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![[Post New]](/s/i/i.gif) 2016/08/11 23:49:07
Subject: Major differences between factions
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Squishy Squig
London
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Hi everyone!
Let me begin with a brief introduction of myself and my gaming experience
I've started collecting my Ork army a few years ago but my first real game was just today, so I am really new to the rules of 40k.
However, I've noticed some patterns, which seem to be true for most of the Ork units: bad shooting, low initiative, which are compensated by a high number of attacks and models in units. So, my question is: is it possible to list such special features of different factions? IMHO such features have a defining role in tactics behind each army, so it would be very exciting for me as a new player to understand it. I am particularly interested in SM and CSM armies as I am thinking about collecting one of this armies, and I want to choose units in a more structured and informed way than I did with orks
Thank you in advance!
p.s. I hope I chose the right part of the forum for this thread
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![[Post New]](/s/i/i.gif) 2016/08/12 00:05:38
Subject: Major differences between factions
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The Last Chancer Who Survived
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C:SM = humans +100
BA = SM vampires, but with no ability to use that
SW = SM with fur
DA = SM with plasma and super secrets
CSM = SM -9000
GK = SM with more mary sue and magical powers
Deathwatch = SM with anti-tank anti-personnel assault weapons on the same model
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![[Post New]](/s/i/i.gif) 2016/08/12 00:12:54
Subject: Major differences between factions
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Fresh-Faced New User
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Niro wrote:Hi everyone! Let me begin with a brief introduction of myself and my gaming experience I've started collecting my Ork army a few years ago but my first real game was just today, so I am really new to the rules of 40k. However, I've noticed some patterns, which seem to be true for most of the Ork units: bad shooting, low initiative, which are compensated by a high number of attacks and models in units. So, my question is: is it possible to list such special features of different factions? IMHO such features have a defining role in tactics behind each army, so it would be very exciting for me as a new player to understand it. I am particularly interested in SM and CSM armies as I am thinking about collecting one of this armies, and I want to choose units in a more structured and informed way than I did with orks Thank you in advance! p.s. I hope I chose the right part of the forum for this thread Hi, there! I'm new as well but I've doing research on the armies/factions for some years now and can try and give you some basic things I've noticed: Eldar: High mobility, good shooting and strong psychic phase. Army is composed of specialists, meaning that each different unit tends to be really good for one particular thing (EX: Fire Dragons = Vehicle Hunters). However, each of their units are not too bad in other roles depending on the situation. Generally, their really good but you need to know what you're doing. They'll either do well/dominate or fail miserably. Low toughness. SM: Jack of all trades, master of none. Really forgiving for beginners. One dumb mistake won't cost you the game. Troops can take a bit of damage and give it back. Problem is every other army does a particular thing better than you. (EX: Don't expect to outshoot a Tau army.) CSM: Lack of variety and versatility. Don't play like their Loyalist counterparts. Lack ATSKNF. Not doin' so well because 7th edition is about shooting and CSM seem to want to melee. Problem is that they don't have a lot of options to get into combat and even when they do get into combat, they're outclassed. That's what I've really seen and confidently comment on. Hope this helps even a little.
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This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2016/08/12 00:14:17
"I used to be sane but then I found out that was boring..." |
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![[Post New]](/s/i/i.gif) 2016/08/12 00:30:42
Subject: Major differences between factions
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Squishy Squig
London
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Da Masta wrote:
Hi, there! I'm new as well but I've doing research on the armies/factions for some years now and can try and give you some basic things I've noticed:
Eldar: High mobility, good shooting and strong psychic phase. Army is composed of specialists, meaning that each different unit tends to be really good for one particular thing (EX: Fire Dragons = Vehicle Hunters). However, each of their units are not too bad in other roles depending on the situation. Generally, their really good but you need to know what you're doing. They'll either do well/dominate or fail miserably. Low toughness.
SM: Jack of all trades, master of none. Really forgiving for beginners. One dumb mistake won't cost you the game. Troops can take a bit of damage and give it back. Problem is every other army does a particular thing better than you. (EX: Don't expect to outshoot a Tau army.)
