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Inspired by something in a different thread....

What is the worst/weakest army that you've fielded? And the results.
Ideally as an intentional ongoing thing vs just as an evenings lark with models you have anyways (cause anyone can just grab crap out of their collection, but to intentionally buy & build it......

Mine? Mine would be an Adeptus Arbites force.
For those who don't know, the Arbites are the Imperial police & are directly inspired by Judge Dread. Due to limited equipment & no real AT, they are not well suited for standard 40k games. Never have been. Necromunda &/or Kill Team? Standard 40k? Not that that stopped me.

Anyways, way back in early 3rd ed the Arbites got a list in the Citadel Journal magazine. And I made a force.
Now imagine an Imperial Guard force - without the #s, without the heavy or special weapons, without the vehicles/tanks, & without the various support units (ogyns etc).
They HAVE: Carapace armor, everyones armed with boltguns or shot guns, limited # of grenade launchers if memory serves, bikes (cause you can't do Judge dread without the Lawmaster), & a rhino variant. Oh, and close combat options of riot shield & shock-maul. Characters are limited & have even more limited wargear options.
I converted a Vindicare assassin for sniper support (actually I converted an Arbite to be wielding the rifle).

I played this army throughout 3rd, 4th, & into 5th. No, it's not my only or even main force, so it's not like i was losing with it weakly for 2.5 editions.
So how did it play? It played exactly like you'd think an Arbites force would (so well) & fared as well as you'd expect it would if thrown onto a 40k battlefield - I.E. poorly.
It fared better at lower pt values. As pts increased & people brought tougher things/characters, larger tyranids, tanks etc it's lack of #s & heavy support really hindered it.
I probably lost about 75% of games played with this force.
Most of my victories were lower pts value games &/or scenarios with victory conditions other than "KILL!". A few wins were in multi-player games where I had a partner who got to do most of the heavy lifting.
Most of my losses were mid-range+ pts value pitched battle games (many with partners as we tended to play 2-3 people/side) where the enemies options/vehicles would outmatch me.

Would I play this army again? Yes.
I could probably make this army again using some current codex's options, but the minis are buried so deep in storage I don't think I'll get to them before 10th ed arrives.

6th ed. Close Combat oriented Chaos Space Marines. I just got hammered so badly in every game. Hell, even tau beat me in close combat by punching me to death with Riptides.

I’ve had a full battle company on the shelf for a while, but it rarely sees the table in force. Took it to an Apoc game once, open invite, just show up with 3k points. Nothing in a battle company can really impact the superhevy spam and ranges needed on a push all the tables together kind of game. Mostly I just picked up models but the handful.

On a more small scale effort, back in 6th (before formations made it cool) I fielded my company in two halves in separate games, one with the odd numbered squads, the other with the evens. Not talking little 5 man combat squads. Full 10 marine squads, like the Codex dictates.

I remember one half with the chaplain being paired against a silver tide necron player. Who was amusingly outnumbered by blue tide Ultras. I won that one, but it was close and well fought.

The other half I teamed up for a pairs game, forget the outcome, but I remember my crappy old 2nd ed “I <3 My Bolter” pushfits, who NEVER see the table, were my MVP of the game, erasing a swarm of little gribbly ‘nids, taking of chunk off a squad of zoanthopes, and holding fast on an objective.

Mine would have been my kroot mercenary army.

Great fun to convert and build but almost impossible to use, especially well.

No vehicles.
Almost no armour saves.
Poor shooting.
Average combat.
1 anti tank weapon that is far from even being “good”

Such a fun army but every match was painful.

2nd ed Blood Angels. Never won a game until 3rd dropped. Approximately 15% of games or so I didn't get a turn.

I restarted 40k at the start of 5th with a daemonhunters army and they were pretty badly outmatched by the marine and CSM books of the time, but running mech arbite/stormtroopers and eventually more and more sororitas allies propped them up.

Though the weakest list with the best results would be when I told a friend I was playing a zealot list, so he pulled up with an all anti-infantry berzerker army.
Had a bad time with the nine penitent engines :p

My Lost and The Damned army for the Eye of Terror campaign just got mowed down every game
It probably didn't help that I don't like fielding named characters or heavy vehicles in my forces!

However, they we're brilliant fun to make and paint. And fielding a shambling mutant horde was a great theme!
I'm always daydreaming about creating another Lost and the Damned force.

I had a converted Deathwatch army that I used in 4th for a bit, it did ok in smaller games but any game over 500 points it completely fell apart. Sadly sold the only unit that had the old DW upgrades, I really wish I could have gone back and re done them.

