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If there is such a thing, an easy army to use, I’d like to know which one is the easiest. If there’s more then one, even better.

So,
What is the easiest and simplest army to use? One that doesn’t require a lot of complicated rules to make it work effectively, for example it doesn’t have to rely on stratagems much. “Effectively” in this case is that it packs a punch, is forgiving in the absence of some sly and cunning strategies, and is fun win or lose.

What I have in mind is playing a basic and straightforward way. Set models down. Move, shoot, charge, over, that kind of thing. I don’t want to have to remember a lot of rules.

Apologies if that sounds boring... but I’m having a hard time liking the idea of how complicated the game has become. I would like to avoid the time spent to really get acquainted with the rules. For now at least.

In the near future I would use the information giving here to show my kid a game of Warhammer. Before that I would get some games in at the flgs. But again, honestly I am not of fan of how complicated the game has become. Maybe I’ll think differently after some games played, who knows? Thanks for any help giving.

Space Marines seem pretty easy, most of them have the same statline or really similar. If you remove strats and abstract the cover rules, the game is pretty simple.

Blood Angles maybe? 30 sang gaurd, sang priest + anything else you want is a pretty effective and straightforward army. Might get nerfed though. That's always a risk. That's what I'd say right now.


As far as space marines in general ... I kinda don't think so. Vanilla codex marines arent especially strong. The strength is pretty much all in Blood Angels, Dark Angels, and Black Templar. Of those, I'd say Blood Angels are the most straightforward.

Space marines, something like an UM army with 3 Dreads, 3 Eliminators, 3 Incursor/Ints squads, Calgar, Lib, and a 10man VGV jump is a super easy army to learn, limit on the CP uses but has enough CP to do what you want. Everything has a simple job, you get some re-rolls, and a couple tricks but not a lot of tricks to make your head spin.

necrons
you've got very minimal army wide rules to worry about, you can reduce the strats down to about 3, and every unit is straight forward to play. and the few slightly less than straight-forward units you can simply skip using.

they're even dirt simple to paint.

Imperial Knights (with 2-3 Knights and 4-7 Armigers) are rather easy to play.
With a few models on the field, the stats to learn is very limited.
Tactics is also rather straightforward.

Custodes.

Low model count, small unit selection, relatively tame set of Stratagems.

 techsoldaten wrote:
Custodes.

Low model count, small unit selection, relatively tame set of Stratagems.

Agreed, Custodes. Small, elite army with a minor amount of rules.

Necrons. You practicaly only have to learn how to use the silent king effectivly, and the rest is mostly playing a soliter game. Most armies won't be able to shot your dudes off objectives, without getting close and if they do that they are just feeding you points to gain with the king. You have a pre game move, practicly everything is scoring. They do use stratagems, but it is nothing like the what Ad Mecha player had, and still have to, do if they want a good working army.


Stay away from marines. They are easy to learn, but what you learn fast is that they are not a very good army and you have to use very specific units and combos, and even those are far away from what non marine armies can achive.

i don't think any army is going to be very good if the idea is just move shoot charge. In the current game with mission objectives and secondaries you have to play to the missions and honestly i find that more fun personally than just trying to table the opponent.

that said I think the closest army to fit move shoot charge would be custodies. you have the armor and toughness to move up without relying on other mechanics, have nice inv saves. Good WS and BS, fast and don't need as many stratagems to be successful. There will be weak matchups though vs both space elf factions as they have the speed to just avoid them.

Custodes, probably.

The main problem is that 40k is currently just not a simple, straight forward game. Every army has layers of special rules, strats, WLT and other interactions that make them powerful. So even if you find an army that works well without all those things, it's likely they'll be significantly weaker than they would otherwise be if you did use all those layers.

Great suggestions all, ty!

Custodes and Necrons are the two I will start looking at and focusing on next.

As for my child, Astra Militarum was chosen... The Leman Russ tank stood out. Looks like I’ll be buying the “Start Collecting” box/kit. Hopefully that army isn’t too hard to start and finish, and use.

Khornate Bezerkers possibly. In the fluff a World Eater said "Charge is the only order worth remembering". May have been Kharn, can't quite recall.

Garukadon wrote:
If there is such a thing, an easy army to use, I’d like to know which one is the easiest. If there’s more then one, even better.

So,
What is the easiest and simplest army to use? One that doesn’t require a lot of complicated rules to make it work effectively, for example it doesn’t have to rely on stratagems much. “Effectively” in this case is that it packs a punch, is forgiving in the absence of some sly and cunning strategies, and is fun win or lose.

What I have in mind is playing a basic and straightforward way. Set models down. Move, shoot, charge, over, that kind of thing. I don’t want to have to remember a lot of rules.

Apologies if that sounds boring... but I’m having a hard time liking the idea of how complicated the game has become. I would like to avoid the time spent to really get acquainted with the rules. For now at least.