CSM: Lack of variety and versatility. Don't play like their Loyalist counterparts. Lack ATSKNF. Not doin' so well because 7th edition is about shooting and CSM seem to want to melee. Problem is that they don't have a lot of options to get into combat and even when they do get into combat, they're outclassed.
That's what I've really seen and confidently comment on. Hope this helps even a little.
Thank you! That's exactly what I wanted to hear: just a couple of sentences, which define the overall performance of a particular army
Though, it's kinda sad that CSM do not perform good atm as I was thinking of something like noize marine roster
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![[Post New]](/s/i/i.gif) 2016/08/12 00:33:09
Subject: Major differences between factions
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Assassin with Black Lotus Poison
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Tau Empire: Big guns and lots of them. Often mounted on big robots.
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This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2016/08/12 00:33:55
The Laws of Thermodynamics:
1) You cannot win. 2) You cannot break even. 3) You cannot stop playing the game.
Colonel Flagg wrote:You think you're real smart. But you're not smart; you're dumb. Very dumb. But you've met your match in me. |
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![[Post New]](/s/i/i.gif) 2016/08/12 00:59:32
Subject: Major differences between factions
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Fresh-Faced New User
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Also, I forgot! The faction I picked:
Necrons: Good shooting, transports and durability. Very good HQ and elite units. Enough unit variety to play how you want. Has no real problem against any other faction. Lack dedicated CC units but still good in melee. Can lose you friends.
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"I used to be sane but then I found out that was boring..." |
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![[Post New]](/s/i/i.gif) 2016/08/12 07:51:35
Subject: Major differences between factions
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!!Goffik Rocker!!
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Orks: FUN
Btw, you can play an elite ork list very successfully. You can always move away from the general theme. For example, i've found that my bully boyz (3*5 meganobz) perform better than hordes most of the time.
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This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2016/08/12 07:54:17
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![[Post New]](/s/i/i.gif) 2016/08/12 08:27:47
Subject: Major differences between factions
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Jinking Ravenwing Land Speeder Pilot
Hanoi, Vietnam.
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![[Post New]](/s/i/i.gif) 2016/08/12 12:17:15
Subject: Major differences between factions
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Shadowy Grot Kommittee Memba
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Here's the gist:
-Eldar: Traditionally, Eldar were represented by durable vehicles, and highly specialized infantry squads backed by a core of cheap but flimsy Guardian units. With the new meta however, they mostly consist of super-fast long ranged bike units backed up by nigh unkillable wraith units.
-Dark Eldar: Generally play two styles. Kabalites are super-mobile, glass cannon shooting units, while Haemonculus Coven armies are a frankenstein freakshow of highly durable, elite melee units and monstrous creatures.
-Tyranids: Tons of various monstrous creatures and little swarmy buggers. No vehicles, mostly melee, often taken for their very powerful flying monstrous creature units.
-SMs: A tactical mix of melee and shooting units, trending towards shooting. Adapt to many tactics, but most of the time cant get quite the level of specialization of the more skewed factions.
-Necrons: Durability, the army. Mostly centered around shooting within 24". Durable vehicles, and the most durable infantry in the game make some army builds where a whole army can fire into a single beefy unit and cause next to no damage.
-Daemons: Highly random, melee and psyker focused army which has the defining traits of only invuln saves (no armor) and everything having Deep Strike.
-Grey Knights: The space marine answer to daemons. Also deep strike very commonly, also of note they are amongst the most expensive, elite armies in the game.
-Blood Angels: Space Marines but more melee-er. Focus on jump pack units and melee variant dreadnoughts.
-Space Wolves: Space Marines but more melee-er. Have the only Cavalry units of any SM army. Can also bring beast packs of pet wolves, and bizarrely, pumped up werewolf space marines. Yep. They're viking furries.
-Dark Angels: Space Marines but more bike and/or terminator focused. Their army is split into three "wings", one which acts similar to Space Marines classic flavor, one which is all terminators, and one which is all bikes. Usually when you see a DA army, it picks one of the latter two to focus on.
-Orks: Have more shooting than most melee armies, but still are very melee focused. Low quality high quantity is generally the name of the game with orks, they lack many special rules, but the ones they do have tend to be silly, highly random, and not terribly reliable, so at their core orks tend to be a bit of a blunt instrument.
