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No. You can play - and enjoy - any army as a beginner - except Grey Knights - their models are horrible horrible horrible (prejudiced - me?).

In general however, expect to lose before you start to win - unless you have beginner's luck.

Some armies are easier to master than others. You can't jump from buying the starter box and first game straight to winning national tournaments. It takes effort and skill, so expect curbstomps, narrow defeats and major wins along the way.

Pick the models you like. Play friendly to get to know them then get more competitive if that floats your boat. Any army will do except grey knights. Their models are horrible.. wait.. did I say that already?

Bharring wrote:
Jid,
That's a very good point.

However, even if Orkz could do well if they built an army using Lootas, Flash Gitz, and Shoota Boys, using the right choices in each slot to MOAR DAKKA (which is certainly Orky), would it feel as "natural" to a new player to see his Orkz play that way? After he builds up a mob of Slugga Boyz, is he going to replace them with Shoota Boyz?

Shooting orks feel very natural. Near the end of 5th edition necrons could have combo that would basically half all your movement and kill your models whenever you moved.
I remember such a game, shooting a necron army off the table with dakkajets, lootas, koptaz and shoota boyz. I was tossing tons of dice, most of them missed but there was still enough left to chew through warriors, quantum shielded vehicles and a C'Tan.
All of those units cost more and do less damage today than they did in 5th, while almost every other unit in the game shoots more and costs less than in 5th.

A new player probably doesn't have both types of Boyz. A new SM player has Tacs, which (in theory) can support either list.

Shoota boyz and slugga boyz are from the same box. Unless you are buying AOBR orks from ebay, you will always have both lists.
Also note that space marines are no better in CC than orks are in shooting right now.

I still think SM is better thematically for a new player. That said, a new player who is an Ork player would be better off starting Orkz. For the right player, I'd agree that starting Orkz is better. For most players, though, I think SM is the better starting army. There'll be exceptions, of course.

The best place start for someone who has no clue what to do is primaris marines from DI. Every primaris unit has one job it does reasonably well, you have zero chances to pick inefficient options and you have a bunch of models that don't die easily to minimize the frustration of getting shot during your first game.

it doesn't get any simpler than that.

New players shouldn't really be expecting to win many games in the beginning anyway so you have to ask what the purpose of their first army is?

Space Marines, for example, are pretty good as a first army. They are cheap to buy, easy to paint, and have options for all phases of the game and multiple styles of play. They'll teach you the game quite well. In addition they can ally with any other Imperium army so if you want to go more competitive later you can still use those models. If you choose a homebrew chapter you don't even have to commit to any one specific Codex.

Slipspace wrote:
New players shouldn't really be expecting to win many games in the beginning anyway so you have to ask what the purpose of their first army is?

Space Marines, for example, are pretty good as a first army. They are cheap to buy, easy to paint, and have options for all phases of the game and multiple styles of play. They'll teach you the game quite well. In addition they can ally with any other Imperium army so if you want to go more competitive later you can still use those models. If you choose a homebrew chapter you don't even have to commit to any one specific Codex.

This is definitely a good point. If you are a new player on a budget choosing an army with the Imperium or Chaos Keyword is a good idea. That way when you inevitably choose the wrong faction (not a given but I don't think I have ever gotten into a minigame and ended up sticking with the first faction I chose...) Then it is easier to segway into a different faction without wasting your investment in your first faction

Arguably, since the Dark Imperium was brought up, if someone likes Grey Knights, the Exorcists chapter might be a good fit. Regular Marines who are made to fight daemons and also work closely with the Ordo Malleus.

Not much special in the way of unique options (though Silas could be a Primaris considering how huge he is in the fluff), but they can be run as any vanilla chapter on the table giving them more flexibility than the actual Grey Knights.

Flamephoenix182 wrote:

Slipspace wrote:
New players shouldn't really be expecting to win many games in the beginning anyway so you have to ask what the purpose of their first army is?

Space Marines, for example, are pretty good as a first army. They are cheap to buy, easy to paint, and have options for all phases of the game and multiple styles of play. They'll teach you the game quite well. In addition they can ally with any other Imperium army so if you want to go more competitive later you can still use those models. If you choose a homebrew chapter you don't even have to commit to any one specific Codex.

