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Last time I played was when the Dark Angel Codex had come out and I had a foot slogging terminator armor under Belial.

Now I am coming back to the game and the choices seemed to have doubled. I am torn between so many things. Thousand Sons look awesome. Mechanicus looks awesome. Genesteelers looks awesome. I just cant decide what I want to focus on. I need to be sold on an army. Any army. Please help Dakka.

I'd always suggest going for the models you like the most. You'll be spending a lot of money on them, and time painting them. Always makes it better when you love the models. Are you leaning towards one in particular? You can always do small armies and them all

Honestly I am loving the Thousand Sons but everything is looking so good.

You could always just set up multiple kill team armies. Basically just a troop choice or two from any you like the look of, then splurge on whichever one you prefer the play style of.

Or, just sink thousands of dollars I to two or three armies...

I would try and pick what is most important to you in the hobby. Is it painting, is it modeling, is it lore, or is it gameplay?
Find what's most important to you and pick based on that.

If you paint your armies, go with whatever you think looks best. Meta and "power" be damned. You'll never finish painting an army if you pick one based on table-top performance.

If the rumor mongers are correct and there is a new edition in the next 18 months, then rules/power/meta may go right out the window anyway.

What figures do you feel comfortable spending a hundred hours painting/assembling?

Welcome back!

In truth, I don't think things have been this positive for the game since mid 3rd-edition! There's some stupidly broken stuff out there, but the wealth of options has undergone a quantum surge for the average gamer, and the mid-tier level of the game is amazingly rich and diverse

Play Unbound. Any unit from any codex in the army you want.

 Sachamo wrote:
Last time I played was when the Dark Angel Codex had come out and I had a foot slogging terminator armor under Belial.

Now I am coming back to the game and the choices seemed to have doubled. I am torn between so many things. Thousand Sons look awesome. Mechanicus looks awesome. Genesteelers looks awesome. I just cant decide what I want to focus on. I need to be sold on an army. Any army. Please help Dakka.

GeneStealer Cult has been hailed by those new players who grasp it as being extremely fun. I have yet to fight against it sadly but my friend is number one Genestealer player in the ITC by last check and he's obviously enjoying it. Thousnad Sons still looks awfully suspect to me, but I played against Magnus the Red and he is FOR REAL. He is an awesome threat. The army I faced was three Daemon Princes, Magnus the Red, 20 Cultists and a Terminator Sorcerer. So its also an extremely economical army to build relatively speaking. If that is important to you, you can do a damn sight worse. it was a mind blowing blizzard of Psyker energies being released, right there and the Mind Siphon power or whateverr its called makes it even more impressive.

Mechanicum is a very attractive model range. A lot of painting. So depends on how you go into it, but as "easy" armies to start with, its probably not on the list. Butthe War Convocation is one of the most powerful builds in Warhammer 40,000 and a version of that idea took second place at the Bay Area Open this year (about 200 players).

If you want it to be cheaper to start, go the Magnus route. He can REALLY bring it with his flying buddies. If you want a painting challenge and something that looks uber when its done right, Mechanicum is pretty boss. If you want a more free whjeeling, sneaky, deployment shenanigan type of force (more my speed) then Genestealers would definitely be fun by all accounts, as well as effective.

 Jancoran wrote:
Thousnad Sons still looks awfully suspect to me, but I played against Magnus the Red and he is FOR REAL. He is an awesome threat. The army I faced was three Daemon Princes, Magnus the Red, 20 Cultists and a Terminator Sorcerer. .

Was that a 1500 pt game? If so Magnus is like half that army, so your opponent was really taking a gamble he didn't die

 TheLumberJack wrote:

 Jancoran wrote:
Thousnad Sons still looks awfully suspect to me, but I played against Magnus the Red and he is FOR REAL. He is an awesome threat. The army I faced was three Daemon Princes, Magnus the Red, 20 Cultists and a Terminator Sorcerer. .

