Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Hello Dakka!

It has been a while since I've played 40k regularly. However, my son is starting to get a little older and I'm getting excited that I (may) have a captive gaming audience. I was looking over my collection (Eldar, Astra Militarum, Black Templars, Blood Angels) and I realized I don't have a classic "bad guy" army.

So my question for all the dad's (or non-dad's with an opinion): what "bad guy" armies do your mini-yous love to fight against?

Happy Father's Day

Orks are pretty good classic easy to sell foe. Easy to identify orcs from fantasy books as well.

Also they have wacky rules and play differently to say space marines in being more of horde army(compared to say CSM which would be more akin to SM).

Flipside being their current rules stink so if your boy insist on playing with them(rather than wanting to be the hero at which point this is GOOD for you!) he's up for extra challenge. Of course you can fudge it by giving him lot more points Not like he's likely going to notice the point imbalance

On a plus side also orks are fun to paint and convert for the dad

I've been trying to get my 7 year-old step-daughter into the wargaming. So far, for 40K she's only interested in collecting and painting Tyranids. We haven't got a chance for her to play against me yet as she is determined to get her models painted first, and is not interested in getting more models until she gets what she has painted (which is something I struggle with).

And part of it is trying to figure out who are the "bad guys" in 40K. I've tried explaining it as there are some good guys (Imperium, Eldar, and Tau), bad guys (Chaos, Dark Eldar), and some guys in the middle doing their own thing (Tyranids, Necrons, Orks). Trying to get any more specific complicated than that is difficult for a 7 year old to grasp.

TL;DR - Chaos Space Marines. If your son wants to be the bad guy, there's lots of great bad guy stuff, like powerful heroes, Heldrakes, and things that just look mean. If your son wants things to fight against, Cultists can die in droves, Chaos Space Marines are good "elite-looking" guys, and some of these powerful bad guys are fun to defeat as well.

-----------------

I'm starting to face this opportunity myself. My nephew, who has always been able to oogle the models but never touch them, was calm and patient for long enough that when he asked if we could play with them, I was cautiously optimistic. He also really likes rolling dice, though I think more because they make a fun sound right now that anything.

Still, it was enough! I dumbed down the rules a LOT, and let him take his favourite model, the Heldrake (because he loves dragons), and he got to work burning away all these little Cultists. He really got into it, even though it was just a short 3 turn affair. I told him he had to move the Heldrake first (though I let him spin it around and and move WHEREVER he wanted), and I told him to get the flames over as many of my guys as possible.

It was thoroughly enjoyable to watch him learn to cover more guys. First time he only burned 2 guys, but the next time he realized he could cover more of them! During the last turn, he covered all of them, which really made him happy. I don't think he connected higher numbers with "better", but he got that the dice meant something and was excited to roll them again not because he was rolling dice, but he wanted to see what would happen.

I'm really looking forward to exploring this with him :-)

Personally I think the joy of this hobby is that you can make your faction be anything you want.

Want your marine chapter to be horrible killers? Space Sharks.
Want your Guard to be an army of oppression, add an inquisitor.
Want your Eldar to be evil? Add some Dark Eldar allies.

There's so many options. I would let your son look at the models, take him into a GW store and let him look at the different armies and see what takes his fancy. With the start collecting sets, there are some good ways into the game.

Nids are fun to play with and against and they are kind of the ultimate sci fi bad guy.

Tyranids are one of the most evil looking factions if that's what you're looking for.

Of the two I fought I preferred fighting Nids because they put up more of a fight and I just like the way they look more than Orks. If I had a chance to fight Necrons though I would go out of my way because I like the look.

My suggestion would be to let your son take over one of the factions you dont use as much, and start a bad guy army yourself or together.

That way things stay fresh as either one of you can play the bad guys and would allow for a lot of room for a narrative campaign.

Cheers

Maybe something with a lot of heroes or big monster's? Nidzilla or chaos Knights? A small model count would keep things small and quick.

 BunkhouseBuster wrote:
I've been trying to get my 7 year-old step-daughter into the wargaming. So far, for 40K she's only interested in collecting and painting Tyranids. We haven't got a chance for her to play against me yet as she is determined to get her models painted first, and is not interested in getting more models until she gets what she has painted (which is something I struggle with).

Emperor bless your child for choosing anything besides Slaanesh. On the 40k FB group there was a dad who asked us how to prevent his daughter from googling Slaanesh online and find excuses as to why he can't say anything about this particular chaos god (his 6 year old daughter chose Slaanesh because she thought they were an army of pink princesses. Technically she's not wrong...).

Starting my nephew off with gaming in general, I picked up some cheapo push-together space marines on ebay. This way I'm out about $30 if he doesn't stick to it. Introducing him to painting, and a little bit of kiddie-hammer.

I collect Eldar, so we'll just play against each other. If he maintains interest or it turns into a "thing" for him we'll move onto other armies and letting him choose some stuff etc.

He's nine, for reference. He could change his mind next week and forget all about it.

You do know that your Space Marines and Imperials are not "good guys" if you consider soldiers that are worse than Nazis just because of religion?

That being said from one Dad to another, let your son choose. When my son got into Daddys armies he loved the Space Marines because I guess they are in all the starter sets. When he grew up he decided he like Terminators. I am talking Arnold Terminators, "I be bahk." So he choose Necrons till he found out how the rules really worked and lost interest in 40K.

So show him your minis. Show him the books. My son didn't care for books or I should say reading the books, but looked at the pics, and saw Terminators and that is what he choose.

You don't even need to tell him how bad the Space Marines are really are. Just let him go by what he likes the look of and just go on from there. If you try to "hedge" him in a certain direction, he will loose interest in the game. So let him do all the decision making.