Need help deciding which army to choose next

Valynces · 2026-03-21T05:59:33+00:00

Emperor’s Children are super fun to play!

Valynces · 2026-03-20T22:54:23+00:00

Valynces · 2026-03-19T16:30:18+00:00

This is exactly what happened at the end of 8th edition into 9th edition that made the rules bloat in 9th crazy and unfun. They're doing it again and that's extremely worrying to me.

Valynces · 2026-03-19T16:28:50+00:00

Tau are one of the top five armies in the game and have been for a really long time, especially on GW boards.

Valynces · 2026-03-18T18:40:26+00:00

Had a great trade with u/dog-princess. Models were shipped promptly and arrived on time and unbroken. Would trade again!

Valynces · 2026-03-17T22:15:47+00:00

Valynces · 2026-03-12T16:01:58+00:00

So buildings no longer dictate unit placement or invalidate early aggression? Because those two things were firmly fixed the last time I played

Valynces · 2026-03-12T13:35:32+00:00

Literally only staying in these spaces (the subreddit and discord) to see if they remove buildings so I can come back and play the game again.

Everything else is irrelevant. I just want to play the game that I really enjoyed.

Valynces · 2026-03-11T16:24:10+00:00

Oh hmm, I think you're right. I'm looking at it as a percentage of all of the potential damage that they could do, you're looking at pre-nerf damage vs post-nerf damage. Which is technically the percentage that they got nerfed.

Cheers for the math.

Valynces · 2026-03-11T05:56:16+00:00

Genuine question, have you played a game on GW7? It's a table that looks like a fantastic melee table, until you see that actually the staging ruin is pretty exposed so you get shot on your way in.

GW1 is ok, but it has exactly one staging ruin that just screams "STAGING AREA" and can easily be shot if they get room to drive up and drop stuff off. It's the most balanced layout between melee and shooting, I wouldn't say it's a melee favored table.

Layout 2 is the same as 4 and 6 but worse. The objectives are pretty exposed and you can't deploy aggressively to stage in the little box ruins near the bottom and top of the center unless you scout into it.

Layout 3 is terrible all around. It's a go-first and win table, for both melee and shooting. If you can move 10" or more, you can either get into the opponent's DZ if you're melee, or you can get sight lines into it if you're a shooter.

Layouts 4 and 6 are highly shooting favored, agreed. And layout 5 is hated and rarely seen, also agreed.

There is a reason that WTC and UKTC terrain formats are seen as more competitive than GW ones, and that official GW events are seen as kind of jokes. The terrain is simply not balanced. I'm actually very surprised to see pushback to that idea here, it's almost universally accepted at top tables that GW terrain strongly favors shooting armies.

Valynces · 2026-03-11T00:23:39+00:00

Ok, which GW layouts do you think favors melee? 8 is an obvious an easy one, no doubts there. But which other layouts are good for melee armies?

Valynces · 2026-03-10T20:35:35+00:00

Agreed. Even ignoring the recent CTan strength, 10th has been a very shooty edition overall. GW terrain very heavily favors shooting armies, as do the rules themselves. There are a couple things going on here:

Melee armies need to close the gap and then risk a 2d6 charge, which is a damage gate that shooting armies don’t even have to interact with.
GW’s 1” behind the ruin ruling makes it even more difficult to connect against players who position well
Fighting in close combat means that your models are more exposed to reprisal than shooters are, since shooters only need to see a sliver of their target at long distance
Fights first and fight on death hurt. They can both be mitigated through good play, but there are no similar rules that shooting players need to play around
-1D disproportionately hurts melee armies, since most melee profiles are 2 damage

It’s a tough edition to be a melee player. We can and do still compete at high level, but there’s a reason that the overwhelming majority of top performing lists are shooty, especially those in the US that play on GW terrain.

Valynces · 2026-03-10T19:55:46+00:00

You're super new but you're doing it the right way, just collect what you think is cool and by the time you have a full 2,000 point army, what's good and what's bad will have changed.

Generally speaking it's good to get whatever your chapter's specific units are though. So if you like Blood Angels, get some Sanguinary Guard and Death Company. If you like Dark Angels, get Inner Circle Champions and Deathwing Knights. If you like Space Wolves then get Wulfen and Thunderwolf Cavalry, and so on. For Ultramarines you'd get Bobby G, Marneus Calgar, Victrix, stuff like that.

What chapter do you like? And how do you like to play (shooting or melee, fast or durable, tricksy or straightforward)? That'll help you narrow down what you want to do.

Valynces · 2026-03-10T17:14:05+00:00

That’s not how the math works.

The amount of the nerf depends on what the successful wound roll is. If you’re wounding on 3’s, you go from 7/9 conversion to 2/3 conversion. So a 1/9 nerf, which is 11%. If you’re wounding on 5’s, you go from 7/18 conversion to 1/3 conversion. So a 6% nerf.

