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Thank goodness for kill team, because I've been going back and forth on which army to get into, my top picks are Grey Knights and Ad Mech, however I've heard both are very bad competitively. I don't plan on attending a huge tournament or anything, however i don't like losing all the time either. either viable options for just casual in store tournaments without being tabled every time?

This is not a helpful place to ask that question.

 plark wrote:
Thank goodness for kill team, because I've been going back and forth on which army to get into, my top picks are Grey Knights and Ad Mech, however I've heard both are very bad competitively. I don't plan on attending a huge tournament or anything, however i don't like losing all the time either. either viable options for just casual in store tournaments without being tabled every time?

I personally hate playing lower tier teams, even if you have a great strategy and roll well, you can lose to incompetent players, because of army choice

It always depends on who you're playing against and what the meta is in your area.

Sometimes you can take a super casual army and absolutely curb stomp someone who has no idea what they're doing.

Sometimes you can take a super casual army and get absolutely destroyed by turn two by someone who is very much into tournaments and has a tournament army.

Both have happened to me.

It's very hard sometimes to get a good group of like minded people together.

I know how to play, but I also don't like to take tournament lists, or take the game very seriously. Consequently I operate in a middle ground where I take fluffy lists that can work on a semi competitive level. That kind of leaves me open to being curb stomped by competitive players and destroying non competitive players. It's actually kind of frustrating.

I feel like generally most armies are playable on a semi-competitive level and you will have a reasonable chance of enjoying the game as long as you don't expect too much out of your army or the game its self which is actually pretty terrible rules wise.

It's only when you reach tournament level where every small decision can mean the difference between winning and losing does it really matter. I used to be in the tournament circuit as a Fantasy player because it was the best and tightest rules GW has ever produced. Now that it's basically push models forward and roll dice, I have no time to take it seriously since it's obvious that GW doesn't either.

One other way of looking at it is if you're a new player how well would you expect to do at tournaments anyway? I mean that's not completely fair, as there certain armies that are good while being straighforward, and I guess that would be ideal.

I just don't see worrying about it too much unless highly competitive play is the only reason you're getting into Warhammer.

If you're worried about being competitive have you considered allying in another faction with the ones you prefer? Like maybe Astra Militarum with Grey Knights or Imperial Knights with Adeptus Mechanicus?

What are the current lower tier armies?
I play pure GSC w/o Imperial Guard. Wondering if I'm really that poor at playing or if I can blame it on my army

Think of it this way... You're only exposure to 40k is through video games and media. You played a lotmof Eternal Crusade, Space Marines, etc... so you really want to buy Orks. You go to the store and are offered two options. The Dark Imperium set that comes wih the rules and a pretty good amount of points worth of troops that are on a medium level of competitiveness (with a bit of skill you will win half your casual games) or the Oek starter set. You suuuuuper want to buy Orks so you get the set thinking "hey, GW is not so bad... £50 for an army". You also buy the rule book as well.... and the index... soon you're like "erm... this is getting more expensive. At least I got it all now". You read all the rules, the index and finally figure out how to play the game. "Huh... so I don't even have a hq with my set?" You go into the store the next day for a hq and find out they only sell one HQ in plastic (it's the one nobody really wants unless you pay £40 for the mega one) and the rest you have to order in. You do a bit of research and find out there is another plastic hq online he's just a named character with nobz that's now just a standard warboss. You grab him and have now spent £82 (on the right site thisnwould be two starter sets) on models.... you now have somewhere arou d 600 points. You find someone playing at that level and.... you get wrecked. You look through their codex and find that your 10 nobz and warboss are playing more for their range weapons than the marine pkayer is (despite BS 5) and your deff dread is also a little over priced... you do more research and jow find out if you want an even casual army that you might win at you need to dump another £100-200 on just maybe 1 or 2 units. And you'll only have a small chance of winning compared to the two teams you could have got with dark imperium. You sell out your orks on ebay... buy dark imperium... sell the half you don't want and use all that money to buy a pretty solid 1-2k point death guard army.

 privateer4hire wrote:
What are the current lower tier armies?
I play pure GSC w/o Imperial Guard. Wondering if I'm really that poor at playing or if I can blame it on my army

you DO lack a codex. so thats definatly a disadvantage right there

A couple of things to consider:

1) Any 40K army is an expensive proposition with hundreds of hours spent building/painting...so, my normal response would be "choose what you like". You'll never paint an army if you don't like the models.

