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 Lukash_ wrote:
I'll put in a vote for Stormtroopers/Scions.

Yeah, Stormtrooper armies are like Imperial Dark Eldar in a lot of ways. They don't get the same access to FNP, have slower and slightly more durable vehicles, but those same vehicles are still fast and have a lot of firepower. You also have tons of S3 AP3 shooting with only a handful of special weapons, so it's imperative to get the right weapons in the right places since you can't just drown units in poisoned fire.

 Formosa wrote:
Serially, how can it be anything but deathwing, low model count, can't deal with hordes effectively, high point cost and low survivability.

There's more, but it takes some real skill to beat armies like eldar and tau, and is even a struggle against guard and orks (depending on list)

Because Harlies have every problem you mentionned for Deathwing PLUS shorter range weapons, no 2+ armor save and T3.

So clear personal attack aside, I think you're wrong. basing my arguments on my local and state meta green tide is very competative, end in top three almost every event. eldar however do not. we have had maybe three eldar victories i can remember, we have had i think two ork victories, on with green tide and one with a grot can list, generally our eldar players do very poorly. hell one of our top lists that generally does place either first or second is blood angels death company with a nemesis strike force, he murders with two armies considered by Dakka to be trash. this website has the most skewed idea of whats good that it's baffling.

i play tau, i understand how my army works, it takes actual thinking(which i know is hard for most ork players). I see people play tau and make really gakky decisions and expect the army to win the game for them. NO army outside of maybe eldar bikes with wraigthknight(which isnt a huge thing here thanks ITC) plays itself. though i can see you being a ork player who incorrectly finds a green tide to be "non competitive" having a hard time with that, considering the victim complex of ork players being what it is.

Are tau strong? yes they are, its why i play them, i enjoy playing a competitive army against other people with competitive armies. I also know that Dakka is filled with care bear players who dislike people playing differently from them. There are multiple ways to play this game, which multiple people play day to day.

Also ignores cover is not ignores line of sight. i dont know where you got that from but you are clearly mistaken.

Well #1 Smart Missiles Systems don't have to draw LOS and tau have more then enough Ignores cover with markerlights to make up the difference. The fact that you mention charging your Ion accelerator as a tactic makes me wonder how you think anything else you say is going to be taken seriously.

Aside from the fact that your either lying or you have the smartest, best ork player in the world combined with pretty shoddy competition, you will never see an Ork Kan army win in 7th. Aside from the fact that Kanz are garbage in this edition, Green tide is not good. For starters it is incredibly slow, it has zero firepower and when assaulted from two sides it can spend the rest of the game piling in to the two CCs, and as mentioned many times in many other ork topics, when Orks don't assault they are S3.

Your trying to tell me that you honestly believe that Orks and BA are stronger tournament armies then Eldar and Tau...... Keep in mind im talking about the game in general and not your local meta. For all we know your local meta has the worst Eldar/Necron/Tau/SM players around.

Go take a look at the ITC results, yes they are different from regular 40k because they attempt to make the game more balanced, something GW doesn't care about. I had to look through 8 tournament results before I found a single result where Orks placed in the top 3. And yet i saw lots of Eldar, and Space Marines, Tau weren't in as much but then again you guys just got your new 7.5 codex recently. Give it time and IM sure the top 3 armies will be Eldar, SM, Tau followed by Necrons and every other 7.5 codex.
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 Erik_Morkai wrote:

 Formosa wrote:
Serially, how can it be anything but deathwing, low model count, can't deal with hordes effectively, high point cost and low survivability.

There's more, but it takes some real skill to beat armies like eldar and tau, and is even a struggle against guard and orks (depending on list)

Because Harlies have every problem you mentionned for Deathwing PLUS shorter range weapons, no 2+ armor save and T3.

Except Harlequins have a decent psychic phase, great WS, I, and attacks, vehicles, assault ability. Deathwing are everything about Terminators and worse.

Dark Eldar. So so fragile, its like a crystal scalpel. It can do a lot of damage, but hold it at the wrong angle and it shatters.

die toten hosen wrote:
Im going to be that guy and say that tau are pretty skill based. along with eldar.

you can bring a tau list or an eldar one that you grabbed from the internet and still get wrecked if you don't have any idea what you're doing and expect the army to play itself.

If you fudge your phases with tau and miss nova charges or markerlights then you may have just lost the game. did you forget to jump away from those assault terminators? GG.

Eldar requires you to know what powers to use when and on what and in what order. the individual units themselves are generally pretty paper thin, but if you manage your abilities well then they get pretty beefy.

i agree that dark eldar can be a pretty high skill level to master, and it's definitely not a beginners army(i know it was my first lol).

