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Hello all! I hope your day is going well. Anyway, I'm looking to start a new army for 40k. Currently I have Eldar, and in the past my main army has been Dark Eldar. I feel like I should balance out all these Xenos with an Imperial force. I was wondering, if you have a favorite imperial faction, which is it? And why do you like it? (Gameplay wise please, and fluff if you want.). The top 3 on my consideration list is Imperial Guard. Blood Angel. And Space Wolves. (Also considered just generic space marines.) I favor an aggressive, hard hitting, play style. But am not opposed to playing a completely new style of army. So just throw out your thoughts! And maybe a good unit or two to start with!

Thank you for taking the time to read my post and reply! I look forward to reading what you all have to say .

Blood Angels. They're one of the under dogs right now and to be honest, have some of the coolest fluff in existence (opinions will very). You're all about getting into someone's face and sawing it in half with a chainsword while screaming incoherently about Sanguinius, what's not to like?

Wolves will be your competitive choice, IG too. I run IG and have a blast with'em, lots of tanks and guys out shooting every army in the game.

Imperial Knights, all you need is 4 models for a 1500pts game. I'll bet its an aggresive, hard hitting playstyle.

 Frankenberry wrote:
Blood Angels. They're one of the under dogs right now and to be honest, have some of the coolest fluff in existence (opinions will very). You're all about getting into someone's face and sawing it in half with a chainsword while screaming incoherently about Sanguinius, what's not to like?

Wolves will be your competitive choice, IG too. I run IG and have a blast with'em, lots of tanks and guys out shooting every army in the game.

Wow thanks for the fast reply! Haha, I really like the IG weapon teams, and storm troopers. I heard they are getting an update soon though...


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wufai wrote:
Imperial Knights, all you need is 4 models for a 1500pts game. I'll bet its an aggresive, hard hitting playstyle.

Lol the models do look vicious!

Imperial Guard CAN be aggressive (the emperor know I've been with my guardsmen), but it's not aggressive by nature. You've got to work at it to make that happen. There are a few ways to make this happen, but my favorite was my chimera highland charge army. The beginning of the game looks like this:



And often turn 1 is me moving everything forward 12", and then moving flat-out, so turn 2 sees my entire army in their deployment zone, basically.

The only problem will be one of how many games you want to win. Aggressive guard can be done, and is very fun, but it's not exactly the strongest way to play guard (much less the strongest army in general).

If you want the glove for the hand of a hard-hitting aggressive imperial army, I'd go with DA. Either you poop an entire army of terminators on your opponent turn 1 and 2, or your whole army is faster-than-normal bikes. In either case, you hit fast, and hit hard. Plus, given that the minis are part of DV, they're criminally cheap to buy from ebay.

 Ailaros wrote:
Imperial Guard CAN be aggressive (the emperor know I've been with my guardsmen), but it's not aggressive by nature. You've got to work at it to make that happen. There are a few ways to make this happen, but my favorite was my chimera highland charge army. The beginning of the game looks like this:



And often turn 1 is me moving everything forward 12", and then moving flat-out, so turn 2 sees my entire army in their deployment zone, basically.

The only problem will be one of how many games you want to win. Aggressive guard can be done, and is very fun, but it's not exactly the strongest way to play guard (much less the strongest army in general).

If you want the glove for the hand of a hard-hitting aggressive imperial army, I'd go with DA. Either you poop an entire army of terminators on your opponent turn 1 and 2, or your whole army is faster-than-normal bikes. In either case, you hit fast, and hit hard. Plus, given that the minis are part of DV, they're criminally cheap to buy from ebay.

I appreciate your picture! Sounds like a fun time. Dark angels look sick, do they offer a variety of tactics? Or kind of one of those "only one effective way to run" type armies. An army of terminators sound frightening.

Necrons. There aren't any bad units in the codex (arguably) besides Flayed Ones. There are a ton of flexible lists out there, and you aren't confined to one play style. They are also simple to paint, which I love.

<.< ........ >.> .....



If yuu cant decide yet ive lust all hope fer diz git.

Havelock wrote:I appreciate your picture! Sounds like a fun time. Dark angels look sick, do they offer a variety of tactics? Or kind of one of those "only one effective way to run" type armies. An army of terminators sound frightening.