2) If you're genuinely interested in tournaments, you're selecting a somewhat narrow slice of 40K and are wilfully choosing to play more competitive than casual or narrative. The last thing you want to do is spend hundreds or thousands of dollars and TONS of time painting and building an army if you end up getting trounced constantly.

So, in short...good luck?

My Advice;

1) Start with the Army you like the models and go from there. They may not be the army you stick with, but you will enjoy learning to play and painting more if you do.

2) Your local meta will be it's own thing. You can gain information from the overall meta, but that doesn't mean much if no one plays the top armies in your local scene.

3) Never chase the meta. It's going to change. What sucks now, could be really powerful in the future.

4) Theoryhammer is a hammer. It is great in a vacuum, but falls short when you consider all of the variables aren't nails.

5) A lot of people on this forum are full of gak. They have agendas that don't involve helping you have fun with your army.

 Crimson Devil wrote:


4) Theoryhammer is a hammer. It is great in a vacuum, but falls short when you consider all of the variables aren't nails.

this can't be emphisised eneugh, As a good example of this, Agressors are often considered to be pretty lack luster, all told, by the mathhammer types here. But there's a 3 page thread here https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/760932.page that asks if they're brokenly good. Because the player in question is an Ork player that happens to run a list that agressors can ahrd counter.

AdMech is fine, and some portions of the army have even proven to be competitive. You can definitely play that army in casual settings and perform well, even without cawlbots (the chicken walkers can be surprisingly effective).

 privateer4hire wrote:
What are the current lower tier armies?
I play pure GSC w/o Imperial Guard. Wondering if I'm really that poor at playing or if I can blame it on my army

genestelers is an index army atm so no your not playing bad, all index armys are horrible.
in general you can say there is a bottom tier codex that only serves as food for the big fish(grey knight) and then below them, you have index armys.

get out
get out
GET OUT BEFORE THIS HOBY CONSUMES YOU!!!

The best thing you can possibly do is pick an army you like and make it work the best you possibly can. You'll have middling success at best at tournaments but you won't mind failures as much and you'll exalt successes more because you enjoy what you're playing. The chances of you ever getting a decent placing at a large event are incredibly small anyway, don't spend too much time worrying about it.

As for local metas, literally all you have to do is build your army in a way that makes logical sense(still using units and strategies you like). Despite(or perhaps because of) all the pontificating done on forums like these, the vast majority of players play terrible lists with limited mastery. Know how your army works, pick a strategy that makes sense, and no matter what codex you're playing you'll likely end up winning like 70% of your games regardless. I still haven't lost a non-tournament game so far this edition.

Don't forget that online people complain a LOT more than the compliment. In fact some people only ever complain online

So you can get a very amplified amount of noise on complaints regarding factions and balance, some of which is fact, some is opinion, some is bad players playing badly, some is just flat out bonkers and there's one or two trolls that stir things up every so often.

Heck sometimes an army is continually ranked low by everyone until someone takes it to a big competitive events and wins and suddenly everyone is talking about how overpowered they are .



I'd agree, go with what you like! You are going to spend hours with the models cleaning them up, assembling and painting them before they even hit the table. So get those that you like.
Asides which if you're new chances are you're not all that sure how you want to even play so gameplay structure and mechanics can be harder to make a solid choice on. So go on visuals, get your feet wet and play some games.


At present GW is balancing the game more than ever before, its actually a fantastic time to get on board and play whichever faction you want (in the past you could wait YEARS to get a rules update and could even miss whole editions of the game).

Any army can work in a store meta, you can win a game just with hot dice and in my experience store players are hobbyists first that generally means they don't have the super spammy top performing lists.

I would pick an army based solely on aesthetics and lore, personally. I know people who have selected armies because of their performance on the tabletop though.

You're going to ingest a lot of time into the hobby, painting, assembling etc. I'd make sure I liked what I was spending all this time with.

Despite the grumbles on here, 40k is as balanced as its ever been and even the lowest tier armies can compete, particularly when they can soup to remove weaknesses.

