I felt kind of guilty about going into so much detail about getting started in Warhammer 40K but glossing over one of the most important aspects: Picking an army. I’m rectifying that now.
I’m writing part of this article to be a bit more generic in terms of the advice provided. Although Games Workshop has dominated the hobby for decades, its position is being challenged by several newcomers. Some of the stuff I have to say isn’t relevant to WH40K alone, or even just for Games Workshop games.
So, the first thing to do is… your research. Head on over to the Games Workshop WH40K army lists and read. Go through the articles, read the background, have a good look at the minis. Keep the following questions in mind as you review each army.
Do you think it’s cool?
Seriously. Unless you’re just playing to kick butt and take names alone, visual appeal is a big part of the hobby. Why spend money on miniatures you think are dumb or ugly? Even if you’re not a world-class modeller or painter (and I’m definitely *not*), you still want something you can see at the end of the day and be happy with how it looks.
Do you like the army’s style of play?
You’ll have to dig a bit deeper on this one. An army has strengths and weaknesses that set it apart from the other armies in the game system. Some armies will be very good at shooting things from a distance, but won’t perform so well if they get into melee. Other armies are very good at hit-and-run tactics, but get flattened quickly if forced to go toe-to-toe with a heavily armed force. You should see if your army choice(s) can support a style of play that suits you.
As a note, don’t just read the setting information (or “fluff”) about the army. All too often it depicts the army in a way that differs from how it actually gets played. For example, in WH40K the Space Marine Chapter of the Space Wolves is supposed to be full of fighters who prefer the bloody glory of hand-to-hand combat. However, the army includes so many good choices for long-ranged firepower that the melee element becomes secondary or seriously ignored. After all, why go to all the trouble to close with an enemy when you can blow it to pieces from across the battlefield?
Google for battle reports for the army and game system you want. I’m not sure who coined the term “battle report” but many of the game systems have adopted it. A battle report is simply a record of a game. It should show you the style of play for various armies as well as how well they do against each other.
A good battle report will include:
- Complete army lists, usually with point values.
- An outline of any special rules or victory conditions in play.
- Some sort of diagram or description of the battlefield setup.
- Detailed turn-by-turn descriptions of actions on both sides. The best battle reports have diagrams to show unit actions. A few even take photographs as the game progresses and then add arrows and other icons to show what happened in the turn.
- Insight on why players did things a certain way. This doesn’t often happen, but every now and then a report writer will go into detail about why an unusual army, deployment or maneuver was chosen.
Unfortunately, the majority of the battle reports out there don’t include all those elements. It’s usually not the fault of the report writers. If you want to write a decent battle report about an event, you pretty much have to be prepared in advance to write and document everything as the game progresses. Many of the battle reports are written after the game is over after the players have left, and details get forgotten.
The best places to find battle reports are in forums like those found at Bell of Lost Souls, Warseer and Bolter and Chainsword.
Is the army supported?
It would make sense that if a gaming company introduced an army, it would periodically update the army’s rules and provide new miniatures. Regrettably, the realities of supporting an active gaming system sometimes require less popular armies to go for years without any attention. In WH40K, the Necrons and Dark Eldar both were going on eight years without any appreciable updates. They were not one but two editions out of date. Many of their army-specific rules no longer conferred the same advantages (or any advantages at all in some cases).
A Personal Lesson
One of my armies is Necron. I bought it as a “battleforce” box for several reasons:
- It was “new” to me in the sense that Necrons didn’t exist back when I was into WH40K Rogue Trader.
- The models looked cool. I really like the whole terminator/undead thing.
- Better yet, the models were all plastic. I could see a lot of potential for some really interesting conversions.
I had a copy of the codex already, but it didn’t occur to me to do any research on how they fared in combat until sometime later. I was figuring out my first army lists, and became greatly disheartened to discover that with the introduction of WH40K 5th Edition, the Necrons were a bit of a joke. When they were first introduced, they were very good at shredding anything in beam weapon range including heavily armoured vehicles. They weren’t good at melee combat, but then again that’s not what the army was for. Over the next WH40K editions, changes to the core vehicle and combat rules reduced Necron effectiveness considerably. With their flaws in melee combat still very much intact, it became very difficult to use a Necron army effectively. The only players who could had been playing Necrons for a very long time.
I became very discouraged. It wasn’t the prospect of the army’s flaws being the greatest thing to overcome to win a game. Or rather, it wasn’t just that. I was worried the army wouldn’t be fun to play. As a beginner, I didn’t want to field an army for target practice. To date my Necron battleforce is still unassembled in its box.
There is a happy ending… The new Necron codex is rumoured to be coming around Christmas, with big changes for the army. Of course, now I don’t want to assemble my Necrons until I find out all the new stuff. Status quo, I guess, but at least now there’s an end in sight.
