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Hey folks!

I was poking around to see if 40k was worth getting back into again...but I'll literally be starting from scratch, so I need to figure out where to start.

Who are the local tactical geniuses these days? My "go-to" and mentor (Hulksmash) is/has switched to Age of Sigmar, my other sounding boards mostly aren't in the hobby anymore, and I don't know where to begin. I need someone to bounce ideas off of. Dark Eldar (erm, Drukhari?), Ork....maybe I should pick a whole new army this time? Everything is different, and I need to figure out if 40k is too big to try getting back into or not.

What are you trying to achieve? Who will you play against?

Pick an army you like the look of, research a little to try and figure out a list that isnt terribad, buy some stuff, read the rules and go nuts. 40k is more accessible than ever

Who are you planning to play with? Group of friends, pick-up games at your LGS, big tournaments?

What is your approach to gaming? What armies are you interested in, and what is your envisioned play style?

When are you hoping to be “game ready?”

Why are you coming back to 40k, as opposed to doing something else with your time?

How much time do you have to devote to your pursuit of “why”? 40k can be enjoyed casually, for certain, without much of a time investment. If you’re looking to have masterfully painted hordes of dudes and be a master on the tabletop, you’ll need plenty of available time.

Where seems like a variations on the first question.

I find the tactica threads for each army a great resource for getting to know a faction. Grab a glass of wine, put your feet up, and archive-trawl that badboy!

That avatar is a serious blast from the past
Welcome back.

Does he still have the kitty with the fruit helmet avatar?! Dash is back! Nice.

 grouchoben wrote:
I find the tactica threads for each army a great resource for getting to know a faction. Grab a glass of wine, put your feet up, and archive-trawl that badboy!

Also, you’ll generally be able to pick out the subject matter experts for each army in their respective threads. It seems there are a lot fewer “all-around” tactics types these days.

We at Glasshammer among covering a lot of the European meta with 3 team England etc lads. Can check out our Facebook page by searching us up.

Morkphoiz wrote:What are you trying to achieve? Who will you play against?

Pick an army you like the look of, research a little to try and figure out a list that isnt terribad, buy some stuff, read the rules and go nuts. 40k is more accessible than ever

Well, I want a fast, lethal, take all comers army. I want to build *to* it. In 5th Edition, I went from Tau to Orks to Dark Eldar to Necrons, amassing tens of thousands of points of different armies to find my flavor. I do not want to repeat this now. And while I work on figuring that out, I'm trying to figure out who the Creed(s) of Tactics are so I can pick their brains to make sure I get it right the first time. Once I had dialed into my army, it didn't change for anyone. I took it everywhere, wrote extensive battle reports, freely encouraged anyone to list tailor against me to bring a challenge...I want THAT again, but in 8th edition.

greatbigtree wrote:Who are you planning to play with? Group of friends, pick-up games at your LGS, big tournaments?

All of the above I guess? Friendly games are nice, I don't have a FLGS - its at LEAST an hour's drive to anything - and in 5th Edition, I lived and breathed the national tournament scene, so all of the above!

greatbigtree wrote:
When are you hoping to be “game ready?”

Why are you coming back to 40k, as opposed to doing something else with your time?

I have no set goals. I have co-workers who are 40k players that are trying to pull me back into the hobby.

greatbigtree wrote:
How much time do you have to devote to your pursuit of “why”? 40k can be enjoyed casually, for certain, without much of a time investment. If you’re looking to have masterfully painted hordes of dudes and be a master on the tabletop, you’ll need plenty of available time.

Oh...I've never been a painter. My wife always painted my armies. Which is why I traveled around the country with Ghazghkull's Harem, pitting my pink pajama-suited Orks with glitter flock bases against people's carefully themed armies.


I will probably end up buying a little kill team or newbie box thing to learn the rules, and have a "side army" for my wife's painting interests, but whatever my tournament army ends up being, I intend to have it professionally painted again (like my 5th Edition DE army). I loved her pink orks, but I can't tell you how many GTs I went to where I won best general, and didn't win best overall because my painting scores weren't very good. Early in my career, I did pretty poorly on sportsmanship too - a lot of players didn't like getting tabled by pink orks - no matter how friendly I was - and I disastrously sometimes tried to then offer tactical advice to people post-game on what they could have done differently.

I just want to drink liquor, throw dice, and talk about how Leman Russ was the REAL traitor primarch.

grouchoben wrote:I find the tactica threads for each army a great resource for getting to know a faction. Grab a glass of wine, put your feet up, and archive-trawl that badboy!

I wrote some of those. That was actually the first place I looked; I went looking for an 8th Edition DE / Drukhari breakdown, or a unit analysis, or a "How to play DE" guide that would be more modern than mine, but there really isn't anything.

Ratius wrote:That avatar is a serious blast from the past
Welcome back.

Thanks! Hopefully history will not repeat itself!

greyknight12 wrote:

 grouchoben wrote:
I find the tactica threads for each army a great resource for getting to know a faction. Grab a glass of wine, put your feet up, and archive-trawl that badboy!

Also, you’ll generally be able to pick out the subject matter experts for each army in their respective threads. It seems there are a lot fewer “all-around” tactics types these days.

