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So I have recently been looking to get back into 40k. The last time I played was in 4th/5th edition eldar, only had a 500 point army and played a couple games. I am not a huge fan of painting but I love the assembly, modelling and converting parts. Also which ever army I decide to go with (hopefully the decision is made easier by the advice given from you guys and girls) they will be heavily magnetized, but more to the point of this post.

The choices are narrowed down to 4 factions, each with a theme or style that I want to play. The rough formation or units listed would be the core of my army and as time goes on I would expand on them while still trying to follow the theme of the army. I am also not a fan of horde armies and prefer low model count, big scary unit play styles, range or melee doesn't matter to me, either way I enjoy playing aggressively. The advice I am hoping to get is what is the relative strength, flexibility to deal with other armies (with a few units added and/or gear swapped out) and any experiences any of you have had with these armies. So without further ado, here they are.

Orkz: Dread mob with a heavily looted units from other races theme (waagh Ghazghkul)

Tau: Retaliation Cadre + Optimized Stealth Cadre, big fan of all suit army but hate the stormsurge

Space Marine: Brethren of the fell handed + more dreadnoughts and drop pods, lots of big stompy things

Tyranid: Nidzilla mostly focused on Fexes, Flying hive tyrants and Mawlocs/ Trygons, also lictors cause I love the model.

As you can see there is a pretty common theme I enjoy robots and big stompy stuff haha. I have done a decent amount of research on how to kit out the units and the general play style of them but I'm still unsure on how well these do against the more common and/or competitive army setups nowadays. Not a huge fan of FW models due to the huge price tag and difficult access to them (except for Malanthrope, I have plans to convert one if needed), I live in Vancouver, Canada.

Thanks for the help everyone.

Most of the replies on here are going to be regarding play style and competitiveness on a tournament level. All 4 options are going to be fun from a modeling standpoint and I really like the themes of all four.

Of the 4, Orkz and Tyranids are going to be considered the "least competitive" from a competative/tournament standpoint, with Tau and Marines being considered the best competitive options. That said, a heavy Lictor army with with a similar load out you're talking about did very well in a major tournament in recent times.

As someone that plays in only a handful of tournaments, I tend to make my decisions based on modeling fun and theme, and your ork army seems like the most fun from that standpoint. I personally love kit bashing with my ork army, and it's one of those armies I love to play with no matter the outcome.

If your looking for a fun time go Orks if you want something competitve Tau or Marines

Orks are fun enough to not care about the losses for a while.

Tyranids just got their Genestealer Cult to make them fun enough not to care about the losses for a while, but the sheer amount of loses before that has made me lukewarm about taking the time out of my week to play 40k regularly.

Dreadnoughts are just not cool enough to not care about the loses.

Tau don't lose often enough to worry about the loses.

So, Tau if you want to focus on what happens on the table, Orks if you want to focus on what happens off the table. Nidzilla Tyranids is a good build for a bad army, and it did keep me on the table against top tier armies with an okay record against less than top tier lists. I just got bored never having the little guys...

Tau and Space Marine models are newer and awesome, very detailed. Would make for some fun conversions.

Having built a ton of Crisis Suits I will tell you magnetizing them is the way to go; however, a word of warning, I haven't built any of the "new" crisis suit kits yet, but it gets boring building the old ones after a while.

 Lord Inquisitor Nathandar wrote:
If your looking for a fun time go Orks if you want something competitve Tau or Marines

 SharkoutofWata wrote:
Orks are fun enough to not care about the losses for a while.

My guess would be that "a while" is about a few months then it start getting old to lose to any decent player who doesn't handicaps his list for you.

For competitive play

Orks are bad.
Ghazz supplement has some nasty nerfs for your army in there.
Non gargantuan Walkers are bad.

So I would not go this path if you are even slightly interested in competitive play in this edition of the game.

Actually, a while is up until the point that you spend more time playing the game instead of building, converting and painting models. When the army is done and all you have to do is play, that's when the losses will start to hurt.

Your missing the none of the above option.

Thanks for all the advice, after looking into to it all a bit more and thinking of all the conversions I can do (pretty much want almost every unit in my army to be fairly "different" from the picture on the box) so I have ruled out the dreadnoughts and tau, only so much you can do to them before you start to get into the realm of ridiculous fluff to explain the conversions lol. I have an idea of a joining of tyranid and ork, every model in the army I make will heavily draw from kitbashing the hell out of it all and stealing aesthetics from both factions.

This picture just made me fall in love with the idea. Just blows my mind with it all the possibilities.

I have a ton of ideas of what models and parts I could combine to make some epic looking creations (must be my inner ork thinking out loud). So my next debate is whether to play these models as orkz or nids. I am slightly leading to orkz as the idea heavily falls into the fluff surrounding the faction. Still trying to drum up some good ideas for killa kans (ork / tyranid hybrids variety, carnifex going to be a dreadnaught) while still having the model be roughly the same size and style of shooty, killa kans going be shooty for me.

This leads me to the fact that I am slightly worried of orkz being very weak atm (this list / formation being especially skewed toward the weaker side of orkz) and I really don't find any other ork list / play style particularly appealing. On the other hand I know nidzilla can be strong but the whole idea of orky tyranids really does go against the fluff. So out of the 2 lists left, which one would you guys say would be the stronger / least amount bad matchups against popular enemy lists of the two, as well as which faction has more flexibility of units I could add to the core as time goes on to deal with the different armies and list that I may combat against. I would personally be really happy playing either as the theme I am aiming for fits both armies aesthetically as well as crossover between the units I would use would work with both factions. Again thanks for all the help everyone and keep the advice and C&C coming.

SharkoutofWata wrote:Actually, a while is up until the point that you spend more time playing the game instead of building, converting and painting models. When the army is done and all you have to do is play, that's when the losses will start to hurt.

Not too concerned about this as tbh I will have models to convert and paint for at least a year after finishing the core of my army. Plan to start with around 1500 points and build up to 2000 over time, then adding different units to the core of the army for a little more flexibility while on the tabletop.

hobojebus wrote:Your missing the none of the above option.

I knew I was forgetting something, lol, jk. I find no other army really appeals to me model wise or aesthetically or I cant come up with any conversions that would change that. Also I really do wanna keep the model count low as I have zero interest in hordes and wanna make every model in my army unique. (only so many ways you can model a necron before it no longer is a necron).

gaffles wrote:

This picture just made me fall in love with the idea. Just blows my mind with it all the possibilities.

if you love that you should really check out orkatude
http://orkatitude.forumactif.com/f7-modelisme

That site is one of the best resources for ork scratch builds conversions and paint schemes
Sure it is french but who cares the pictures are still good and most of it is step by step : D
They are also great at obscure clans such as Snake bites