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I'm new to 40k, and so is my gaming group, which is just a couple friends from school.
Since my mate and I are gonna split a DV box 50/50, I'm gonna be fielding a DA army, while he has a CSM army, and my other mate has Eldar. He's gonna bring a friend that plays Tau.

What I need help with is creating a list that can hold up against CSM, Eldar, and Tau, which I know is going to be a pain.
We all have relatively small armies, so that's why I'm only going for 500 pts, but in the future, I'm slowly gonna build up towards 1000-1500 pts as well.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

well the csm wont be much of an issue, chaos marines are actually pretty fun to play against. the problem is the tau and eldar.

eldar are very very very tough as an army they pretty much do everything very well at a reasonable cost or cheaper with very few exceptions. so if your friends are trying to remain friends be aware that this information will come from that perspective so i dont expect him to start rolling out the kitchen sink and the jetbikes

the tau are again challenging but this is mainly because they do everything dark angels cant do or cant handle. by there very nature whole section of our army just doesnt work but again assuming your trying to remain friends i dont expect him to be min maxing and breaking out the riptide squads and stormsurge formations

ill walk you through whats going to need improving from where your at with half a DV.

for one your army is actually half an army and one of the units in the box is basically mothballed.

the problem child that has largely been mothballed is the terminators. termites sadly have been squeezed out as a unit by either bigger more potent units, or by cheaper units that do the one thing 7th edition bashes you over the head with; shooting better then the terminators could hope to do and thats after weve account for the deathwings twin linked when deepstriking bonus. as a result i feel hes better left out of any lists you write just altogeather or as a one off down the link and have him assault from a raider or a caestus assault ram or some such nonsense. their never worth it and get mopped off the floor or never contribute to a game every time with very few exceptions so leave them at home

the rest of the ary just needs some sprucing up to become more combat effective, get yourself three more bikes to give yourself a full 6 man, maybe give the sgt a power weapon to make them more resilient to cc and a flamer might not be a bad idea either since your going up against a lot of guys in stuff like crisis suits and jetbikes because as much as i wish people would stop taking them their going to do it. and template weapons ignore cover and jink saves. alternatively you could go grav gun i leave that in your hands but a grav gun means buying more plastic if your wanting to observe WYSIWYG. this is of course if you want to bring them at all, you could shift gears and go towards asault marines or veterans or other units. no right or wrong answers only issue is your wallet and what you want

next get yourself another box of troops so that tactical marines or scouts, scouts i feel are a woefully underplayed unit in dark angels armies and can do a lot of work, and tacticals are generic and consistent and are a staple of good marine army design. some people will come in here and tell you to carve up the dv marines into two squads but thats actually a very bad idea, two squads of 5 die very quickly, the gained mobility of half of them not being tied down to a heavy weapon is lost when they die in the first round someone rolls dice at them. scouts can get away with 5 because they have 48" ranged guns or can be given cover saves and extra bodies for absolutely nothing, tactical marines really cant afford to do it

your then going to want to get some more fun units and or some transports. marines in power armour hate walking, walking makes them sad, giving them transports wont make them sad. its something your going to want to work on, and there are no right or wrong answers there. but if you want your dread get your dread, you want your devestators go get your devestators.

for the HQ i recommend starting with the librarian and then adding someone else later as a beginner his utility is a good way to bail yourself out of nasty situations, the one thing i recommend you do is look into buying him an invulnerable save via special issue wargear or FNP via relics. it will help him live longer. and then from here add in other commanders or switch to someone else as you learn the game better

Thanks ionusx for the help and advice. Like I said really appreciated.

The dark vengeance kits are snap-together plastic which is sweet you can get some games started quickly.

I learned with dark vengeance doing the missions that come in the box and watching some youtube vidz of people going through the missions.

I'd suggest trying all the units in there - the libby, the bikes, the termies and just getting a feel for tactics and how the units work before you start investing in other stuff or even gluing/painting.

You are at a sweet starting spot in the hobby where you don't have to worry about this or that uber unit or tactics and can get a feel for what type of gameplay you and your group likes.

As an avid DA fan, I love to see another player join us! Before you start thinking about what should I buy and how should I build my army, start by thinking about how you like to play. Do you like to have super strong units(albeit not many of them), or fast and mobile bikers, or a foot-slogging infantry?

Obviously with the DV box you get a taste of each, and I suggest playing with all of them to see which you like the most. I personally started with a Deathwing army(all Termies) and evolved into pure Ravenwing(bikes). This was because I realized there is a huge advantage to have twinlinked guns and high mobility. This also lent itself to my play style.

Once you have an idea of how you would like to play, look at getting an idea of how to address problems. Your goal should be to address a multitude of issues in as efficient a way as possible.

I hope this helps, and I hope you love playing DA!

I highly recommend getting a Dark Talon at some point. It's got the biggest gun in the entire book (S10 AP2, occasionally turns into a D weapon with Vortex rule) and is just a solid flyer overall.

Sadly, I agree with many on the terminators. However, I would recommend that you play and proxy until you realize what you like. That said chaos is in a very hard place right now. You can deal with anything thrown your way minus the heldrake in low point games. Against tau you will have to watch for weight of fire and Eldar has some heavy hitters at higher point games and mobility with their bikes. I would advise to play what you like. Bikes are really good and can do some major damage. Move and shoot. If concerned about being shot then assault and break out to repeat. Equip with melta for anti armor, grav for teq and meq, plasma if you want light anti armor and anti mc, teq, meq. Flamers are great against hordes but can't fire if you jink. Tactical squads are good against the units you'll rarely see in a competitive environment and die off objectives too easily. Scouts are pretty sweet as they can infiltrate, and be equipped to be a thorn...

At 500 without knowing what you'll face; bring a vindicator to the party and split the squad into two five men squads. Then purchase another bike squad or trade the terms for another bike squad. Enjoy a cad with a lot of threat that can be expanded to be deadly at 1000 - 1500 points.

 Inkubas wrote:
Sadly, I agree with many on the terminators. However, I would recommend that you play and proxy until you realize what you like. That said chaos is in a very hard place right now. You can deal with anything thrown your way minus the heldrake in low point games. Against tau you will have to watch for weight of fire and Eldar has some heavy hitters at higher point games and mobility with their bikes. I would advise to play what you like. Bikes are really good and can do some major damage. Move and shoot. If concerned about being shot then assault and break out to repeat. Equip with melta for anti armor, grav for teq and meq, plasma if you want light anti armor and anti mc, teq, meq. Flamers are great against hordes but can't fire if you jink. Tactical squads are good against the units you'll rarely see in a competitive environment and die off objectives too easily. Scouts are pretty sweet as they can infiltrate, and be equipped to be a thorn...

At 500 without knowing what you'll face; bring a vindicator to the party and split the squad into two five men squads. Then purchase another bike squad or trade the terms for another bike squad. Enjoy a cad with a lot of threat that can be expanded to be deadly at 1000 - 1500 points.

5 man tactical squads are awful

Depends on how they're used. I'm advising using them because that's what available. 70 points for some units to hold objectives in the back is not a bad option IMO. It forces the opponent to focus on either trying to rush to the table edge and dislodge them (in cover it's not THAT easy) or ignore them. Either way you're scoring kills or keeping objectives secured and with stubborn these buggers are usually pretty resilient