40k Army Summaries

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Domikaze
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40k Army Summaries

Post by Domikaze » Mon Aug 29, 2011 1:24 am

Hey, Everyone!

I am sorry it's been so long since I have been on this forum last. Things have been a bit hectic as of late and I haven't had any 40k time, really.

But, here in Shiga (though I live in Kyoto) we have a whole new crop of ALTs with nerdy tendencies such as our own and I am slowly but surely convincing some new blood (even though I still am) to get into 40k! :mrgreen:

But, since I don't know much about the series I have been trying to search for a good, short, comprehensive summary of the 40k races and how their armies play. I have found a few things online, but I find them a bit unsatisfactory.

So, I figured I would ask everyone here on the forums to see if we could whip something together as a bit of a "starters guide" or something. Personally, I really would like to see exactly what an army is known for (melee, range, tanks, versatile? ), what their strengths and weaknesses are, what are commonly seen and used with their armies, and what kind of things are not so useful.

I don't really know much about 40k and still am learning to play, but when I first started looking into armies I started becoming interested in the Orks based on their asthetic, humor, and the fact that I tend to gravitate towards races with massive mandibles. But, I kept hearing about this "green tide" thing - how Orks were just this army that was huge in numbers and very melee heavy, so I was a little turned off by that. But, I think it was after talking to a few guys here on this forum that I was told in better detail how you can play the Orks and felt pretty confident in choosing them after this. So, I figure a thread or something like that might be useful!

Anyway, anything that kind of comes to mind about these races would be appreciated! Like how the Eldar's are a powerful, but fragile space race or how the Sisters of Battle seem about a chromosome away from having asses for faces. amiright? :mrgreen:

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Re: 40k Army Summaries

Post by Primarch » Mon Aug 29, 2011 1:44 am

Well, I'll start things off with the easy one:

Codex Space Marines

Pros: Very flexible and very forgiving. Marines can normally withstand whatever gets thrown at them better than non-marine armies due to their toughness and good armour saves. With a marine army, you can do most things (manouver, shoot and assault) fairly well, and the codex offers a wide range of play styles. In fact, due to their Chapter Tactics rule, changing your HQ choice allows you to totally change the way your army acts on the tabletop.
Nearly the entire range is available in plastic which makes things cheaper and lets you customise the army more easily.

Cons: Very vanilla as far as armies go. Their special rules are good, but not as fun as other armies. The fact that they are fairly good at everything can be a bit of a drawback if you go up against an army which is VERY good at 1 thing and the scenario/terrain/roll of the dice favours them. Plus, seeing as MEQ (Marine Equivilant) armies make up about 1/2 of the possible armies for the game, everyone brings the guns and weapons needed to kill MEQ on a regular basis.

Overall: A good, all-round starter army. They can be competitive, but as players get more experienced they take more effort to win with.
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Re: 40k Army Summaries

Post by Domikaze » Mon Aug 29, 2011 2:04 am

Awesome! Thanks for the reply! This is exactly what I was looking for!

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Re: 40k Army Summaries

Post by me_in_japan » Mon Aug 29, 2011 9:51 am

OK: my area of expertise:

Eldar

Eldar are an army that requires a good understanding of each unit and its strengths and weaknesses. Their units are extremely specialised, and can carry out one role only. However, they excel at that role and you will be hard pressed to find a unit in any other codex that will out-perform them. So, playing eldar well requires you to know all of your units and what they are good at, and applying them to that task. They have a reputation for bending the rules, as they tend to have a lot of fancy pants wargear that allows them to do things other armies cannot.

Note: it's not as simple as "unit A is good at CC". It's more a question of "what is the ideal target for this unit."

e.g. Howling Banshees - very high initiative, and the whole squad carries power weapons.
= They can kill well armoured elites well. e.g. space marines, or terminators.