Lower tier armies are fine, it's the top tier codices that are not fun to play against.

ERJAK wrote:
....and no matter what codex you're playing you'll likely end up winning like 70% of your games regardless. I still haven't lost a non-tournament game so far this edition.

realy does depend on what codex your playing. i wonder if those gk players are winning 70 to 100% of their casual games.

i work with a index, and that is pretty much guaranteed 90% loss ratio for me, will have to see how it changes whenever my codex comes out.

if you get into admek it could help if you also get a little into imperial knights since both those armies can easily blend well with each other as far as style (even if you not into the big kights you can do those new smaller helverins which wont stand out too much right next to duncrawlers).

since the admek codex is already out the next hope you have for balances is in the chapter aproved and that is coming out sometime at the end of the year (its a yearly thing) and maybe the slightly more common faqs (though faqs do little as far as point changes).

but i agree with others on this thread, get into an army that you love the look of and the lore, because at the end of the day if and when your codex is crap and your getting beaten even in friendly pickup games then all youll have to keep you sane is enjoying the lore and the models (i highly suggest getting into conversions as much as possible because they really do give you that personal touch with your army).

ERJAK wrote:
The best thing you can possibly do is pick an army you like and make it work the best you possibly can. You'll have middling success at best at tournaments but you won't mind failures as much and you'll exalt successes more because you enjoy what you're playing. The chances of you ever getting a decent placing at a large event are incredibly small anyway, don't spend too much time worrying about it.

As for local metas, literally all you have to do is build your army in a way that makes logical sense(still using units and strategies you like). Despite(or perhaps because of) all the pontificating done on forums like these, the vast majority of players play terrible lists with limited mastery. Know how your army works, pick a strategy that makes sense, and no matter what codex you're playing you'll likely end up winning like 70% of your games regardless. I still haven't lost a non-tournament game so far this edition.

This.

To the OP...

Ad Mech are available in Kill Team and the Forgebane box sets. Splitting them up and trading/selling off the non Ad Mech portions will allow you to get in to the hobby/army fairly cheap. They have a Codex which allows you to access all the non index portions of the game and though they aren't a top tier army. They don't hinder you from enjoying yourself with a reasonable expectation of winning some games in a setting where a new player should expect to win in the first place.

Gray Knights aren't as easy to buy in to for 40k. They lack presence in any of the various big box GW kits right now but a squad of PA Gray Knights is all you need to play them in Kill Team. Of course they might be easy to pick up second hand if they really are as bad in the upper competitive levels as the stories say.

Building an army you are actually interested in is the first big step in seeing that army through to a fully built and painted army. You'll enjoy playing it a lot more because you like it, win or lose. A lot of players struggle simply because they are chasing a winning army vs playing their favorite army. Being a 40k player isn't like parenting. Having a favorite actually helps you get better at it. (40k not parenting) Familiarity with an army can't be math hammered and having an actual like for and interest in an army only helps with that.

 lolman1c wrote:
Think of it this way... You're only exposure to 40k is through video games and media. You played a lotmof Eternal Crusade, Space Marines, etc... so you really want to buy Orks. You go to the store and are offered two options. The Dark Imperium set that comes wih the rules and a pretty good amount of points worth of troops that are on a medium level of competitiveness (with a bit of skill you will win half your casual games) or the Oek starter set. You suuuuuper want to buy Orks so you get the set thinking "hey, GW is not so bad... £50 for an army". You also buy the rule book as well.... and the index... soon you're like "erm... this is getting more expensive. At least I got it all now". You read all the rules, the index and finally figure out how to play the game. "Huh... so I don't even have a hq with my set?" You go into the store the next day for a hq and find out they only sell one HQ in plastic (it's the one nobody really wants unless you pay £40 for the mega one) and the rest you have to order in. You do a bit of research and find out there is another plastic hq online he's just a named character with nobz that's now just a standard warboss. You grab him and have now spent £82 (on the right site thisnwould be two starter sets) on models.... you now have somewhere arou d 600 points. You find someone playing at that level and.... you get wrecked. You look through their codex and find that your 10 nobz and warboss are playing more for their range weapons than the marine pkayer is (despite BS 5) and your deff dread is also a little over priced... you do more research and jow find out if you want an even casual army that you might win at you need to dump another £100-200 on just maybe 1 or 2 units. And you'll only have a small chance of winning compared to the two teams you could have got with dark imperium. You sell out your orks on ebay... buy dark imperium... sell the half you don't want and use all that money to buy a pretty solid 1-2k point death guard army.

