooting its storm bolter? Oh you mean you can move it up to a ruin whilst advancing? Because if you are mid board nobody will think of flanking to get side armour and negate the ruin?
Oh look my melta did jack due to that serp shield. Good job rhinos get the same benefit. Oh no - wait a minute...
Its alright though - we can rip both apart in combat. Oh crud! Looks like we cant even catch that slippery serpent.
Its ok lets pod in. Oh no - its just flown to the other side of the board.
Ok lets try and get side shots (even though side armour is the same), oh begger - the serpent has outmanouvered our outmanouver.
Screw it lets get airsupport on their arse... agggghhhh were being shattered by tl st7 shots. Bail bail bail! Boom!

Dont worry though. We'll set a rhino on them!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Remember a rhino wants to get in close. Very hard to stay in cover when you need to get close. Also short range AT is something serpents dont need to worry about. If the non eldar player has mass st 6/7/8 shots the eldar player can shoot the shield and outshoot them. If the non eldar player has few st 8/9/10 shots, the eldar player will keep their shields up and outshoot their opponent. Its lose-lose.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
The only reliable marine weapon for its points against serps is grav weaponary. And thats only IF you play that grav weapons ignore vehicle cover saves.

Poly Ranger wrote:

 hippesthippo wrote:
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.

Did I honestly just read that a wave serpent is as easy to kill as a rhino??? Really???


Automatically Appended Next Post:
First of all, what is a rhino doing behind a ruin? Shooting its storm bolter? Oh you mean you can move it up to a ruin whilst advancing? Because if you are mid board nobody will think of flanking to get side armour and negate the ruin?
Oh look my melta did jack due to that serp shield. Good job rhinos get the same benefit. Oh no - wait a minute...
Its alright though - we can rip both apart in combat. Oh crud! Looks like we cant even catch that slippery serpent.
Its ok lets pod in. Oh no - its just flown to the other side of the board.
Ok lets try and get side shots (even though side armour is the same), oh begger - the serpent has outmanouvered our outmanouver.
Screw it lets get airsupport on their arse... agggghhhh were being shattered by tl st7 shots. Bail bail bail! Boom!

Dont worry though. We'll set a rhino on them!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Remember a rhino wants to get in close. Very hard to stay in cover when you need to get close. Also short range AT is something serpents dont need to worry about. If the non eldar player has mass st 6/7/8 shots the eldar player can shoot the shield and outshoot them. If the non eldar player has few st 8/9/10 shots, the eldar player will keep their shields up and outshoot their opponent. Its lose-lose.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
The only reliable marine weapon for its points against serps is grav weaponary. And thats only IF you play that grav weapons ignore vehicle cover saves.

Not to derail, but that IS the RAW interpretation of that interaction.

I do agree with it too. Mainly because I hate serpents even more than UKIP (and that's saying something the xenophobic b*stards!)

Serpents should be good,no doubt, but to be this good, they need to cost more. I don't begrudge any army powerful models, as long as they are costed appropriately.

 Mr.Omega wrote:
Pfft are you kidding me? At the very least for the first part, the last thing any DE player is probably worried about is whether they can maximise enough strength or not.

Is english your first language? There is a difference between "use your strengths", and "use strength".

I bring it up because your entire post was a lengthy rant that didn't really address anything I said. Pointing out that the Dark Eldar have strong units means nothing. If whether or not an army has strong units is indicative of the difficulty it takes to play it, than there is no hardest army to play.

 BlaxicanX wrote:

 hippesthippo wrote:
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.

You can take this argument and apply it to any army. "Army X isn't so hard to plaaaaay. Just do Y and Z and you'll be okay!" Yes, that's how 40K works, you maximize your armies strengths while trying to prevent your enemy from capitalizing on their weaknesses. The question is how easy is it to maximize your army's strength while protecting its weaknesses? For Dark Eldar, it's pretty difficult. Boards are only so large, and almost every popular army in the game right now either has a plethora of long-range weaponry or moves fast enough to render your turtling pointless. By your own admission, Tau, IG and Necrons (though Eldar and Daemons should be added to that list) rock Dark Eldar socks. What's what? Oh right... those armies also make up like 75% of the competitive meta right now.

I never said those armies rock DE's socks. What I said, quite clearly, was that Tau and IG are easy armies to play. Basically, point, shoot, and don't forget to move forward at some point. I mentioned nothing about Eldar with respect to DE. The only army I specifically mentioned curbstomps DE is Necrons.. that's because DE don't have any anti-air and Tesla is tailor-made for wrecking light vehicles.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Poly Ranger wrote:

 hippesthippo wrote:
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.

Did I honestly just read that a wave serpent is as easy to kill as a rhino??? Really???


Automatically Appended Next Post:
First of all, what is a rhino doing behind a ruin? Shooting its storm bolter? Oh you mean you can move it up to a ruin whilst advancing? Because if you are mid board nobody will think of flanking to get side armour and negate the ruin?
Oh look my melta did jack due to that serp shield. Good job rhinos get the same benefit. Oh no - wait a minute...
Its alright though - we can rip both apart in combat. Oh crud! Looks like we cant even catch that slippery serpent.
Its ok lets pod in. Oh no - its just flown to the other side of the board.
Ok lets try and get side shots (even though side armour is the same), oh begger - the serpent has outmanouvered our outmanouver.
Screw it lets get airsupport on their arse... agggghhhh were being shattered by tl st7 shots. Bail bail bail! Boom!