Generally, any army I'm currently playing is the "weakest".

I've played since RT, so I've had some doozies, but my weakest is probably the Marine army I played at the start of 8th. Re-reading the "Stillmania" article form that one White Dwarf of many many years ago planted the idea in my head to attempt that for 8th. For anyone not familiar, the article was a semi-tongue-in-cheek piece by Nigel Stillman regarding his WFB army. The concept of "Stillmania" is that you buld your army and then never change it. Ever. No matter what. Keep a "battle roll" of the "engagements" they have been in, and add painted/modeled accommodations for any models or units that perform "great deeds". Why I tought this would be fun in a brand new 40K edition is now lost on me, but the idea of building a single 2000pt list and never changing it appealed to me for some odd reason.

So I built a classic marine army (no Primaris at all) with the idea of them being a forward recon, "airborne" element. One Stormraven, a bunch of Assault Marines in Jump-packs, a jump pack Chaplain, the Lord Executioner model as my Captain, a ton of scouts, a single Dreadnought (to be delivered by the Stormraven as the forward support element), and pretty much no heavy support at all. It was almost entirely drawn from the "Troops" and "Fast Attack" slots (save for the flyer and the Dread).

The idea was kind of based on the concept of having the Scouts be a Vietnam era Long-Range-Recon-Patrol, that would find the enemy and call in the air-cav to deal with them. In terms of "fluff", it actually played just like that. The scouts would do their best to hide and snipe and not die until the other marines showed up with the gunboat. The problem is that the support elements couldn't hit hard enough. You have TWO tanks?! Uh-oh ....

A single Knight? I'm boned. lol

I lost SO MANY games. It was fun for a while, and a great challenge (I still trot it out once in a while), but you can only be tabled so many times before an idea starts to lose its appeal.

Welp, I have a pretty terrible record with my Orkz. (After every game I play, I remind myself "This is why I dont play Orkz") I dont buy into the whole Mek Gun spam style list seems to be their only caveat. I have tons of Lootaz though. Justbdoesent seem to be worth the time and movement phases to just get wiped out by turn 3, or worse, stuck in a corner.

I loved to take underdog armies and stomp people. My 4th edition Daemon army in 5th was said to be “weak” online, but people in my local store refused to play it, as they would have often lost on the first turn, if not second. Black Templar’s coded in 5th was an older book with crap stormshields, and I had command squads decked out with honors that attacked with an obscene number of dice (for back then). I played the 4th edition CSM codex with dual Lash Princes, summoner GDs and heavy amounts of chosen/havocs.

I had a Blood Angels list in 5th too that was a broken book as well, although the list I played wasn’t the standard and looked confusing; but it was great at points denial and objective theft.

I guess the weakest I ever played and lost with was my BTs at the start of 7th. They were worthless and only saw one game.

Pre-battletome, just using the warscrolls in the build instructions 500pt Slaves to Darkness Age of Sigmar army.

I my first game, and it was against Bonereapers. I only managed to remove 3 Mortek Guard for a couple of minutes before they came back. Playing a game where each wound equaled a point, I believe I loss 0-40 or something at the end of Round 3. Spoiler is a photo of that game.

 Saturmorn Carvilli wrote:
Pre-battletome, just using the warscrolls in the build instructions 500pt Slaves to Darkness Age of Sigmar army.

I my first game, and it was against Bonereapers. I only managed to remove 3 Mortek Guard for a couple of minutes before they came back. Playing a game where each wound equaled a point, I believe I loss 0-40 or something at the end of Round 3. Spoiler is a photo of that game.

Spoiler:

As I put this on the 40k boards I didn't think I had to specify 40k army.... Got a 40k tale?

My mechanized R&H .

Planned and Started in 7th . IA 13, well then 8th hit .
Neither chimeras nor the army as a whole got something to work with ....

I started playing DA but I switched to Tyranids pretty fast (3rd edition) as a youngster and, while I lost most of my early DA models (Azrael, Ezekiel, Asmodaï all in metal ...), I still have most of my tyranids and they are ugly as hell, badly painted, and I lack most of the useful units.
Played with them twice and got roflstomp everytime ; one of those two time I even raged at one of my best buddy because he just destroyed me and I still feel shame for that (and we haven't played since then).

2k mono Slaanesh Daemons, Codex points values, none of the new hotness and with 20% of my points sunk into Zarakynel.

Grey Knights in early 8e. Scooped or got tabled before turn three about five games in a row, and decided it was stupid and shelved them.

ccs wrote:

 Saturmorn Carvilli wrote:
Pre-battletome, just using the warscrolls in the build instructions 500pt Slaves to Darkness Age of Sigmar army.

