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In the vast universe of Warhammer 40k, every faction has its die-hard fans and its detractors. But some factions seem to evoke a collective groan from the community. Is it the overzealous Space Marines, with their countless chapters and seemingly endless lore? Or perhaps the Necrons, whose ancient, robotic nature can feel a bit stale? Maybe it’s the Tau, with their emphasis on ranged combat and a more "friendly" approach to warfare that just doesn’t sit right with some players.

Let’s dive into the factions that make you roll your eyes or skip past their articles. What is it about these groups that turns you off? Is it their playstyle, their lore, or just the sheer number of models you see on the table? Share your least favorite faction and why they make you want to flip the page or scroll past!

I understand the game/fluff is set in stone at this point and that it's all representative instead of 1:1 etc etc etc.... but it will always irk me to see dozens of SMs fighting/dying against 100-odd orks/guardsmen/whatever on the tabletop. They should have custodes sized armies at most!

For me there's always been 2 factions in 40K that never interested me

Space Marines and Orks

Now let me first say I LOVE both those armies as concepts. In Lore, Artwork, Video games, Battle reports etc.... I love them. I play them in video games; I enjoy the childish love of war that the Orks bring; I love the grim dark military style of the Marines.

But as table top armies neither one gets my attention. For some reason I don't want to collect either army as a force for the tabletop in 40K.
They aren't bad models nor designs overall; they aren't poorly sculpted or lacking in details/interest. There is nothing "wrong" with them in a generic sense that I can put my finger on and say "that's the problem right there." They just don't spark joy for me as armies I'd want to spend money on and build.

Even though I know if I played them I'd surely find them both fun in their own ways.




For Marines I can actually say that I think part of the issue is that they aren't gothic enough. You get the odd Chaplin with skulls and baroque/gothic inspired armour; but everything else is sleek clean mechanised war.
For this reason whilst marines spark no interest I'm 100% down for building a Sisters of Battle army. I've also a passing interest in the Custodes - again they have just that slight edge in gothic design elements; plus they are a super-elite army so small on model count.






I should also note that this barrier is only in 40K. Epic/LI is entirely different because the troops are tiny and it focuses much more on titans and tanks and massed infantry. For me that's enough of a difference that I enjoy them in that scale*



So there the two armies I dislike the most in 40K are basically doing nothing wrong and actually catch my interest in quite a few fronts; just not as a 28-35mm models.
Otherwise SoB; Imperial Guard; Eldar; Dark Eldar; Tyranids; Tau - 100% all for them!

Squats I'm leaving out purely because I've really not seen enough of their range in reality as actual models. They have a good few design elements shared with the marines, but a very different styling to them at the same time. If that's enough for me or not I can't say - again they don't do anything wrong; but they are new and I've just not really "seen" them in the wild to appreciate the models.


*fun fact Titan Legions boxed set was my first ever wargaming model purchase. That was Marines VS Orks

World Eaters. They're just so boring.

Don't get me wrong - there's a certain appreciation for running forward and hitting things, but when that's pretty much all you do? Ugh.

It's one thing to pick up a box of Berzerkers to include with a CSM army, but I can only tolerate them in small doses.

Bonus anti-points for Angron being essentially required.

I should also reiterate my stance of being comically anti-Nurgle.

 BorderCountess wrote:
World Eaters. They're just so boring.

Don't get me wrong - there's a certain appreciation for running forward and hitting things, but when that's pretty much all you do? Ugh.

It's one thing to pick up a box of Berzerkers to include with a CSM army, but I can only tolerate them in small doses.

Bonus anti-points for Angron being essentially required.

I should also reiterate my stance of being comically anti-Nurgle.

I thought you were also anti-Space Wolf to.




Automatically Appended Next Post:
I just can't get into the Genestealer Cults. It's an army that can't last long, because even of you win, you still get eaten at the end of your conquest.

Leagues of Votann, I like some of their ideas (fluff wise) but I just don't understand how they are supposed to fit in to the galaxy, or on the tabletop.

Overall I think my least favorite 40k force would be.... Mono-Nurgle Demons.

They're slow,
lack virtually any shooting (I like shooting things!),
and I really don't like most of the model range.

 Lathe Biosas wrote:

I just can't get into the Genestealer Cults. It's an army that can't last long, because even of you win, you still get eaten at the end of your conquest.

Leagues of Votann, I like some of their ideas (fluff wise) but I just don't understand how they are supposed to fit in to the galaxy, or on the tabletop.

For the Cult - they don't actually have to get eaten. Cult's do last without being eaten up and they just spread to other worlds; other sectors and grow in power and influence.
Sure you can argue that, in the end, they should all be eaten, but then you can say that for all the races of the Galaxy - Tyranids are the never ending hunger that will devour all

Swings between Space Marines and Orks.

