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Hey, I've been in the painting side of the hobby for a while and absolutely love tanks, recently my girlfriend wants me to get an actual playable army to play against her necrons, additionally I've also been interested in actually playing a bit both with her and at local stores, at first I figured I could grab a leman russ tank commander a few more russ's and maybe a malcador or macharius and have a nice 1000/2000 point army. However after looking about a bit it seems the general consensus is full tank army's suck ass to play against, is there anything I could do apart from having to buy and paint like 20 or 40 guys to replace most of the tanks to make it fun to fight against?

Let's see...

1) Talk to your opponents. Make sure everyone involved in the game is aiming for a good, fun time. Potentially allow some list tailoring against you-let your opponent know you're taking Tanks Tanks Tanks! and adjust accordingly.

2) Consider some lighter vehicular elements. Sentinels, for instance, are vehicles but not so chonky.

3) Maybe try some custom scenarios, depending on the armies involved. Make it so you both have achievable goals.

Someone who is more up-to-date on guard can correct me, but I believe guard still have access to some smaller infantry units, right? If not vets or special weapons teams, then probably scions? If you include a few units of one of those (probably riding inside a chimera, taurox, or valkyrie), then you'll give your opponent something to interact with that isn't a tank while also sparing yourself from having to paint a ton of infantry.

Basically, the annoying thing about all-tank armies is that any lower strength weapons in your opponent's army just don't get to do anything. Sure, they're technically allowed to fish for 6s to wound you, but it's a lot of rolling for a frustrating end result. So to offset that, you just want to have a few units in your list with lower toughness values. Maybe some scout sentinels (T7), ogryn, heavy weapon teams, etc.

Alternatively, if your interest really is in all-tanks-all-the-time, you could let people know in advance that that's the kind of list you want to run and ask them to tailor their list to be a good match for you. This risk putting you at a disadvantage (they can potentially take nothing but tools well suited for countering you), but good sports will try to build lists that are genuinely well-suited for a good game.

 Wyldhunt wrote:
Someone who is more up-to-date on guard can correct me, but I believe guard still have access to some smaller infantry units, right? If not vets or special weapons teams, then probably scions? If you include a few units of one of those (probably riding inside a chimera, taurox, or valkyrie), then you'll give your opponent something to interact with that isn't a tank while also sparing yourself from having to paint a ton of infantry.

Basically, the annoying thing about all-tank armies is that any lower strength weapons in your opponent's army just don't get to do anything. Sure, they're technically allowed to fish for 6s to wound you, but it's a lot of rolling for a frustrating end result. So to offset that, you just want to have a few units in your list with lower toughness values. Maybe some scout sentinels (T7), ogryn, heavy weapon teams, etc.

Alternatively, if your interest really is in all-tanks-all-the-time, you could let people know in advance that that's the kind of list you want to run and ask them to tailor their list to be a good match for you. This risk putting you at a disadvantage (they can potentially take nothing but tools well suited for countering you), but good sports will try to build lists that are genuinely well-suited for a good game.

What ratio would you recommend points wise? 50/50? And additionally would taking a singular high cost tank be worse then the same points in say leman rus's? Obviously nothing silly like a baneblade

(Also this is how you reply right? First time here sorry if it isnt)

That's a perfectly good way to reply, sure.

I don't have a strict ratio for you, but 50/50 probably isn't necessary. It's fine to lean into a theme (such as "armored company.") Where curmudgeons like myself start to get bothered by "skew lists" is when it feels like large parts of my army don't have anything to do except get shot at. My extremely personal, not-at-all-backed-up-by-anything gut feeling is that you should try to have at least one non-vehicle unit for every 500 pointsyou're playing at. (So at least two non-vehicle squads at 1k points.) My 1k lists would kill 2 guard infantry squads pretty fast, but at least I'd walk away from the game feeling like there was something for my swooping hawks or howling banshees to go after.

Personally, I don't find that multiple medium vehicles versus fewer heavy vehicles makes much difference to how I feel when going up against tank skew lists. Imperial Knight lists and IG parking lots are both annoying in largely similar ways. That said, if you're playing lower points (like 1k), especially powerful units are prone to being less balanced one way or the other at those game sizes. Often, your opponent either has the tools to kill The Big Thing before it solos them or they don't.

Honestly I think it'd be a blast to play against an all tank Guard army with an all tank or near-all tank traditional Space Marine army. Multiple Land Raiders, Predators and Vindicators seem like they'd enjoy throwing dice at Leman Russ variants.

Anyone remember that tank battle in White Dwarf from the 90s?

Indecisive dumbass wrote:
Hey, I've been in the painting side of the hobby for a while and absolutely love tanks, recently my girlfriend wants me to get an actual playable army to play against her necrons, additionally I've also been interested in actually playing a bit both with her and at local stores, at first I figured I could grab a leman russ tank commander a few more russ's and maybe a malcador or macharius and have a nice 1000/2000 point army. However after looking about a bit it seems the general consensus is full tank army's suck ass to play against, is there anything I could do apart from having to buy and paint like 20 or 40 guys to replace most of the tanks to make it fun to fight against?

It is a trade off, between how fun it is for the opponent and how fun it is for you. Because trying to just take a few tanks in IG does not really work. You either take a whole car park and overload the ability of the opponent to deal with all of them, while respawning units over and over again or you try to play the mix, and then you get the win rates IG has right now. Remember to take adventage of the fact that now you can give orders out of transports, spam sentinals, because they are undercosted etc But truth be told unless you play teams IG aren't very fun to play. Because either you have a good list and suprise your opponent, because you play it the right way. Which is not fun for the opponent. Or your opponent know how IG functions, and even worse you didn't build your IG probably, and you end up getting cleaned off the table over and over again. Which isn't very fun.

Sentinels are a good unit to support your tanks and diversify the profiles in your list, adding a chimera with some infantry inside makes things interesting as well.
You can tailor the power of your list with different Leman Russ variants as well. The standard battle tank isn't that great IMO, so you could "soften the list" a bit.

Talk to your opponent, maybe write the list together so your opponent has enough anti-tank to be able to stay in the game for some rounds.
Pure tank lists are strong but not oppressive so playing some smaller games to get a feel the game flow would be my advice. Then you can tailor the lists for a better experience.

The AM Combat Patrol box seems to be the ideal purchase, here.

I've been painting a 500 point Ulthwe army, of troops and light vehicles, and its only now that I'd consider anything like a Wave Serpent or Wraith Knight. I do have a Knight army which are only Armigers, and yet still feel that GW needs to release something smaller - at least something that can be included in Kill Team - before they can be considered a true 40K faction.

You have a great excuse to treat yourself, so why not?