This would be the munchkin approach to the hobby and it is not recommended. Even if your Ork units are overcosted, you can talk before the game with your opponent to give you some slack. I collected all armies apart from Adeptus Mechaniscus, Tau & Necrons and never sold anything. But I am also more of a painter than a player. My advice would be to avoid cutthroat players and spent time instead with reasonable people so that you don´t waste your time. If everybody around you has a different mindset then, you are out of luck. In that case you could just paint your minis and don´t play or look for another hobby .

Admech can do very well in comp try and find some of Joshua Deaths lists but to give the basics what you want is stygies electro priests dragoons and some of those new drill things from FW then add in mandatory imperial soup guard/knights/blood angels/custodes to taste

 Strg Alt wrote:

 lolman1c wrote:
Think of it this way... You're only exposure to 40k is through video games and media. You played a lotmof Eternal Crusade, Space Marines, etc... so you really want to buy Orks. You go to the store and are offered two options. The Dark Imperium set that comes wih the rules and a pretty good amount of points worth of troops that are on a medium level of competitiveness (with a bit of skill you will win half your casual games) or the Oek starter set. You suuuuuper want to buy Orks so you get the set thinking "hey, GW is not so bad... £50 for an army". You also buy the rule book as well.... and the index... soon you're like "erm... this is getting more expensive. At least I got it all now". You read all the rules, the index and finally figure out how to play the game. "Huh... so I don't even have a hq with my set?" You go into the store the next day for a hq and find out they only sell one HQ in plastic (it's the one nobody really wants unless you pay £40 for the mega one) and the rest you have to order in. You do a bit of research and find out there is another plastic hq online he's just a named character with nobz that's now just a standard warboss. You grab him and have now spent £82 (on the right site thisnwould be two starter sets) on models.... you now have somewhere arou d 600 points. You find someone playing at that level and.... you get wrecked. You look through their codex and find that your 10 nobz and warboss are playing more for their range weapons than the marine pkayer is (despite BS 5) and your deff dread is also a little over priced... you do more research and jow find out if you want an even casual army that you might win at you need to dump another £100-200 on just maybe 1 or 2 units. And you'll only have a small chance of winning compared to the two teams you could have got with dark imperium. You sell out your orks on ebay... buy dark imperium... sell the half you don't want and use all that money to buy a pretty solid 1-2k point death guard army.

This would be the munchkin approach to the hobby and it is not recommended. Even if your Ork units are overcosted, you can talk before the game with your opponent to give you some slack. I collected all armies apart from Adeptus Mechaniscus, Tau & Necrons and never sold anything. But I am also more of a painter than a player. My advice would be to avoid cutthroat players and spent time instead with reasonable people so that you don´t waste your time. If everybody around you has a different mindset then, you are out of luck. In that case you could just paint your minis and don´t play or look for another hobby .

From someone that has over 7000 points of orks and recently started a death guard army, I have to tell you that lolman's view is spot on. To win with anything but boring tactics and lists, you would need a 150%-200% handicap, and I assure you, most pick-up players won't give that to you.

When starting orks, especially with the units GW suggest to new players, you just have to accept that you are going to lose more than 80% of your games. You will not stand a chance against people who have just unpacked their double DI Marines or Death Guard and are playing their third game or so. You will get stomped flat by any half of the forgebane box. And may the emperor have mercy on your soul if someone bought the renegade box and is fielding two knights - there is literally nothing you can do against them.

The few units you can field as orks without losing the game the moment lists are exchanged are expensive and require you to paint a ton of models.
Few people starting the game realize what it means to paint three units of boyz, the basic troops you need to field a battalion. Most players playing other armies don't even own that many models.
On top of that you have the hefty price tag of 180€ for just a single unit of KMK, a unit all but mandatory if you plan on wining any games at all. And don't give me the "convert or scratchbuild" BS - other armies don't require you to acquire skills in modeling either.

