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Hi.  I know I made a thread asking about which 40k army to pick up as my 3rd and said I wouldn't start Fantasy, but after giving it some thought and seeing some WHFB games played, I'm being lured in to the old world.

So I'm looking to start a Fantasy Army, in fact starting the game for the first time after playing 40k for about 2 years (Orks & Marines).  I don't know a lot about the fluff, but I do know a few things about what I would and would NOT like in an army:

1.) I don't want a hoard.
2.) I don't want Cheese, but I don't want pushovers either.
3.) It's going to be a hard sell to get me to play anything Human, Elves are pushing it.
4.) I'm not playing Orcs, I've already painted 100+ Greenskins and I ain't doing it again! :p
5.) I want an army that's balanced and can do a little bit of everything (move, shoot, magic, assault).

I'm also a gamer first, modeler second, and a painter 3rd.  I want an army that is fun to play, but also fun to play against.

Two armies in particular caught my eye: Dwarves & Lizardmen.

I have to admit that I absofreakinlutely love Dwarves as far as a fluff perspective and as their overall model line and character style.  It also helps that my wife things they're adorable and I may get her to actually help me paint them.   They're also cheap and come in the starter box, huge plusses right?

Well I spoke with the folks at my local GW store and upon mentioning Dwarves I heard "Don't be that guy" and "they're so cheesy and easy to make broken".   I also stated that I wanted an army that was fun that I actually had to manuver and work with to win.  Given that Dwarves move 3", and from what I've read on Dwarf tactics it revolves around shooting people and having them break themselves on your troop lines - so magic is out and so is a whole lot of manuvering. 

I don't want a "stand and shoot" army where my troops just sit there and wait to be charged or at best stand only to charge when the enemy arrived and charged my shooters.  That comes off as boring for me to play and that's exactly what people at the store told me Dwarves would be like, very little moving (or need to move) my troops and a whole lot of shoot and then win CC through being resilient.  I also heard about the Anvil of Doom being broken and a whole lot of complaints about it.

I do so love the models, the character of them and everything like that though.

So my other thoughts went to Lizardmen.  Nice models, easy to paint for me (always a plus), not too soft, not too squishy, can shoot, can assault, can do lots of magic, lots of movement if I wanted - I'm thinking this may be a good idea.

I love the look of Saurus on Cold Ones, but everything I read on them says take 1 minimized unit of them max (ie 5 guys) and that's kind of sad since I think they're awesome looking and I LOVE fast stuff.

The downside? Um, they're not Dwarves?  They seem to be a bit more fun to play with and against though and that means more to me than the stunties looking cool.

I still need to get a copy of the rulebook, I still really need to pay attention to an entire game playing out, and I still need to decide how I'm going to start the army.  I was hoping that the fine folks here could help me out by giving me some info on the two armies, what they think of em, and things to start with if I went with either one.

All help is appreciated, thanks!

Dwarves are neat, but they do lend themselves more to the style of play you?ve described. They can certainly be played in a more aggressive manner, especially with the use of miners, gyrocopters, and the anvil to give you more mobility, but it?s not really their forte. They excel at winning fights, or not breaking even when the enemy does manage to beat them, but not so much at beating the enemy by a large amount and running them down to wipe out the unit. You also lose out on having any magic phase, and the mixed mobility factor of cavalry and infantry. They do compete very solidly in combat and shooting.

Lizards are great all around. Virtually no bad units (Jungle Swarms, just because all swarms got kicked in the teeth with the 7th ed rules), and lots and lots of good. Between their magic, skink skirmishers, kroxigors, salamanders, and terradons, they have lots good things. Saurus (both infantry and cavalry) sometimes are given short shrift, but that?s just because the skirmishy shooty build (poison shooting skinks + salamanders) was so popular and effective in 6th edition. Saurus (and even Saurus cav) are certainly viable, and you can always tool up the other stuff in your army a little more if they are letting you down. It?s also a pretty easy army to paint; lends itself well to dipping, too, if you want a finished army at turbo speed.

Undead (Vampire Counts or Tomb Kings) can be good beginner armies, for some of the same reasons people like Marines in 40k. They?re super easy to paint, and their special rules make them very durable. No running away, and you?re the only armies which can raise new units and restock your old ones. Of course, VC lose out on shooting, and with either army you don?t really learn and experience all the psychology rules and the full maneuver tactics you can use with other armies- like fleeing from the enemy if you want to.