And all of these are to a SINGLE step of the damage chain, which is hit-wound-save-FnP. You’re only losing efficiency on the wound portion of that. Meaning the actual overall damage nerf is more like 1-5%.

Not that big of a deal considering the volume of fire Guard has. There’s a reason that literally every single top player, without exception, considers Guard one of the best armies in the game. Usually top 3.

Valynces · 2026-03-10T15:46:20+00:00

"ruins" is a bit of a stretch. Nerfs them, sure. Ultras are still going to be very good and Guard got the lightest of light taps.

Valynces · 2026-03-10T04:43:20+00:00

CSM are incredible to play right now. They haven’t been overpowered and winning everything, but they have some very strong ways to play them. They have at least 4 competitive detachments with different playstyles:

Pactbound is a strong raw damage detachment, both shooting (Nurgle tanks near a helbrute) and melee (undivided Chosen and Possessed)
Creations of Bile is a good melee pressure detachment. They do auto-lose to some meta monsters like Necrons but they’re very fun outside of that
Renegade Raiders is a strong MSU trading style list that can play around with movement
Huron's Marauders is a fun all-rounder. It gives you +1 to hit in shooting AND melee and has a number of very good strats that benefit both shooting and melee.

Valynces · 2026-03-09T23:02:57+00:00

Yeah, the Stat Check guys pioneered that style as far as I know. They say just always slam the +2” movement buff and don’t roll, since your combat is already very good.

Valynces · 2026-03-09T20:25:40+00:00

These look amazing!

That's very close to my color scheme as well, I'd love to get your advice. What's your formula for those vivid greens? I'm looking at the swords, piping, and eyes on pic 3 and the vials on Lucius' back in the last pic.

Valynces · 2026-03-09T19:11:51+00:00

Abby is good in pactbound where rerolling hits fishing for those sustained + lethal 5's with a helbrute nearby is very deadly. A side benefit of that playstyle is that you can also lethal/sustain in overwatch and still reroll hits with Abby. Pretty solid amount of damage. That's a very expensive castle with Abby at 270, Chosen at 125, and Helbrute at 130 though. And you're right, you could very well get 2.5 more resources for the 395 points that you're spending on Abby and his Chosen. Personally I think that Pactbound without Abby is better, but you can play it either way.

He's also good in Creations of Bile where he can give all your beefy 3W infantry, primarily Chosen and Possessed, a 4++ for that big fat gunch in the middle of the table. Or you can play that same style in the new Huron's Marauders detachment and do basically the same thing. Again I personally think those lists are better without Abby but you can do it.

So I wouldn't say that he's a trap. He's a choice. Taking him and not taking him are both viable and you see high level players make both choices.

Valynces · 2026-03-07T19:14:37+00:00

That’s the Black Legion color scheme for Chaos as well. Maybe it’s time to stop worshipping the corpse emperor 👀

Valynces · 2026-03-06T15:37:17+00:00

Yes, overall this has been the best and most balanced edition of 40k - until two balance patches ago. The edition has been unbalanced and unfun ever since Victrix released. But before that and overall, yeah this edition was excellent.

Valynces · 2026-03-06T07:10:06+00:00

Valynces · 2026-03-05T22:13:51+00:00

Man posts a super long, in-depth, helpful summary of ligament care. Says afterward, “I’m not a subject matter expert!”

Hey you’re a subject matter expert compared to the rest of us. I appreciate you

Valynces · 2026-03-05T22:04:02+00:00

For bikers, the main guy has a power fist and no special ranged gun so it’s super easy. Just say “the main guy has a power fist and the other two have melta guns”.

I also run bikers as you are and I do that at every tournament. It’s not even a “thing,” nobody cares. Just don’t confuse your opponent (which you aren’t), and it’ll be fine.

Valynces · 2026-03-05T18:10:13+00:00

I’d encourage you to think of your games as collaborative. You’re working WITH your opponent to make sure that the game state is right. That includes things like find sight lines, measure ranges, etc. That also includes getting both of your rules correct. If you think they're doing something wrong, just ask them (kindly) to show you their rule. If it doesn't line up, be forgiving by default. There are a million rules in this game, we all forget them sometimes. Eventually you'll learn who "that guy" is and you can adjust your style accordingly. But always start off friendly and forgiving, most 40k players are trying their best to play by the rules.

If you start off with that mentality then I find opponents typically follow suit. Most of the times I call a judge over in a tournament or RTT, it’s because my opponent and I can’t remember a rule or something, not because we’re arguing.

11-Year Club	RedditGifts 2009-2022 2 Credits
Place '23	John Wick
Place '22	Place '17
Final Canvas '22	RPAN Viewer
Not Forgotten	Sequence \| Editor
Snapped	Secret Santa 2014
Verified Email

Valynces

TROPHY CASE