Striking Scorpions - high Strength (for an eldar), many attacks (4 each).
= they can kill high T models in large numbers. e.g. orks

Dark Reapers - long ranged, high S, low AP shots.
= they can kill high T, well armoured models. e.g. Space Marines.

The result of all this is that if you want a competitive Eldar army you really need to have at least one of each unit in your collection, so you can pick and choose according to what opponent you expect to meet.

OK, that's the specifics. A more general army overview would run thus:

Eldar are the quintissential Glass Hammer army. that is, they hit bloody hard, but if you hit them (at all) they break. Although they have fair-to-middling armour, their T3 across the board is a serious achilles heel for them.

This means that they have to support each other.

E.g if a unit of banshees charges a unit of marines, they will kill a good few of them, but the remainder will punish them for it. HOWEVER, If a unit of Dark reapers shoots the marines first and then the banshees charge, then the marines will likely be wiped out before they can retaliate. This kind of thinking is important as an eldar player. I believe the word is synergy. The eldar HQ unit the Farseer is a prime example. He is an uber buffing unit, but is pretty meh on his own.

Finally, Eldar are a pretty fast army. If you try to footslog them across the board they will get shot to bits before they achieve anything. They have some bloody fast transport vehicles with a large transport capacity (10 infantry PLUS up to 2 HQ models. This is almost unheard of in other 40k armies.) So, it's important to have your eldar in lots of fast, skimmy transports and zip them across to where they need to be. (or in the case of Dark Reapers, stand them on a hill at the back and shoot all day :D )

So, that's the Eldar. If you or your young padawans have any questions, just PM me. I reckon eldar are the best race in 40k for a number of reasons.

1) They look cool. Most people agree this, even if they dont like eldar in game terms.
2) they have ace fluff and back story. Its very well fleshed out, as theyve been in the game since day 1.
3) They reward thoughtful list building and canny tactical thinking. They will punish you if you just slap a list together for shits n giggles.

So, that's my take on the eldar. Other mods - feel free to add your thoughts to this post.

OR you can ignore all of the above and just take 3 units of 3 warwalkers with scatter lasers and some guardian jetbike units with Shuriken cannons and throw out hundreds of Strength 6 shots a turn, in a very generic and dull list that will wipe most opponents off the table without breaking a sweat. It goes against the 'elite/specialist' vibe of the army, but it is a lot simpler to use. You wont make many friends doing this and I certainly wouldnt advocate it, but it is an option.
While the above advice is not 100% innacurate, it is a hellaciously expensive list to buy (money-wise) and will also get its bottom handed to it by anybody who gets to shoot before it does, or who suspects it may be coming. 9 War Walkers sounds lovely, until you realise that half a dozen auto-cannon can kill them all in one turn. Also, if it was that great a list, you'd see it in tourneys more, which I havent, in my limited experience of looking at such things online. (which is, I'll concede, limited, as I abhor tourney lists in general.) Anyway, who plays eldar to spam units? the whole point of the army is the pretty colours...
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Re: 40k Army Summaries

Post by Domikaze » Tue Aug 30, 2011 12:59 am

Awesome!

I think I would play the Eldar as an alternate to my Ork army since they are so tactical and frail. But, I don't want to get ahead of myself, haha.

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Re: 40k Army Summaries

Post by The Underdweller » Tue Aug 30, 2011 3:19 am

Well, I have only been playing them for about a year, but I will give the Tau codex a try.

*mod edit* It should be noted that Tau are one of the armies in 40k that really, really need a new codex. They suffer from being under-powered in almost every department. As Underdweller mentions, they were intended to fill the role of "poor at CC but ACE at shooting" in 40k, but have been so ridiculously overshadowed by all the codecii that have come out in the past few years that they can pretty much be shot off the table by anyone. That said, if you (or anyone else) likes their style, then go for it. Sooner or later they will get a new codex (exactly when, we cant say. It could be next year, could be 3 or 4 years from now. Nobody knows) and when they do, they will kick so much ass it'll make people wish they were up against Grey Knights.

