Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

If you are serious about playing, I'd say two or three.

If you have just one army, there will be periods of time where the current balance state/codex/core rules just makes your army not fun to play. Having different armies which focus on different aspects of the game will help with that. Having WE, orks and BT most likely not.

For most players who cycle through more than three armies regularly, they usually lack the practice to both learn their army and play them quickly. I have quite a few friends who own 10+ armies and they always lose to forgetting rules, using specialist units in the wrong way or bad army composition, all while continuously having to look up every weapon profile.

In addition, it's an absolute chore to keep up with that many rules changes four times a year.

That's why I think one army is not enough and four armies is too much unless you play multiple times a week.

One to first question and one to the second question. That is if I were to go by what I think and like. By GW ways of writing rules the optimal way is probably 2-3 armies in every core GW game, so you can jump around when ever the games get stale/unfun or you plain do not like the core rules of a given edition. God help the person with 10k pts in HH or High Elves, that does not like 3.0 or the "play HE as wood elves MSU" style of play. Who happens to have no other army.

There are very few armies where you can be sure there will be fun to play every edition for more then 2-3 months. At least in the modern 8th ed and later w40k, I know.

Currently Own:
Tau
Ultramarines
Black Templar
Thousand Sons
Black Legion
Homebrew Chaos Marines
Emperors Children
Tyranids

Previously owned and either sold or traded:
4th Edition Black Templar
4th Edition Tau
5th Edition Thousand Sons
6th Edition Imperial Fists
7th Edition Necrons
7th Edition Iron Warriors
8th Edition Guard
8th Edition Grey Knights

Karol wrote:
One to first question and one to the second question. That is if I were to go by what I think and like. By GW ways of writing rules the optimal way is probably 2-3 armies in every core GW game, so you can jump around when ever the games get stale/unfun or you plain do not like the core rules of a given edition. God help the person with 10k pts in HH or High Elves, that does not like 3.0 or the "play HE as wood elves MSU" style of play. Who happens to have no other army.

There are very few armies where you can be sure there will be fun to play every edition for more then 2-3 months. At least in the modern 8th ed and later w40k, I know.

Thankfully playing a static older edition solves all of those problems. i only play HH 1.0 and when i play our house 5th ed 40K the 5 armies i own i know inside and out because they never change and i have been playing some of them effectively non-stop since 3rd edition. even my "newest" army 7th edition admech i have had for nearly 10 years now.

It feels good not caring what GW is doing to the game currently or needing to chase the roller coaster.

I pass from ideal to unnecessary a long time ago. When I played frequently the ideal number was two - a main and a side - as that is what my budget and painting time allowed for.

Though I proxied a lot of other factions and had odds and ends from box sets so that it wasn't all coke cans and 'marine counts as' on the table.

These days my pile of shame has greatly surpassed my time and motivation and my most modern armies have never seen the table as they were panting projects.

 aphyon wrote:

Karol wrote:
One to first question and one to the second question. That is if I were to go by what I think and like. By GW ways of writing rules the optimal way is probably 2-3 armies in every core GW game, so you can jump around when ever the games get stale/unfun or you plain do not like the core rules of a given edition. God help the person with 10k pts in HH or High Elves, that does not like 3.0 or the "play HE as wood elves MSU" style of play. Who happens to have no other army.

There are very few armies where you can be sure there will be fun to play every edition for more then 2-3 months. At least in the modern 8th ed and later w40k, I know.

Thankfully playing a static older edition solves all of those problems. i only play HH 1.0 and when i play our house 5th ed 40K the 5 armies i own i know inside and out because they never change and i have been playing some of them effectively non-stop since 3rd edition. even my "newest" army 7th edition admech i have had for nearly 10 years now.

It feels good not caring what GW is doing to the game currently or needing to chase the roller coaster.

I'm with you; gave up chasing the 8th edition and went back to 5th and 5th is where I will stay.

-Guardsman- wrote:

how many armies?.

.

Since I'm getting back into 3rd-5th edition 40k and avoiding the newest edition (I really don't like keeping up with meta or updates or stuff). I personally want to collect 1 of each army.

Marines, Imperial Guard, Sisters of Battle, Gray Knights, Eldar, Dark Eldar, Tyranics, Necrons, Orks, Tau, Chaos Marines. I only really want between 1k-1500 points for each army. I'd like to be able to play small games against my children or other people who I can get interested.

I only have a Dark Eldar army ready so far, I have some Necron, Tau, Eldar, Ork, and Space Marine miniatures but not assembled/painted for a 1k army yet.

Currently I just am interested in like.... "cool idea" for battles, using different armies together in different ways for fun games, stuff like that. I like having good guys and bad guys for the good guys to fight against.

I have 2
Sisters of Battle and Slaanesh CSM
Both are HEAVILY outdated to the new rules though.

4 2500 is probably ideal.
Or 2 3000 and 2 smaller 1000-1500 armies.

Right now IF I get back in, looking at the new startee set and getting some marines (maybe dark angels successor, but I've also been drawn to the celestial lions, and orks.)

I need to preface this all with the exception that, this advice applied before GW started legending units like it was an Olympic sport. If you play in an area that is not all tournament all the time, the advice applies.

3 is ideal to me. One army can work if you collect it as an entire army, not a list or, series of lists, having 3+ of all options in your codex gives you real insulation to edition change.

Otherwise 3 armies keeps painting/modelling fresh avoiding hobby burnout with some (historical) insulation during edition changes.

Ideally it would be the three armies I play: Tyranids, Drukhari and GSC.

However, I keep buying and selling other armies...sometimes without building a single model in some bizarre need to do anything rather than actually finish painting the three armies above.

Technically I have two maybe 1.5

A partially painted Imperial guard army and a the beginnings of an inquisition army. The guard and inquisition kind of feel like allies.

I would probably like to have at least one more at some point but not sure what. Maybe something like night lords that’s very different to what I have.

For me, it was about having forces that complimented each other in one way or another. This went in two directions.

On the tabletop, I ran Guard and had a smattering of Inquisition and Marine units. It was always fun to have an allied detachment to add something interesting.

On the painting bench, I focused on Guard and Tau. The head canon for my guard regiment set their primary opponent as Tau. It was fun building opposing forces and sometimes mixing models (I made some really cool Gue'vesa a longgg time ago.)