SMs with the way the lore centers so much around them at the expense of all the other factions, even moreso to the detriment of allied factions.

Orks just embody about everything I don't like in the way they play or look, and their humour never worked for me.

 Overread wrote:

 Lathe Biosas wrote:

I just can't get into the Genestealer Cults. It's an army that can't last long, because even of you win, you still get eaten at the end of your conquest.

Leagues of Votann, I like some of their ideas (fluff wise) but I just don't understand how they are supposed to fit in to the galaxy, or on the tabletop.

For the Cult - they don't actually have to get eaten. Cult's do last without being eaten up and they just spread to other worlds; other sectors and grow in power and influence.
Sure you can argue that, in the end, they should all be eaten, but then you can say that for all the races of the Galaxy - Tyranids are the never ending hunger that will devour all

I liberated this from the Grotmas Detachment introduction on the GW site. This does not sound like an army that I want to play.

Final Day
Every Genestealer Cultist longs to witness the arrival of the Star Children, and then ascend to join them in blessed oneness. This will be a transcendent experience, a sublime reward for their devotion, or so they believe. The reality is altogether more hideous: as the Tyranids approach, the utterly alien Hive Mind assimilates the more nuanced Broodmind of the Cult.

Many of the faithful die from psionic shock, while others are freed from Tyranid mind control only to go mad with horror as the truth is revealed. The rest become short‐lived puppets for the first waves of Tyranid vanguard organisms descending on their world. Exerting its will to make them fight harder and move faster, the Hive Mind swiftly burns out those who survive, harvesting each flicker of bioenergy to reinvigorate its more valuable Tyranid organisms.

They may be fun to play, but I can't get past that hurdle.

I had the dame hang up about the Necrons back in 2001 Chapter Approved - when they had the personality of an automated sentry gun. They were super fun rules wise to play against, It was their character that didn't hold my interest.

I have a grudge against Necrons, ever since their debut White Dwarf battle report back in 2nd edition where the Sisters against them were wildly badly chosen (as is often the case, because it's what they had painted up) and Team Robot rolled over them with depressing ease, earning my ire; it's a comedy grudge though, it doesn't really splash over to thinking Necrons are bad, or shouldn't be there.

The 'shouldn't be there' award actually goes to Custodes for me, because I don't care what lore they cooked up to justify it, to me the Custodes belong on Terra, not gallivanting around the galaxy being 'proactive'. I don't care for the miniatures either - I'm not saying I want an absolute hard reset to the bare-chested leather pants and pointy helmet brigade (no matter how much I love them just for nostalgia's sake), but I took a good look at their range when I was starting to play games again (just because the fewer minis there are the easier it is to carry them around), and not one of their varieties looked like anything I could see myself spending time on, with their ungainly poses and mountains of ornamentation; I feel like if I tried to paint one it'd be a case of using the colours to fight against the sculpt and salvage it, rather than showing it off, and that's no mood to take into painting an army, even a tiny one. No dislike to Custodes players though, your kink is not my kink and that's fine - if my heretics wind up fighting them, I just assume they're some hallucination cooked up by the Eye of Terror, weird things happen all the time so why not.

Literally Space Dwarves. I know that they were already in some old editions, but I can believe that GW could finally add Dark Mechanicum army and Kelbor-Hal model and decided to add Space Dwarves.

There are a bunch of factions I wish just stayed as single units. Grey Knights, Imperial (and chaos) Knights. Scions, Deathwatch. These did not need to be spun up into full armies. Nothing against them, but they should have been a single unit you splash into another list, not a stand alone faction. Custodes are similar, but I wish they never even hit the table-top. Keep them in the fluff, but off the battlefield. If we are moving the fluff forward I could see them maybe sending a single guy, or a squad to someplace important, but army strength? I’d rather not.

I think it's loyalist Marines for me. The only faction that makes me eyeroll whenever they get something new - but often it's because they again get something new.
But their fluff is also stupid with 1000Marines per chapter being anywhere and doing everything, totally overshadowing the guard that should be doing what they do. Add to that the whole Primaris problems, ugly grav tanks, ugly nerf guns, them stealing specializations from many other factions and nevertheless being just a plain boring Version compared to Chaos Marines.

Runner up probably Votann. It took them 30 years to rerelease Space Dwarfs as just another Space Marine lookalike with shorter beards than Space Wolves. What a waste.

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
But their fluff is also stupid with 1000Marines per chapter being anywhere and doing everything, totally overshadowing the guard that should be doing what they do.

Main Character Syndrome. Being the poster boys means getting to hog the limelight. My complaint here is the lack variety in which Chapters keep getting screen time, which then translates into which Chapters/characters get models. How many Chapters have multiple named Captain models - three? And then you have the Raven Guard who only have a single Chapter-specific model.

