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I was wondering what you guys feel are the simplest armies to play, without having to learn the tricks of marker lights, canticles and so on? If someone was completely new t o 40k, what would you recommend? I'm not including Knights in the poll simply because that is obviously a very straight forward army.

Orks: there they are! Get 'em lads....

Space marines: do you want to deal with shooty armies? Grav. Choppy? Grav. Armor-happy? Grav. Hordes? A bit more grav than usual but still fine. Fliers? God dangit, bring those grav-cannons to the closest skyfire nexus, why did I pop the devastator doctrine to kill that pesky guardian squad!?

Meh guard... even more than tau they're basically stand and shoot your opponent at an extremely basic level. Their more mobile methods are for higher skilled players.

That being said space marines are a close second. They're just basically 'do what you want and go nuts!'.

Easily it has to be the poster boys of 40k, Codex Space Marines.

Khorne? Just charge, really lol. You can skip psychic and most of shooting.

Cult Mechanicus. Even though folks get scared off by the 'complexity' of the Canticles, the limited unit types and lack of significant options (usually an either/or) make them very easy to play. Your Tech-Priest is going to be your fiddly unit, and even then the options are still few. Solid formations.

No way, I have to say either Tau or Necrons. Both lack a psychic phase, but have incredibly easy optimal tactics (shoot and run away or just shoot and not die) both armies avoid CC like the plague in comparison to good CC armies so the only thing left to do is literally shoot shoot shoot. Possibly the most "complex" thing about necrons is their reanimation protocals. And thats just FNP. Space marines atleast have chapter tactics and an array of differant upgrades for each unit. Whereas necron infantry get: warriors: nothing and Immortals: Gauss or not Gauss. Necrons by far take the cake for simple

Either Space Marines or Necrons.

Superfriends. Just download the grocery list, buy it and you will have a painted ITC approved local tournament winning list next week if you spend a single weekend painting the stuff up.

You could probably even write a idiot machine / simple AI script that will just kurb stomp most players in your nighbourhood with the list.

I'd actually say Necrons or Eldar - they're the easiest to kit/list build, which makes playing them really simple. Even the Eldar Aspect Warriors that have multiple weapon options are generally just slight variants on their standard equipment. Necrons don't have to worry about psykers, so they probably edge out Eldar here, regardless of how competitively you're wanting to be.

stroller wrote:
Orks: there they are! Get 'em lads....

This is one of the hardest armies to play with and actually succeed in winning a non intro game ; )

Tyranids. As long as you.keep your models in synapse you can skip right over morale and instinctive behavior. Lack of access to the rulebook's psychic powers means that.you only need to remember yours.

Probably the one army not in the poll, Necrons.

Run a Decurion with a Harvest (literally about the only build people run these days, I haven't seen a Necron army in person that wasn't run this way in a year and a half), memorize the RP rules, and the army pretty much plays itself. Move forward, if an opponent can't overcome RP you win, if they can, you lose. The resiliency and mobility of the army is incredible and basically allows them to play without having to really think or react to the enemy in most cases as they can simply weather whatever is thrown at them and re-deploy against what they can't.

 Baldeagle91 wrote:
Meh guard... even more than tau they're basically stand and shoot your opponent at an extremely basic level. Their more mobile methods are for higher skilled players.

Guard are not a particularly simple army, they rely on a glut of rules that have varying levels of functionality to actually work, particularly Orders. Unless we're talking about an Armored Battlegroup, that can be relatively simple to play, but straight codex IG have a whole lot of awkward fiddlyness.

My bad, I added Necrons to the poll, I don't know how I skipped them.

The problem with C:SM is that its really easy to make a terrible list.

Necrons. Easy to paint, easy to pick units, reliable and forgiving, and pretty much every weapon can threaten most possible targets.

I have 3 answers.

1. Codex: Space Marines
Because under normal non-spamming conditions, every one of your models has exactly the same abilities and Stallone. Almost everyone has the same weapon, besides sergeants and a specialist in each squad (barring heavy weapons units), and your tanks have the same profiles, just different weapons.