However, orks and chaos marines do not require the same amount of skill. lets not confuse "taking skill to play" with "underpowered army". orks have one competitive list, green tide, zero skill to move a blob forward and charge, it's super basic gameplay wise. Orks get my vote as being the least skill intensive army.

If you've ever played with orks you'd soon know that it takes much more skill to win a game in the current climate than you imagine. However, if you think that one formation is the only reason why you think that orks are easy to play, and take no skill, you've never had to play with an army that is as random and unforgiving as orks. Challenge yourself, try a couple of games with orks and see if you can seriously justify your claims, I doubt you could.
It's nice to hear that an ork player regularly kicks arse with killa kanz, although i am sceptical about that tbh. If he's winning in this edition using a Killa Kanz list he clearly plays at a skill level so high, he makes Creed look like a drunken hillbilly.

 jreilly89 wrote:

 Erik_Morkai wrote:

 Formosa wrote:
Serially, how can it be anything but deathwing, low model count, can't deal with hordes effectively, high point cost and low survivability.

There's more, but it takes some real skill to beat armies like eldar and tau, and is even a struggle against guard and orks (depending on list)

Because Harlies have every problem you mentionned for Deathwing PLUS shorter range weapons, no 2+ armor save and T3.

Except Harlequins have a decent psychic phase, great WS, I, and attacks, vehicles, assault ability. Deathwing are everything about Terminators and worse.

Plus artillary/tank themed IG lists literally cannot touch you if you play harleys properly!

When he said Grot Kanz, he had to have meant Grot Tanks. Because Kanz are just awful, but grot tanks are actually pretty amazing.

Also, for the people that talk about Deathwing and mention how hard it is to play, we get in to the discussion of it really just being one of the worst armies out there.

Obviously the worst codex or worst army will take the most amount of skill to win. But even the most skilled player is going to lose because the most skilled player is not going to do much differently than a regular player. The tactics and tools just aren't there in that army.

Orks are a very hard army to play. The 7th edition codex pretty much nurfed every unit in the book. I had to laugh when Kans where mentioned as a good unit, kans where one of the hardest nurfed units in the 7ed codex.
I never got to look at the 7th edition Dark Elder codex so I really don't have an opinion on them.

 Brother SRM wrote:

 Lukash_ wrote:
I'll put in a vote for Stormtroopers/Scions.

You also have tons of S3 AP3 shooting with only a handful of special weapons, so it's imperative to get the right weapons in the right places since you can't just drown units in poisoned fire.

Given 4x special weapons in the command squad, 2x specials in MSU line squads, and Krak Grenades on everyone, there can be less S3 AP3 shooting on the infantry models than you'd expect. Even two Volleygun can do a lot to prop up the basic weapons, they output more S4 AP3 firepower at 18" than a full-size squad at S3 AP3.

I'd say Dark Eldar, however they are not the most unforgiving army when played with a powerful list ( something the skilled players usually pick. )

This is because the most powerful Dark Eldar lists are MSU Venom -spam with Reaver jetbike spam, and it is actually quite a forgiving list. Why? Because there are so many cheap units with their transports on the board that it doesn't matter if one or two of your 9 Venoms die. Certainly a total beginner can't play an army such as this, but what it boils down to is:

Rush to all objectives all game, kill something when you can, and try to win the mission before you run out of separate units.

I've played it myself on a friends army and it really was quite simple.

Skitarii require a significant amount of skill due to it being a scouty up close shooty army which is very hard to do well against a lot of match ups

Harlequins are certainly up there in terms of skill based play required to run them successfully. The biggest hurdle this army has to cope with is the limited range of configurations you can put them in. The most modular arrangements (Cast of Players) are slow compared to the larger formations and detachments. Other formations (Serpent's Brood, Faolchu's Blade) have no Psychic support that is so critical to improving the longevity of your units. The most flexible option (Masque Detachment) fixes your Troop count to three--no more, no less--and your Fast Attack to two, and your Heavy Support to one, but does provide the means to get the required Psykers and useful transports into your force.

While Harlequins have access to Psykers, you still need to maneuver with a plan should you fail. Very, very few armies rely on the Psychic phase as much as Harlequins do. One failed Veil of Tears could leave your very elite Troupe out in the open. Using your Shooting phase to run behind or into nearby cover to compensate is critical. This leads to the chess match Movement becomes from the start of the game onward. If you go second it's incredibly important to have places to hide. Few armies have the vulnerability to going second that Harlequins have, which is why one of the Warlord traits you can roll for your Troupe Master warlord adds +4 to your Seize the Initiative roll. Even the developers understood how fragile the force is should you fail the initial roll-off that they added this option in there.