 BorderCountess wrote:

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
But their fluff is also stupid with 1000Marines per chapter being anywhere and doing everything, totally overshadowing the guard that should be doing what they do.

Main Character Syndrome. Being the poster boys means getting to hog the limelight. My complaint here is the lack variety in which Chapters keep getting screen time, which then translates into which Chapters/characters get models. How many Chapters have multiple named Captain models - three? And then you have the Raven Guard who only have a single Chapter-specific model.

There are enough chapters scattered across the galaxy that having marines show up at major battles is not unreasonable. But having the named ones? Nope. Big events in their backyard, yes, but they should not be everywhere at once.

I like how in 5th they encouraged you to file the names off the characters and make them your own. Sure, the examples (and fluff) were mostly for the poster boys, but they would serve for any chapter you wanted. We are kind of heading back there in 10th, but there are still some chapter-locked things.

There are a few I dislike:

Squats (or whatever pretentious name they have now). In a system bloated to the gills with power-armour, GW gives us . . . more Power Armour.

And the Power Armour isn't even interesting or different. They just look like one of the bazillion variants of Primaris Marines (or possibly Centurions).

Oh and their vehicles look like tat someone bought in Poundland, albeit for a far heftier price.


Tau. Never cared for their aesthetics and they're rarely ever fun to play against.


Space Marines. Partially for the same reason as Overread:

 Overread wrote:

For Marines I can actually say that I think part of the issue is that they aren't gothic enough. You get the odd Chaplin with skulls and baroque/gothic inspired armour; but everything else is sleek clean mechanised war.

But mainly because I'm just sick of them at this point. They may always have been the poster-boys, but for many years they still felt like just one faction among many. Now their book is long enough to merit an intermission and refreshments midway through. To say nothing of the endless chapters, sub-chapters, spin-offs etc. Going by the models, it seems that the 'rare, elite, best-of-the-best' Space Marines make up roughly 90% of the entire population of the galaxy.

Imperium - 'Oh woe is us for we face an entire galaxy of dangerous and hostile races! What can we do against such horrors? All we have is three billion trillion super-super-super-super soldiers, who grow in power every day, led by super-super-duper-ultra soldiers who are each larger than a tank and able to eat Imperial Knights for breakfast! Truly there is no hope for mankind.'

Least favourite is a good way to put it, because I don't hate any faction for 40K.

But I'm similar to Nevelon - I don't like "unit as faction" factions. My most disliked is actually Grey Knights because I think they should have stayed a special squad for Space Marine armies.

And I kinda believe that the special space marine chapters should mostly be a special unit for the vanilla space marine book too.

Knights are a unit, not a faction, and Custodes should be sitting on Terra.

I also dislike Custodes because they feed into the "Bigger Supersoldier" spectrum that we now have which I just find kinda ridiculous even for 40K. Sisters of Silence are cool though.

But I could see myself painting a unit of any of these and as single units they're all cool models. I just don't like them extended into armies.

Votann just don't work for me on a visual level.

Knights and custodes range from mediocre to great visually, but they shouldn't be their own factions and rather allied contingents to imperial factions.

I really don't get why GW hasn't fleshed out Sisters of Silence at the very least in 30K

A tie between Grey Knights becoming boring space marines, chaos becoming boring space marines, and squats kind of leaning the same way.

Honestly not sure I have one.

In terms of model range? Thanks to recent efforts to give Xenos some much needed attention, I don’t think any faction is looking particularly left behind. And as someone largely background driven, I can find something to appeal from every current army.

Game wise I’m so long out of practice I can’t offer a valid opinion.

Though I would say it’s high time Mechanicus forces got some more Automata.

ccs wrote:
Overall I think my least favorite 40k force would be.... Mono-Nurgle Demons.

They're slow,
lack virtually any shooting (I like shooting things!),
and I really don't like most of the model range.

Rude.

I'll echo Mad Dok-there's no model range I really dislike, and while I don't always jive 100% with any given faction's themes and aesthetics, they're all fun in their own way.

It might be Adeptus Mechanicus for me, just because their tabletop (and thus background) representation has been so badly crippled by GW's 'models first and only' approach.

Original half-Codex has no transports? No problem! lets just say that the Skitarii walk everywhere and that's why they have bionic legs!
Need to release some new vehicle units? No problem! Now the Skitarii have hovercraft and chicken fliers! What, you though they walked everywhere? Idiots.

Whatever happened to Ryzan Skitarii's extensive use of Leman Russ Executioners? Oh yeah, we need to make sure we keep the sales figures for Guard nice and clear.

Etc.