Was that a 1500 pt game? If so Magnus is like half that army, so your opponent was really taking a gamble he didn't die

1850. And Magnus was a beast.

 Jancoran wrote:

 TheLumberJack wrote:

 Jancoran wrote:
Thousnad Sons still looks awfully suspect to me, but I played against Magnus the Red and he is FOR REAL. He is an awesome threat. The army I faced was three Daemon Princes, Magnus the Red, 20 Cultists and a Terminator Sorcerer. .

Was that a 1500 pt game? If so Magnus is like half that army, so your opponent was really taking a gamble he didn't die

1850. And Magnus was a beast.

I imagine hes a monster but it still sounds like a huge point sink. What army were you?

 TheLumberJack wrote:

 Jancoran wrote:

 TheLumberJack wrote:

 Jancoran wrote:
Thousnad Sons still looks awfully suspect to me, but I played against Magnus the Red and he is FOR REAL. He is an awesome threat. The army I faced was three Daemon Princes, Magnus the Red, 20 Cultists and a Terminator Sorcerer. .

Was that a 1500 pt game? If so Magnus is like half that army, so your opponent was really taking a gamble he didn't die

1850. And Magnus was a beast.

I imagine hes a monster but it still sounds like a huge point sink. What army were you?

Tau Empire.

 Jancoran wrote:

 TheLumberJack wrote:

 Jancoran wrote:

 TheLumberJack wrote:

 Jancoran wrote:
Thousnad Sons still looks awfully suspect to me, but I played against Magnus the Red and he is FOR REAL. He is an awesome threat. The army I faced was three Daemon Princes, Magnus the Red, 20 Cultists and a Terminator Sorcerer. .

Was that a 1500 pt game? If so Magnus is like half that army, so your opponent was really taking a gamble he didn't die

1850. And Magnus was a beast.

I imagine hes a monster but it still sounds like a huge point sink. What army were you?

Tau Empire.

Did you win or lose? You could've really laid some smackdown on the princes or on Magnus with railguns and SMS and the like. And considering 4/5 of the army was in 4 models, you doing damage to Magnus or the princes would have been a massive loss for your opponent

He destroyed me. Lol.

Now to be fair, the general is quite good anyways but no. I brought a Surge, an Optimized Stealth Cadre, deep striking Crisis objective stealers and Riptides.

Even had anti-air on the Surge and one Ghostkeel. Didn't matter. I eventually grounded Magnus and charged withthe StormSurge, hoping to stomp Magnus out, which you can do but when you're fishing for 6's, it is what it is. Had i stomped Magnus out the game would have been over. Didn't. Got smashed.

Well you almost had him

Did he shoot using your Stormsurge, Jan?

I'm pretty interested how the new Tzeentch table plays!

My point was simply that Magnus has more than impressed me enough to suggest people take him. His saves are essntially T7 with a 3+ invul most rounds, re-rolling 1's. so effectively he has better than a 2+ save functionally on T7. Couple this with flight. It makes for a long day at the office against him. He can be killed. It just takes an enormous amount of effort.

Some forces will deal well with him if they have anti-air, for as long as they have it. But his saves are SO good. if he took a Grimoire to keep from falling from the sky, it would be even more discouraging.

its only one game but I can see clearly that Magnus is rising. You will be seeing him.

 Jancoran wrote:
My point was simply that Magnus has more than impressed me enough to suggest people take him. His saves are essntially T7 with a 3+ invul most rounds, re-rolling 1's. so effectively he has better than a 2+ save functionally on T7. Couple this with flight. It makes for a long day at the office against him. He can be killed. It just takes an enormous amount of effort.

Some forces will deal well with him if they have anti-air, for as long as they have it. But his saves are SO good. if he took a Grimoire to keep from falling from the sky, it would be even more discouraging.

its only one game but I can see clearly that Magnus is rising. You will be seeing him.

The biggest counter to him in that case would just be to play smaller games. He is such a big point sink in smaller games that he won't be worth it

For almost any list, the plan is to kill all the ground units and ignore him. He's functionally immortal.

