The Hardest Army to use?

[Ikarus]

Well ofcourse there could be talk of the 'best' army but how about the hardest?

I could do a poll (though I am busy at the moment, so just say your thoughts!)

My thoughts would have to go with Dark eldar as they are very fragile and unforgiving.

[MSguardsmen]

my boy you must be kidding me. certainly the hardest would have to be the Daemonhunters Grey Knight Army. Sure they have some of the best troops and the shrouding which is only good at long distances. but they already have the smallest numbers, they need to get into combat to actually stand out and there are already a hell of alot of armies designed to wipe out Marines of ever sort.

so my vote is for the Grey Knight Daemonhunter Army

[hairyyahoo]

eldar can be a bit tough to get to grips with at first as your units are fragile and terribly interdependant, its kinda like learning to conduct an orchestra(sp?). you can just put them on the table and play but without some finess you'll probably loose more than you win

i vote eldar

[Ikarus]

Originally Posted by MSguardsmen

my boy you must be kidding me. certainly the hardest would have to be the Daemonhunters Grey Knight Army. Sure they have some of the best troops and the shrouding which is only good at long distances. but they already have the smallest numbers, they need to get into combat to actually stand out and there are already a hell of alot of armies designed to wipe out Marines of ever sort.

so my vote is for the Grey Knight Daemonhunter Army

I am going to counter this idea slightly, given that a GK knight is as a bit equivalent to an Emperors Children Marine if you think about it.

Talking about EC with sonic blaster, which is common equipment.

Both 2x on the move shooty.
Both have CC capabilities (could argue that GK is dominant in some ways).
GK Has the ability to prevent long range shots with their armor and psyker abilities (i think?).


Low Model Count, and anti-tank could be a problem.

GK has Allies
EC has its CSM roots.

What do you think?

[The Drop Zone]

I second the Dark Eldar
i have played every marine army there is and eldar de and now ig

the de are by far the most mentally challenging army to play you either play them smart or you lose

im sorry but gk? how id love to have land raiders and dradnaught that can kill at long ranges with the dark eldar .. oh how id kill for a vehicle with better than 11 armor... no offense but give me a break

with ther new eldar codex thay still have fragile units but what they have more than makes up for it

after de goes orks if you dont get lucky or play therm exactly perfect youll have a long list of losses before you get a win

[r4wr89]

Originally Posted by The Drop Zone

I second the Dark Eldar
i have played every marine army there is and eldar de and now ig

the de are by far the most mentally challenging army to play you either play them smart or you lose

im sorry but gk? how id love to have land raiders and dradnaught that can kill at long ranges with the dark eldar .. oh how id kill for a vehicle with better than 11 armor... no offense but give me a break

with ther new eldar codex thay still have fragile units but what they have more than makes up for it

after de goes orks if you dont get lucky or play therm exactly perfect youll have a long list of losses before you get a win

de for sure. no questions asked. GK are hard because they're expensive marines. DE can at least get some models on the field, whereas GK, at least where i've seen them, are almost always outnumbered, which is annoying and daunting for the GK player, as 40k [i think] is very much psychological. bigger guns and more people=good.

haha :] just a thought or two.
-ant

[DeAd_cOmMaNdO]

id have to go with eldar and grey knights. EC equipped with othing but noise weapons are very similar to GK but the fact is not every army is equipped this way - many EC armies hardly have any noise weapons making them more like normal marines.

i could say DE but i dont have much experience with them, so my vote is Eldar and Grey Knights 9pure GK armies, mind)

[Stubber]

I would have to say Dark Eldar.
They are near impossible to play with but you do get the occasional player who's figured out how to use them right and they can't be beaten. (I faced one such player in a tournament...cringe, I lost 2000 Vp's to 700.)

[Heroka Vendile]

I would say Dark Eldar are a potent tournament army, as you often see them quite high up on average, not nessessarily winning all the time, but certainly one of the highest achieving overall.
They are however a bit do-or-die, you either get it exactly right or you loose completly.