-Imperial Guard: Shooty, low quality troops. Rely on buffs and command orders to bring their shooting up to par and beyond that which other armies can put out. They also have slow but fairly durable tanks, and use big blast templates more than most other armies.
-Tau: If guard are a shooting hammer, tau are a shooting knife. Again fairly flimsy, melee-allergic units take the floor, but rather than buffs which bring up their volume of fire they can cut through special rules and cover saves like a hot knife through butter. Supporting their infantry are tanks similar to Eldar vehicles, and mecha-monsters straight out of an anime.
-Adeptus Mechanicus: no transport vehicles means their units are loaded with rules to get them across the board and doing work. They have a mix of melee and ranged focused units, and mostly rely on army wide buffs to increase their whole army's shooting, melee, or defenses for the turn, so an Admech player must figure out a good strategy to have entire turns focused on doing just one thing very well, or his very expensive army is likely to perform very poorly.
-Harlequins: Melee focused super-mobile Eldar, similar in feel to Dark Eldar, but more interested in stabbing you in the face than shooting you. Contain many morale-breaking special rules.
-Sisters of Battle: An army centered around the idea of individual units using their faith to perform miraculous, superhuman feats. Each unit has a once-per-game "Faith Power" which pumps them up in a fun way for one turn, and timing their use is the key to winning with the Sisters.
-Chaos Space Marines: Crazy, rebel marines who combine some aspects of the daemons with space marines. Their vehicles are mostly monstrous creations of the dark mechanicum, and they look like Transformers for the most part.
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"Got you, Yugi! Your Rubric Marines can't fall back because I have declared the tertiary kaptaris ka'tah stance two, after the secondary dacatarai ka'tah last turn!"
"So you think, Kaiba! I declared my Thousand Sons the cult of Duplicity, which means all my psykers have access to the Sorcerous Facade power! Furthermore I will spend 8 Cabal Points to invoke Cabbalistic Focus, causing the rubrics to appear behind your custodes! The Vengeance for the Wronged and Sorcerous Fullisade stratagems along with the Malefic Maelstrom infernal pact evoked earlier in the command phase allows me to double their firepower, letting me wound on 2s and 3s!"
"you think it is you who has gotten me, yugi, but it is I who have gotten you! I declare the ever-vigilant stratagem to attack your rubrics with my custodes' ranged weapons, which with the new codex are now DAMAGE 2!!"
"...which leads you straight into my trap, Kaiba, you see I now declare the stratagem Implacable Automata, reducing all damage from your attacks by 1 and triggering my All is Dust special rule!" |
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![[Post New]](/s/i/i.gif) 2016/08/12 12:21:43
Subject: Major differences between factions
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Ancient Space Wolves Venerable Dreadnought
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Tyranids: The token monster/hoard army. However, they have the worst monsters and their hoards are too expensive.
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I don't break the rules but I'll bend them as far as they'll go. |
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![[Post New]](/s/i/i.gif) 2016/08/12 13:10:07
Subject: Re:Major differences between factions
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Squishy Squig
London
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Thanks guys, your comments helped me a lot! I guess I'll look more closely at SM, Necrons and Eldar codexes then as atm I prefer shooting armies, which have some units capable of fighting in melee as well.
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This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2016/08/12 14:35:44
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![[Post New]](/s/i/i.gif) 2016/08/12 16:29:26
Subject: Re:Major differences between factions
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Regular Dakkanaut
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Niro wrote:Thanks guys, your comments helped me a lot! I guess I'll look more closely at SM, Necrons and Eldar codexes then as atm I prefer shooting armies, which have some units capable of fighting in melee as well.
Shameless plug as a necron player: necrons have decent shooting (not great!) just because it's all short ranged (we have five things with a range of over 24 inches). Necron cc is good, because you can throw units into the meat grinder and keep your opponent locked forever, or overwhelm them with attacks, or get a bunch of high strength ap2 attacks that will shred through anything, if they can get into combat. Necron mobility is great. In previous editions, mobility was supposed to be our weakness, that is no longer the case. Almost all of our best units are our most mobile units (wraiths, tomb blades, destroyers, praetorians). And, as previously stated, our durability is absolutely insane.
