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Also, what would you replace it with?

I'd merge the following:
Dark Angels, Blood Angels, Space Wolves, Space Marines- Space Marines (w/ Space Wolves, Iron Hands & White Scars/ Raven Guard supplements)
Grey Knights & Sisters Of Battle- Inquisition (Also Add Deathwatch)
Chaos Space Marines & Chaos Daemons- Forces Of Chaos (w/ Iron Warriors, Night Lords & Sons Of Malice Supplements)
Militarum Tempestus+ Astra Militarum- Imperial Guard

Codices I Would Add:
Mechanicum (Would Absorb Imperial Knights)
Rak'Gol (Awesome Reptillian Pirates Who Would Be The 40K Alternative To Lizardmen)

That Would Lead Us With:
Codex: Imperial Guard
Codex: Mechanicum
Codex: Inquisition
Codex: Space Marines
Codex: Forces Of Chaos
Codex: Eldar
Codex; Dark Eldar
Codex: Necrons
Codex: Orks
Codex: Tau Empire
Codex; Tyranids
Codex: Rak'Gol

I would merge Tempestus with Imperial guard.

Space Wolves.

Didn't even need to think about it. Their fluff is so poorly written, contradictory, and obnoxious it'd be doing them a favor, to say nothing of Santa Grimnar and Wolf Riders.

If they had to be replaced, bring in the Adeptus Mechanicus, something truly interesting and different and not just the generic core army slathered up in Wovlerine fanfic.

None, but I really wish that Farsight Enclaves was either removed or changed to not be Battle-Brothers with Tau, considering they're actively hostile towards one another constantly....

Blood angels. So similar to vanilla yet not as good. Give them chapter tactics and a few fluff pages and they'll be good.

Blood angels, dark angels. They're so similar to the vanilla marines that with a little bit of adjusting they could have easily been in the same codex. Until the 5th and 6th edition codices came along.
Maybe sisters of battle just to end their misery.

Militarum Tempestus should never have been its own codex

Tyranids. Their concept is so silly it's not even funny. Living weapons waste massive amounts of energy, recycling them wastes even more. And living space ships is the stupidest idea ever in a universe where ships fight with massive broadsides and even try ramming. If these things actually needed to reach another galaxy they would be Necrons. As they are, they died the first time they attacked an inhabited planet. They used too much energy on winning and much too much more on converting it to something they could use. Whatever they get form a conquest is less than they need to live. They're dead.

I said imperial knights, only because a single model does not a codex make. They could easily have been in IA, or escalation, or something.

Were I to bring in a new army, I'd try to shoehorn another xeno race in there, I think. Perhaps a port of skaven or lizardmen, or some weird version of VCs.

Telmenari wrote:None, but I really wish that Farsight Enclaves was either removed or changed to not be Battle-Brothers with Tau, considering they're actively hostile towards one another constantly....

Though this is an interesting idea. Split tau into two codices like how they have eldar and dark eldar. You could have one ridiculous mary-sue meccha kawaii super battling seizure robots army, and then dump the rest of the stuff into a real army. The auxiliaries (with a few additions, perhaps a skaven or lizardmen unit), as well as the firewarriors and etherials. A sort of gritty revolutionary army to contrast the ban-dai action figure thing. Tau insurgents or separatists, or "true believers" or whatever. Sort of like a chaos tau, but without the demons. Like DE, really.

I put in Tau because they're the only one that's an actual army that I'd remove; they don't fit with the tone or the aesthetic of the game very well.

That said if I had my way there would be nine army books (including the Tau) with any material that GW wants to package as a 'supplement' and sell for an extra $30 included as appendixes and multiple different sets of list restrictions as needed:

Space Marines
Imperial Guard
Inquisition
Eldar
Forces of Chaos
Orks
Necrons
Tau
Tyranids

I'd merge deamons in with the CSM.

Tyranids. I hate their models almost as much as I hate their fluff, so I wouldn't hesitate one bit to remove them. And I wouldn't replace them with anything, 40k has way too many armies already and I'd remove more of them if I had the opportunity. But getting rid of Tyranids is the top priority.

Removing an army would be a jerk move. But putting all the marines in one book is okay.

I voted Space Marines, it was the obvious choice.

The problem is that to remove Space Marines, you'd need to remove at least 5 codexes (one of them is space marines for girls).

The only thing I'd really remove would be some of the silliest models from the Space Wolf range because they look rather dumb on the tabletop.

I like Necrons but I would remove their codex for being a pile of WTF.

Orks. Immediate answer.
They simply would not and could not function on any level that would make them even remotely threatening in the 40k universe... Yet they magically are. No explanation.
They're too cartoony. They don't fit atmosphere of the game.
I can't stand how they always magically happen to have whatever unconstrained abilities needed to do whatever they want from the moment they're born, yet still be halfwits.

The explanations justifying all of the above are always just as shallow as the fluff itself.

Actually, the cargo-cult nature of orks fits perfectly with grimdark. It fits along with techpriests and warp-based psychic powers to a tee.

Orks as funny only doesn't make sense when you can't see grimdark as the absurdist humor it is.

grey knights all the way - totally detracts from the 'space marines are man's last hope' thing and kinda says 'space marines are mans last hope, but sometimes they aren't pure enough so we had to make a special un-corruptible marine force with different equipment who are definetly un-corruptable'

cause anything in the 40k cannon is absolute? my arse.

 AnomanderRake wrote:
I put in Tau because they're the only one that's an actual army that I'd remove; they don't fit with the tone or the aesthetic of the game very well.