The times i've played them, i've found Nids to be a bit of a pain to use.

[experiment 626]

for the beginner;
without doubt space marines is the hardest army for new players to learn to use well! 99% of new players have the distressing habbit of loading up on all the expensive shiny stuff meaning their armies are rather unbalanced and easily overpowered due to their extream low numbers...

for the tournament player;
again, i'm going to say space marines! (vanilla, untraited marines who don't use drop pods either.)
almost all tournamnet armies are designed to kill space marines which makes it very difficult to play a basic space marine army and win at the tournament level... (going for a high body count is about all you can do.)

overall hardest army to learn; dark eldar hands down... everything about them is so very fragile! sneeze near their vehicles and they crash and burn. they also suffer from very average stats and low strength for a hard-core assault army, and all those agonisers can really start to add up!
if your 1st assault fails, you're pretty much screwed because everyone else is either tougher and/or can simply drag the dark eldar down through sheer weight of numbers...
(and let's not forget to mention that their models are butt ugly too!)

cheers!

[Torquemada Coteaz]

I'd say squats
all your models are expensive and on ebay
and no up to date rules.
so hard to use it's virtually impossible (unless you are willing to convert 200+ dwarves/cadian bits, and make up rules for some of the weapons and base most of other rules on the IG codex)

[Killermoose]

Heh, Sqauts. I've always seen that Orks are difficult to play. You need big mobs of them, but they also need to be quick. So you stick them in Wartrukks. But then you don't have big mobs, so they get shot/hacked up in assault quickly. So then you drop the Wartrukks for big mobs, but they end up getting shot before reaching the enemy.

[rintinglen]

I have to go with those who go with GK. While they are buggers in CC, their near total lack of infantry based heavy weapons means that once the landraider goes up in a cloud of Dark Lance-induced smoke, they have only a bare handful of troops left. "Always out numbered, always outgunned."

In my observation, DE usually do pretty well, primarily, I think, because the guys who are playing them are usually dedicated, long-time players who understand them and use them to best advantage. I will say that they are the most fragile army, but also the fastest. They are about unique in that they can still get a powerful charge off in turn one.

Another army that deserves an honorable mention is the CSM World Eaters. They are like the Grey Knights in that they have a high individual points cost and some of their special rules make them at times uncontrollable. The sight of my poor berzerkers hurrying after a bike sideways across the battle field right through the sights of 24 odd Space Marines made me think for a Moment of Custer's Last Stand. The end of the Rhino Rush more or less put an end to their utility, though they still can be murderous on the charge. They just don't live long enough to get into charge distance.

[Killermoose]

Though Grey Knights are nasty in Land Raiders. I played someone a 1500 point game, and all he deployed to start off with were 2 Land Raiders and a Dreadnought. The game ended with my Wraithlord with one remaining wound in combat with one of his deep-striking Terminators, in the centre of the board. And the mission was Take and hold, so no-one won. Sheer madness. Though to be honest, my Uber-Autarch and his 4 Shining Spear bodygaurds were all hacked down by a single Grey Knight.

But I still agree, they look like you need a considerable amount of skill to play well with them.

[Dan296]

world eaters can be tricky, but some people dont know that they have to assault, and ignorance is death.
tyranids can also be tricky if you max out on the big gribblies and lots of biomorphs, sort of like space marines maxing out on the big shiny weapons.

however, i will jump on the dark eldar bandwagon here for hardest army to learn. theyre rules are patheticly bad. they are an assault army, yet they can get hacked down by guardsman. grizzled vets though, will destroy pretty much anyone.

