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I'm going to start collecting for real soon as me and my friend learn how to play. Ive owned pretty much a box set from every army in the last ten years but not really played or finished a single army ever.
and i just cant decide on an army. some parts of one race i really like but really dont like the others and same for all of them. Im just not feeling that connection to the armies like i used to when i first started. I still want to start i just dont know how to pick my first real army.

My friend is a marine player and he loves his army, it suits him and his personality and likes in an army but i dont know about myself. So my question is how did you know the army you picked was right for you? was it a big choice with lots of thinking or was it just a gut feeling?

I picked nids based on the look of the models. To me they were the most visually appealing and that's how I decided to start them

I tried picking up nids 6 or so years ago when i was in highschool. I liked the idea but my friend kept smashing me with rines when i was trying to learn. It went to the point where i quit. I just started up again this summer and went with the necrons because i liked the fluff and general look of the army. I came to this conclusion after weeks of research tho. Not to mention necrons are prolly the easiest to paint as well, which is nice since im not the most stellar painter.

I picked Imperial Guard alongside Chaos daemons since I like the looks of both armies. and their radicaly different playstyles appeal to me, I also have an exscuse to make Norse bloodletters and my own gas mask wearing regiment of sigre troops.

So my question is how did you know the army you picked was right for you?

opponent ask what you play . you say codex X , Y build . he goes sad. Then you know you picked up a good codex and a good list to play with

Just have a browse on this site and see what army inspires you the most.

I started 10 years ago when I had just seen the alien movies for the first time and was obsseded with the Zerg on Starcraft then a friend started collecting 40k and I looked into it and saw nids and fell in love!

You just make do and adapt, I mean, it's not like this is a marriage, where you have to find your soularmy or something.

I picked DE as my first army, the army, as me and my friends have noted, is totally my "soularmy", dark, evil, agile and assaulty(I know shooty DE is the best, but shush), but I'd think that if I had picked BA, necron, or any of the armies that I initially considered, I'd still be able to eventually adapt to the play style and make it feel like my "soularmy".

If in doubt, there is always post-purchase rationalization to help us get over it.

Excuse the language but my buddy gave me the best way to choose an army. Read up on all of them, then whichever one "Get's your dick hard." That should be your army, at least from a fluff lover stand point I went chaos just becuase well... I loved the idea behind it. I loved the models at the time. I loved the concept of summoning daemons so on. These days I play SM and 'Nids but I will always love my old retired Chaos Army. All Glory to Chaos.

My first army is the Necrons. I picked them because they had those little green rods. Also, undead robots. Pure win. (at the time, their codex did not match this sentiment)

I wanted a space marine army for my second, as I already had a xenos army. I picked Space Wolves because, holy gak, space vikings! (After accumulating 1000 points, I would learn they were very powerful)

I almost went with tyranids, because I thought I had figured out an easy way to paint them. I ended up going with Tau though (because i liked the picture of the misleadingly giant robot mech on the cover).
Turns out I loved the play style of blowing people's heads off at 500 yards with a high powered sniper rifle.

Went with iG cause it seemed cool at the time... i also didnt like the idea of Immortal Robots/Hellspawn, didnt want plants(orks), fish(Tau), bugs, walking tanks or elves with guns, IG felt more real to me and i liked that, so whatever floats ur boat

I have a thing for playing the 'good guy' or being the hero, so I picked grey knights cause it fits with that. However feeling quite dark and sinister at the moment so looking to start dark eldar.

I'm regitmentized so I went with Tau and SM at the same time. Then my wife got involved and she picked up DE...just lately she picked up on CSM but I decided Night Lords for her. I also at the same time brought a box of nids and converted them to alienids. Basically I have fun making fluff up and when I game people don't already have me type caste on a army. Mostly though I just paint them till certain individuals leave the local GW store for good.

When I had roughly 80 guardsmen and 2 leman russes in a 1,000pt game, looked at my army on the table, and my opponent just said "holy crap, that's an IG army?!?!" (he'd only ever seen leafblower)

It just felt right. It LOOKED like an army you'd see in the fluff. It FELT like an army you'd see in the pictures and books. And Emperor help em, they fight like the fluff too (aka total badasses) It just felt good, and I enjoy playing them. Even if it's a labor of love. Even if I know I'll never stomp people at the local tournies. Even though for even small games I'm unpacking a 100+ models, I'm playing a Guard army, and every time I'm used them they've made for an awesome match.

