Help a beginner.

[Tyler Sanguinius]

Hello, I'm fairly new to the whole Warhammer 40k universe and especially the board game.I've barely had time to read a little about the Space Marines (my personal favourites momentarily).I know they're the easiest race around and it's a cliche that I want to start with them but I just like their background.Especially the Blood Angels with their vampiric style.I hope i'll get the codex soon so I can understand the basics of leading a Space Marine army, and what I want to know are maybe tips/hints or just the plain basics to making a starting army.I don't have a really big budget and the Game Workshop store opens here in January.Any help would be greatly appreciated, thank you.

[DeAd_cOmMaNdO]

the best thing for a new player to do is to go with an army he likes the look of. best thing to get first is a box of tactical marines and have fun gluing them up and painting them. the space marine and blood angel codex would be a good thing to get next, as well as the 40k rulebook

[Icarus Athrasuriel]

Yes. Though, may I recommend, getting the Battle for Macragge boxed set. it comes with Space Marines, plus another race called Tyranids that you can guage the Marine's strengths and weaknesses with. Additionally, it comes with a copy of the rule-book, a set of scenarios, and some pwning scenery.

[Tyler Sanguinius]

Well I already have the rulebook and read most of the basic rules, I only need to get my hands on the codex.And about the Battle for Macragge I have a friend that bought one and I found the units they give you in it really worth their money.Plus I'm interested in playing Tyranids also cause they just look awesome .

[DeAd_cOmMaNdO]

nids are the army i started with and theyve given me lots of good games!

[Icarus Athrasuriel]

Good stuff. I often play with my friends nids cos' they look cool.

[Mr Nude]

Yeah you should go with whatever army appeals to you, ive pretty much ended up owning all of the codices and army books looking at varuous armies.

[experiment 626]

well, one thing i recomend is to just play your blood angels as regular 'codex' space marines untill you get the basics of game play down
once you get a feel for the game rules and such, then you can start adding the proper blood angel special rules (such as the death company!)

a few things about the bloody ones too;

- blood angels are the ultiment 'assaulty' space marines! however i'd honestly avoid taking any unit of veteran assault marines as they are currently way over-priced for what they do! just stick to honour guards and/or an assault squad or two (not to mention your death company!!!)

- blood angel scouts are some of your best assault troops! cheap pts-wise and just as good as a regular assault marine!!! their only real drawback is that they can't stand upto the same amount of enemy fire as proper marines due to their lighter armour...

- due to their tendancy to go nutty, avoid taking devastators!!! on average they'll secumb to their raging thirst at least once a game and be be forced to run forwards... (meaning they'll be unable to fire their big guns!)
stick to baal predators and predator annihalators for your anti-hoard and/or anti-tank work!

- you will need to buy some death company! a chaplain is a great leader for any blood angel force as he brings extra death company marines with him these guys will be your main assault unit!

- due how the death company works, you'll also want to avoid taking alot of high pts units/models... having 2 or 3 terminators go mental and join the death company is annoying to say the least!

hope this helps,
cheers!

[Inquisitor Rosenadel]

Being a Blood Angels player, I would also advise taking Blood Angels. While they are very good at assault, I'm not sure that they are the best Marines at it. I think Space Wolves give them a good run for their money, at the least.

Both armies are really cool and have excellent fluff. Pick what's coolest.

Example: I loved the look of Space Marines. I knew that was the army I would play. Since my friends got me into it, they advised against regular SMs because they were so overused. They described Blood Angels as really good assault troops where "event he dreadnoughts have jump packs!" Well as it turns out, they don't, but they were still a wicked cool army that I always enjoy playing with. Mind you, my battle record isn't great, but I still love them (and screaming at my chaplain when he screws up, which is nearly all the time).

So choose something that you will like playing with win or lose.

[MSguardsmen]

the best advice i can give you is get a job at Games Workshop.

