Oh for sure
In Rimmys video he goes to melee and accidently uses the squeaky toy so it looks like he kills the guy with the squeaky toy
Warhammer Warhammer General discussion thread: Now with 100% more Space Marines
- Thread starter Battlegrinder
- Start date
In Rimmys video he goes to melee and accidently uses the squeaky toy so it looks like he kills the guy with the squeaky toy
Bloodbowl 3 Closed Beta Trailer
So, if anyone wants to bulk up thier IG force, I've got a freind trying to sell a bunch of cadian guardsmen. $2 each, he's got 70 in total.
So... with the maybe 2 WH40K players in my whole country, I'm not likely to pick up the hobby, despite reading some lore and generally liking the idea of this game...
But just for fun, how would you rank all the armies by their newbie friendliness?
But just for fun, how would you rank all the armies by their newbie friendliness?
1. Sisters of Battle/Space Marines. Both are pretty tough, capable armies with a big toolkit that can cover everything, field big enough armies to accommodate the occasional mistep, and have a number of subfactions that will let them do exactly what a player wants them to to do, letting them play the army thier way instead of the army wants to run.
Key downside is sisters are harder to paint than average, while marines have so many units and subunits that the choice of which one yo use van be daunting at first.
2. Orks/Crons. Both armies are, like 1, tough and forgiving, but they're a bit less flexible and have much more of an intended playstyle.
3. Custodes. Custodes are super marines. Tougher, harder hitting, far more capable, far easier to paint. But they're also much less tolerate of mistakes, because you have far fewer units on the field.
4. IG/Nids. Just kind of all around find, not super easy to play, not particularly hard either.
5. Admech. Stupidly complicated rules, even more complicated units, and plays like 3 armies stapled together.
6. Elves of any sort. They're all fast, hard hitting specialists, but very fragile, so a battle plan can easily fall apart if they're not used precisely as intended.
I don't know where stealers should fall, though probably somewhere on the harder end, and Knights are more typically brought as a support arm for another for (usually admech) then any army of thier own.
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Eh, not exactly. The biggest issue with IG is their infantry have poor saves and, without proper use of orders they have mediocre shooting, and they're a joke in melee. Not like, tau level bad, but any MEQ will usually tear through them, as will any melee heavy faction like orks.
And you need infantry in 9th to hold objectives and actually do stuff that wins you VP, so knowing how to properly support and protect your troops is critical for IG (yes, you can run spearhead and get obsec tanks, but that's an imperfect fix because there is a lot of serious AT firepower running around, particularly with marines and Sisters). It's not super difficult to learn how to do that and how to compensate for having weak troops, but you do have to learn that skill and it's a constant weakness for the army.
Why they do me dirty!
Alrighty, cool answer. So if I were to collect a Space Marines army, just as a... thought experiment... Which chapter should I choose? I know Dark Angels are the strongest in the current meta, but that probably makes them a nerf magnet in the next update, right? Any good reasons to collect one chapter over the others?
Unless you're planning on playing competitively, chasing the meta isn't necessary with marines, they're pretty interchangeable when it comes to more casual environments.
For starting out, I would suggest playing ultras or fists, as they're fairly solid all rounders, and once you get a few games under you belt you can decide if you want to branch out into another chapter (either don't paint you guys at first, or do paint them but use a custom color scheme. If you do change chapters, you don't want a bunch of guys in Ultramarine colors in a Blood Angels army).
As for collecting a specific chapter, outside of rules the big draw to chapters like DA is their unique units. Most chapters share the same list of units, but some have thier own special units, and some of them also don't have something from the core list.
For example, the dark angels have two unique aircraft (both of which rock), three unique landspeeder variants, a number of unique biker models, a unique terminator squad (deathwing knights. They're badass), a few more weapon opitions for thier stock terminators, unique terminator characters, and unique support models like a terminator apothecary (who is amazing because unlike the normal apothecary, he has a gun), and in exchange for getting all that stuff, they only lose a handful of units, I think it's just sternguard vets and vanguard vets (shooty and stabby/hammery elite sqauds).
The blood angels have a bunch of unique assault infantry, unique dreadnoughts, and a unique tank that was pretty cool before the reaper grav tank made it obsolete, but I don't know what they lose.
