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Hi all, I?m a long time warhammer fantasy player, finally decided to try my hand at 40k.

This is going to be another ?please help newbie start army? kind of thread, but I?m really clueless as to what works and what doesn?t in the game. And hence I?ve no idea how or where to even begin collecting an army. Back when I started fantasy, I just went and bought all the things I thought looked cool without knowing if they worked. I ended up wasting a lot of money on useless stuff, and would like to avoid this mistake with 40k.

So anyone who could give me ANY advise for starting 40k would be greatly appreciated. Things like:

- what are the best/broken/cheesy armies or army types in the game (drop-pod marines? Godzilla lists? Mechanized tau? Starcannon elder? Others?)
- what are the popular units I?m likely to encounter
- is min-maxing frowned upon or taken for granted
- how big should squads be
- what units should I not bother with
- what sized games are usually played
- what scenarios/mission types are usually played

In particular, I?m thinking of starting IG, so any more specific advise pertaining to IG would be extremely helpful! Like

- which is more versatile/better, infantry horde IG, mechanized IG, tank squadron IG etc
- what weapons to equip the units with
- which units are suited to which role
- how many guardsmen per squad
- how many squads per platoon
- how many heavy weapon teams
- which ordnance should I take
- general playstyles of an IG army (like shooty with tons of small arms fire, or shooty with the big guns)

A big heart felt thanks to all who bothered to read this lengthy post and to reply with much valued help!

Wow some of those questions are really broad. Like which units to avoid? Depends I can name some for different armies. You will mainly encounter Marines. 50% of the players are marines (generally). Min/maxing is frowned upon here but some do it anyways. As for cheese Daemon bomb armies are pretty bad (just started one myself).

Games out here can range anywhere from 1000-1850 and normally play seek and destroy or cleanse but that is just here.

As for guard all I can tell you is that I hate playing against them. The top 2 players here are guard and give me a headache. Totally different too. I armored co and one loaded up on troops with no vehicles.

Sorry for the vague questions... I was just hoping for any general or specific advice that people are willing to throw at me since I'm totally new to the game. Like I don't even know what is meant by a daemon bomb army...

Let's say if I decide to play IG, what are the units that I should get? What weapons should I equip them with? What numbers of troops should I bring, many many small squads or fewer but bigger squads?

Thanks for the reply, I'm glad that IG is actually a competitive army (had no idea before your post...)

I would suggest taking a look in this forum for previous threads regarding this exact topic. You could even do a search for "IG" or "Imperial Guard" and read up.

Those questions are just so broad it would take quite a long reply to start to cover the bases.