I was faced with the decision of either buying a single 210 point unit to make my army somewhat competitive in a very tame environment, or just start a 2000 point death guard army for the same cost. Guess why my battlewagon avatar is Green/Purple now.

If the OP really, really wants to start orks, there is only one advice to give: Wait for the codex in September, wait one month for the dust to settle and then check back if orks are in a better place. If they are not, maybe look for another army of your liking.

I have played a bottom tier army for long time. The game is no fun if your models don't do what they are supposed to do in the fluff, but are just target practice for your opponent.

Sqauwky wrote:
Admech can do very well in comp try and find some of Joshua Deaths lists but to give the basics what you want is stygies electro priests dragoons and some of those new drill things from FW then add in mandatory imperial soup guard/knights/blood angels/custodes to taste

I'm sorry did you just suggest a new player who says he won't go to tournaments should start buying up Josh Deaths list with £75 a pop forge world specialist models?

Anyway...

Imo for a "store meta" where yoj play locals who arent all runnign tourney lists you would ideally want about a 60/40 win loss rate. It's nice to win more than you lose, but if you win them all people will get sick of playing you. Unless every match is a super close win of course.

Buy the thing you think is coolest.

The only "trap" in 40k is units that are un-fun... For me that's really slow things that dont do much damage like space marine tactical squads. They are kind of boring to use. Dudebros that can zoom around and shoot stuff quite well are way more fun.

For me. Some people like static gunlines.

 Jidmah wrote:

 Strg Alt wrote:

 lolman1c wrote:
Think of it this way... You're only exposure to 40k is through video games and media. You played a lotmof Eternal Crusade, Space Marines, etc... so you really want to buy Orks. You go to the store and are offered two options. The Dark Imperium set that comes wih the rules and a pretty good amount of points worth of troops that are on a medium level of competitiveness (with a bit of skill you will win half your casual games) or the Oek starter set. You suuuuuper want to buy Orks so you get the set thinking "hey, GW is not so bad... £50 for an army". You also buy the rule book as well.... and the index... soon you're like "erm... this is getting more expensive. At least I got it all now". You read all the rules, the index and finally figure out how to play the game. "Huh... so I don't even have a hq with my set?" You go into the store the next day for a hq and find out they only sell one HQ in plastic (it's the one nobody really wants unless you pay £40 for the mega one) and the rest you have to order in. You do a bit of research and find out there is another plastic hq online he's just a named character with nobz that's now just a standard warboss. You grab him and have now spent £82 (on the right site thisnwould be two starter sets) on models.... you now have somewhere arou d 600 points. You find someone playing at that level and.... you get wrecked. You look through their codex and find that your 10 nobz and warboss are playing more for their range weapons than the marine pkayer is (despite BS 5) and your deff dread is also a little over priced... you do more research and jow find out if you want an even casual army that you might win at you need to dump another £100-200 on just maybe 1 or 2 units. And you'll only have a small chance of winning compared to the two teams you could have got with dark imperium. You sell out your orks on ebay... buy dark imperium... sell the half you don't want and use all that money to buy a pretty solid 1-2k point death guard army.

This would be the munchkin approach to the hobby and it is not recommended. Even if your Ork units are overcosted, you can talk before the game with your opponent to give you some slack. I collected all armies apart from Adeptus Mechaniscus, Tau & Necrons and never sold anything. But I am also more of a painter than a player. My advice would be to avoid cutthroat players and spent time instead with reasonable people so that you don´t waste your time. If everybody around you has a different mindset then, you are out of luck. In that case you could just paint your minis and don´t play or look for another hobby .

From someone that has over 7000 points of orks and recently started a death guard army, I have to tell you that lolman's view is spot on. To win with anything but boring tactics and lists, you would need a 150%-200% handicap, and I assure you, most pick-up players won't give that to you.

When starting orks, especially with the units GW suggest to new players, you just have to accept that you are going to lose more than 80% of your games. You will not stand a chance against people who have just unpacked their double DI Marines or Death Guard and are playing their third game or so. You will get stomped flat by any half of the forgebane box. And may the emperor have mercy on your soul if someone bought the renegade box and is fielding two knights - there is literally nothing you can do against them.

