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(Without reading any of the other posts)

I say either current daemons or blood angels.

Daemons are stuck fighting their own codex the whole game, and being bent over by deepstrike rules..

Poor blood angels are stuck with their d**k in their hand if they try to run an assault army..... which is all they are good at

DE, BA, BT all are just not matching up against others.

Orks Orks Orks Orks. Has anyone here lost a game when there opponent was playing Orks. Did they play well? I have seen the most amazing tactics coming from Ork players but alas it's all in vain as they still lose the game by huge margins. Don't think that I have deviate from topic in question I suppose coming standard with lances and poison weapons add the Standard rule of tree hugging, I'm just wondering how that takes skill

Yorkskargrim wrote:
Orks Orks Orks Orks. Has anyone here lost a game when there opponent was playing Orks. Did they play well? I have seen the most amazing tactics coming from Ork players but alas it's all in vain as they still lose the game by huge margins. Don't think that I have deviate from topic in question I suppose coming standard with lances and poison weapons add the Standard rule of tree hugging, I'm just wondering how that takes skill

once, on a practice rouge trader tourney here where they were trying to figure out rules--all deathwing (so hard to play itself) one deep struck off board and mishapped and died, other mishapped and got placed on the far side of the board. All else was shot up in open view and burned by a truck of burna boyz, not the proudest moment

Daemons have screamerstar and flying circus, both super easy to play

Orks eh they are easy to play. Lets face it, its not hard to swarm bodies on the field.

DE is hard cause they are a glass cannon, require careful thought
BA is hard cause they require great abouts of list work cause everything is so expensive you have to know what your taking and have it do exactly that to make its points back
BT.....the EC and Helbrecht....why the nerf GW!!!!! but since they are codex marines now i wouldnt say they are hard to play.

If you ask me, I'd say that You have to know quite a bit about 40K if you are playing a varied Ork army and not just spamming BW's, Boyz or Biker Nobz.

The hardest overall army to play is probably BA. I think you can compare them to DE, since their 3+ saves aren't worth much anymore, and many of their units are very expensive and assault oriented.

Orks are a bad joke in 6th. at the price point for boyz they are out spammed by 'nids, their paper thin open topped troop transports don't even have a save like dark eldar flicker fields or jink, and their bikes cost more than space marine bikes and perform worse.

Playing them and winning is a miracle occurrence. I hope they get a new codex sometime soon.

Orks are much better than BA, though. Much, much better actually.

orks flat out kill armies if they use forge world

Personally I think DA lists are the hardest to play. Ravenwing are fast but with the small number count are ridiculously fragile while Deathwing are tough but very slow and again with the small model count issue. And Greenwing can work but is not forgiving on mistakes in the least.

CSM are pretty close up there as well, partly because nothing really stands out like the hell turkey and the things that do work are really pricey.

I don't see SW or BA as being all that squishy honestly. They have their little tricks that work great but don't play on the upper tier level because they are in dire need of an update. Otherwise they are really pretty straight forward.

The new Tyranids codex may be the answer...

I'd say assault armies are the hardest now. U can't just run forward and charge, also you have too many things against you. Dif terrain, overwatch, random charges and most important - the death of the closest. Every game i have to trick an opponent to win with my assault-oriented orkses.

Regular assault example: i'm disembarking boyz like 6' away of the opponent's key forces like a big squad of bikers/spawns and so on. I measure distance accurately, rub my chin, count something in mind with the solely purpose of making an opponent think that i'm gona assault him...but i do realise that in many cases charging with my boyz is bad. Overwatch, low ini - i won't even strike blows. Than i try hard to "accidentally" kill a few models in a squad that the opponent thinks i'm gona charge, shooting with all i got around...and say: "Oh my! The closest have died so i most likely won't be able to charge! What a pity!" and act desperately. And the opponent totally focuses his attention on that squad of boyz and shoots them down + charges and than runs them down in a turn or two. But that's exactly what is need! Cause now i can operate elsewhere: take points, clear out support or even try to organise a round-assault on his key forces. If the opponent figures out that it's just a distraction than i'm in trouble cause my boyz do lack punch vs most things and they're not very durable so if i loose tactical advantage - i loose the game.