So essentially, necrons can do everything well, and their durability makes them forgiving if you make mistakes. However, necrons are not in the best spot right now. I don't say this because the codex is bad, but because it is very good, but not an extreme cheesefest. It is hard for necrons to compete with top tier imperium lists like super-friends and excellent eldar lists, especially jetbike and wraithknight spam, because of our weakness to psychic powers and low(ish) damage, respectively. Necrons haven't placed at a major tournament (I think, correct me if I'm wrong) since LVO early this year. But necrons cannot play casually very well either. You will stomp mid tier and low tier codexes into the ground if you bring an optimized list and play it well. Plus, necrons are often considered to be one of the worst armies to play against. People hate not being able to see results on the tabletop. Even if they win through objectives (which is usually the only way to win vs necrons) a durable necron list will still have lots of models on the table at the end of the game. So necrons have it pretty good, but people hate them for their playstyle and lack of "interactivity". We don't have problems anywhere close to those of the bottom tier codices, but necrons are in a wierd place right now. But if you like the models, fluff, and playstyle (we can do almost anything), necrons are the army for you.
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![[Post New]](/s/i/i.gif) 2016/08/12 23:22:41
Subject: Re:Major differences between factions
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Squishy Squig
London
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Thank you, Anrakyr-the-Traveller, now I'm really intrigued about Necrons. I'll try to find a player of this army in local clubs to see them in action irl.
Btw, I love how you, guys, describe relationship with other players after playing Necrons
Da Masta wrote:
Also, I forgot! The faction I picked:
Necrons: Can lose you friends.
Anrakyr-the-Traveller wrote:
Plus, necrons are often considered to be one of the worst armies to play against. People hate not being able to see results on the tabletop. Even if they win through objectives (which is usually the only way to win vs necrons) a durable necron list will still have lots of models on the table at the end of the game. So necrons have it pretty good, but people hate them for their playstyle and lack of "interactivity".
So, now I may only wish that somebody comes up with such a broad summary of SM and Eldar, though I guess that there is plenty of stuff about this somewhere on the forum already.
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![[Post New]](/s/i/i.gif) 2016/08/13 00:17:29
Subject: Major differences between factions
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Ancient Space Wolves Venerable Dreadnought
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Space Marines do it all and with the exception of a few chapters don't do anything particularly well.
Decent firepower but can't out-shoot the Tau or the Eldar.
Decent maneuverability but can't out-maneuver the Eldar.
Decent durability but not as tough as the Necrons.
Decent close combat but kitting anything for melee is a massive point sink because Murphey's Law.
What Space Marines have in their favour is the ability to stick those few chapters that do something above average together to create an army that does almost everything above average.
Eldar are glass canons just like the Tau they do something really well but suck at other things. Eldar have decent firepower, great maneuverability, high initiative and weapon skill and a strong Psychic Phase, Eldar weakness is toughness, when you can actually inflict wounds on them Eldar die pretty easy. Oh, and they have Monstrous Creatures that draw and wear all the wounds that should be used for mowing down Eldar troops.
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I don't break the rules but I'll bend them as far as they'll go. |
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![[Post New]](/s/i/i.gif) 2016/08/13 02:03:10
Subject: Re:Major differences between factions
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Insect-Infested Nurgle Chaos Lord
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I need to have a separate section for Space Marines (waaay at the bottom) because they...tend to steal the crap out of whatever is in the game. Also note that this is a rundown of what these factions ideally are, not how they actually perform on the tabletop. This is due to the imbalances GW has allowed to come into the game, so some descriptions doesn't line up with others (for example if you use the broken eldar units, they end up feeling more like Orks or IG's brute force rather than the tactical specialists they're suppose to be):
Eldar - (ignoring broken units) Specialist roles and relies on buffs. Each unit is devastatingly good at killing what it's intended on killing and how to kill it, but crap at everything else. They can also get exponentially better when you buff them with Farseer psychics.
Dark Eldar - Glass cannons. Purest definition of Glass cannons; your toughest tank has less armor than the weakest transports in other armies and your troop's armor aren't much better. But they hurt like hell when they do hit and, like the eldar, have an answer for everything. Always alpha strike, never get caught in the open. You're also fragile speedsters in that a lot of your troops either has access to fast vehicles, deepstrike, movement modifiers, or a combination thereof with very few exceptions (talos, I'm looking at you).