Space wolves also get unique stuff, like a unique flyer, some unique weapons, and a bunch of wolves and mutant wolfman they can deploy. Also not sure what they give up, aside from thier dignity*.
None of the chapters that get special stuff lose out on basics, so if you start with an HQ and a few troops you should be fine to branch out from there. Here's a quick, probably mostly accurate rundown:
Ultras: all rounders
Fists: also all rounders, with added bonuses against dug in opponents.
White Scars: Bike Assault
Black Templars: Assault but specifically with infantry
Salamanders: resisting high volume of fire attacks
Blood angels: jump pack assault, also melee in general
Raven Guard: all rounders
Iron hands: tanks, heavy weapons. Don't play iron hands if you're thin skinned, some people are still salty about them being super broken at the end of 8th edition.
Space wolves: assault again.
Dark Angels: All rounders, but can really focus in on excelling with either infantry, bikes, or terminators and bladeguard.
*Why yes, I do play dark angels, how did you know?
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@Battlegrinder
Nice breakdown!
Now let's assume that I totally didn't discover that a store selling WH40K products and hosting tournaments and such is located about a 7 minutes walk from my workplace. Now let's also assume that I'm NOT, I repeat, NOT getting slowly sucked into this extremely expensive and time consuming hobby, have not started reading lore, playing the Dawn of War RTS etc, and am definitely not eying starter kit prices. Because that would be financially irresponsible, so I'm NOT doing it.
Assuming all that, in the completely hypothetical and out there scenario that I wanted to collect a space marines chapter that is not one of the 3 which have 9th edition codexes... Are the previous edition's codex supplements for chapters like Raven Guard, Imperial Fists etc still relevant to playing with the current rules?
Nice breakdown!
Now let's assume that I totally didn't discover that a store selling WH40K products and hosting tournaments and such is located about a 7 minutes walk from my workplace. Now let's also assume that I'm NOT, I repeat, NOT getting slowly sucked into this extremely expensive and time consuming hobby, have not started reading lore, playing the Dawn of War RTS etc, and am definitely not eying starter kit prices. Because that would be financially irresponsible, so I'm NOT doing it.
Assuming all that, in the completely hypothetical and out there scenario that I wanted to collect a space marines chapter that is not one of the 3 which have 9th edition codexes... Are the previous edition's codex supplements for chapters like Raven Guard, Imperial Fists etc still relevant to playing with the current rules?
I believe the codex supplements are still valid. However, the extra rules from Faith and Fury are not, those rules were rolled into the main codex in 9th.
Also, speaking of starter sets, there's a few othe things you should know as far as picking one.
I woyld advise against buying the current "Start Collecting" box for marines. There's nothing exactly wrong with it, but it's all pre-primaris models and they're a bit sub par (aside from the dreadnought, that's still good. There's also the start collecting vanguard box, which is fine but IMO not a good way to start playing marines). A lot of the other starter boxes are....fine. Most of the have simplified versions of current kits that just push together instead of needing glue (hence them being called push fit models), and while there's nothing wrong with them and they're just as detailed, there's zero customization. IMO they're more for practicing painting then anything else, and for that you're better off with just some army men or something cheaper.
What you want as a starter is a combat patrol box, which is a bundle of several kits at a slight discount, and taken together they all form a legal patrol detachment (the smallest legal army you can take in matched play that's actually functional). None of them save deathwatch come with chapter specific bits or models, so you can paint them however you like without them looking weird.
Of the 4, I would suggest either the dark or blood angels ones, with a slight preference toward dark angels as the incursors and librarian from the blood angels box can be a complicated to use effectively, whereas the DA box contains much simplier units, and IMO much better ones.
And speaking of this store you've found, I would check their policy's on proxy models (using one model to represent another, such as taking a tactical sqaud of firstborn marines and running them as primaris), third party parts, conversions, and WYSIWYG, or What you see is what you get, IE that a model equipped with certain wargear has that wargear and not something else. For example, I have some primaris hellblasters that have thier plasma rifles modeled as a hybrid of the three different versions of the rifle, which some very strict stores might not allow because it's not immediately obvious what they're armed with. Most stores will be reasonable on these (aside from offical GW ones, which are notorious when it comes to third party stuff), but it's food to know ahead of time.