As for the orks. The very first game I used them my Warboss zoned out and got killed by a broodlord. I laughed so hard that even though it lost the game for me, it was hilarious. That's how I knew I'd made a good choice with orks for army number 2.

You'll know when you found the right army OP. You can't force it. That's why I dont like using other armies. They just feel weird. I only feel comfortable when I've got orks or IG.

I started with Necrons back in 4th Edition, and really enjoyed it. They were easy to paint, and I liked their style.

They didn't have much variety, so I picked up Eldar as my next army. They were fun to an extent, but I never really got the enjoyment out of them, as I did My Necrons.

Then I picked up my Nids, which were my Main army for most of 5th. I really loved their Models. They are a blast to play.

Finally, my Necrons got an update, and I've pretty much played them almost exclusively, since then. I really loved the new Models and fluff.

Since My Eldar have been pretty much shelved not too long after I got them, I figured I'd try to pick up an another army, that I'd enjoy playing. (I never sell them, as their next codex update could make them fun) So, I started Chaos! We'll see where it goes.

I got my entire group of friends into the game because myself and another friend talked about the fluff. For a year (maybe even 2 its hard to recall) there were 2-3 people in my circle of friends who had never touched a model. But had picked favorite armies based purely on fluff. That was a big help, getting people to know the army before they know the rules. These guys while not even playing the game knew more about its characters than 90% of the gamers I have met.

In fact I also started my army by loving the characters, not the rules. Necrons were my first army. And I picked them because in the 3rd edition rule book there was a picture of "unknown xenos" or something like that. And it had a line up of like 6 different species. One of them was a basic necron warrior. I still remember flipping through the book coming across that page and just going "That one, I want to play that race"

During my time playing I started to enjoy sisters of battle. But as a junior high kid my friends didn't like playing 40k and instead prefered fantasy. So i never got to start them until highschool when I met my current group of friends. I have always enjoyed the religious fanatic bit. WIth necrons I know the exact moment I fell in love with them even now 15 years later. With my sisters even though those are my favorite army now, I can never put my finger on what caused me to start them. Im sure it had something to do with breasts and puberty though. Now I keep collecting them for different reasons. (though breasts are still a bonus)

I've toyed with emperors children, tau, dark eldar, eldar, black templars. I sold all my xeno armies other than necrons. I love the way tau would look...if they were human. And I have a pet project I might start up later. But no army holds my attention like my sisters do now. I think I know now that sisters are my favorite army and I will never be able to drop them because no matter what new armies tempt me, every time I am in the hobby store i take a look at the sisters of battle. (wow run on sentence). But I mean, I was just looking at the new Forgeworld heresy stuff for my emperors children army. And sure enough in my cart even as we speak is a sister of battle repressor. Last time i went into the hobby shop to pick up some wraiths and an ADL I almost walked out with some sisters blisters. Same thing the time before I was in there buying a secondary carrying case, i barely walked out without buying an immolator I saw on the shelf (a rare find indeed). And every time I am browsing 3rd party companies websites I see models and think of conversion ideas for my sisters. I even recently bought from female paladin models to use as crusaders.

I guess that is how you yourself will know. When you are shopping for models which ones do you keep going back to. But I guess everyone is different. I just said the fluff and the models are what keep me interested. But there are definitely people who find the rules the most interesting part. Maybe they are strong or maybe they fit your playstyle.

You won't know right away if the choice you made was a good one. It will take time and experience.

In any case, picking a 40k army is like getting married. You don't span the world looking for your soul mate, as that will only leave you a bitter old man who never had love in his life. Instead, the successful marriages come from finding a person that is good enough, and then spending a lot of time, energy, and effort into building a relationship with the person. The same is true for a 40k army.

The 40k army that's the right one for you is the one that you have that level of commitment to that, no matter how badly you lose (probably repeatedly), you still want to stick with that army. It's something that grows on you through wins and losses, stories told, and countless hours spent working on.

Orks,,,because..well. ORKS!

I love the fluff, the reality-bending gizmos and the fact that it's easy to forget that they are 7 ft green fungal gorillas with attitute until they slap your silly head off

My other main army is Haemonculi coven DE, because i like that Tzimitzce/Frankenstein/Cthullu/Evil Scientist vibe and the models are awesome

I didn't realise there was a choice

I picked DE because the 6th ed models looked really cool.

I sugest you make a list of all the things you want in an army an see which one gets the most ticks.

I chose Eldar....

What?...

What?!

Iranna.

I keep changing armies till I got tired of buying models and thats the army I stuck with. I have basic armies of both Necrons and Nids, 3/4 of a battle company of space marines, and I am back to building a footslog IG army.