Orks - "Idiot proof" is what I call them. With Orks, you're generally not hassled by losing a model or two because your models are so cheap, and because of the inherently low BS, you fire lots of shots so fancy stuff like Overwatch can be glossed over (unlike other factions most of your units will only miss half their shots, rather than 3/4ths of their shots). The army is generally straight forward (in that while some combinations are possible, you generally won't go wrong with just pushing forward) with a small emphasis on melee (most people think Orks are all about beating face, but they also tend to forget that Orks were the ones who came up with the term "Dakka Dakka").
Tau - Shooting specialists bar none. With the exception of that super-overwatch, your army will crumble faster than digestive biscuits in the hands of a 2 year old if anything makes it into close combat. Yes, even the mighty riptide (note how most strategies emphasis how it can kite units, rather than melee them). However there is nothing Tau Shooting can't put down. They're also buff-related like the Eldar, in that markerlights and other buffs can exponentially increase your unit's deadliness.
Necrons - Use to also be Shooting Specialists in 4th edition because they lacked decent close combat units, but now are firmly in the place of Mightly Glaciers. Incredibly tough troops across the board backed by excellent weapons (Gauss means they can hurt everything, and Warscythes and whatever the Wraiths are packing are downright deadly) they can basically march from one side of the board to the other killing everything in the way. Unless you Spam Transports, top speed is often a problem but they have better overall speed as they can basically just march and shoot.
Chaos Daemons - Wildcards. Each army can vastly differ due to the different roles each god has, not to mention the Warp Storm table, randomized rewards and other shenanigans. When the stars align, Daemon armies can be an utter nightmare to face, but can just as easily be crippled by bad rolls before the game even starts. They have, by far, the most varied of effects and generally run contrary to the game's normal conventions (the most notable is army-wide invul saves, which can catch people by surprise).
Imperial Guard - They're called the Hammer of the Emperor for a reason. Mighty Glacier AND The Brute combined into one; they have obscene amounts of Ordinance (in both quantity, quality and variety) backed by a ton of troopers. Like Orks, everything is straight forward and generally do not require fancy tactics, but like the Eldar and Tau they can also get better (although not exponentially) with Orders.
Tyranids - Often called the "Melee Monstrous" counterpart to Imperial Guard; Tyranids have no vehicles whatsoever. They use Monstrous Creatures instead, resulting in them spamming monstrous creatures left and right. This automatically makes them more melee-focused as MCs come with Smash natively, so you don't need to buy fancy weapons to make MCs good at smashing heads. Melee-focused doesn't necessarily mean they're better at melee, as they've steadily gotten better shooting weapons since 4th edition. They're also highly reliant on Synapse, which makes their troops basically fearless and unable to be shifted, but losing it means their troops either do nothing or outright run off the board. Also comes with a variety of exotic rules seen nowhere else in the game.
Now those are the big "traditional" armies out of the way. Next up are the mini-dexes:
Inquisition, Legion of the Damned, Militarium Temptestus - These are "fillers" for imperial armies. They generally provide some decent specialists that you can use to fill in the holes where one of your army underperforms without having to bring in another full-army to do so. However while they can be fielded stand-alone, they often have so many glaring holes in their own armies that they end up requiring so much help from another army that they end up as the allied force one way or another.
Ad-Mech forces - Imperial Necrons is what I'd call them. A ton of special effects, devastatingly effective units, slow as molasses due to lacking native transports of any kind. They work well alone but get exponentially better when you bring some allies from another imperial codex. In some ways they're also the Imperial equivallent of Daemons, as they bring some really exotic and useful rules to other imperial armies when allied with them.
Imperial Knights - Superheavy-only army. Works well alone or as a side dish; they're Lightning Bruisers due to the huge range on their guns, the Superheavy rule, and the speed at which they move. Just note that they're not invincible behemoths; you will feel every single loss, even if it's just a weapon destroyed result.