One thing you said you don't want is a hoard army... well, in fantasy, they're pretty much all hoard armies to an extent. A lot of armies really benefit from outnumbering oppoents and having a lot of models. Where your average space marine units have up to 10 guys.... a lot of fantasy units will have 20-25, and several units that size. If you don't want a horde army, I'd say your best choice will be chaos. They have more chances of having less models on the board that some other armies. If you really want fewer models, ogres might be an option, because they all get big bases.

Tomb kings could also be cool, while they rely on skeletons you can also fill up your ranks with bigger & more expensive things while still being effective, like chariots for instance.. plus the characters are expensive and you need to have the full amount of chars every time because you need the magic to make them work. Even then though, expect to get a lot of skeletons...

If you thought 40K was expensive, you ain't seen nothing yet WFB is designed to make you buy a lot of figures, much more so than 40K (IMO anyway) .. but WFB is more fun sometimes, a lot more thinking and strategy

I'm gonna recomend charriot heavy tomb kings with a couple of catapults, lizards and brets, in that order.

Lizardmen have dinosaurs!

What, isn't that enough? They also have dino-skull helmets!

Still no, eh? Well the big Kroxigors (think Ogryns, only scaly and without shotguns) can hid behind a swam of the little lizardmen. Nobody can see the Korxigors, but the little lizardmen relay information back to the Kroxigors, telling them what's going on up ahead. Like, scouts, or something. Then when you get close, the Kroxigors can declare a charge, even though they can't see the enemy! Is that awesome, or what?

I was this close to playing lizard(dinosaur)men, but, well, "Demons are cool! Wizards rock!" Yeah, I play Chaos instead.

You have to know the guys at your local GW store have no idea what they're talking about most of the time. I know this because it's also my local GW store.

Play dwarves.

While they can be a shooty only army, that army sucks. Dwarves work best when they're a fighty army with some shooting to back them up, not the other way around.

But be aware that fantasy armies are bigger than 40k armies. If you play dwarves, expect to paint 100-120 of them in a 2000 point army.

Just show up on fantasy night and borrow Sturdy's army.

OT- when you are talking about lots and lots of troops, it is a horde. When you are talking about lots and lots of treasure, it is a hoard.

Dwarves can be a fun army to play, and I agree that their background and theme can't be beat. But they can be a little boring after a number of games, and some opponents don't like to face dwarves.

I recommend collecting Lizardmen as your first army, since they can do everything. They only lack two things (light cavalry and heavy artillery) but they have reasonable subtitutes for those. It is much more fun to play an army that relies on movement than one that doesn't.

I also agree with those who have suggested Tomb Kings. They are another army that can do almost anything, and they have some nifty models too.

A few things to consider -

Mauleed is correct about dwarves. And about GW people. A good 90% of the time, they have no idea what they are talking about. Plus, as salesman, they ought to be falling all over themselves to sell you dwarves since that is what you are interested in. If you want to have a little bit of fun, maybe you should discuss that with a manager?

OT - Maybe we should start being more verbal about what mouthbreathers GW employees are? That kind of garbage Anung described is certainly not in line with their business model or Ten Commandments of Customer Service. It really is a shame, but maybe we can do something about it? Maybe a chat with the Store Manager about that incident? Or maybe it was an isolated incident that isn't worthy of discussion I don't know. Enough thread hijack, sorry.

Anyway, if you like dwarves, then you should probably go with dwarves. There are a couple of other armies that have lower model count though.

Ogre Kingdoms for example, and Minotaur heavy Beasts of Chaos. Both have relatively few numbers and hit really hard when they charge. And at M6, they can also get around the table relatively quickly. They also lend themselves to being painted individually, and each individual isn't just a filler for a rank bonus.

As for options, Chaos in general has a multitude of options. Demon, Mortal, Beast, Khorne, Nurgle, Tzeentch, Slaanesh, Undivided!

But if your first instict was dwarves, go for it!

EDIT:  It seems I misunderstood you Anung, and you weren't talking about the employees were you, just the players!

Out of curiosity, what are high elves like?

Right now, high elves have decent magic, decent cav and chariots, really poor infantry, and generally over-priced shooting (though the repeating bolt thrower isn't bad at all).

If you play a magic heavy all chariot/knight force, they work pretty well, but that's about the only list I've seen that works.

Seems to be a little misunderstanding here.