Perhaps the greatest indicator of how much skill is involved in successfully playing Harlequins is the realization that on some turns--especially the first--you may not do a single offensive thing to your opponent; positioning is that critical you would forego any shooting of any kind in order to give yourself the best opportunity on Turn 2. Few armies experience this requirement (Orks come to mind), but unlike Orks Harlequins don't have the ability to add bodies to absorb blows as you cross the battlefield.

Dark Eldar are also high requiring player skill, but it has greater force flexibility, including MC options and MSU opportunities.

My vote is for Militarum Tempestus. Another glass cannon army like DE.

die toten hosen wrote:

MorkorpossiblyGork wrote:

die toten hosen wrote:
Im going to be that guy and say that tau are pretty skill based. along with eldar.

you can bring a tau list or an eldar one that you grabbed from the internet and still get wrecked if you don't have any idea what you're doing and expect the army to play itself.

If you fudge your phases with tau and miss nova charges or markerlights then you may have just lost the game. did you forget to jump away from those assault terminators? GG.

Eldar requires you to know what powers to use when and on what and in what order. the individual units themselves are generally pretty paper thin, but if you manage your abilities well then they get pretty beefy.

i agree that dark eldar can be a pretty high skill level to master, and it's definitely not a beginners army(i know it was my first lol).

However, orks and chaos marines do not require the same amount of skill. lets not confuse "taking skill to play" with "underpowered army". orks have one competitive list, green tide, zero skill to move a blob forward and charge, it's super basic gameplay wise. Orks get my vote as being the least skill intensive army.
chaos marines just need a new codex. if you pull out wins with CSM you either are very lucky or your opponent was also CSM.

Your definitely that guy then. Eldar/Tau require significantly less kill then most other factions. "If you fudge a nova" im sorry but thats just completely garbage. Tau are literally the most point and click army in the game. Oh what skill to use them. That unit is coming towards me, better fire 40 S8 missiles at it.

And Eldar? seriously? Wraithknight + Scatbikes = win in most games. The only tactics you have to worry about is which models you wish to remove from your opponent first.

As far as Orks are concerned, the Green tide is not a competitive, its a scare tactic at best, the real tactics of orks involve a lot more strategic moves then simply rush up the board. I won't get to much into it because honestly I don't think you comprehend what tactics are.

So clear personal attack aside, I think you're wrong. basing my arguments on my local and state meta green tide is very competative, end in top three almost every event. eldar however do not. we have had maybe three eldar victories i can remember, we have had i think two ork victories, on with green tide and one with a grot can list, generally our eldar players do very poorly. hell one of our top lists that generally does place either first or second is blood angels death company with a nemesis strike force, he murders with two armies considered by Dakka to be trash. this website has the most skewed idea of whats good that it's baffling.

i play tau, i understand how my army works, it takes actual thinking(which i know is hard for most ork players). I see people play tau and make really gakky decisions and expect the army to win the game for them. NO army outside of maybe eldar bikes with wraigthknight(which isnt a huge thing here thanks ITC) plays itself. though i can see you being a ork player who incorrectly finds a green tide to be "non competitive" having a hard time with that, considering the victim complex of ork players being what it is.

Are tau strong? yes they are, its why i play them, i enjoy playing a competitive army against other people with competitive armies. I also know that Dakka is filled with care bear players who dislike people playing differently from them. There are multiple ways to play this game, which multiple people play day to day.

Also ignores cover is not ignores line of sight. i dont know where you got that from but you are clearly mistaken.

Just wow. I have played green tide.... it is semi competitive....however I got obliterated by a TAC tau list pre new releases. You are also talking about 1 formation. Try playing a CAD of orks. Every hit you take hurts and if you don't position yourself correctly the game is over T1. Not to mention everytime one of your units finally makes it to CC it's going to be dead next turn. You are either high or trolling to say that tau take more skill than most other armies because they definitely do not. ELDAR #1 least skill to play. The pre necron codices take more skill than tau. Tau are up there with marines and necrons.

die toten hosen wrote:
Did you forget to jump away from those assault terminators? GG.

If you are within charge range of assault terminaters as Tau, you deserve to lose.

"Also ignores cover is not ignores line of sight. i dont know where you got that from but you are clearly mistaken."

Probably referring to SMS, which do indeed ignore Line of Sight, and Seeker Missiles, which unless I'm remembering wrong ignore LOS if you have a marker on the target.

"If you fudge your phases with tau and miss nova charges or markerlights then you may have just lost the game. did you forget to jump away from those assault terminators? GG."