Some notes before the SMs and equivalents come up: Again these are just what the armies ideally would be, not how they actually are on the tabletop right now. For example a lot of people complain about MCs being broken; but they're not talking about Tyranids at all. The ones they're complaining about are Tau and Eldar MCs and GMCs, and just some very specific ones (the argument would be better if they just said "these specific units are broken" rather than "all MCs are broken"). Another thing is these are generally what the armies were meant to be across different eras of the games; some of these descriptions are basically paraphrasing old GW designer interviews and what they viewed the army "should" be. They have since drifted a lot from then and each army had a "weird" period where they ended up being completely different from their intended style (Nob Bikers is when Orks turned into a completely technical army rather than a straightforward brute force one).
And now, the five flavours of Power Armor and their Sorbet Cousins. Generally all of them have relatively the same level of mobility and durability, with some sliding higher on the scale and some sliding lower. They also all generally share a lot of weapons as well. Basically, while there are some differences, the broad strokes tend to be the same between different units of identical role across codexes:
Space Marines - Jack of All Trades. They have a bit of everything. And I do mean EVERYTHING; you can play mech, you can play specialists, you can play elites and, in some circumstances, you can even play horde (bare-naked marines in a gladius having free transports). Unlike the usual trope and due to some player-perceived (although not entirely unfounded) favouritism by the company, Space Marines do NOT fall into the "Master of None" category; in fact they can come fairly close to other races who supposedly specialize in those areas while sacrificing little in others. Currently the army with the largest variation, with no less than 5 different "Decurions" to choose from, more units than any other army in existence, and numerous supplementary units from Forge World (which includes almost the entire Horus Heresy Line). Note that they are powerful, but not broken due to most units (with only a few exceptions) being a resounding "meh" when compared to others. Note that the codex technically houses several different armies, each defined by their own "Chapter Tactics". A Raven Guard Space Marine Army would play very differently from a Salamanders Space Marine Army, and neither would be like the Black Templars (all of these are in one book).
Dark Angels - Ideally the Shooter variant of Space Marines, they're also suppose to be "super specialists" in that they can field all-terminator or all-biker armies (this has since been stolen from them by....pretty much every other vanilla marine force). They place an emphasis on Plasma Weaponry and shooting, and have some nifty Super-elite variants of some marine units in exchange for not having access at all to other marine units (no centurions, Ironclads, etc).
Blood Angels - Melee-Specialist Space Marines. They have fast vehicles, emphasis on close-quarter weapons (having Heavy Flamers in tactical squads, Baal Predator, Frag Cannons, etc...). They also have one of the most devastating Marine Melee units in the Death Company, followed by Sanguinary Guard. Much like the Dark Angels, they trade some of their special units for other normal marine vanilla units, such as Centurions.
Space Wolves - They use to be the other Melee Specialists but now are more of a Technical faction within the space marines as a whole. A lot of their options are drastically different in how they're taken in a normal SM army; for example their Devastators (called Long Fangs) can take up to 5 Heavy Weapons and shoot them at different units (so mix-weapons is actually a good thing here), but no extra members to buffer wounds. They also have some hilariously powerful, out of context units like the Thunderwolf Cavalry and Wulfen; the entire army can either be technical or lightning bruisers depending on how you build your army, and is one of the few to actually break from the standard Space Marine mold at times.
Grey Knights - Daemon-specialists and Psyker Army. Another Technical one; they have some of the trappings of normal space marines but are otherwise completely different; for example even your most basic trooper is armed like a special character. Obviously due to the army-wide force weapons and close-range guns, they're a melee-focused army. Very notable in that their Terminators are still one of the stronger ones and the Dreadknight is extremely powerful. Their librarian is also one of the cheapest and most effective ways to spam certain psychic disciplines. Unlike other Marine Armies, these function better as allies than straight-up armies.
Sisters of Battle - A lot of people will torch me for lumping them here but they're basically Marines with less stats in all but name now. Once again another Technical Faction within the MEQs, they specialize in close-range guns (NOT close combat) with their faith system being essentially Psychic Powers -1. Their organization is very similar to that of the Grey Knights and a lot of their units feel like lighter-armored counterparts (although they fulfill completely different roles). They can bring hilarious amounts of meltas and flamers into play, making them extremely deadly in close quarters. Finally, each unit has an "Act of Faith" that can be activated to boost their abilities for one turn. Like the Grey Knights, they function better as Allies. This is mainly due to both of them having a shared heritage from being old Inquisition units (which were always designed as Allies).