I my first game, and it was against Bonereapers. I only managed to remove 3 Mortek Guard for a couple of minutes before they came back. Playing a game where each wound equaled a point, I believe I loss 0-40 or something at the end of Round 3. Spoiler is a photo of that game.

Spoiler:

As I put this on the 40k boards I didn't think I had to specify 40k army.... Got a 40k tale?

I suppose it is my Genestealer Cult army. Too many character units, not enough infantry. Using Neophytes when Brood Brothers would be a more efficient. My generalship is also particularly poor as I really only played space marines, both regular and spiky, making it radically different than what I am used. Not to mention am pretty bad at making the most of deep strike which GSC thrive on. So less a bad army, at least at the casual level I play, and more I am bad at using it.

Not nearly as exciting as my jump into Age of Sigmar.

My 40K tailed off at the end of 5th and I was playing most Flames of War through the start of 6th. I got the 40K itch again, picked up the MRB and took what was basically my 5th Ed Imperial Guard to a tournament for my first seven games of that edition. I placed last with a 1-6 record: my win was against the TO's ringer list (complete sympathy).

This was the not the IG Codex's fault: I had dipped my toe back into 40K by diving into the deep end of the shark tank! I adjusted going forward, but that tourney was a good lesson in humility.

Pure biker White Scars, back in 7th Ed when bikers could be troops. I wanted to make a very special army: nothing but bikes and aircraft. No footsloggers, no land vehicles. Sadly, for all that 30 bikers looked very impressive on the table, it was not a very effective list, and I got soundly trounced in most of my games. (A notable exception was when I fought a very strong 30k Mechanicus list to a near-tie, due to a rock-paper-scissors effect between our two armies.)

8th Edition made pure biker lists pretty much nonviable, so I sold my army to make room for a new one. I'm still sad to this day. I really wanted them to work.

.

A.T. wrote:
I restarted 40k at the start of 5th with a daemonhunters army and they were pretty badly outmatched by the marine and CSM books of the time, but running mech arbite/stormtroopers and eventually more and more sororitas allies propped them up.

Though the weakest list with the best results would be when I told a friend I was playing a zealot list, so he pulled up with an all anti-infantry berzerker army.
Had a bad time with the nine penitent engines :p

I had a game like that. One of my regular opponents brought a Harlequins army he'd armed entirely around destroying my regular Primaris Marines since he knew he'd be playing me, I brought a horde of Slanneshi daemons. I still lost because flip-belts let him put shooting units into places where I couldn't engage them in melee.

It didn't really bother me that much though, the actual turn-to-turn tactical gameplay of 40k has always been more about weaponizing the janky base rules than anything else.

In terms of worst armies that I had fun with just on the theme I had a Marine strike force that was a Stormraven carring a Captain, two five-man Company Veterans squads, and a Dread with Melee and Lascannons, plus a Storm Talon gunship. At least the first game I played was against IG and he had the decency shoot down my transport in my deployment zone and kill everything in it before he let me know that because of Boots on the Ground I'd be considered tabled if all I had left were AIRCRAFT.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 AnomanderRake wrote:
Grey Knights in early 8e. Scooped or got tabled before turn three about five games in a row, and decided it was stupid and shelved them.

I got tabled or scooped at the end of turn one better than half my games for the first six months of 8th. I'll admit I had moments when I regretted getting back into it.

Back in the day I collected an Eldar army around Howling Banshees simply because they looked cool. Against Tyranids and Marines they weren't that good.

From then on it was Banshees and Dark Reapers AND an Avatar!

ccs wrote:
Inspired by something in a different thread....

What is the worst/weakest army that you've fielded? And the results.
Ideally as an intentional ongoing thing vs just as an evenings lark with models you have anyways (cause anyone can just grab crap out of their collection, but to intentionally buy & build it......

Mine? Mine would be an Adeptus Arbites force.
For those who don't know, the Arbites are the Imperial police & are directly inspired by Judge Dread. Due to limited equipment & no real AT, they are not well suited for standard 40k games. Never have been. Necromunda &/or Kill Team? Standard 40k? Not that that stopped me.

Anyways, way back in early 3rd ed the Arbites got a list in the Citadel Journal magazine. And I made a force.
Now imagine an Imperial Guard force - without the #s, without the heavy or special weapons, without the vehicles/tanks, & without the various support units (ogyns etc).
They HAVE: Carapace armor, everyones armed with boltguns or shot guns, limited # of grenade launchers if memory serves, bikes (cause you can't do Judge dread without the Lawmaster), & a rhino variant. Oh, and close combat options of riot shield & shock-maul. Characters are limited & have even more limited wargear options.
I converted a Vindicare assassin for sniper support (actually I converted an Arbite to be wielding the rifle).