The few units you can field as orks without losing the game the moment lists are exchanged are expensive and require you to paint a ton of models.
Few people starting the game realize what it means to paint three units of boyz, the basic troops you need to field a battalion. Most players playing other armies don't even own that many models.
On top of that you have the hefty price tag of 180€ for just a single unit of KMK, a unit all but mandatory if you plan on wining any games at all. And don't give me the "convert or scratchbuild" BS - other armies don't require you to acquire skills in modeling either.

I was faced with the decision of either buying a single 210 point unit to make my army somewhat competitive in a very tame environment, or just start a 2000 point death guard army for the same cost. Guess why my battlewagon avatar is Green/Purple now.

If the OP really, really wants to start orks, there is only one advice to give: Wait for the codex in September, wait one month for the dust to settle and then check back if orks are in a better place. If they are not, maybe look for another army of your liking.

I have played a bottom tier army for long time. The game is no fun if your models don't do what they are supposed to do in the fluff, but are just target practice for your opponent.

Read my post again. I never told you to to do conversions or scratch-build stuff. Also you mentioned pick-up games. Don´t do pick-up games with strangers. Organize games with your buddies or acquaintances. Idk, I never have problems like a lot of people seem to have on this forum.

And I have a final recommendation to make:
Delete the words viable and competitive from your way of thinking. You are playing just a game after all.

 Strg Alt wrote:
And I have a final recommendation to make:
Delete the words viable and competitive from your way of thinking. You are playing just a game after all.

This is the one recommendation every new player should ignore. In a game as badly balanced as WH40k is, buying the wrong units will ruin the entire fun in the game and the new player will leave before he even understood what happened.

You said yourself that you don't care much about the game and prefer modeling and painting. I'd say you are unqualified to give advice on how find good games. How is someone supposed to find a group that enjoys the same game the same way he does before even starting the game?
Don't you think he needs to find out what kind of game he enjoys before doing that?

WH40k is game about cool models doing cool things. Playing a bottom tier army will mean your cool models won't be doing cool things, but you will just be removing them from the table with little or no effect on the game.
Not even the most hardcore beer&prezel gamers are having fun that way.

The Pendulum swings hard and fast( Well maybe just hard) in Warhammer. A power player today will be tomorrow's punching bag.

every army has a hard matchup, but I don't feel like there's an army that's so rough and unplayable that new players won't be able to play. Just remember to play the objectives and have fun.

From the point of view of a bottom tier player (I play GK), I can truly say playing a specific army hundreds of times will make you a better player regardless of winning or losing. You will find that as long as you make less mistakes than your opponent, and make better decisions than your opponent, you can turn a loss into a draw, and a draw into a win.

However, if disappointment is something you actively avoid, then avoid playing this game. But if disappointment doesn’t register, if the challenge of being a better you is your goal, you will be happy with your army choices as you grow into the hobby.

SJ

 Jidmah wrote:

 Strg Alt wrote:
And I have a final recommendation to make:
Delete the words viable and competitive from your way of thinking. You are playing just a game after all.

This is the one recommendation every new player should ignore. In a game as badly balanced as WH40k is, buying the wrong units will ruin the entire fun in the game and the new player will leave before he even understood what happened.

You said yourself that you don't care much about the game and prefer modeling and painting. I'd say you are unqualified to give advice on how find good games. How is someone supposed to find a group that enjoys the same game the same way he does before even starting the game?
Don't you think he needs to find out what kind of game he enjoys before doing that?

WH40k is game about cool models doing cool things. Playing a bottom tier army will mean your cool models won't be doing cool things, but you will just be removing them from the table with little or no effect on the game.
Not even the most hardcore beer&prezel gamers are having fun that way.

40K isn´t suited for competitive gameplay. Even a blind man can see that fact. Noobs shouldn´t memorize broken netlists but learn to socialize properly. Then you will have good matches and less people will come to this board to bitch and moan. I am also pretty confident that I could have a good game with my Bad Moonz in 8th with one of my acquaintances at my FLGS.

Its probably the best edition in a long time in terms of faction balance. Yes GK are bottom tier but Ad Mech are solidly middle. Fine except versus top tier tournament stuff.