Chaos Space Marines - Spiky Marines; They were once written as the "older, heresy-era" marines with Daemon help, but ever since Daemons got their own codex they've sorta been "marines, but with marks". Like Space Wolves, they share some units with the Marines, but have a ton of their own special ones (usually dedicated to some god or a daemon engine). They intermix some of the Daemon's unique rules with the Marine's durability while also having access to some unique, but mundane weapons (like Battle Cannons, Autocannons, etc) and some Daemon-mixed Marines. They actually function a lot better when combined with Chaos Daemons; the two armies filling in the holes of the other, which was originally how it was. Chaos Marines are usually split into five flavours: Unmarked (basically Marines -1 due to lacking ATSKNF), Khorne (Brute Melee), Slaanesh (Fast Melee), Nurgle (durable) and Tzeentch (Magic and invul saves) and unlike Vanilla marine's chapter tactics, these can be intermixed.
Again, these are just what they ideally would be. Generally it's considered that among the SM armies, vanilla is the strongest due to it's wide array of options and variations, with Space Wolves being a close second due to having a lot of really strong units, but not that many stand-out formations or options (although some would argue that SWs don't need those options). Dark Angels come at a distant third with one or two effective builds, but nothing that overall jumps out above the other two. Blood Angels and Grey Knights are considered "playable" but hard due to either being behind the times or lacking units effective against certain targets, respectively. Chaos and Sisters are considered the lowest, with Sisters being highly divisive due to lacking formations and a bunch of other stuff (including an up-to-date model line) while CSM is considered the worst among all of them for having the most outdated rules and overpriced units (note that CSM is just considered the worst of MEQs, not the worst codex in general as others would say Orks, Nids or Guard would be there too).
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Gwar! wrote:Huh, I had no idea Graham McNeillm Dav Torpe and Pete Haines posted on Dakka. Hi Graham McNeillm Dav Torpe and Pete Haines!!!!!!!!!!!!! Can I have an Autograph!
Kanluwen wrote:
Hell, I'm not that bothered by the Stormraven. Why? Because, as it stands right now, it's "limited use".When it's shoehorned in to the Codex: Space Marines, then yeah. I'll be irked.
When I'm editing alot, you know I have a gakload of homework to (not) do. |
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![[Post New]](/s/i/i.gif) 2016/08/13 11:39:52
Subject: Major differences between factions
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Squishy Squig
London
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MechaEmperor7000, thank you so much, I think every new player should take a look at it before choosing an army to play
Can you help me with marine chapters?
Dakka Wolf wrote:Space Marines do it all and with the exception of a few chapters don't do anything particularly well.
MechaEmperor7000 wrote:Note that the codex technically houses several different armies, each defined by their own "Chapter Tactics". A Raven Guard Space Marine Army would play very differently from a Salamanders Space Marine Army, and neither would be like the Black Templars (all of these are in one book).
I've looked through SM codex and saw a lot of HQs who are ultramarines and some HQs who are from other major chapters. But if I decide to play SM, I'll create my own chapter or choose something like Hawk Lords, i.e. I won't be able to use these special HQs. Is it a big problem in terms of power of the army or regular SM HQs are as good?
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![[Post New]](/s/i/i.gif) 2016/08/13 11:43:29
Subject: Major differences between factions
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The Last Chancer Who Survived
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You can use any SM special character with any invented chapter (just fluff them as being different people), but you can't use them with differing chapter tactics.
For example, Marneus Calgar and Tigurius can only be used with Ultramarines' chapter tactics, and the Emperor's Champion can only be used with the Black Templars' CT.
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![[Post New]](/s/i/i.gif) 2016/08/13 12:03:31
Subject: Major differences between factions
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Squishy Squig
London
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Selym wrote:You can use any SM special character with any invented chapter (just fluff them as being different people), but you can't use them with differing chapter tactics.
For example, Marneus Calgar and Tigurius can only be used with Ultramarines' chapter tactics, and the Emperor's Champion can only be used with the Black Templars' CT.
Oh, that's great, if there are no such restrictions even on tournaments, it perfectly solves the issue.
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