Warhammer 40k

[Conspiracy_Victim 0]

A cousin of mine has started trying to sell me on playing Warhammer 40k. I kind of like the look of it, but before I start to invest what looks to be a good chunk of change in it I would like to get some outside opinions. So, anyone else in these parts play it? And if so, what army do you play as?

 

Also, I thought this would be a place that would be a good spot for strategies, tactics, units, etc. etc.

[Damaramu 0]

I've played. I don't have my own army. I was all set to pick up an Eldar army but I chickened out when it came time to place down the time and money.

I've used my friends Space Marine, Tyranid, and Tau army's. It's a very fun game.

For a beginner I'd recommend Space Marines though. Highly customizable and easy to buy for as most everything works with them.

[Conspiracy_Victim 0]

Yeah I've actually decided on the Space Marines (good balance, good stats, etc.). I'm actually creating my own chapter so I can have a plausible explanation for my own color scheme. Basically a hybrid of the Ultramarines and Iron Warriors, I'm going to try to limit my modifiers so people don't bitch too loudly. Still working on it though.

 

Come on people don't be afraid to talk about Warhammer. It'll be okay. *talks soothingly and tries to draw them out into conversation*

[Dace59 0]

I'd say keep it small to start with... find people with big arms and just play a few skirmish with them. Get a good feel for the game, because you dont want to throw too much money away if you're only going to play for a month for two.

 

Doing your own chapater means you dont have the specialist codexes to draw on, but if you take the chapater's stlye to be a cross of the two your using for a base and pick a fair mix of pro/con rules. Pretty much any home player should be fine with that, but it probably wont be allowed in real tournaments and big world wide campains.

 

I can't give you any advice about customising models to make your own characters, best bet would be just to do a few simple part swaps of various character models to make your own, but only do that when you're sure you want to lay down the money.

 

Once you've played a few games, and maybe used friend's armies in a few, you'll have an idea of what sort of army you want. Space Marines dont have to be all shock assault troops with some fast attack stuff and heavy support if there's room. Haven't played in a while, buy I remember the Dark Angels, you would have a Raven Wing army (Raven Wing was their fast attack company) and everything you had could be on Bikes or whatever) Just depends on what you want.

 

So, just start small and get experience, make sure you really want to lay down the cash. After you have a basic army, get some of the books, see what your army can and can't do within cannon and then build around that. The books are also great for the whole history they have been hind them. The offical novels about the various Warhammer universes are generally pretty good as well.

[Garth 0]

I used to be big into warhammer a few years ago but kinda greaw out of it, still have all my stuff lying around somewhere. I played as Blood Angel space marines when i first started as they had a couple of special rule attached to them like if you rolled a one before you moved you got like double your movement as they had a thing called "blood rage" which i thought was pretty coool. I then moved onto the imperial guard but that was towards the time i stopped playing so didn't really get much of an army for them.

 

One thing i do reccomend you get is called Death Marines or something like that i can't remember the exact name, they're black in color with red crosses on them, they're total bad asses, they carry huge power weapons and generally just destroy everyone else.

 

Later moved onto regular Warhammer instead of 40k, i found this the better of the games, as I just found the characters in it a lot mroe interesting.

 

I wouldn't mind checking it out again as i know now they have LOTR warhammer and that actually looks pretty cool.

[Dace59 0]

I was a Blood Angels play as well. Just had a nasty melee group, just get in close and rip a few holes.

 

And you're thinking of Death Company. It's when the Blood Angels had given into their blood lust and basicly lost it (as they're basicly vamps). They just went into battle ready to kill everything they could. They'd either die, or get killed afterwards as only one person had ever recovered from the rage and that was Mephisto. It was a Blood Angels only thing and it rocked.

 

It's fun how so many classic Sci-Fi and fantasy ideas are found in 40K. Blood Angels = Vamp, Dark Angels = Goths, Orks =Orcs, Eldar = Elves, Dark Eldar = Dark Elves, etc, etc

[Garth 0]

Yeah thats the one, I loved my death company. I painted up a Rhino tank just for them. I had a squad of about 15 of them. I won a whole game by myself with just them once. I managed to get the extra movement via the tank, sped across the entire battle field jumped out and just about killed everyone before in the next go completing the objective for that game. Good times.

[Conspiracy_Victim 0]

Yeah I've read up on the Blood Angels and Death Company and found them pretty intriguing. Right now though I've basically made my chapter a hybrid offshoot of the Ultramarines (your "average" Marines, so to speak), so everything can be kept basic. Really I just didn't want a bunch of blue Marines running around (that's who my cousin uses as well).

 

The black and red trim is actually the color scheme I'm going for, soI might just take a look at the Death Company and base my paint job off of it. I'm also going to make my Chapter (as of now called "The Dark Judges") a kind of heavy-weapons Chapter with lots of Tactical and Assault squads (with a couple more Devastator squads thown in for good measure). Tac squads are pretty cheap, so I can throw out a bunch of them. With the +3 save roll and bolter guns/missile launchers on most of them, I should be fine.

 

BTW for anyone who plays and tries to create your own Chapter, damn it's harder than I thought to come up with a backstory, organization, etc. I tried to make mine look like it came directly out of the Index Astartes (Space Marines compendium) and it took me damn near all day just to make it look halfway decent. Three pages worth. I like it though. May tweak something here and there.

