[Help Needed] Starting another New Army!

[Akaiyou]

Saw news(rumors) of the price increase coming up on BoLS and decided it's time to start planning for a new army for the year at the current prices.

I'm Interested In (no particular order):
1. Dark Eldar
2. Imperial Guard
3. Space Wolves

Looking to start off with a solid (5th ed competitive) 1,000 or 1,250 pts army.

What I need from anyone offering suggestions are the following:
1. Recommended Army List fitting into what i'm interested in (as mentioned above)
2. A list of what I'd need to buy to create said army list brand new off the shelf.
[optional]
3. Ideas & Tactics to use with suggested army.

This will help me to gauge the list not only from a play standpoint but also financially.

I definitely want a competitive base to start off from, as then I can get accustumed to playing to the army's strengths and build upon them later on with my own choosing/flavoring of units.

I thank everyone in advanced.

[Kaiserdean]

With you choices, I'd recommend SW for the $ per point factor.

You can make your list out of Thunder Wolves, Grey Hunters, Termies and extras to get a 2,500 point army fairly cheaply. 9 GHs ride in Rhinos with a melta along with a Wolf Guard that has a combi melta. Thunder Wolves sprint into CC. Termies might ride in a Land Raider and sprint into CC as well.

If you went IG, I'd go mechinized, with lots of Chimeras and Valkyries, your minimum troops (two vet squads) and two command squads. I've built a foot slogging IG army and it was quite expensive and I don't think as effective as my mech list.

I can't comment on the DE, but the nasty lists are also mech based with lots and lots of transports.

Just my two cents.

[Chuck777]

Space Wolves are the cheapest. DE in the middle. IG is the most expensive.

Wolves are very forgiving and a lot of fun. I suggest them fully.

[Kawauso]

Well let's see...

if you go SW, it could be cheap, potentially, but it depends a lot on how competitive you would want your build to be...
It could be pretty pricey or difficult trying to find all the meltas/combi-meltas and missile launchers needed to emulate some of the more popular competitive lists kicking around. All of those weapons tend to be one-offs in various kits. Then again, you could have a good stockpile of these bits for SM, so it's hard to say.

I was going to say it's pretty easy getting around 850~ points of competitive SW from the battleforce and 3x Devastator kits, but then I realized you wouldn't have nearly enough missile launchers that way, and zero meltas/multi-meltas...and those tend to be pretty defining weapons in terms of what you'll see in a lot of competitive SW lists.

And this could really go for any army. If you're going for pretty competitive builds, you're going to need to work quite a bit outside what you get in standard boxes if you want to get all the heavy/special weapons you'll need.

So I guess the answers you'll get depend on how much you would be counting to get out of each box you buy with any of those armies, and how much hunting you'd want to do for extra weapon bitz. Or whether you'd be interested in taking somewhat less conventional lists as far as playing competitively is concerned.

[Akaiyou]

Do feed me more info please and dont worry bout getting the stuff i have tons of spares I own 9 out of the 16 armies with half of them being MEQ so i got extra meltas/missile launchers that i horded for those armies lolz

I'm starting to get more and more interested in the SW though as everyone seems to point out that they would be the cheapest to do competitively which for all of us in this hobby is always a big bonus once u've collected a few armies.

I'd still like example army lists and lists of what I would need to buy in order to build those lists.
If there's for example extra 'bits' or stuff that i'd need to get separate (i'd obviously not gonna go buy a whole devastator box just for 1 missile launcher or something crazy like that) just put it on a 'extra bits' needed listing so i know that i'll be missing such things to complete the list after buying all the boxsets/batlteforces or what not.

Of all armies in 40k these 3 are the ones that confused me the most in terms of composition and what i needed to buy in order to actually build up a force with them so i really do appreciate allt he help i can get and the more detailed the better. So thanks

[HsojVvad]

I say, wait one or two months. With the rumours of 6th edition about to come out, it can change your playstyle or outake and make other armies viable.

Unless you plan on only playing 5th edition, I say wait. Heck June is almost here so the June WD should tell us (by back cover I am guessing) if July will be the 6th edition release.

