Often the thread in GBS prompts people to say something along the lines of, “I really like the concept behind this army, but HOW DOES IT PLAY?” or the dreaded “Are they any GOOD?”  I see it in my local nerd store all the damn time; people bemoaning the cosmic injustice of their preferred army of plastic men being slightly less potent in a Sci-Fi war-game.  For the uninitiated or would-be hobbyist, these sort of arguments about balance and relative power are mystifying and frustrating.

You may find yourself in that limbo, trying to decide whether the army that tickles your creative fancy will give you a decent shot at ever actually winning a game.  You might have a dusty army of old models from a previous edition, collected during your wayward youth, and are considering playing with them now.  You might even be already mentally committed to our silly hobby, but want to minimize your financial outlay (fool me once, every single CCG ever).

Let’s set this one down easy right now.  Barring an extremely competitive local metagame, you can have fun and successfully win games of Warhammer 40k with any army. However, this doesn’t mean that they are equal!

You’ll find me using this big gay word METAGAME an awful lot.  What does it mean, you say to yourself, while stroking your neckbeard and letting your glassy doll-eyes stare unfocused at your collection of anime wallscrolls.  Fear not, gentle goon.

In this context, META usually means self-referential or self aware.  So when we ‘sperg out and act like mildly retarded children about our strong opinions on balance within a wargame, we’re being meta.  We’re referring to the game-within-a-game, the counters and the interplay between armies that all approach the same basic ruleset from different perspectives.

If your local nerd store is populated by ultra-competitive nerds, then it’s going to be tough going for armies that are currently disadvantaged by the changes in the rules.  If your bros and dudes are fans of narrative gameplay, fluff-based armies, or generally don’t like taking beardy lists then you can often find a lot of entertainment value in playing less potent armies.  For the casual player, your local metagame will have significant impact on how much fun you have when playing pick-up games of 40k. Use your flawless common-sense and unfailing social graces to investigate this before you start buying stuff, because this can save you a lot of grief.

NEEEERRRRRDDDSSSSS

Indulge your ‘spergmaster and let’s go over some concepts drilled to death by powergaming blogs: explaining why certain trends are very popular in the year of our Lord 2009 whilst playing yon 5th edition of the grim dark future of war-hammery.

The 5^th Edition of 40k introduced several sweeping game changes:

• Run! This new rules means basically anything with legs can move an additional d6 inches in lieu of shooting.  Your 4′x6′ board just got a lot smaller, which cuts down on the turns available for shooting the enemy before they get close enough to krump you.  The Fleet special rule used to confer this benefit, now instead it allows a unit to assault in a turn after it runs.
• Shooting uses True line of sight and the rulebook affords 4+ cover saves for shooting through other units.  As a result, this has devalued low AP weaponry like plasma.  Any unit can also voluntarily pin themselves to improve their cover save, and in cases of objective holding there’s often no downside for doing so.  If everybody in the game has access to at least a 4+ cover save fairly easily, your best bet is to drown them in wounds and let probability sort them out.  Quantity has a quality all its own, etc.
• Assaults are often settled in the first or second round, with the brutal new rules for combat resolution.  The potential for frequent multi-assaults and the 6 inch pile-in movement means that usually everyone gets to swing, and being Fearless results in additional armor saves if you lose combat.  There are no more consolidations into new assaults either for the victor.
• New Wound Allocation rules are a cause for much wailing and gnashing of teeth, because if you have wounds in excess of the number of identical models in a squad, you must allocate them before rolling your saves.  Likewise, if you have a squad of entirely identical models in your squad, you simply roll the total number of saves and pick up casualties.  In general two axioms apply: firstly, the more simultaneous wounds that a squad has to save, the greater the odds of their upgrade characters like powerfist sergeants or heavy weapons dying.  Secondly, the more unique models a squad contains, the better able to isolate instant-death or no-save wounds onto a single doomed model, in order to give the majority of the squad a good chance at survival.

Ok, so we’ve established some basic concepts that are new to 5th edition gameplay.  Hopefully I can refer to this shit without having to explain it, when giving an overview of how different armies are faring, when I attempt to describe the experience of collecting and playing that army.  If you think I’m wrong or misinformed SUCK A FAT DICK please comment on the article or hit up the forums, and we can get a discussion going!

For our purposes let’s make a few basic assumptions:

1. that your time and money are not limitless
2. that you prefer plastic models (lighter, easier to assemble, cheaper)
3. that you are versed in the fluff enough that I don’t need to rewrite the concepts behind each army.  If this ISN’T the case and you desire an indepth look at a faction or army, I suggest the Lexicanum as a good place to start.

This dovetails into some points covered by the recent update on Points-per-Dollar costs of various models. For a player that’s looking to keep things on the cheaper side, an army of models who have high individual point costs is going to be cheaper than a more horde-styled army.

For the first portion of this ongoing article, I’m going to cover the flagship army of the Warhammer 40k universe: the Space Marines.  They are iconic, and have attracted a lot of people to the hobby via the Dawn of War series of games and the 40k novels; not to mention they’re by far the most common army to find on the tabletop.  It’s worth taking the time to unravel the different variants, seeing as they offer different gameplay experiences.  A solid core for the army is readily available in the starter set, Assault on Black Reach.