[Dace59 0]

I have an idea for you. If you're doing a Heavy Weapons chapater, there where Chaos Marine models which had a Heavy Bolter on a sholder chain, so it was held in both hands rather than over the shoulder.

 

A Space Marine model with that set up, so you have lots of Heavy Bolters instead of having power weapons and close combat stuff on people. It might work.

 

I think it was in the second generation of 40K, the Salamander Space Marines, could replace all the standard bolters with flamers for +5 points. Could work a similar deal to that with heavy weapon gear. Or just more points spent to have more in the squad.

[Damaramu 0]

Of course you could just be the cheapest bastard on Earth and buy the Necron army. Most unbalanced thing I've ever seen.

My friend bought a Necron army. Fricking able to roll to see if they get up after every turn. They were impossible to kill. And then his monolith. Oh you could destroy it. It's weapon runs of a power crystal. So even if you got weapon destroyed it's main cannon still was able to fire. Absurd. You could never take it out it seemed.

He would get pissed b/c everyone ganged up on him.

[Dace59 0]

The Tau have some whorish shit. Ok, one Space Marine squad will kill their whole army in close combat, but at range...bye bye. They're armed to the balls.

[Damaramu 0]

The Tau have some whorish shit. Ok, one Space Marine squad will kill their whole army in close combat, but at range...bye bye. They're armed to the balls.

My friend played as the Space Wolves. They're pretty badass if you have a bunch of tanks to transport them where they need to go. They're close combat monsters.

[Conspiracy_Victim 0]

The Tau have some whorish shit. Ok, one Space Marine squad will kill their whole army in close combat, but at range...bye bye. They're armed to the balls.

Yeah I've been looking through my cousin's Tau Codex. Good Lord some of their shit kicks ass. The fact that their Railgun is a Str 10 and has a 6' board radius is crazy. Of course like you said, a single Terminator squad would leave a smoking crater where the Tau were should they get in close. Their Kroot soldiers have little defense and the Battlesuits look kinda fragile.

 

Thanks for the thought Dace I'll look into those models. I figure since I'm making the Chapter myself and they were stuck out near the Eye of Terror for so long they kinda scrounged parts wherever they could that I can pretty much use whatever kind of model I want. I like the Iron Warriors Terminator (although I guess their weapons systems won't be used by Terran forces) so it'll all come down to what I can fit into their design without causing other players to go into fits. It'll probably just be Ultramarine models when all's said and done.

 

Finally, I've heard about Necron armies, Dam. I've been looking up Warhammer boards and Necron players always talk about how if they lose 75% of their troops they have to check against phasing out (automatically losing). The problem is actually GETTING 75% to stay down at once. Their little rebirth/revive/whatever it is sounds cheap.

[Dace59 0]

You can tank rush Necron's though. As the can't dodge out of the way, you just drive straight over the little gits.

 

Have they got around to bring the Squat's back in yet? Drawves in Terminator Amour...beware!

[Damaramu 0]

Yeah a Necron player will bitch that the phasing out is unfair and makes it to hard to win......people who play against them bitch that they are cheap. I think it was a bad army to release at all.

 

Oh and the great thing about Warhammer is that just about every army has a strength and weakness. And some are more advanced than others.

Like Dark Eldar......I heard you have to be REALLY good to play as them b/c they have so little strengths.

And Orks.....I've never played as them but I heard they're hard to use. But they're cheap and you can dump them out in mass quantaties.

[Guest jm29195]

Ah yes, Ihad a bloody huge ork army back in 1998, it was over 10,000 points, I believe, had a speed freaks cult based on gorka morka, and loads of orks with mega aromour (second generation 40k) I also had a customized ork Rhino that I turned into an Ork Razorback? by putting a tractor cannon on it.... I also had some guy who had like a great big teleportation gun on his shoulder, you could shoot snotlings into dreadnoughts and if you were really lucky , get a one hit kill.....hmm back in the day....

 

 

Also had Chaos marines (Abadon the Despoiler!), tyranids (The Carnifex!), Imperial Guard (Demolisher Seige Tank!) aswell as Warhammer armies Chaos, with a double headed chaos dragon, and some older epic Imperial armys (did they ever make an update to the Capitol Imperialis transporter or Imperator Titan, that was the daddy of everything, just like a walking castle with a gatling gun the size of a building stuck on it!!)

[thuganomics 0]

I used to play as the Tyranids somewhat regularly, but I got f'n sick of fighting one Space Marine army after another. If the company promoted more variety I'd enjoy the game much more.

[Guest Cerebus]

Still have my Blood Angels and Dark Eldar armies and my half-finished Imperial Guard theme army. When I was stuck at home for about a year I repaired a lot of them and assembled the figures I had never got around to doing before I left for the Navy. They're packed a way in a box ready to be displayed once the rest of our furniture comes into the new apartment. I'll probably buy enough models to complete my theme army once I get settled down here but I have 2000 points for Blood Angels and Dark Eldar so I probably won't be buying anything more after that. The fiction for WH40K is still fucking awesome though.

[Dr. Tom 0]

I used to play Chaos (Tzeentch), and still have all my models and rulebooks. This was before the latest round of rules changes, which made Thousand Sons worse. Painting the minis and all that is such a time commitment that I won't get back into the game. If anything, I'd like to sell off what I have. It's a fun game, though, I'll give it that.