Most people that say this just don't understand the Tau. They might not slaughter everything in their path just for fun, but they're one of the most grimdark things about the setting. Remember, the Tau are a generic expansionist empire that would be the bad guys in almost any other setting. Their only redeeming quality is that they're pragmatic enough to offer you a chance to surrender and become slaves before they kill you, and use science and engineering to build practical weapons that kill you as efficiently as possible instead of throwing a bunch of purity seals on some WWI-era junk and hoping for the best. And this is the closet thing 40k has to a "good" faction! It's really hard to do a better job of saying "hope is dead" than that.

All armies except the Imperial Guard.

With so many regiments, all with potentially different tactics, uniforms, weapons, mindset and worlds there would be endless customization, rules and models to make and use.

All the other races have horrid fluff and many of them look lame to me. Eliminate them all.

 Swastakowey wrote:
All armies except the Imperial Guard.

With so many regiments, all with potentially different tactics, uniforms, weapons, mindset and worlds there would be endless customization, rules and models to make and use.

All the other races have horrid fluff and many of them look lame to me. Eliminate them all.

Eliminate them all. And ig too. Best setting ever.

SirDonlad wrote:
grey knights all the way - totally detracts from the 'space marines are man's last hope' thing and kinda says 'space marines are mans last hope, but sometimes they aren't pure enough so we had to make a special un-corruptible marine force with different equipment who are definetly un-corruptable'

cause anything in the 40k cannon is absolute? my arse.

They're uncorrectable, except when they're not and need to kill Battle Sisters for extra extra purity!

My vote went to Imperial Knights. It just seems pointless having a whole Codex dedicated to what should, ostensibly be, a Support Unit. Somewhere on Dakka there is a thread asking if 40k is too bloated. Daft things like Imperial Knights having their own book are adding to the bloated-ness of the game. Imperial Knights should jut be a support choice in the SM Codices, IG and Chaos 'Dex's. That's it.

£25 for a 64 page book giving you the rules for TWO units!? WTF?

 koooaei wrote:

 Swastakowey wrote:
All armies except the Imperial Guard.

With so many regiments, all with potentially different tactics, uniforms, weapons, mindset and worlds there would be endless customization, rules and models to make and use.

All the other races have horrid fluff and many of them look lame to me. Eliminate them all.

Eliminate them all. And ig too. Best setting ever.

I would happily spend a lot of money on a setting thats Imperial Guard themed without all the other junk. I could imagine the joy of facing other Guard Armies and comparing models and seeing conversions etc that arent tainted by bland models or bland fluff.

 Swastakowey wrote:

 koooaei wrote:

 Swastakowey wrote:
All armies except the Imperial Guard.

With so many regiments, all with potentially different tactics, uniforms, weapons, mindset and worlds there would be endless customization, rules and models to make and use.

All the other races have horrid fluff and many of them look lame to me. Eliminate them all.

Eliminate them all. And ig too. Best setting ever.

I would happily spend a lot of money on a setting thats Imperial Guard themed without all the other junk. I could imagine the joy of facing other Guard Armies and comparing models and seeing conversions etc that arent tainted by bland models or bland fluff.

Any historical game, really.

 Swastakowey wrote:

 koooaei wrote:

 Swastakowey wrote:
All armies except the Imperial Guard.

With so many regiments, all with potentially different tactics, uniforms, weapons, mindset and worlds there would be endless customization, rules and models to make and use.

All the other races have horrid fluff and many of them look lame to me. Eliminate them all.

Eliminate them all. And ig too. Best setting ever.

I would happily spend a lot of money on a setting thats Imperial Guard themed without all the other junk. I could imagine the joy of facing other Guard Armies and comparing models and seeing conversions etc that arent tainted by bland models or bland fluff.

Dude, there are a couple of really good WWII games out there. They'd fit what you're looking for and be a heck of a lot cheaper. Just saying.

 MWHistorian wrote:

 Swastakowey wrote:

 koooaei wrote:

 Swastakowey wrote:
All armies except the Imperial Guard.

With so many regiments, all with potentially different tactics, uniforms, weapons, mindset and worlds there would be endless customization, rules and models to make and use.

All the other races have horrid fluff and many of them look lame to me. Eliminate them all.

Eliminate them all. And ig too. Best setting ever.

I would happily spend a lot of money on a setting thats Imperial Guard themed without all the other junk. I could imagine the joy of facing other Guard Armies and comparing models and seeing conversions etc that arent tainted by bland models or bland fluff.

Dude, there are a couple of really good WWII games out there. They'd fit what you're looking for and be a heck of a lot cheaper. Just saying.

I play many history games. But the problem is if I randomly decided to play say a cold war themed army it would need new terrain and at lleast two armies. With imperial guard I Take whatever theme I please and can have them fight guysfrom whatever theme my oopponent pleases.

That's the advantages of imperial guard overhhistory games.

I said Imperial Knights for the same reasons everyone else said but I think there's quite a number of armies that could do with a good reworking.

I am however loving the Tau schism idea. I always liked the Fire Warriors but was never a super huge fan of all the anime bots so that's something I could get on board with.

I'm really surprised that Tau aren't winning the poll (I didn't expect IK to be since all IoM players abuse them).

I voted GK as the concept is awful and not very grimmdark at all.

Ultramarines. :-D

I vote Knights. IMHO super-heavies do not belong in non-Apocalypse games (I'll still play against them though).

As for a new army - C'tan.

Story could be a good amount of C'tan Shards has joined together, combing their powers or are just working together to take revenge on the Necrons.

HQ
Transcendent C'tan Shard

Elites
Empowered C'tan Shard

Troops
C'tan Shard
Cosmic Destroyers

This may seem unbalanced but they could make it balance, just look at the Daemon, they are all powerful and they have their own codex and army.