Codex: Space Marines

Codex: Space Marines was released pretty recently, and was written with 5th edition in mind. As we would expect, it’s an eminently flexible army, and it can change based on the inclusion of special characters or wargear choices.  A Captain on a bike allows bikers as troops, for example, and a Master of the Forge can enable a player to take up to 6 dreadnoughts.  You can use the special characters, which incorporate sweeping changes based on the fluff, to further specialize your army.

The ability to split your basic troops consisting of 10 models into combat squads gives you the flexibility to handle objective games, and the option to curtail unit count for kill-point games.  The range of transport options available helps to insulate you from small arms fire and mitigate the risk of getting shot to death at long range.  Drop Pods are completely unique in 40k gameplay, and no other army has the quite the same range of transport options that are available to the Space Marines.

They are forgiving of newbie mistakes, and it’s difficult to make a complete dud of a list.  This doesn’t necessarily mean that every list will be strong, but simply that their basic troops are so useful and sturdy that they don’t give you that many bad options.

From the poor-man hobbyist standpoint, it’s hard to say no to these guys.  The Black Reach set acts as a GW-sponsored subsidy to play this army.  You get over 500 points of models for a fraction of those individual kits’ MSRP, which puts every single other army’s starter box to shame.  Reselling via eBay and other sites means you can always get marines on the cheap, just strip the paint and start fresh.

Their model range is extremely well represented in plastic, with only some of the HQ models, the veterans (sternguard/vanguard), and a few others in metal.  The quality of these sculpts, as flagship products, is top-notch.  They are easy to paint, easy to kit-bash and convert, and with the Allies rules you can mix-match the other Imperial forces to boot.  They’re never far from the pages of White Dwarf and every future expansion will always figure them prominently in artwork and conceptual design.

The Space Marines have been given so much leeway in their fluff that different Chapters often bear very little resemblance to each other.  The Imperial Fists are known for a completely different style of combat from say, the Raven Guard or the White Scars.  A fluff-minded hobbyist has a wealth of novels, backstory, and internet resources to base their army on.  That said, there are only a few Chapters that differ so greatly from the range of options presented in the codex that they require their own special army books.

What’s great about playing a variant chapter is that there’s no requirement to purchase anything besides the basic space marine plastic kits.  Sure, you CAN buy the upgrade sprues but it’s not necessary by any means.  A marine is a marine, and at their most basic level these distinctions are just palette swaps!

Blood Angels

Compared to the codex marines these dudes are far more expensive points-wise, as every unit is also paying for a member of the death company.  However, the core army concept is a very solid one: Assault marines as troop choices (scoring units), fast vehicles, and awesome special characters.  Furioso Dreads and Baal Preds are great units, very strong and have aged well.  Overcharged Rhinos get your dudes where they need to be.

The special characters are potent, and grant some great benefits to your army; this helps to mitigate the point deficit you incur when playing Blood Angels.  If you’re opposed to using special characters it’s something to keep in mind when weighing pros/cons.  This army codex is available for download for free from GW you shitbirds, so give it a gander if you’re curious.

Dark Angels

Hey here’s your chance to play that all [Terminator/Bike/dress-wearing] army you’ve always wanted, and ALSO complain about how shitty your wargear is compared to the Ultramarines!

They do have a pretty sweet plastic upgrade kit, and as silly as it would seem to have robed supermen in power armor, it’s a decent look.  The Ravenwing battleforce is a great way to accumulate lots of Space Marine Bikers, and the Deathwing is the only way to take Terminators as troops currently.  Stubborn as an army rule is not particularly unique to the Dark Angels anymore, seeing as Lysander can grant it to codex marines currently.

Black Templars

Highly divergent from codex marines in that every single troop choice can be up to 20 men strong, can take bolt pistols/CCWs, and their scouts can be mixed in with their power armor dudes.  The vow that grants the entire army Preferred Enemy is really nice and makes them pretty damn competitive.  The Land Raider Crusader is basically THE Black Templar transport, and it kicks a lot of ass.

Righteous Zeal often feels like it’s overkill what with the speed of 5^th edition movement, and they are subject to a lot of special restrictions such as no Librarians and target priority checks.  However, they too have an awesome upgrade set and an easy paint scheme to boot.

Space Wolves

With their new codex revision around the corner there’s no point in overanalyzing these guys.

Early rumors look to maintain their status as the very best assault-oriented loyalist army, with an emphasis on blood claws/grey hunters being awesome in combat.  Current HQ choices are efficient in terms of points and the Stormcaller special power will get you punched in the dick by friends and enemies alike!

I’ll break here, and pick this up next time with a more high level look at the other armies of 40k.  For now, I hope that this has given a decent overview of 5th for me to build off in the future with less preamble and more down & dirty army nitpicking.

Tags: 5th edition, introduction, space marines

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 23rd, 2009 at 12:49 pm and is filed under Warhammer 40,000. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.