Tau are a shooty army that aren't especially good at shooting. They do have lots of cool weapons and other technology that help them make up for that.

Tau gear includes things like:

Plasma guns that don't overheat.
Marker lights that can make them better at shooting
Jet packs that let them jump out from behind cover, shoot, then jump
back in
Shield drones for invulnerability saves
Disruption pods which make their vehicles difficult to shoot at
Railguns with 72" range, strength 10 ap1


Basic Tau strategy (at least for me) includes

-Harrying the enemy from a distance - shooting at them, then retreating to be safely out of range of attack.
-Focusing all of your firepower on one enemy unit at a time is generally the safest way to wipe them out.
-When possible, keeping units separate from each other so that the enemy can't assault multiple units at once
-Avoiding close combat- Tau suck at melee, so basically you should avoid it most of the time. Their allies, the Kroot, are the only ones who should regularly be fighting hand to hand. However, having no armour (usually) and average toughness, they should be in cover anytime they are not assaulting, or they will die quickly.

Overall: Tau strategy is a little tough to pick up at first, but they are fun to play once you get onto them. It is difficult to make a good take-all-comers Tau army list, but if you know what you are up against, you can take appropriate weapons, units and gear to give them a good fight.

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Re: 40k Army Summaries

Post by job » Tue Aug 30, 2011 3:41 pm

As a 10-year veteran of Chaos Space Marines (CSM), I'll give my 2-yen of summary and advice on them.

The CSM are a MEQ army, essentially, but unlike their loyalist counterparts they've been gifted with daemonic gifts and allies while lacking the technological edge of the SM armies. Generally this will make your marines more of a specialist and elite oriented force, but this can be deceiving because the style the book was written and where the inherent advantages lie, you may find they're (they've become) a more flexible force then a true marine army.

Generally your force will be very effective in close combat. The running theme of CSM armies through 3rd, 4th and 5th editions is that the force excels in the Assault phase, but again this can be deceiving as there are lots of CSM units highly respected for their shooting capabilities.

Your force organization will usually include a very powerful HQ, either a marine lord, sorceror or Daemon Prince. All these options start at least at 90 points, and most players tend to up-arm their characters as they tend to be powerful cc beasts.

The current codex allows you to field 5 + 2 troop choices (Options, not organization chart): CS marines, Berzerkers, Plague Marines, Thousand Sons and Noise Marines are the regular Troop options, with daemons and spawn also acting as "troops" but not actually counting in the organization chart. The four cultist troop choices are specialists in either close combat or shooting, with particular abilities. They tend to be pricey. The CS marines are very flexible, packing both bolters and bolt pistol/close combat weapon options. Additionally they can have icons to specialize them a little.
It should be noted as a tactical point, that a lot of the current codex's power lies in these units (according to this humble opinion).

In elites, the CSM army enjoys terminators, possessed marines, chosen marines, and dreadnaughts. The terminators are the cheapest in the game, before you add the power fists; the possessed have random powers; chosen have the scout ability and a great variation of equipment; dreadnaughts are, well, 'Crazed' and crazy.
It should be warned that few competitive people play with chosen or dreadnaughts, but it is my opinion dreadnaughts are baller. :D

Fast attack is one of the really not bad, but sad sections of the book. The current CSM book lost three choices in this section, so there are just bikes and raptors. The raptors are (now) just vanilla marines with jump packs. (They used to be so much more!) The bikes expansive with a close combat edge on their marine counterparts.

The Heavy Support section has a number of options: Havocs are a good infantry fire support option with four heavy weapon slots; the predators are just like their SM counterparts; the Vindicator is a powerful ordnance vehicle; the Defiler is the other ordnance deliverer which is walker and close combat effective, too; the Obliterators are one of the more nifty chaos units, able to morph weapons and be dropped as individuals; then there is a Land Raider. It should be noted that many of these are simpler forms of SM vehicles, as they lack many options and variations marine armies have.