This is definitely a good point. If you are a new player on a budget choosing an army with the Imperium or Chaos Keyword is a good idea. That way when you inevitably choose the wrong faction (not a given but I don't think I have ever gotten into a minigame and ended up sticking with the first faction I chose...) Then it is easier to segway into a different faction without wasting your investment in your first faction

Well that goes on a player by player basis, i never switched my first faction in any minigame (tyranids, Seraphon and Everblight). I simply look at the minis, if i like those then i like the faction, if the faction is not competitive then that is just one more challenge.

In any case, defyning what is competitive and what is not is actually not that simple, and looking at top tables in big tournaments is the last thing you should do, that is a really bad source of informations. From there you can only see what is OP and what has a god matchup against that OP stuff. Being competitive has nothing to do with that.

The only real data you can gather for the competitiveness of a faction, is compliling the results from around 100 regular store tournnaments with at least 8 players, look for every entry of the faction being examined, and score 1 point for every time that faction manages to be in the top half of the ladder.
Then you get the total and divide by the total number of entries, a result of 0,5 means that the faction is perfectly balanced, the higher the value, the more OP it is.

This is the only way to assess how good a faction is, by determining if the average result of that faction tends to be in the top half or in the lower half of the final rankings.

You can use the scores from BCP for this, but be warned that you are getting only information for ITC events, so if your area doesn't play those, then ypu are looking at skewed results.

A could of different people have mentioned getting tourny results. Lots and lots of results. Where are you getting them? There must be a site I don't know about.

Headlss wrote:
A could of different people have mentioned getting tourny results. Lots and lots of results. Where are you getting them? There must be a site I don't know about.

Best coast pairings, Frontline's official website, BoK, etc.

The information is freely accessible.

For instance, Death Guard won the BAO by defeating Guard + Custodes.

Mono-Guard was very well represented in the top 10.

Orks, Necrons, Tyranids, Space Marines, etc, were not in the top 10.

 Marmatag wrote:
Mono-Guard was very well represented in the top 10.

Assuming you're talking about the BAO, can you show me the data for this assertion? There are a bunch of Astra Militarum lists in the top 10, but none of them are pure save possibly 2, but that's only because I can't find those two lists (Josh Rosenstein's and Mitchel Pellum's). None of the other lists in the top 10 are Mono-Guard, and I suspect they're not as well, but if you can find more data than I have could you send it to me?

Is there anywhere where you can see what lists people bring to tournaments? All I can find is what faction they have and their placing, but not the list itself. Seems like that would be readily available information since im sure its recorded by the tournament...

 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?

Don't choose an army for its competitiveness, you'll get bored of the army you didn't choose based on your first thoughts and later you'll realise that a good player can win with crap army rules and you'll end up ditching your army and starting the two that you wanted in the first place. If you want to play a game just to win, you're better playing chess, you'll save a lot of money. The reason why we love 40k is because of the unique armies and character and the rich lore. Khorne berzerkers have always been gak since 3rd edition, but I always field them. Plus you only need to choose a super competitive army if you are doing tournaments, if you are playing at your local shop or club, you can quite easily win against most people with a low competitive army, not everyone is a serious player and plays every day. So you aren't going to lose every match unless you are extremely bad but sometime the dice will even then be on your side.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Billagio wrote:
Is there anywhere where you can see what lists people bring to tournaments? All I can find is what faction they have and their placing, but not the list itself. Seems like that would be readily available information since im sure its recorded by the tournament...

I would only look at other peoples lists as a reference, because you also need to take into account how that person plays. He might have a small but very powerful detachment but he could be looking to table his opponent rather than playing a points game. or if they are bringing a large detachment and command points he is probably looking to play safe and look at getting points. A lot of lists will be all-rounders expecting everything some lists are for a specific enemy etc. You have to be aware of all of that, when you are comparing lists.

 Delvarus Centurion wrote:



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Billagio wrote:
Is there anywhere where you can see what lists people bring to tournaments? All I can find is what faction they have and their placing, but not the list itself. Seems like that would be readily available information since im sure its recorded by the tournament...

I would only look at other peoples lists as a reference, because you also need to take into account how that person plays. He might have a small but very powerful detachment but he could be looking to table his opponent rather than playing a points game. or if they are bringing a large detachment and command points he is probably looking to play safe and look at getting points. A lot of lists will be all-rounders expecting everything some lists are for a specific enemy etc. You have to be aware of all of that, when you are comparing lists.

Agreed, but its still useful to see what people are bringing to get ideas. Knowing that an army is competitive and consistently places top 5 in tournaments is useless information unless you know what they brought and how they are played (aka what list they had)