Apparently "attempting to do a thing and rolling lower than the value required" is now a potential tactical blunder? Doesn't that make orks the highest skilled army thanks to their BS2?

Also, the bit with the assault moves....what? Does that mean Marines are skill intensive because you might forget to take armor saves and just remove models from the table?

Tau have no psychic phase odds to worry about, no assaults to position for, and very little range positioning required.

Here, I'll play a tau army.

All my stuff? I'll put it in cover. Vehicles bring their own cover, so whatever they go on the edge/corners of the board.

Now (here's the tricky part) I remember to shoot my marker lights first, and (tactics time) I'm gonna point them at stuff that's in cover.

Now I'll take my riptide, making sure it's within the right effective band of 60" range, and I'll carefully make my Nova Charge roll and hopefully avoid the strategic blunder of rolling a 1 or 2.

Then I point it at the unit with the marker lights on it and roll for scatter, sweating as I strategically roll the dice to scatter the template.

Then in the assault phase, if I haven't passed out from the exertion, I'll find the enemy unit closest to each of my jet pack troops and jet pack move them directly 2d6 inches away.

It is by far harlequins in my opinion. Low survivability means you have no opportunity to make mistakes, every move needs to be perfect if you want to survive long enough to hit that combat. And yes, once they hit combat they can mulch whatever they hit, in the first round. Past the forst round they are only S3 and S3 is pumpking strength. However to successfully mulch you have to make sure your target priority is on point. Did you put your hammer of wrath unit into that unit of terminators? Well I guess you don't get to kill them. You put your kisses into that horde, you only get to kill half of it I guess. Every model costs almost 20 points+ and gets instantly mulched by Las guns.

My vote goes to harlequins too. Guardsmen level survivability with space marine model costs. And they have to get nice and close to the enemy to do their job, which is even neater! Really have to plan ahead, putting your troops in positions where they can minimize damage taken, but still be able to charge in the next turn (this is made a little easier with their run/charge). Fluff their charge, and they're very expensive dead clown meat.

Surprised no one has mentioned daemons, an almost completely melee army most troops at toughness 3? Ouch

I also think Tau don't take an awful lot of skill, the only part that someone can trip up on is target priority (and perhaps movement in a crisis list). The entire Tau shooting phase is based on removing randomness, long range, high bs, low ap and ignore cover and high str are the back bone of tau fire power, and the only taxing tactical thoughts will be who to shoot first and how much to direct into them.

Pretty cut and dry if you ask me.

Scot, i actually LOL at that, thank you have an exalt.

Huh at your local tournaments what is the board set up? I run the tide around here and two games are dawn of war and one is hammer and anvil. Now against eldar it is a feat to even catch them at 1850 just due to the amount of firepower they have. Against tau its the same thing. The worst is against IG arty armies. That's just around here anyway. Another player does well with his trukk spam orks though and lots of tankbustas. Against eldar they can just stay 19 inches away and dominate. Tau ignores all your cover and everything ignores your armor so all you have is the feel no pain rolls. Although this can be skewed by my inability to deal with GCs and SHs. Stupid PKs always whiffing...

Reavas wrote:
Surprised no one has mentioned daemons, an almost completely melee army most troops at toughness 3? Ouch

Well, they do always have their 5++ or better "U can't touch this" saves. Plus the first time I ever played against demons, I wasted a lot of firepower against a DISTRACTION KEEPER OF SECRETS, which tanked a ton of low S hits with high T and 2++ after psychic shenanigans.

It's an army that requires skill to play, but maybe not all the skill.

The definitions of skill could vary soo much.

Orkz though

 ChiliPowderKeg wrote:
Codex:Stronghold Assault

It must be a bit difficult to win with an unbound list made of buildings and turrets

Rogal Dorn disagrees.

Reavas wrote:
Surprised no one has mentioned daemons, an almost completely melee army most troops at toughness 3? Ouch

not even close to hardest to play

Harlequins most certainly, a single missed charge, a veil of tears not managing to go off or a nasty round of overwatch will lose the game for you.

They are very expensive points wise with only a 5+ invul to help them and can certainly struggle against all army types...

Definitely gaming on a knife edge or so to speak.

That's a difficult question. It mostly depends on lists. I'd say that lists with less brute power yet more tactical possibilities are the hardest.
You can create an easy yet brutal eldar list with scatbikes and wraithknights and at the same time, you can create a mostly footslogging eldar list that can also win games but would require much more thought.

Another vote to Dark Eldar. I've seen some really good players do well with them, even now when they aren't considered powerful at all. However, I've also seen them get blown off the table a lot in the first couple of turns.