Tactics: (some of the author's beliefs)
It maybe very odd to an old Chaos hand, but the army list is actually very flexible and the lists will probably be very versatile. While a lot of CSM power lies in the cc abilities, there's a lot of very powerful shooting options. There's a myriad of lists out there, and a lot depends on what you pick for troop choices.
My personal observation is that most of the strength of the book lies in the Troop section. These choices point out well, are good at their specialized abilities and will probably determine the type of army you field. One of the most commonly noted attribute is how the CS marine, when compared to a regular maine, has an extra attack and higher Leadership at the same point cost. This can be furthered with different icons boosting the squads ability. Of course the CSM army lacks "They Shall Have no Fear" and "Combat Squad" rules, so it tends to pan out.
This tends to give the CSM force more then enough troops to hold objectives and your army can play the basic strength of Space Marines, adaptability, while also focusing on specialization of units.

Overall, the army is a great force for those with black hearts and a love for really cool models. (Some of the best 40k models are CSM models!) You won't have a lot of the gimmics of Space Marine forces, but do expect powerful formations with elite orientation all the while holding an ace card of versatility.

*mod edit*
It should be noted that certain grumpy old school players detest the current chaos codex, as it has robbed the CSM of their defining characteristic. i.e. Worship of the chaos gods. In the current codex you really have to play a mixed allegiance army if you want to be competitive. In previous editions of the game all of the fluff, and indeed the rules themselves, said this was a no-no. It is possible to play CSM armies of only 1 chaos god (known as "mono-(name of god)" lists), but they are extremely gimped and have very little in the way of choice. The current ruleset is also very dull compared to other lists, as there is little in the way of special rules or interesting bits and bobs that nobody else gets.
- signed, grumpy old school mod :x


@ the Grump: agreed, mate! I used to hang on to my 4th edition codex to remember the "glory days". But, sadly those days have passed.

It should be noted that there is talk of a new CSM codex featuring Legion specific rules, but maybe that is just a pipe dream.
Last edited by job on Wed Aug 31, 2011 1:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: 40k Army Summaries

Post by Primarch » Tue Aug 30, 2011 10:28 pm

Codex Dark Angels

Generally regarded as the trial run for Codex Space Marines, the Dark Angel book suffers from a bad case of being left on the shelf since the Codex Space Marine book came out.

Pros
It is possible to do an all Terminator or all Bike army or a combo of the two. (Now Space Wolves and Space Marines can do the same thing, though in a different fashion). Both of these armies are fearless, no pesky Ld checks for the Angels.
Their Rhinos can have a second stormbolter for 5 points (rather than 10 in other books).
Their scouts are WS4, BS4, though are in the elite section.
Their Venerable Dreadnoughts are cheaper but dont get the extra WS or BS.
They have the ONLY scoring vehicles in the game if you take Ravenwing squadrons.
They can mix ranged terminators and assault terminators in one unit.
[Sigh] and the best point in their favour is that you can probably just use Codex Space Marines until they get an update for themselves.

Cons
Codex Space Marines does everything Dark Angels can do at a lower points cost or with better rules.
The special characters are bland and underpowered, though the Master of the Ravenwing in a land-speeder is very shooty and hard to kill.
Company veterans are nowhere near as good as Sternguard or Vanguard.
They dont get any of the flash new toys that Codex Space Marines got.
If you arent using Terminators and/or Bikes there really isnt a reason to choose them.