I'm not a DA player, so I'm probably not the one to ask. So far, I've only seen variations on that ravenwing list, that deathwing list, or a version that uses salvo bolter spam. But that's just what I've seen, and I don't know enough to come up with other play styles for them.

To be fair, though, aggressive armies will always play sort of the same - run toward your opponent. The only real difference is if you do it with more speed or more durability.

Havelock wrote:
Hello all! I hope your day is going well. Anyway, I'm looking to start a new army for 40k. Currently I have Eldar, and in the past my main army has been Dark Eldar. I feel like I should balance out all these Xenos with an Imperial force. I was wondering, if you have a favorite imperial faction, which is it? And why do you like it? (Gameplay wise please, and fluff if you want.). The top 3 on my consideration list is Imperial Guard. Blood Angel. And Space Wolves. (Also considered just generic space marines.) I favor an aggressive, hard hitting, play style. But am not opposed to playing a completely new style of army. So just throw out your thoughts! And maybe a good unit or two to start with!

Thank you for taking the time to read my post and reply! I look forward to reading what you all have to say .

I'll pitch out the curveball and say you should check out Horus Heresy: Betrayal. The list is so expansive that it allows for just about any playstyle; it's constantly being updated with new flavourful units and it's own version of Chapter Tactics (Rite of War) and it's incredibly well and caringly written.

Not to mention, it's unique, it will draw eyes at the LGS, and the models are beautiful. (Though its slightly more expensive than regular armies, depending on how you build it)

-TheCaptain

 TheCaptain wrote:

Havelock wrote:
Hello all! I hope your day is going well. Anyway, I'm looking to start a new army for 40k. Currently I have Eldar, and in the past my main army has been Dark Eldar. I feel like I should balance out all these Xenos with an Imperial force. I was wondering, if you have a favorite imperial faction, which is it? And why do you like it? (Gameplay wise please, and fluff if you want.). The top 3 on my consideration list is Imperial Guard. Blood Angel. And Space Wolves. (Also considered just generic space marines.) I favor an aggressive, hard hitting, play style. But am not opposed to playing a completely new style of army. So just throw out your thoughts! And maybe a good unit or two to start with!

Thank you for taking the time to read my post and reply! I look forward to reading what you all have to say .

I'll pitch out the curveball and say you should check out Horus Heresy: Betrayal. The list is so expansive that it allows for just about any playstyle; it's constantly being updated with new flavourful units and it's own version of Chapter Tactics (Rite of War) and it's incredibly well and caringly written.

Not to mention, it's unique, it will draw eyes at the LGS, and the models are beautiful. (Though its slightly more expensive than regular armies, depending on how you build it)

-TheCaptain

Just checked them out, they look pretty sick! Makes me want to read the Horus Heresy books lol.

(Puts on fake Russian accent) Oh, you want Imperial army guy? I got Imperial army guy just for you!

Imperial Guard is good army. You want a bunch of flying craft? Imperial Guard has. You like tanks? We got a whole army list for tanks! You like infantry? Boy, we have infantry unit that has own FOC chart! You can have FOC in FOC! Like rapper Exhibit!

You want assault? Oh, Ogryn is good. You like artillery? We have so much artillery you won't even know where to start. Like fast moving tanks? Ah! We have three! Like Star Wars? Hey, we have Stormtroopers! Imperial Guard give you many options to field the army you want. Order today and get a 0% discount!

Start a Kill Team from an army you don't already own!

Gives you an excuse to at least get models from something you don't have already, and gets your foot in the door for expanding. Luckily for you, pretty much all Power Armor armies make affordable and viable kill teams. A basic Tactical Marines squad with a Rhino will come out to roughly $80 bucks MSRP and depending on the weapons loadouts of your sgt, specialist weapon and heavy weapons guy, comes in right at or just above 200 points.

I'm currently looking into Space wolves. They seem to be a fun army to play while still being a little different from the run of the mills spess mehreenss.

IG are freaking awesome but super expensive.

They're not THAT much more expensive if you're not going with forgeworld or metals/finecast for your infantry.

Anyways, something else I missed - the OP wants something not xenos, but that isn't necessarily an imperial army. You could go for CSM as well. They're not xenos and, with a few exceptions, every unit is crazy aggressive. The whole codex is practically built around close combat and short ranged shooting.

Plus, nothing says aggressive like mark of khorne terminators...

 TheCustomLime wrote:
(Puts on fake Russian accent) Oh, you want Imperial army guy? I got Imperial army guy just for you!