2. Necrons
With their newer release, things got tricky and complicated, especially when playing a Decurion. But your models are all Ld10 and I2. Your weapons wound everything on 6's, barring tesla weapons, which just generate more hits. Your tanks have the same abilities and profiles.

3. Dark Eldar
Hard to play nowadays, since they don't usually get saves of any kind, and the new jink faq really hit these guys hard. They have different profiles for almost every single unit (a lot like tyranids), different weapon options, and special rules for every unit. But when it comes to shooting, its incredibly simple: your weapons wound/pen on a 4+. Infantry? 4+. Vehicles? Darklances are a 4+ to damage. Monstrous creatures? 4+ poison. Wracks in cc? 4+ poison. Getting shot at? 4+ jink (3+ with stealth) Its amazing, since you never have to worry about wounding on a worse result. But it sucks, as you can't normally wound on a better result, either.

I chose Tau but it was close. Eldar are so stupidly OP that it doesn't take much common sense or strategy to become a fairly good player with them. But Tau I think take the cheese.

A quick glance at their codex and you just go, "I'll take these big robots and stand at the back of the board and delete enemy units".

Eldar have a number of tricks they can do that makes them very competitive, but Tau really have 1 trick they are really good at, OP under priced units that have way to much dakka for their prices.

SemperMortis wrote:
...Eldar are so stupidly OP that it doesn't take much common sense or strategy to become a fairly good player with them...

There's kind of an odd dichotomy going on with Eldar. If you play point-and-delete Wraith/Scatterbike lists they're the easiest thing in the world, but if you play Guardians, grav-tanks, and Aspect Warriors they can be very difficult to figure out what to do with. There isn't really a middle ground, there are incredibly simple to play lists and incredibly hard to play lists, nothing in between.

 AnomanderRake wrote:

SemperMortis wrote:
...Eldar are so stupidly OP that it doesn't take much common sense or strategy to become a fairly good player with them...

There's kind of an odd dichotomy going on with Eldar. If you play point-and-delete Wraith/Scatterbike lists they're the easiest thing in the world, but if you play Guardians, grav-tanks, and Aspect Warriors they can be very difficult to figure out what to do with. There isn't really a middle ground, there are incredibly simple to play lists and incredibly hard to play lists, nothing in between.

You forgot to mention Warp Spiders and a few other units

Necrons are incredibly strait forward.

SemperMortis wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:

SemperMortis wrote:
...Eldar are so stupidly OP that it doesn't take much common sense or strategy to become a fairly good player with them...

There's kind of an odd dichotomy going on with Eldar. If you play point-and-delete Wraith/Scatterbike lists they're the easiest thing in the world, but if you play Guardians, grav-tanks, and Aspect Warriors they can be very difficult to figure out what to do with. There isn't really a middle ground, there are incredibly simple to play lists and incredibly hard to play lists, nothing in between.

You forgot to mention Warp Spiders and a few other units

There are plenty of units that are powerful but aren't straightforward.

My thought process went straight to codex space marines because they are the go to vanilla army and can do everything, but then I realized its very easy easy to make a bad Space marine army. They are not OP out of the box and will easily get murdered if the player does not know how to play and what to bring.

Then I went to the Tau and just how they shoot things. Shoot this with unit A. Shoot that with unit B. Its very straight forward and you just roll dice to shoot. However there are some actual tactics to their army and you do have to know what to target prioritize and how to react to certain situations.

Then I started to think about Necrons. They literally just roll up the table and through everything in their way. Enemy is able to ignore your armor or cover saves? RP. Enemy has a bunch of melee? Tarpit them forever and counter with wraiths. Objective game? Hold everything. Kill point game? Never die. Your answer to every situation is to outlast it and just tank it all.

So in the end I voted for Necrons because they require the least amount of game skill or knowledge to do well with.

 Tibs Ironblood wrote:
My thought process went straight to codex space marines because they are the go to vanilla army and can do everything, but then I realized its very easy easy to make a bad Space marine army. They are not OP out of the box and will easily get murdered if the player does not know how to play and what to bring.