So, it may feel like I am comparing them to Codex Space Marines a bit much, but that is because essentially the two books are the same except for the Terminators/Bikes. Unlike Blood Angels or Space Wolves who play differently to vanilla marines, Dark Angels are the same in every way except you pay more points and get less options. The only reasons to take them are their style (robes), their background (mysterious) or because you want an uphill struggle in every game you play. That said, I personally have an all Terminator/Bike army, which can be fun to use and is certainly different from most other armies I come across. My company of tactical marines stays at home in a box at the back of my cupboard though.
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Re: 40k Army Summaries

Post by Konrad » Wed Aug 31, 2011 12:09 am

I can do Orks! Orks are the best! 'nuff said!
They do work best in big groups. A true "Green horde" is like 100+ models, but you don't have to go that route. Other "builds" are the "Kan Wall", the "Battlewagon Blitz", or the uh..... "Go fasta with lots of Trukks".
They are easy to get started with. The 40K Black Reach box set comes with Orks and you can alwasy find folks with extra to sell. They are a melee army, but can be suprisingly good at shooting just by having soooo many shots. Also, they are easy to scratch build for. My Trukk is just a toy from the dollar bin at the second hand store with bits added to it and painted.
I'm not smart enough to go into it unit by unit. There is a great Ork Tactica http://www.dakkadakka.com/wiki/en/Category:Orks_Tactica
here at DakkaDakka that does.
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Re: 40k Army Summaries

Post by me_in_japan » Wed Aug 31, 2011 7:51 am

OK, I did the Vanilla Eldar, now for the Dark Eldar.

Army overview:

With a few notable exceptions, Dark Eldar are made of tissue paper, and their vehicles are made of tinfoil. This is critical to both playing and playing against Dark Eldar. If you shoot them, they will die. If you hit them in CC, they will die (see notable exceptions, below).

However, in order to make up for this, they have four things in their favour.
1) If they shoot you, you are dead.
2) If they hit you in CC, you are really dead.
3) They are as fast as poop off a scoop. Seriously, by the end of turn 1, some of them will be behind your army, and not because they infiltrated.
4) They are spiky.

Essentially, Dark Eldar play like Eldar on crack (in fact, aheheh, according to the fluff, in many ways they actually are Eldar on crack)

Notable Exceptions

I said the Dark Eldar are fragile. Generally this is true, but they have some wierdy wonderful rules to make them a bit more inclined to not die.
1) Wyches (a troops choice) get a 4+ invul save in close combat (only CC, though)
2) Most all Dark Eldar units can get Feel No Pain pretty quickly (see PAIN!, below)
3) Haemunculi units are tougher and often have multiple wounds.
4) Their vehicles get wierd fields and shields that give them invul saves, or increase the shooting range to them. Basically, they're still made of tinfoil, but you can upgrade it to be invisible tinfoil.

PAIN!

A notable army-wide special rule is Power From Pain. This means that every time a DE unit kills another unit, it gains a pain token. A unit can have up to 3 tokens, and there are, correspondingly, 3 tiers of Pain induced buffs. - L1=Feel No Pain, L2=FNP & Furious Charge, L3=FNP, FC, Fearless. There are various ways to spread these tokens around, and a DE player can actually start the game with most of his army with FNP, and a fair portion of it with FC, too.

Notable units
I've started to realise the importance of Haemunculi in DE armies. They supply Pain tokens. Pain tokens win you games. They are also spiky.
Groteques can be monstrous in CC, especially when teamed with Urien Rakarth. And they're spiky.
Incubi are insanely good at CC. They all have WS5, S4, A2, power weapons. That will gut ANY other CC unit in the game, pretty much. Lots of spikes, too.
Harlequins - look cool, and visually contrast the predominant black of the rest of the army.
Wyches are a very good tarpit unit. and often have many spikes.
Raiders and Venoms are very, very fast transports. (but are made of tinfoil, with lots of spikes stuck on.)
Reavers can move 36" a turn and kill guys in the movement phase with their spikes.
Razorwings have some really nasty missiles (with spikes on them)

Conclusions
The Dark Eldar are very much a finesse army*. You will either win big, or lose big. It all comes down to who controls the movement phase, and with their super fast transports, they should have it all their way :)

*with spikes.
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