I was talking to one of the local GW Staffers for a while about fantasy and he was actually really helpful about all the armies and he told me Dwarves were good but if I didn't want an army that mostly shot you and didn't really do a lot of manuvering then Dwarves probably weren't for me. He wasn't the one trying to push one army over the other, gave me some recomendations on which armies were good for starters and were balanced and which ones took more finesse. I told him the I was interested in Lizardmen after Dwarves and he gave me some good information on how they'd play (which seems to jive with what I've read online about em).

He was not the person who told me all sorts of negative stuff about the Dwarves, that was from some of the local players there (I don't want to drop names on a public forum). I was pretty much told that a lot of people hated the Anvil (which i see why I'd need it, to move in the shooting phase) and that it was broken when used with a certain character, and even without it it was broken because they couldn't dispel its effects and it would let dwarfs charge, etc. And that it made Miners broken because if my opponent was playing a gunline it was like an auto-loss for them since the miners could charge the gunlines flank the turn they came in.

Just wanted to set the record straight regarding who told me what, I can understand some GW Red Shirts being dumb, but this wasn't one of those cases and this guy (Erick for anyone who goes to the Cherry Hill Store) was being nice enough to take a lot of time to explain a lot of the armies playstyles to me knowing I wasn't going to buy anything that day.

Oh and damn you Ed, here I am thinking about doing Lizzardmen and you start putting ideas of Dwarfs back in my head. Damn slayer models are so freakin cool too.

If I ran Dwarves what I'd probably want to run is two units of Warriors, w/ Longbeards in the center to help keep things steady, some Slayers on one flank, and two units of thunderers to pull fire support. Also from what I'm reading it sounds like I'll probably want an Organ gun and other pieces of artillery/warmachines. Lord knows how many points that all is though.

Lizardmen I was thinking about starting with a lot of Saurus Warriors and some Cold One Riders with Skinks doing screening work and shooting blowguns (ie. I'd use the Army Starter Set and expand a little from that), I'd probably experiment with Salamanders and Kroxigor. One thing that DOES interest me in Lizardmen is the fact that they can go uber magic heavy with a Slann. What I don't like is reading a lot about them and hearing people say that they don't use any Saurus units, only tons of Skinks, Salamanders, and Kroxigors/etc.

I'll try and make it to a Fantasy night at the shop next week when I'm not as busy with work and family.  Thanks for the help (and making me reconsider dwarfs again).

If you get into Fantasy, you're welcome to come and play with my regular club (TFG). We meet every other Friday, but it's all the way in Media PA. You're welcome to ride over with me if we can work it out.

The group is generally tournament focused, and if you play with us you will be forced to become at worst a middle of the pack tournament player.

We still use the old Rogue's Den message board as our own if you want to check it out:

http://www.roguesden.com/phpBB2/

You have to register to even browse though.

 

Posted By mauleed on 01/09/2007 12:26 PM

If you get into Fantasy, you're welcome to come and play with my regular club (TFG). We meet every other Friday, but it's all the way in Media PA. You're welcome to ride over with me if we can work it out.

The group is generally tournament focused, and if you play with us you will be forced to become at worst a middle of the pack tournament player.

We still use the old Rogue's Den message board as our own if you want to check it out:

http://www.roguesden.com/phpBB2/

You have to register to even browse though.

 

I appreciate the invite and may just take you up on that, I sent a PM.

Last night I took a look at the Dwarf articles from some old WD's I had.  Considering the reaction of my wife went form "*Sigh* You're going to start Fantasy now?  Why Lizards?" to "Dwarves are cute you have to let me help paint them!"  I believe my decision was made for me.   Well that and I love the models and the Battle for Skull Pass models can be nabbed for cheap online.

Been doing some reading over at Bugmans Brewery and I decided on a nice goal to build up to for a 2k point starter army from one of their starter lists: 20 Longbeards, 2x 25 Warriors, 10 Quarrellers, 10 Thunderers, 10 Miners, 10 Slayers, 2 Bolt Throwers, Organ Gun & Gyro Copter, a Runesmith and a Thane. 

I understand that the Slayers aren't the best flank anchor type units, but Ironbreakers or Hammerers are much more expensive and I friggin love the Slayer Models, so it should be nice to start with to try out.  

That's the way to go, then. Dwarves are what grabs you, you can get into them cheaper, and the wife wants to help paint? Go for it!

That list is pretty solid, BTW.

If you really don't want a Horde army then you can always go with Ogre Kingdoms. With a little greenstuff skill you can make them look like giant Dwarves. Win-win!