So i say the hardest armies to play to appropriate levels are non-mobile assault armies without exceptional durability. BA, BT, Orkses without nob bikers, Dark eldar heavy on witches.

It's not hard to play wraithwing as a necron. It's not hard to play spawns. But mon, it's hard to play assault marines, boyz and witches when you got to advance across the whole field.

I do play shooty gunline armies from time to time. Most important is deployment there. Than you make a few tactical decisions during the whole game and other that that - shooting priority and throwing dice.

I've tried playing mobile shooting armies like eldar or de. They're even more easy. Eldar got tons of super-effective, hard-hitting, extremely mobile and hard to kill stuff. Dark eldar got all that except for 'hard to kill' part. But once again - mobility and target priority.

Anyone that plays BA in 6th Ed will have a hard time because they never LTP in 5th ed. How is DSing Troop anywhere (1D6 re-roll, not 2D6) on the table with melta guns Hard.

Yorkskargrim wrote:
Anyone that plays BA in 6th Ed will have a hard time because they never LTP in 5th ed. How is DSing Troop anywhere (1D6 re-roll, not 2D6) on the table with melta guns Hard.

Because that wasn't good, and if you did that with BA in 5th, a player like me would wipe the floor with you.

Yorkskargrim wrote:
Anyone that plays BA in 6th Ed will have a hard time because they never LTP in 5th ed. How is DSing Troop anywhere (1D6 re-roll, not 2D6) on the table with melta guns Hard.

And once your 200p squad with two meltaguns is at it's place, you will auto-win a game, eh?
No.

For as far as I can tell I'd say Chaos Daemons because of the random factor when you play them. How waterproof your strategy may be, one roll or unpredicted effect on your Warpstorm Table, and your entire tactic can be ruined and force you to improvise something new, so I'd say Chaos Daemons because of the fact that you can barely plan a strategy without it being ruined by a different reward roll than the one you had in mind

Id say a DE army with no transports, sisters, necrons with the old rules of phase out and lack of bodies was bad and the amount of old models that were awesome but not "necron" so they didn't count

3rdGen wrote:
Id say a DE army with no transports, sisters, necrons with the old rules of phase out and lack of bodies was bad and the amount of old models that were awesome but not "necron" so they didn't count

Never had a hard time with sisters, I've not tried the new dex but they had some decent builds but also some stuff you just avoided. Not hard to play with though.

CSM cus their codex is broken.

I play DE, and yes, I've put in the time it takes to figure out how to make a solid list, come up with great plans, and I'm now winning consistently.

That said, for awhile I used to think DE were the hardest to play. Simply because of how fragile and unforgiving they were.

However, the thing is, just about every shooting roll you make is going to be 3s and 4s. The only question is how many dice. Their weapon options are pretty simple: poison shooting, S8 short range or S8 long range. Which means you don't have to memorize too much. DE's difficulty really boils down to how to properly synergize your army; which a book could probably be written about. Therefore, from a pure playing perspective they are quite easy to get started with... they are just hard to win with.

A hard army to play is one which has LOTs of different mechanics (like psychic powers) or units with disparate options that need to be taken into account.

For example, Daemons. With Daemons you have 4 completely different styles of units, based on their mark. Each style has it's own little rules about what it can or can't work with including various psychic powers to keep track off. Then, if that's not enough, you have various random rolls which might just win you the game or force a total loss.

To me, it's hard to keep track of all those potentially different options when moving them around on the field. Also, it's almost impossible to plan for that even where nearly every one of your units takes hits because the gods decide they don't like you right now.

Guard also fall into that same category. Between orders, lots of different options and very little standardization on weapons or even CC capabilities you have a LOT to think of when putting your list together and almost as much when fielding them.

So, if I was putting together a list of the top 5 hardiest armies to use, I'd pick ones that had lots of options:

1. Daemons
2. Guard
3. Nids - not as much now as the previous codex due to changes in psychic powers.
4. Tau
5. Eldar