I played this army throughout 3rd, 4th, & into 5th. No, it's not my only or even main force, so it's not like i was losing with it weakly for 2.5 editions.
So how did it play? It played exactly like you'd think an Arbites force would (so well) & fared as well as you'd expect it would if thrown onto a 40k battlefield - I.E. poorly.
It fared better at lower pt values. As pts increased & people brought tougher things/characters, larger tyranids, tanks etc it's lack of #s & heavy support really hindered it.
I probably lost about 75% of games played with this force.
Most of my victories were lower pts value games &/or scenarios with victory conditions other than "KILL!". A few wins were in multi-player games where I had a partner who got to do most of the heavy lifting.
Most of my losses were mid-range+ pts value pitched battle games (many with partners as we tended to play 2-3 people/side) where the enemies options/vehicles would outmatch me.

Would I play this army again? Yes.
I could probably make this army again using some current codex's options, but the minis are buried so deep in storage I don't think I'll get to them before 10th ed arrives.

Probably the all-vehicle list. I've played a number of variations of it over time. I've had a few wins with it, but I only really use it if either my friends ask me to play something "casual" or if we're all going to play tankhammer.

Right now it looks something like:

Supreme Command:
Leman Russ Commander
Leman Russ Commander
Leman Russ Commander
Shadowsword

Spearhead:
Company Commander
Chimera
Basilisk
Wyvern
Manticore
Leman Russ
Leman Russ
Vendetta

Core objectives include: have at least one of each vehicle model that I own [I actually have no hellhounds, for some reason], and have the Shadowsword.

In 7E, a little bug Tyranid army. I wanted to see how many Termagants and Hormagaunts I could fit on a field with an army, with as minimal big bug backup I could get away with. Tervigon as an HQ, to spawn more gants.

It was frightening to look at (somewhere around 300 gants/gaunts), but folded like wet cardboard. The only thing that could do a damn was the Zoanthropes I added as synapse backup. It was like playing a tower defense game and I came to play it out of spite at GW's incompetence at rules.

My 3rd Ulthwe army.

I loved the lore about this craftworld and the new design of the guardians. So naturally my force consisted of runeseers, guardians and war machines operated by the latter like vypers, war walkers and artillery platforms.

How did they perform on the battlefield? Well, with a range of 12" for their shuriken catapults combined with BS 3 not so great. Luckily the upcoming special rules for craftworlds gave them a significant boost allowing them for example to enter the battlefield via webway portals.

Though without those special rules the models were hot garbage on the tabletop and therefore only useful for a painting project.

7th edition orks.

I remember getting tabled by eldar before I moved. I also remember charging a unit of boyz at full strength into necron warriors and losing combat.

I don't mind losing as much, most of the time I was unable to have any impact on the game.

 Jidmah wrote:
7th edition orks.

I remember getting tabled by eldar before I moved. I also remember charging a unit of boyz at full strength into necron warriors and losing combat.

I don't mind losing as much, most of the time I was unable to have any impact on the game.

Come to think off it, there were quite a bit of times were factions just were on whole diffrent levels.
Losing is one thing. Slight disadvantage (10-20% WR diffrence) is also ok.
But a certain ward grey knight codex, vs everything else , are not okay imo.

Not Online!!! wrote:
But a certain ward grey knight codex, vs everything else , are not okay imo.

In retrospect quite a bit friendlier than some of the 6e/7e shenanigans. It's a shame really as there were no truly 'bad' books at the start of 5th, just a lot of mismatched rules and points. Perhaps 4e guard but they were to become the first in a long line of codex creep releases that flew further out of control until they had to kill it all with fire 8th edition.

Well... I remember when 8th edition hit with gw'¨s phraseings like "Now you can really get stuck in" with these new close combat rules. And free fallback and no bonus for charges.... Never have my space wolves and Khorne been this horrible... It made 7th seem like a gentle and rational edition...

A.T. wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:
But a certain ward grey knight codex, vs everything else , are not okay imo.

In retrospect quite a bit friendlier than some of the 6e/7e shenanigans. It's a shame really as there were no truly 'bad' books at the start of 5th, just a lot of mismatched rules and points. Perhaps 4e guard but they were to become the first in a long line of codex creep releases that flew further out of control until they had to kill it all with fire 8th edition.

Shh don't summon it, the taudar and formations.