In the near future I would use the information giving here to show my kid a game of Warhammer. Before that I would get some games in at the flgs. But again, honestly I am not of fan of how complicated the game has become. Maybe I’ll think differently after some games played, who knows? Thanks for any help giving.

Are you looking into what works competitively, or just playing for laughs?

Orks can be mildly complex until you get to grips with them from a competitive viewpoint (mostly around maneuvering and when to call your Waaagh), but are suuuuper simple from a casual perspective.

In my opinion, the kings of "move forward, shoot or advance, then charge"; very few auras/buffs to worry about, very few stratagems worth taking, easy to build lists, etc.


But I will otherwise echo people saying Custodes and Knights.

^playing for laughs or fun.

I will build up to learning more about the complexity of the game.

Orks look great and I bet would be fun to pit against my kid’s Imperial Army. I’ve been reading the Ork Codex and seeing what list I’d like to build. Mainly a foot army marching across the board, Ghaz, boyz, deff dreads, and some mega armor nobz, that sounds like an easy army to use.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I do like the Khorne suggestion as well. Didn’t even think about them.

I started playing an Iron Hands space marine list and it's the easiest 40k army I've ever piloted.

Garukadon wrote:
^playing for laughs or fun.

I will build up to learning more about the complexity of the game.

Orks look great and I bet would be fun to pit against my kid’s Imperial Army. I’ve been reading the Ork Codex and seeing what list I’d like to build. Mainly a foot army marching across the board, Ghaz, boyz, deff dreads, and some mega armor nobz, that sounds like an easy army to use.

Orks are one of the most difficult armies to play to even a mediocre standard, unless you are fine with losing pretty much every single game you play. Your plan would pretty much set you up for obliteration by the bottom of tier 3 even against a friendly opponent.

Winning with orks requires you to hide key units, refuse unfavorable fights while forcing them on your opponent yourself and staying out of threat ranges of dangerous things. This requires a lot of knowledge about positioning, the enemy army and what your units are capable of. Orks also extremely unforgiving towards tactical errors, as units which are badly positioned or in fights they can't win will just disappear with no saves or fancy rules to save them.
You also kind of need to follow certain rules when building your lists, otherwise you will be picked apart by even the most casual players.
Orks neither have the durability nor the power nor the flexibility charge head first into anything.

Currently the imperial army is extremely weak, so you might get a few good games out of it - after their codex drops, that might flip into a one-sided "blow up all the orks" though.

I'm not saying that you shouldn't be picking up orks though, you just need to be aware that you have to know a lot about this army in order to provide an equal challenge for your opponent.

On the upside, due to the army being so skill reliant, it's possible to tone it up or down to match your kid's skill level. Codices with a low skill requirement but high baseline power can't really do that as they can murder weak armies on auto-pilot. Knights are bit like that - unless the opponent knows what to do when facing them, they will just walk all over them.

So, please don't go out and buy whatever orks your think look cool/fit your idea of an ork army. Inform yourself first, build a coherent army to match the one your kid is fielding, learn how to pilot it and evolve from there when you have a better understanding of what makes them tick.

Knights or chaos knights are the easiest. Forgiving and very few models.

Eldars are pretty simple in my opinion especially if you go Aspect Warrior heavy. Your units are basically only good at one thing and it's pretty simple to get how they are supposed to work. The fact they are fast and quite reliable also makes them easy to use. The biggest complexity is psychic powers though.

I would put Eldar in the middle of the difficulty curve. They are glass cannons and each unit needs to be used for the right thing. SM are the easiest because they have nearly identical statline, the bonuses are usually army-wide and last for 1-2 turns so you don't have as much to remember, and you can just sit on objectives and shoot their big dudes w your big dudes, their troops w your troops, etc.

Pure Khorne Daemons are super easy.

There aren't many unit choices.
There aren't many strats.
There's very few WL traits or relics.
There aren't many special faction rules for demons as a whole.

The only real questions when building this force are:
1) how many units of Bloodletters do I NEED?
2) how many Skull Cannon should I include?
3) how many Bloodthirsters (including Skarbrand) do I want to use?

During play the main concerns are:
1) holding objectives
2) getting most stuff into the correct melees.

Imperial Guard:

1) Make list
2) Deploy army.
2) Lose.

Easiest army

Eldar are perhaps the hardest army to play if your opponent knows what they're doing. Everything you have will evaporate instantly against any amount of incidental firepower. Even things like lasguns will absolutely murder eldar infantry.

The easiest, most forgiving army to play is probably Custodes. They are extremely tough and do everything well.

 DoctorDanny wrote:
Imperial Guard:

1) Make list
2) Deploy army.
2) Lose.

Easiest army

That's not really using the army though.

 DoctorDanny wrote:
Imperial Guard:

1) Make list
2) Deploy army.
2) Lose.

Easiest army

Losing per se is not an option.

If you meme it, well then DE Aotf, just play 171 wracks kek.