Imperial Guard is good army. You want a bunch of flying craft? Imperial Guard has. You like tanks? We got a whole army list for tanks! You like infantry? Boy, we have infantry unit that has own FOC chart! You can have FOC in FOC! Like rapper Exhibit!

You want assault? Oh, Ogryn is good. You like artillery? We have so much artillery you won't even know where to start. Like fast moving tanks? Ah! We have three! Like Star Wars? Hey, we have Stormtroopers! Imperial Guard give you many options to field the army you want. Order today and get a 0% discount!

Hahahaha that made me laugh, thanks for the input!


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I think I've narrowed it down to either Imperial Guard or Blood Angels.

I was checking out the Death Company, and those guys look sick. Especially the death company dread and lamartes...

Blood Angels get you a fast alpha-strike assault army that doesn't do shooting especially well, Imperial Guard gets you a versatile force that can do just about everything well except for melee. I'd advise Guard, personally; in my experience starting a second army you want something that doesn't play or look much like your primary army. Guard is slow, it's got artillery, and it's got expendable dudes where Eldar are fast, short-ranged, and (theoretically) fragile.

I'd recommend Space Wolves. Leaving out how competetive they are, (Or, how competitive Blood Angels AREN'T,) they have a lot of character too them. If you want to build fluffy armies led by ridiculous but awesome characters, they're the perfect choice. Sagas, for example, provide a special rule and then give flavor suggestions on what the character should do to live up to his role as a hero. These flavor suggestions have 0 effect on gameplay, they're just there for the cool factor.
Also, Space Wolves have a lot of unique units as compared to Blood Angels, and synergize really well with C:SM if you ever want to throw in Vanilla. (C:SM are too similar to Blood Angels in my opinion, I don't like allies to have unit overlap.)

Wolf Cheese aside, they're a ton of fun to play, can be competetive and fluffy at the same time, and have a lot of character.

Waaaghpower wrote:
I'd recommend Space Wolves. Leaving out how competetive they are, (Or, how competitive Blood Angels AREN'T,) they have a lot of character too them. If you want to build fluffy armies led by ridiculous but awesome characters, they're the perfect choice. Sagas, for example, provide a special rule and then give flavor suggestions on what the character should do to live up to his role as a hero. These flavor suggestions have 0 effect on gameplay, they're just there for the cool factor.
Also, Space Wolves have a lot of unique units as compared to Blood Angels, and synergize really well with C:SM if you ever want to throw in Vanilla. (C:SM are too similar to Blood Angels in my opinion, I don't like allies to have unit overlap.)

Wolf Cheese aside, they're a ton of fun to play, can be competetive and fluffy at the same time, and have a lot of character.

Interesting points! My buddy gave me a copy of the Space Wolves dex so I've been looking through that today... I know if I make an army with them its going to be full of stupid heroics attempts hahahaha. Probably take a lone wolf or two


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 AnomanderRake wrote:
Blood Angels get you a fast alpha-strike assault army that doesn't do shooting especially well, Imperial Guard gets you a versatile force that can do just about everything well except for melee. I'd advise Guard, personally; in my experience starting a second army you want something that doesn't play or look much like your primary army. Guard is slow, it's got artillery, and it's got expendable dudes where Eldar are fast, short-ranged, and (theoretically) fragile.

That is true too. You guys are full of great advice! Do you think they'll be getting a new codex soon?

Blood Angels aren't on the rumor board, unfortunately. Guard, Orks, a new Rulebook, yes. Blood Angels? Nope.

A hilariously bad but fun list is to bring 3 Lone Wolves, Logan Grimnar, Njal Stormcaller, 2 Terminator Squads (As retinues for Njal and Logan, obviously bring Arjac,) a Wolf Lord on a Thunderwolf, Canis, and two Thunderwolf squads. In other words: As many badass heroes (With Retinues, of course) as is legal. It's a 2000 point army with almost half it's points in HQ, no range, only the minimum 2 Troops, and no AA. It's also hilariously fun to use, as long as you're not playing against a WAAC enemy.

I'm thinking of doing Imperial Guard, and taking BA as allies. Specifically a death company squad with lamartes or astorath and a DC dread..

 phatonic wrote:
<.< ........ >.> .....



If yuu cant decide yet ive lust all hope fer diz git.

New favourite song. Cheers for the link!