Then I went to the Tau and just how they shoot things. Shoot this with unit A. Shoot that with unit B. Its very straight forward and you just roll dice to shoot. However there are some actual tactics to their army and you do have to know what to target prioritize and how to react to certain situations.

Then I started to think about Necrons. They literally just roll up the table and through everything in their way. Enemy is able to ignore your armor or cover saves? RP. Enemy has a bunch of melee? Tarpit them forever and counter with wraiths. Objective game? Hold everything. Kill point game? Never die. Your answer to every situation is to outlast it and just tank it all.

So in the end I voted for Necrons because they require the least amount of game skill or knowledge to do well with.

The first part of your comment I really agreed with (keep in mind I don't have a single SM army, though I do have a bunch of SM models getting Krumped by my Orks). SMs are not the easy mode army they used to be, to be competitive you have to know how to use the tools you are given and how to utilize their strengths while minimizing their weaknesses. Don't get me wrong, they have a lot of toys that make them almost unbeatable but you have to know how to use them best.

I agreed with the 1st part of the Tau line but you mention the tactics involved....they really don't have tactics. Move, Shoot, move again in Assault phase, rinse and repeat. not that complicated at all. As far as target priority? Everyone has to learn Target priority or you lose, that is not really a good argument for why they are "Harder"

Necrons are fairly straight forward as well, but they do have a lot of tactics involved in getting them to where they need to go, the short range of their weapons teamed with the slowness of the average model means that this army isn't the easiest to play with in my book.

Again, everyone forgets Eldar. Put models on table, watch opponent cry, win game.

Simplest to learn, easiest to win with, or least tactical depth. These are not asking the same things.

If you're looking for the army that's the simplest to learn, it's probably either Sisters or Necrons. Not too many options, not too many weird things to do bookkeeping on, etc. Every army has some kind of trick now (Chapter Tactics, Orders, Marks, Markerlights, Acts of Faith, Synapse, etc), but those two probably have the least to get your brain around.

Least tactical depth? Well, Tau tournament builds basically amount to "immortal gunline that just stands there and shoots". Not much to that. Tau have a lot more tactical depth if you wanna go beyond "Codex: Riptide Wing and Stormsurge", but most tournament lists don't.

Easiest to win with? Well, probably Eldar. They still take some finesse, even with the OP stuff, to know where to use what, but the finesse is mostly in knowing what to attack, what not to, what to avoid and what to just try to tank. Once you've got that - and it's not hard - just point, click and squish.

Necrons by an absolute mile. Just march and shoot. Theyre not called space zombies for no reason.

Space Marines are pretty simple in the fact that much of their stats are the same but if youre playing a fluffy list and avoid superfriends or msu spam you have to think hard about tactics because a lot of armies can outshoot you or drown you in bodies now as for small squads marines aren't very resilient anymore

I think you have to take Space Marines off the list for 2 reasons: ATSKNF & Combat squads. While both are easy to learn rules, they require that you know the main rules first in order to understand the subtle differences.
I might say the same about Necrons. RP can have some quirky things happen that new players might miss.

I'd say Eldar are actually the easiest to learn for 2 reasons: 1) most of their rules/wargear are straight out of the BRB and 2) the most competitive builds are fairly point-n-click and don't require tons of "synergy" like Tau need. Bikes & WKs can pretty much work on their own, And most Aspect Warriors do just fine even if you forget some of their special snowflake rules (which should really be deleted from their entries anyway).

-

Where's the "Imperial Knights" choice?

The one reason I wouldnt vote Eldar is because, while they are hideously and inexcusably broken, making a mistake can open them up much more than say, Necrons. If you totally space moving and shooting that Scatterbike or Fire Dragon squad, its possible that might result in their destruction. If you forget to move and shoot a unit of Necron Warrors or Tomb Blades, you're not out as much lost firepower and its a whole lot harder for an opponent to crush those Warriors or Tomb blades in response.