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Opening up for suggestions here. I currently play all the various chaos armies and have a friend that plays Blood Angels. He's gotten a little understandably frustrated with BA performance and wants to try something new, but jumping right into a full scale army is quite an expense.

We are planning to pick up some variety of starter boxes (start collecting or battleforce, whichever is appropriate for the chosen armies) as a base for low point armies then add 100 pts or so every couple months to slowly build up full armies. He's planning to go Necrons. I'm undecided but want to do something that plays diffferently from my chaos. So not assault oriented and not FMC.

The goal is good games for both of us, no overwhelming advantage to either. We're also not going GMC or SHV in the foreseeable future so that eliminates some of the cheesier/OP options that tend to break certain armies.

So my question is what would make a good army choice for this within these parameters?

Probably Tau. They do well enough without the Stormsurge/Supremacy Suits. They also are on about the same power level (other is vanilla SM, but you two might find more marines boring).

I find when I play against crons with my tau it's fun and challenging. I'd go for it if I were you. The way I see it is that both are Shooty armies, with tau having better shooting, but crons having melee options. id say codexes are fairly balenced against each other.

I've found that Riptides are really effective against Necrons. I mean moreso than they supposedly are against everything. ^^; Their ion blast weapons won't make a dent in a proper horde, but putting S8 AP2 pie plates on top of Immortals erases them. They get 6+ RP (5+ if they're buffed), and that's it.

Riptides are also good at tying down wraiths, although you don't want to get caught in a wall of ID fire before you can charge. (Or get charged; my last opponent didn't realize that was what I wanted.)

Also, forget what you know about gauss weapons glancing vehicles to death. They'll do it eventually, but with Disruption Pods your fish jink all those glances on 3+. And can then drop off a whole squad of Breachers with AP3 pulse shotguns.

Eldar wreck Necrons pretty handily.

I'd vote for Eldar, if you want to win games.

Armies that will almost certainly never beat Necrons:

CSM
IG
BA
Tyranids

 Jewelfox wrote:
I've found that Riptides are really effective against Necrons.

Against Necrons?

Just Necrons?

Riptides are specifically effective against Necrons?

So, what you're saying, Jewelfox, is that Riptides are a questionable decision, listwise. HOWEVER, if you just so HAPPEN to be playing against Necrons, then you should definitely give the Riptide a second look, though you normally probably wouldn't play it?

Is that what you are implying?

I mean moreso than they supposedly are against everything. ^^;

Ah. Never mind.

Just so we're fething clear on that.

Eldar, Space Marines, Chaos Deamons, and Tau can all rumble with each other. If your meta is highly ITC based the Tau will suffer and drop into the Tier 1.5 with Chaos Renegades list and will not be able to compete with the top tier.

Outside the ITC they are potent but there are still far stronger codices the ones I mentioned. Though the Tau probably stand more of a chance outside the ITC and its arbitrary nerfs.

I would consider Guard. Not only are they a good shoot army, if you model them with a traitor guard theme, they could also make good allies for your chaos army.

Sisters of Battle, because we need more Sisters of Battle players. They cost so damned much that model count will never be an issue

More seriously though I'd agree with Tau, as long as your opponent doesn't rush to get flyers and you don't rush to get riptides it shouldn't be too hard to build up balanced forces that are fun to play against.

 Xrystiana wrote:
I would consider Guard. Not only are they a good shoot army, if you model them with a traitor guard theme, they could also make good allies for your chaos army.

Guard are not a good shooty army atm.

The consensus is choose any army that's over powered right now, like Eldar or Tau. Should be fine.

 Xerics wrote:
Eldar wreck Necrons pretty handily.

Well to be fair, eldar wreck everything rightn ow

If you want to try something more off the beaten path try Sisters of Battle, Adeptus Mechanicus, Skitarii, or Dark Angels.

Of course you said you don't want another CC army but everyone should play orks.

Backspacehacker wrote:

 Xerics wrote:
Eldar wreck Necrons pretty handily.

Well to be fair, eldar wreck everything rightn ow

That's my fear with them. I really like the fluff behind taking Eldar to play against Necrons, but I want it to still be a fair and close game whoever wins. Not playing Wraithknights removes some of the OPness, but is it enough to balance out overall or will it still be basically one-sided? Interestingly enough I don't think anyone in my normal circles plays Eldar so I don't have a great feel for how bad they really are and how much is internet hype.

slip wrote:If you want to try something more off the beaten path try Sisters of Battle, Adeptus Mechanicus, Skitarii, or Dark Angels.

SoB would be interesting but I don't want the headaches of a shrinking and not always easily available model line. DA is a maybe. It would probably be my SM chapter if I were to go that route, but I'm not sold on wanting to do more marines. Mechanicus armies are a possibility, how do they fair against Necrons?

Tau have come up several times so I'll definitely consider them as a possibility. ITC rules are a factor but not a big one. We don't tend to use them in friendly games but you never know when I might decide to hit a tournament.

BTW thanks for the suggestions so far everyone!

Fhionnuisce wrote:
Mechanicus armies are a possibility, how do they fair against Necrons?

Skitarii on its own, not so great. But they look amazing. Honestly, Mechanicus is seldom played without allies.

If you're trying to win, you bring in Skitarii for their vanguard with plasma calivers, and ally in drop pods for them to put them next to something that needs to die, and you pick up a group of three anti-air Onagers because they can send any flier burning to the ground.
The rest of the Skitarii models are mostly just pretty.

Adeptus Mechanicus, you bring in for the Kataphron, and you stay away from the electro priests, no matter how awesome they look. And you can get yourself an actual HQ choice from here!

And the Knight, you get so that you get to hear the cries of "OH MY GOD ALL UPGRADES FOR FREE!? THE CHEEEESE!!"

Or like me, you just build a pure Skitarii army around Ironstriders because you love seeing them on the battlefield. I might not win by game rules, but I feel like a winner from the setup!

The way to kill us is through sheer wait of fire. Statistically, RP fails as often as it succeeds, so drown us in saves and we will fail some. Everyone remembers all the times we pass 7/8 RPs, but no one remembers all the times we fail 7/8. I know you said you were looking for a non-CC focused army, but CC is the other way to kill us. We are desperately vulnerable to Sweeping Advance and since most of our army only gets one attack at initiative 2, there's a very good chance you'll be winning combat. Space Wolves seem especially custom-tailored to wreck Necrons with the Curse of the Wulfen supplement.

 Xerics wrote:
Eldar wreck Necrons pretty handily.

But Eldar is not an army for a beginner.
I'd opt for vanilla Marines.