[experiment 626]

well, the reason i didn't jump onto the grey knights bandwagon is simply because, well, they're not ment to be a 'proper balanced army on their own!' they were designed to be used in conjunction with other imperial forces such as inquisition units, imperial guard and/or space marines...

because of this, i have never agreed with almost any of the suggestions about how to "improve" them as an army! (you want rhinos and bikes, then go play proper space marines - not grey knights!!!)

so basically, if you're playing pure grey knights, then you have to realise that you're purposly playing with only half your "real" army!
(us poor radicals on the other have absolutely no way of playing even a semblance of an army form our own bloody codex!! )

cheers!

[Ikarus]

Originally Posted by Torquemada Coteaz

I'd say squats
all your models are expensive and on ebay
and no up to date rules.
so hard to use it's virtually impossible (unless you are willing to convert 200+ dwarves/cadian bits, and make up rules for some of the weapons and base most of other rules on the IG codex)

Squats.. Thats a whole different topic on so many levels XD...

(You don't know my secret annoyance against squats )

[Torquemada Coteaz]

my annoyance against squats isnt very secret.
they are expensive and hard to find, the models arent "GREAT" and people dont know how to convert them 99.77%of the time.
well, back on topic then. Dark Eldar would probably be the "hardest" one to use as in one of the least nub-friendly of the races available now

[Ikarus]

Originally Posted by Torquemada Coteaz

my annoyance against squats isnt very secret.
they are expensive and hard to find, the models arent "GREAT" and people dont know how to convert them 99.77%of the time.
well, back on topic then. Dark Eldar would probably be the "hardest" one to use as in one of the least nub-friendly of the races available now

After messing around with some things.. on IAL.

I think:

Dark Eldar is actually not TOO hard to play, but it is not the easiest army out there.

I think what makes them hard is that they are too predictable; they lack variety.

You have the Wych Cults, Raider Rush, or something else O_O, while people would take this to their advantage and tool their list to MURDER D.E. in seconds.


Off topic: Squats, heh I thought your mentioning of them would spark the annoying topic of 'squats revival' that annoys me to the core, as squats to me, do not fit in the universe of ME!

[NearSightedFarseer]

the thousand sons can be a tricky army to get a handle on, what with the low model count and slow plodding pace

[Killermoose]

Yeh, I find Sqauts pointless. And really annoying.

I've heard that DE aren't that bad to use. In fact, in the right hands, they can really whoop ass. I agree that if you had a list tooled up to beat them you'd murder them, but as hardly anyone plays them no-one bothers to make it. Most of their models are just hideous though (in a bad sculpting way). Only the Incubi look great.

[The Horror in the Shadows]

Grey Knights all the way, great as allies to guard + marines but fielded in a pure GK army the lack of numbers especially if a player's suffering form "AllTheShinyThingsitis".
Too easy to be mobbed by almost all other armies in Close Combat

[witchking92]

Thousand Sons. My friend plays them and I don't think he has won with them ever. They are too few, too slow and suck in combat. The can't out shoot me(marines) because I have so much more stuff, they can't out fight me, the can out psyker me but that is about all.

I out shoot, out fight, out manuver them, they are really hard to play.

Witchking92

[The Drop Zone]

Having played GK as both an idependant army and as ally to other sm units as an ally they give sm's a very distinct advantage by themselves uggghhh forget it..

I dont know that i readily agree with the DE are predictable route. At least not in my case... Of course therr is the raider rush tactic but depending on points the force needs some balance

and this may be a bit of a shock i have never used an agonizer nor will i think it is a waste of points. Thats just my op, id rather my archon use a punisher torment helm and wound on 3's with the combat drug str bonus instead of 4's, and why should i waste my archon and his 6 attacks on a vehicle thats what blasters and dark lances are for !!!!

[MSguardsmen]

alright my math is sucking right now with senior projects, wurthing hights, macbeth, work, and other daily struggles of life. Math at the moment is in the back seat with duck tape over his mouth. there so now we know that i suck at math. however it does seem that the grey knights and dark eldar are getting very close in the hardest to use choice. let me just add instead of getting dreadnaughts as elites like i believe that most space marine armies do we can only have them as heavy support which takes up what precious little space we have in our choices.