I'm going with Dark Angels, when i decided to get into the game awhile back, I decided to go with something I could get into relatively inexpensive.

So I got DV, traded the chaos to someone for their DAs, My army is a little light on vehicles yet, but I have over 2000 points of models.

I started looking at the Sisters for my army, couldnt find a codex for it or a starter kit, so being inexperienced with 40k i shelved that idea and went with 'Nids. played them for a while and got bored and traded them for skaven. played them and liked 40k better, then got into dark eldar, and liked them a lot. then got bored with them and traded part for Orks, now thats a fun army to play. then after learning more on sisters i started collecting them and now have 1500 pts of them. they are my favorite army to play, so they are "my" army. plus im the only one that plays them in my area. started chaos space marines after the codex dropped and have quite a few points into them, but my players will goes to sisters having hobby ADD doesnt help with sticking to one army either anyway

Honestly, I don't. I actually considered shelving my Eldar near permanently and buying some Orks due to my less than 5% win rate (the record in my sig is only since I joined dakkadakka). Currently at a "No! Let me do it!" state with my Eldar, still not going well though. I'm not wanting to buy new models since the new Eldar codex is rumored for next year and I'm afraid what I buy will go the way of the Necron Pariah. Just gotta twiddle my thumbs and keep racking up losses until the new codex comes out.

I've used other armies (IG, SM, Orks, Tyranid, DE) but winning with them felt cheap and hollow. I think I'm emotionally married to my inability to win with the Eldar during a regular game .

Always pick the human is what I do, so I figured I'd take the most dehumanised ones, right?

My first army was Chaos Space Marines, back in their 3.5 codex days. It was such a cool, fun army at the time with tons of options and neat fluff. I then went on a bit of hiatus for pretty much all of 4th edition, and shortly after picking up the 4th edition chaos codex, switched to Eldar. Their play style and fluff are what got me into playing them, as it was radically different from chaos. Eldar were my main army throughout 5th, though I've been dabbling in Orks a bit too, managing to get over $1000 worth of models for only a couple hundred bucks. Towards the end of 5th and the beginning of 6th my chaos started to get some more love, and I'm quite excited about the new codex.

I would recommend reading the fluff and watching some battle reports to see which army you identify with the most. If you're consistently rooting for one faction, that's probably the army for you.

I started off with Eldar in the middle of 4th edition for a mixture of the aesthetics, the fact that I was in the middle of my elf-obsession phase, and the fact that my regular opponent had no good way to counter a mechanized Eldar list.

Since then, I've picked up a few more armies; and I've applied the same criteria to all of them: they have to be elite, since I hate painting large numbers of grunts that die in droves every game, they have to be maneuverable, since I find that being able to outrun the enemy makes battles easier to win, and they have to have a certain indefinable element of awesomeness that entertains me when coming up with stories using the army.

When I were a lad I started this game. I've no idea what made me choose my first army but I started out in second edition with Space wolves... I may still even have some of my models from that era left. I then moved onto guard as I wanted to do an urban force with heavy armour.

Afterwards came chaos, 3.5 codex. It was like coming home. I started out with an undivided Terminator Force and managed to even take it to a HQ event during the Medusa 5 event.

Then it was Thousand Sons. Nothing to me screams Badass like 2 wound troops marching at you bolters blazing. The damn sods even saw off stealers in combat. That was that point where I thought I'd come home as it were.

Eventually got fed up with painting blue and thought, It's been a while sinice I did something "Good" (Figuratively) so I thought, "Let's do a what if Thousand sons stayed as they were, as imperials" Several red marines later I felt they looked too much like Blood angels and did the shoulders and other areas in a parchment colour, no iconography but was planning on turning them into a "Red Templer" army as it were. As they didn't have any heraldry they kept getting accused of being Blood Ravens (those of you who have been keeping tabs on the latest thinking for them can see where this is going) so when the forgeworld transfer sheet came out it was pretty much set in stone. My pre heresy Thousand Sons force became Blood Ravens.

I started one force in this and it seems to have forever dominated my path. But that suits me fine, I'll stick with Tzeentch, it's not marriage but I wouldn't be anywhere else.

Back to topic though, knowing that right army for you isn't something you can ask someone else for. It's something that just feels right. It might be that there isn't an army that is just "You", at least yet.Who knows, you may grow into one. If I were to pick one piece of advice to at least guide you it would be the aforementioned make a list of what you want and look through the forces until you find one that matches most of the criteria.