I dug through the Drukhari 8th edition codex thread looking for people who sounded knowledgeable and competitive, but nothing really *hit* me. The OP told me I'd have better luck outside of Dakka at the Darkcity. Reddit told me to look up a youtuber, but I don't want to watch a 2 hour video on something, let alone dozens of hours hoping to glean a piece of information when I have specific questions, or need back and forth dialogue, not a one-way presentation. Dakka was my one-stop shop for years, and I don't want to have to skip around the internet trying to find someone to help me tweak an army into a terror.

KillswitchUK wrote:We at Glasshammer among covering a lot of the European meta with 3 team England etc lads. Can check out our Facebook page by searching us up.

Hello! I don't actually use facebook; I dodged that bullet. =D I *did* have a LiveJournal briefly a long time ago, but skipped MySpace too. I really do prefer chat - forums, e-mails, things I can readily reference and re-read.

A couple of things. I’m not a tournament player. I do enjoy running stats just for the giggles, but not as much as I used to.

If you are interested in winning tournaments, the current hotness is soup. Aeldari soup, Imperial Soup, and Chaos soup,

Essentially, there’s (in practice) no drawbacks to allying. So (in practice) there’s no reason to not cherry pick the best of several codices to mash together. That’s soup. Other than Aeldari, the Xenos races can’t ally without losing bonuses, except GSC.

In practice, that means there’s 3 armies to choose from at the top tourney levels. For the Imperium, barring a FAQ the current idea is a Castellan Knight (imagine a pile of guns grew legs) with some Guard (for board control / cheap command points) and usually a MEQ melee beatstick or two.

The thing is, GW seems to be intent on shaking up the tournament metagame every year with Chapter Approved. Something is “too good”? Nerf it. Now the Dragon-Chasers will buy new models to be at the top of the game!

If your TAC army is relying on a lynchpin unit or two... you may find your army suddenly invalidated. See Dark Reapers for an example.

All of the codices should be released shortly... barring Sisters (lulz) so the meta might stabilize some, though Orks are still unlikely to be able to compete with soup lists, so it will be mostly CA that sets the tone for the next year.

For DE, wracks and grotesques are very good, as are Talos if you use Haemonculus Coven.

I would look at the best coast pairing app to see lists from recent tournaments that placed well. Read the codex to understand what the unit entries are and most things tend to fall into place if you’ve played the tournament scene before.

I don’t know what local means to you, but if you’re in the Northeast tri-state area, there are a ton of very good Eldar/DE players

Thats not quite true@ greatbbigtree. Ork greentide lists are solid now and will likely improve. What orks can't compete with is the clock so you will likely find they are overpowered in no time limit casual and perform less well at competative.

Also TAU are extremely strong consistently top 5 and majorly buffed by the last faq

Morkphoiz wrote:
What are you trying to achieve? Who will you play against?

Pick an army you like the look of, research a little to try and figure out a list that isnt terribad, buy some stuff, read the rules and go nuts. 40k is more accessible than ever

This.

Don't do what I did, though, which was to buy an army I liked the look of, then find I didn't really like how they would play on the board, and then get discouraged and never build the models until I eventually sell the box set to fund the army I actually wanted all along.

So, research. Definitely research lol

 Dashofpepper wrote:

Hello! I don't actually use facebook; I dodged that bullet. =D I *did* have a LiveJournal briefly a long time ago, but skipped MySpace too. I really do prefer chat - forums, e-mails, things I can readily reference and re-read.

Honestly that's not how people consume tactical discussions anymore. Podcasts and FB groups or Discords are the mediums of current discussion. Just make a dummy FB account and you can find 40k groups. There's a group called "competitive 40k" that has a lot of the top players in it: https://www.facebook.com/groups/Competitive40k/. However, I would say the people at the top of 40k have not changed much since 5th edition. So if you did not get along with them then and are not trying to rekindle friendships that might not be helpful.

There's a podcast that I enjoy called "Best in Faction". They talk lists, tactics and discuss good players: http://bestinfaction.libsyn.com/

Lastly, for the truly committed you can pay Nick Nanavati to teach you: https://nightsatthegametable.com/procoaching

I find the existence of the latter hilarious, but we all have our own priorities in life I suppose.

 Dashofpepper wrote:
Hey folks!

I was poking around to see if 40k was worth getting back into again...but I'll literally be starting from scratch, so I need to figure out where to start.

Who are the local tactical geniuses these days? My "go-to" and mentor (Hulksmash) is/has switched to Age of Sigmar, my other sounding boards mostly aren't in the hobby anymore, and I don't know where to begin. I need someone to bounce ideas off of. Dark Eldar (erm, Drukhari?), Ork....maybe I should pick a whole new army this time? Everything is different, and I need to figure out if 40k is too big to try getting back into or not.

Welcome back. Dark Eldar are quite good now, so bring out the paper boats. Luckely, with the excepetion of agents of vect they have not been hit to bad by the erata hammer. Everything else is getting nerfed every 6 months, so do not invest to much money into a cheese build as it will break down. The most likely next nerf is restricting CP use to the detachment that made them as we can see that in the two kill team faction codexes. Hopefully it will not come to that with the nerf to CP gain.

Besides that BOLS posts the best resoults armies, and I do belive there is an ap that track good performing armies. If not I am sure you can theorise some good armies. Warhammer 40K has never been difficult with best units always sticking out like sore thumbs. What is new now is how those sore thumbs get reigned in. As a MTG player I can say that is a good thing.