Edit: oh, and warhammer legends, check their policy on legends.
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Good advice!
Another question, how do I know which SM chapters have access to which units? I assume that chapter unique units simply show up in their codex or supplement, but how would I know which vanilla SM units are illegal for them?
It's listed in the main codex what they can and can't take. If you get a list building app like battlescribe, that should remove units a chapter doesn't have and add the unique ones.
Black Templars cannot take Librarians of any sort.
Dark Angels cannot take sternguard or vanguard vets.
Blood Angels don't lose anything
space wolves lose sternguard, vanguard, tactical, assault, and dev squads, centurions, and apothecarys, but they get unique units to replace tactical, assault and dev squads. They might get something for apothecaries and the vets, I don't know.
@Battlegrinder
Something I don't get... if models are glued together, then how are they customized for matches? Like, if I want to take plasma instead of bolters, I can't just swap the weapons on the models, I have to have marines with plasma rifles in my roster too? Or what the actual model is holding doesn't matter much, and it's assumed that it has whatever you decided on taking?
By the way, if my noob questions are cluttering the thread I can create a separate one dedicated to "learning WH40K".
Something I don't get... if models are glued together, then how are they customized for matches? Like, if I want to take plasma instead of bolters, I can't just swap the weapons on the models, I have to have marines with plasma rifles in my roster too? Or what the actual model is holding doesn't matter much, and it's assumed that it has whatever you decided on taking?
By the way, if my noob questions are cluttering the thread I can create a separate one dedicated to "learning WH40K".
Depends on the place. Some allow the later, others go by the former. So e people use magnets
This hobby is more intimidating the more I learn about it...
It's not that bad
That will largely depend on how strict the group is about WYSIWGY and what the precise model is. If you have, say, a unit of vanguard vets modeled with thunder hammers but today you want the have power axes, most groups would probably be ok with that. They would probably be less ok with you taking a group of tactical marines and saying they're vanguard vets with power axes (and much, much less ok if you also have a squad of regular tactical marines in your list, because it will slow the game down or risk confusion if your opponent has to constantly check which unit is which).
This is generally much less of an issue with primaris marines, because they don't have the range of weapon options that firstborn have, though by extension people might be less willing to let you play around with proxy models as a long term thing. If you want to run a group of intercessors as hellblasters for a game to try them out, I think most people would be fine with that, but if you're regularly bringing hellblasters I think most groups would also expect that you will eventually model them as hellblasters.
Otherwise, as Thel said, magnets are the way to go if you don't want to buy loads of differant kits and just swap them around, and it's particular easy to do this with primaris marines since you can just swap the arms around. So if you buy some spare plasma rifles from ebay (or a third party like kromlech and your store is cool with that) you can get just a few boxes of intercessors, magnetize the arms, and swap them between differant unit types with ease.
Another option for firstborn marines would be to model them with special weapons that aren't actually available for them and then run them as any variant. For example, Kromlech also makes these volkite guns (or you could get the official FW version). Volkite weapons are a warhammer 30k weapon, in 40k they're not usable (except by a tiny handful of characters, and those characters cannot take these particular weapons). If you model a devastator squad with those, you could plausible run them as being equipped with any other weapon and I think most groups would be ok with it, provided you don't mix weapon types with the squad and you don't have more than one squad.
Nah, it's fine.
@Battlegrinder
As a complete beginner who haven't even bought anything yet (actually, given all the advice online that I should focus on the models and lore I like rather than how newbie-friendly the gameplay is, I'm heavily leaning Tau at the moment), would you say I should ignore all that stuff about swapping weapons for now, at least until I get a few models assembled and painted in my figurative resume? Magnetizing sounds like a verh advanced technique.
As a complete beginner who haven't even bought anything yet (actually, given all the advice online that I should focus on the models and lore I like rather than how newbie-friendly the gameplay is, I'm heavily leaning Tau at the moment), would you say I should ignore all that stuff about swapping weapons for now, at least until I get a few models assembled and painted in my figurative resume? Magnetizing sounds like a verh advanced technique.