After I got out of Magic : The Spendening, I thought I was done with expensive, competitive nerd-hobbies. But one of the guys in my D&D group who also plays Warhammer was showing me some of his newest painted work, and I remarked (as I often have) how I’m sometimes tempted, and he pointed out what a comparatively good deal that ‘Assault on Black Reach’ was, at $100, compared to most 40K sets.
And the game store had it in stock. And I suffer from poor impulse control sometimes, when it comes to buying things.
Goddammit.
Well, maybe I won’t like the game and will be able to avoid spending more. But I probably should pick a Space Marine chapter, just in case…
Eldar, Chaos and I believe Necrons are also low model count armies. Stay away from Orks, 'nids and Imperial Guard if you know what’s good for your wallet
However, 'nids are a hell of a lot of fun to play and especially to convert. My flying Hive Tyrant with a clay-rock pile base was a joy to create.
(Of course, the newer edition made the mods I’ve got for him mostly worthless. Thank goodness for neodymium.)
The good thing about Space Marines is you can get away with using other Chapter rulebooks moreso than with other races. For instance, very few people are gonna buy it if you use Orks with the Necron rules unless you mod them extremely well. Whereas if you want to play a Chapter of your own devising using the Space Wolves or Blood Angels codices, no one will stop you. Heck, you could even use Ultramarines for that purpose and just say “hey, this Chapter coincidentally looks like the Ultramarines, but they’re a lost offshoot that was stranded on a feral world for millennia and so fights more like the Space Wolves” and some people would even be okay with that.
For this purpose I’d recommend Blood Angels and Space Wolves. The regular Space Marine and Black Templar codices are some of the weakest extant codices. For instance, you can take a generic Ultramarine army and create the exact equivalent of it with the Blood Angels and Space Wolves and it will just simply be better, even at doing things that the Ultramarines focus on like long- and medium-range fire. Even when you specialize an Ultramarines army with special characters, it’s only about as good as a non-specialized Blangels or Space Puppies army. And of course you can specialize the Blangels or Pups.
So long story short, if you’re thinking of using the Space Marine codex, you should look at using the Space Wolves or Blood Angels codex instead, even if you will be fighting in the Ultramarine style of combat, because it’s difficult to play the Space Marines codex well* as a beginning player since their codex is so old and weak.
*That said, since they are Space Marines after all, it’s easy for a beginning player to play them average-ly. I.e. they’re more forgiving than the Dark Eldar.
Is there a site that actually compares the strengths and weaknesses of the different Warhammer forces side by side? I did a little casual googling yesterday and didn’t find much.
Not a strongly agreed-upon site. Even the most popular sites have some boners that are roundly dismissed by the larger community. So take everything, even what I say, with a huge lump of Arcturian salt.
All tribes use the same Ork Codex, and some characters allow small variations on the standard Ork list. However, the standard Ork list is pretty flexible and forgiving by itself: there are only a few units that really suck, so you can customize your army’s character within the Ork Codex pretty well.
The exception to the relative lack of tribal character is if you take Wazdakka which lets you take hordes of Ork Bikers instead of Boyz.
Yes and no.
There are six big “Klans” of Orks in the fluff (seven if you count Freebooters), but they typically don’t have their own rules (or at least they didn’t back in my day).
For them it sort of works the other way around: depending on your force composition you’ll claim your Orks are of this or that Klan (or even mix 'n match, Orks are not especially hung up about doctrine. Or hygiene. Or anything). Like for example if you build an army with lots and lots of bikes, you’re probably going to paint them red with Evil Sunz markings. If you rely on tons of heavy weapons, they’re probably Bad Moonz or Deffskullz. If your main strategy is wall-to-wall boyz with axes and pistols charging under the cover of a gazillion gretchins, they might be Goffs or Snakebites. And so forth. Not that there’s anything wrong with claiming a bike army as Goffs, though - as I said, Orkish fuck-giving is in the low single digits.
That being said, I played second and third edition Wh40K and I understand they’re up to seventh now so what the hell do I know ?
Cool. Absent any other reliable info as to what the strengths and weaknesses are, I think I may go with Blood Angels, because they’re red and I like red.
Blood angels are first rate assault specialists and their Furioso Pattern dreadnaughts are pretty fucking awesome when it comes to close in assaults. They also have a special pattern Predator which fits an assault cannon (at least, I think it’s them). If you’re not big on assaulting, they may not be for you.
There are currently seven officially supported sets of Space Marine rules:
Codex: Space Marines
Codex: Blood Angels
Codex: Space Wolves
Codex: Grey Knights
and from 4th edition:
Codex: Chaos Space Marines
Codex: Black Templars
Codex: Dark Angels
Of the newest four, Codex: Space Marines is probably the most balanced. Blood Angels get faster vehicles and lots of troops with jump packs. Space Wolves replace pretty much all squads with similar units, some of which are rather undercosted. Grey Knights are made up entirely of squads of psychers with storm bolters and force weapons.
I have no idea whether or not I’m big on assaulting. But they are red.
I ordered the Ork, Blood Angel, and Space Marine Codexes (Codices?) from GW just a few minutes ago, so I’ll compare and contrast Blood Angels and the generic one before I make a painting decision or buy any other minis.
Yeah, GW’s fluff was specifically tailored to let people come up with their own SM chapters, with whatever paint job they want.
Basically, 2 out of the original 20 primarchs have either never been found, or all records of them have been purged. Since each of the original 20 Legions were then broken into tons of individual Chapters (except those that turned to Chaos of course), that leaves a lot of room for Fuschia Marines.
I admit that I wanted to play, and was really interested in the Inquisition. Howecver, they kinda rolled the Inquisition into the Grey Knights for some insane reason, mostly ignore them anyway, and turned the Sisters of Battle in a pathetically limited mini-army that’s not worth my time. Maybe I’ll look at Chaos Marines someday.