Oh, I forgot one - Imperial Knights.

If I wanted to play Mechwarrior or Battletech, I wouldn't be playing 40k.

I also find their aesthetics boring beyond measure. If you showed me a picture, and I didn't already know they were from 40k, I'd assume they were some sort of Warjack from Warmachine.

Honestly I don't hate any faction in the game, but there are definitely some I'd never want to collect a whole army of for various reasons.

-Craftworld Aeldari. Their models just for the most part don't spark joy for me, other than things like the Wraith constructs (which are pretty cool).
-Adeptus Mechanicus. Firstly, they are nearly twice as expensive as many other armies in the game in terms of dollars/point. They also look really painful to actually sit down and assemble/paint.
-Necrons. Similarly to Aeldari, the models just don't grab me. They do have some cool individual models (Skorpekh Lord/Destroyers, Silent King, Void Dragon), but overall I think their range is kind of boring.
-Chaos Daemons. I actually used to have quite a few of these guys, before I sold all my Chaos stuff. I do have certain personal reasons for not wanting to play this army anymore, but also I feel like their range is just overall so old and tired. The new(ish, holy crap the Bloodthirster is 10 years old this year!) Greater Daemons do look pretty cool though.
-Thousand Sons: These models just look painful to paint, similarly to AdMech. They are just overly busy models IMO. Magnus is pretty cool, but even he's a bit too busy.
-Genestealer Cults: This army just doesn't seem like it would be fun to play, at least for me. The mental load would be pretty high; that's actually part of the reason I decided to sell my Sisters of Battle last year. The models just aren't anything special to me either.

There's not any that I actively dislike but Death Guard have no interest for me.
I've got quite a few but every time I think about painting them I always think of something more interesting to do like pull my nails out or listening to politics.

 Lathe Biosas wrote:

I just can't get into the Genestealer Cults. It's an army that can't last long, because even of you win, you still get eaten at the end of your conquest.

They're the Karma Reincarnation Pulling the tail off a lizard army. If you win, you get subsumed, and then "reincarnated" on the next planet, and whatever individuality you had will either be retained by the Hive Mind or discarded because it didn't matter any more than a tail breaking off for escape matters. At least that's how I picture it.

 Lathe Biosas wrote:

I had the same hang up about the Necrons back in 2001 Chapter Approved - when they had the personality of an automated sentry gun. They were super fun rules wise to play against, It was their character that didn't hold my interest.

Even though they're "just space tomb kings" the change to Necron fluff etc in 5th was such a fantastic and necessary move. Even more fun is the folding in of the old fluff to the new "oh yeah the first few centuries of necrons appearing were the EXTRA derranged/insane lords which is why they were all silent actors with unfathomable motives. don't worry the sane kings and princes of old finally woke up and man are they PISSED little divas!"

Genestealer Cults aren’t necessarily One And Done.

There are Cults out there which, through the Imperium’s trade routes have spread themselves far and wide. So even if the first planet infected is consumed, some part of the Cult still remains, spreading further and further.

 RustyNumber wrote:

 Lathe Biosas wrote:

I had the same hang up about the Necrons back in 2001 Chapter Approved - when they had the personality of an automated sentry gun. They were super fun rules wise to play against, It was their character that didn't hold my interest.

Even though they're "just space tomb kings" the change to Necron fluff etc in 5th was such a fantastic and necessary move. Even more fun is the folding in of the old fluff to the new "oh yeah the first few centuries of necrons appearing were the EXTRA derranged/insane lords which is why they were all silent actors with unfathomable motives. don't worry the sane kings and princes of old finally woke up and man are they PISSED little divas!"

Nah, can't stand that at all.

The ctan went from gods that enslaved an alien race desperate for immortality to Pokemon to make the newcrons look the coolz.

It makes 0 sense that the ctan were the reason the necrons got to where they are and defeated the old ones and somehow were then humbled by their slaves, despite being even more powerful than they were when they first met the necrontyr...

Modern necrons are imo in some ways more Mary su than marines with their galaxy ending buttons and stuff that undermines the setting as a whole, just so they look cool. The necrons shouldn't be able to defeat the Ctan any more than anyone can defeat chaos gods, they are real-world gods and are not beholden to physical laws.

The necrons gained their supremacy from allying with the ctan, all their advancement comes from them. Their uber tech galaxy ending stuff is some of the most on the nose ward era one-upmanship background that still hangs around.

Necrons should still be slaves to the ctan and there should be rebellious elements that maintain their dynasties free from ctan dominion, but the inexplicable power flip of necrons somehow defeating gods should never have happened and is dumb and makes no sense. I ctan could have been that easily and comprehensively defeated they wouldn't have posed a threat to the old ones or been a useful ally in the first place.