[Kawauso]

Do feed me more info please and dont worry bout getting the stuff i have tons of spares I own 9 out of the 16 armies with half of them being MEQ so i got extra meltas/missile launchers that i horded for those armies lolz

I'm starting to get more and more interested in the SW though as everyone seems to point out that they would be the cheapest to do competitively which for all of us in this hobby is always a big bonus once u've collected a few armies.

I'd still like example army lists and lists of what I would need to buy in order to build those lists.
If there's for example extra 'bits' or stuff that i'd need to get separate (i'd obviously not gonna go buy a whole devastator box just for 1 missile launcher or something crazy like that) just put it on a 'extra bits' needed listing so i know that i'll be missing such things to complete the list after buying all the boxsets/batlteforces or what not.

Of all armies in 40k these 3 are the ones that confused me the most in terms of composition and what i needed to buy in order to actually build up a force with them so i really do appreciate allt he help i can get and the more detailed the better. So thanks

Okay, so you have a lot of weapons and bitz available to draw from. That's good to know.

Alright, so here's a quick SW list using the following kits:
Space Wolf Battleforce (includes 20x SW models, with -tons- of extra bitz to spread among vanilla SM models and make them SW-worthy, as well as 5x Scouts and 1x Drop Pod)

15x other Marine models (i.e. 3x kits such as Devastators, Command Squads, any 5-man Forge World armour pack, etc.).

1x Razorback

Total cost of kits from GW website (USD): $240 for SW battleforce, 1 Razorback, 3 Devastators

~~~

Obviously, there are holes in this list (i.e. there's not a lot of mech saturation, and there's only 1 Drop Pod, which is not great). And I'm not a competitive player, so I'm just going off of what I know about competitive 40k (which isn't all that much) when building this list. This is just an example, however, trying to keep things as simple as possible.

Coming in at 1004 points we get:

ELITE:
Wolf Guard Squad
1x WG with combi-melta
2x WG with combi-melta & power fist

Wolf Scout Squad
5x models, including 1x meltagun

TROOPS:
Grey Hunters Squad
5x models, including 1x meltagun, 1x power fist
1x Razorback with Las/Plas or TL Assault Cannon

Grey Hunters Squad
9x models, including 1x meltagun, 1x power fist, 1x wolf standard
1x Drop Pod

HEAVY SUPPORT:
Long Fangs Squad
6x models, including 5x missile launchers

Long Fangs Squad
6x models, including 5x missile launchers

Long Fangs Squad
6x models, including 5x missile launchers

~~~

Gameplay:
So with the above example list there would be a couple of things to remember as far as playing it goes.

1- Wolf Guard are like Sergeants: SW units do not have a 'sergeant' model in them, so most are LD8 and all models are the same without upgrades. Wolf Guard are like veteran squads in terms of stats and the equipment they have access to. They have a unique rule, however, which allows them to split up during deployment so that you can put 1 squad member in another unit in your army as a 'leader'. They are not independent characters, or even characters at all, so they wind up filling a roll similar to sergeants when used in this regard.
From the list above, the idea is that the WG with combi-melta goes with the scouts, and the two with combis/power fists go with the Grey Hunters.

2- Behind Enemy Lines: Wolf Scouts have a special kind of Outflank rule, which is pretty awesome. Basically instead of outflanking normally, on a roll of 1 they come in from the right, and a 2 from the left. On a roll of 3-6 they come in from any edge the SW player wants, including the opponent's table edge. This makes them a great disruption unit. Additionally, SW scouts are not newbies like normal SM scouts are, so they have better stats, and when they are joined by a Wolf Guard, he can use Behind Enemy Lines with them as long as he's not in Terminator armour.

3- Long Fangs are amazing: Long Fangs are very inexpensive points-wise. The 3 units in the list above are 140 points each. Additionally, Long Fangs can take more heavy weapons than regular Devastators; they can take 5 instead of 4. Finally, as long as their pack leader (they actually have a 'sergeant' unlike most SW units) is alive, they can split their fire between 2 targets each turn. This is why missile launcher Long Fangs are so popular with a lot of people, particularly on the competitive scene (from what I understand, at least).




Hope that helps.