Dont worry though. We'll set a rhino on them!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Remember a rhino wants to get in close. Very hard to stay in cover when you need to get close. Also short range AT is something serpents dont need to worry about. If the non eldar player has mass st 6/7/8 shots the eldar player can shoot the shield and outshoot them. If the non eldar player has few st 8/9/10 shots, the eldar player will keep their shields up and outshoot their opponent. Its lose-lose.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
The only reliable marine weapon for its points against serps is grav weaponary. And thats only IF you play that grav weapons ignore vehicle cover saves.

Look, if you can't figure out how to wreck an AV12, 3HP vehicle, I'm not sure I can progress this conversation any further. Yes, Serpents are mobile, but they have to move into midfield at some point if they want to win a tournament mission. You do know that Rhino's can move 18", right? And come with Smoke Launchers? No, they don't have any offensive capability, but that has nothing do with durability. I never said a Rhino would win a head-to-head dual with a Wave Serpent either. Don't make asinine assumptions.

AV12, 3HP, 4+ Cover, does not make a vehicle invincible. k? It will crumble to most of the same things that can kill Rhinos. Do I need to bust out some math for popular "light vehicle killers"? A unit of Broadsides will kill either vehicle. An Annihilation Barge will kill either vehicle. Etc., Etc. Yes, you can sit back 60" and avoid being shot at. You're also avoiding taking control of the board aka winning the game.

 hippesthippo wrote:
Look, if you can't figure out how to wreck an AV12, 3HP vehicle, I'm not sure I can progress this conversation any further.

People who act like Wave Serpents are just Rhinos are the ones not worth talking to.

SRSFACE wrote:
No one else mentioned Dark Angels? I guess they are not "hard to play" per se, they are just really bad. We're gimped space marines, that have ONE worthwhile unique unit in our Ravenwing Black Knights, but then again they are 42 points a freakin' dude and are just T5 3+ dudes with skilled rider. They die quick; they just put the hurt on things before sputtering out spectacularly.

We have to pay a points premium on everything and unlike Blood Angels, Orks, Space Wolves, Necron and Dark Eldar, we don't have the fact the codex was written for an older edition in our favor.

Not to mention Tau eat us for breakfest. No cover saves = dead bikers. Mass units with interceptor = dead terminators. Our power armor space marines are clearly inferior to that of Codex Marines, therefore we're just not terribly good.

Blood Angels play for Vet Sgt and our Marines are more expensive.
You get Terminators and Bikers as troop, and you have something BA doesn't. Good HQ's. Your Chapter Master is cheaper and better than Dante in pretty much every way. Your Librarians are fairly priced.
And Codex point is irrelevant. Having an old codex doesn't make BA any better compared to others.

toocool61 wrote:
Sisters of battle... Mistakes are unforgiving

I was going to say sistas!! lol I just give up.

I'm going to have to say Elysian's are pretty hard to play, they are a squishy, expensive army low in numbers with a lack of good shooting and any combat ability. Plus you have to deep strike half the army into close range of the enemy which makes it more of a nightmare.

The only real strength at the moment is multiple flyers (Vultures, Vandettas & Valkyries) which makes them somewhat powerful if played in one way

it really depends upon your point of view as to what constitutes 'hard to play'.

Daemons may have the paper trail to deal with, but with the flying circus it gets seemly easier at time goes on.

DE have more going for them on the challenge bit, not only are the models an absolute pain to transport, the army to many seems an enigma that either A) has a hissy fit and crumples like paper (highly annoying at best, cursed dice!) or B) nips around the board and generally shooting things to buggery with an ease that makes tau look a little slow (apart from the JSJ fun).

Not to mention that you get 'cheese' accusations for wiping squads of the table with one transport with not a marker light in sight!

it just can't be helped sometimes that a DE army trolls its way to victory in epic style, barring the cashing in of the insurance policy on the archon who was rudely interrupted when he was reading the paper.

 BlaxicanX wrote:

 Mr.Omega wrote:
Pfft are you kidding me? At the very least for the first part, the last thing any DE player is probably worried about is whether they can maximise enough strength or not.

Is english your first language? There is a difference between "use your strengths", and "use strength".

I bring it up because your entire post was a lengthy rant that didn't really address anything I said. Pointing out that the Dark Eldar have strong units means nothing. If whether or not an army has strong units is indicative of the difficulty it takes to play it, than there is no hardest army to play.

Its not a case of yes/no they have strong choices, the Dark Eldar have a high volume of easy to integrate, spammable, high strength choices across all FOC selections.

Meanwhile, DA, Marines, CSM, etc have mostly garbage for troops, many lackluster choices and many heavily debatable, "crap of all trades" choices. There is a lot more thought on what to take and no matter what you do eventually your choice will greatly backfire on you because this game you're against heavily entrenched Firewarriors and Riptide spam while you've got a Tactical core DP army, where your superior armour saves are far less valuable.

Dark Eldar Raider/Venom squads can tackle any match up effectively; they'll put enough wounds on the Firewarriors to kill them anyway from a great distance and they can put many AP2 shots against the Riptide.

Squats due to lack of codex and models



Automatically Appended Next Post:
literally impossible to play with