 TheLumberJack wrote:

 Jancoran wrote:
My point was simply that Magnus has more than impressed me enough to suggest people take him. His saves are essntially T7 with a 3+ invul most rounds, re-rolling 1's. so effectively he has better than a 2+ save functionally on T7. Couple this with flight. It makes for a long day at the office against him. He can be killed. It just takes an enormous amount of effort.

Some forces will deal well with him if they have anti-air, for as long as they have it. But his saves are SO good. if he took a Grimoire to keep from falling from the sky, it would be even more discouraging.

its only one game but I can see clearly that Magnus is rising. You will be seeing him.

The biggest counter to him in that case would just be to play smaller games. He is such a big point sink in smaller games that he won't be worth it

Thats not a counter. Thats hiding from it. Lol.

No that's not going to work if you are an ITC competitor like myself. Adapt and overcome is the mantra of anyone who wants to play competitively but I was more addresssing the value of the choice if someone was considering a Thousand Sons army. He's quite good.

 Jancoran wrote:
I was more addresssing the value of the choice if someone was considering a Thousand Sons army. He's quite good.

He's probably the best anti-AV available for the points.

I was looking at full Lascannon Predator squadrons (for Monster Hunter/Tank Hunter) and Magnus is already fairly close in cost, 420pts to 650pts. No question who wins on flexibility and survivability.

Triple Predator goodness does make me happy though. Void shields are a thing as are Imperial Knights. Really helps to be able to punch and put a hurting on the target unit.

Magnus is an entirely different creature though. Destroying him in comparison is worlds apart in difficulty.

Magnus underscores the value of taking my Sisters Repentia along. They can wipe Magnus. if he's knocked to the ground (which means he probably has two wounds on him at that point). We can slip 5 wounds in on him eventually methinks, and his 7 attacks won't hurt me much. We would average 10 wounds before saves just with the Sisters Repentia. He'd fail on 1 or two, re-rolling 1's... So... 1.67 + .56 = 2.25 wounds on the charge. He'd be ground bound and a lot of his powers would be silenced. all good things for me! So chase him around the board with repentias and keep shooting til he falls. Basically. it's not sexy but it works. use the Adamantium Will thing to as much advantage as possible.

Oh if only Sisters had an anti-air unit or mode the Exorcist could fire in. ah well.

" if he's knocked to the ground"

That's an if I'm never willing to count on.

Martel732 wrote:
" if he's knocked to the ground"

That's an if I'm never willing to count on.

Nor should you. However...what choice do you REALLY have?

Just endure his wrath and kill everything else. Just like I do to flyrants. There is no point in BA shooting at flyrants. There is a point in BA face-raping all his ground units so he has to land or stop being able to score.

it's more "What do you want to paint and build" honestly

Martel732 wrote:
Just endure his wrath and kill everything else. Just like I do to flyrants. There is no point in BA shooting at flyrants. There is a point in BA face-raping all his ground units so he has to land or stop being able to score.

You werent really paying attention though. i said his army was three Winged princes and Magnus. the 20 Cultists reserved and waited for the blood rogy to be in full swing before showing up and his sorcerer just alighted to the ground and joined them later.

Honestly when there are only skyborne targets, why would you not shoot at Magnus? Answer: You would. Ergo my entirely rhetorical question: What choice have you? None. He forces the issue and thats part of his genius. =)

Now if Magnus takes ground bound sorcerers for his Formation instead, then you have a point. but...why would he ever?

Ah. Pure flyers. Maybe I'd shoot the ones with weaker saves to reduce the warp charges. Gah, FMCs are dumb. It's not genius. It's obvious exploitation of a group of undercosted units.

Martel732 wrote:
Ah. Pure flyers. Maybe I'd shoot the ones with weaker saves to reduce the warp charges. Gah, FMCs are dumb. It's not genius. It's obvious exploitation of a group of undercosted units.

they cost over 300 points. Level 3 Psykers with Tzeentch madness. I havent done the math but thats not cheap and not better than the 300 point wraithknight. so i have a hard time callingthem undercosted. hehehe.