1. you get paid a decent wage
2. you get paid to play a great game
3. pretty good discount on expensive models
4. you can get any model you need.
5. did i mention you get paid to play?

as a starter i would recomend getting a small army of Space Marines teach you whats what. However you should quickly move on to a different army; simply due to the fact that everyone and their grandmother has a Space Marine army (seriously my Grandmother before she died had a Space Marine army (god rest her soul) and she would always beat my guardsmen with it).

also since everyone is starting to get a space marine army lots of people are starting to make list that are designed to kill space marines such as my mechanized divisions of chimeras that can put out 17-18 shots in one turn.
3 multilazer,3 hull mounted heavy bolter, 3 heavy stubber, 6 lasguns, 1 heavy weapon, 1 hunter killer missile.

get 3 of these things and a few sentinels with multilasers and a few bassies and leman russ and no SM army will stand long

[Cagarner]

I think it also depends on your playing syle with other game, like strategy games.

If you like to sit back and let the enemy get blown up by the big guns, Imperial Guard are perfect for you. Maybe Tau as well.

If you like to run in and slaughter all who stand in your way, swamping them with shear numbers, then go with tyranids or maybe orks.

If you like to slowly advance, while producing a steady rate of fire, choose space marines, necrons.

If you like to mix them around e.g. assault and shooty, then get chaos, eldar.

I think thats all of them. You can obviously mix them around and get a shooty tyranid army or something, but most armies focus around a particular style of play.

[masterofweirdness]

My suggestion if you like Space Marines is get Chaos Space Marines.

They have a few differances (their terminators, guys with super heavy armor and really good guns) are a bit differant, but, I have heard they are more balanced. I haven't played them myself but want to get a few models and try them out (of course I want to do the same with the eldar and the Imperial Gaurd ).

If you want space marines, though everyone plays them (especially as the Dark Angels, a space marine chapter with their own codex are being redone) feel free to try them!

Space Wolves - Assault Monsters
Blood Angels - Assault Monsters with shooting
Black Templars - BIG Squads
Dark Angels - I don't really know, I think they're more shooty than most Space Marines, and have cool fluff.

Or failing that you could make your own chapter! The Space Marine Codex has a several differant "traits" and "drawbacks" for differant things (like assaulting? get Take the Fight to Them and your tactical squads are better at assaulting!).

[Peter]

i think the new codex makes things more expensive for a blood angel army but assault squads as troops and a rending death company have to be good

[Inquisitor Rosenadel]

Originally Posted by Peter

i think the new codex makes things more expensive for a blood angel army but assault squads as troops and a rending death company have to be good

This is true. Everything seems a little more expensive than I'm used to, but the rending Death Company and Assault Marines as troops make up for it. Somewhat... They're still expensive, so you'll almost always be pretty outnumbered.

[Stubber]

Beware the Thread Necromancers.

Being an elite army with a lot of CC specialisation Blood Angels will almost always be outnumbered.
BA players just have to get over this and work on their good points (Baal predator anyone??? 10 AP4 shots)

[JoeGuardsman]

I don't know who told that guy that you get paid to play. Maybe you get played to run demo games and beginner games...oh the joy, but in 9 months of employment I played maybe a handful of games and that was only because my managers was really cool.

Stitch you were describing rules for the old Angels and not the White Dwarf update. Blood Angels can be played as regular marines now without having to worry about them running forward but with assault squads as basic troops I doubt anyone will.

Battle for Macragge is a great start. I still can't imagine joining this game without my starter set. It didn't have a cool name but it had 40 spiky gretchin and the ugliest marines to ever grace the planet...and oh yeah a paper Ork dreadnaught. Definately play some games out and decide well. I went through a short Chaos phase and a short Ork phase when I started and it was a bit of a waste of money.

[experiment 626]

Originally Posted by Stubber

Beware the Thread Necromancers.

Being an elite army with a lot of CC specialisation Blood Angels will almost always be outnumbered.
BA players just have to get over this and work on their good points (Baal predator anyone??? 10 AP4 shots)

just because BA's now have assault marines as troops is no reason to neglect your tactical and scout squad options! sure scouts eat-up a valuable elites choice, but they're still dirt cheap troops and now with the combat squads rule, you can effectively have 2 squads for the price of 1!
as a dark angel player, i can asure you that the combat squads rule is plain gold... having upto twice as many scoring units as your opponent thought you had is a definate psychologically damaging weapon. plus, it makes the razorback a viable option for tactical squads now...

instead, having assault marines as troops simply free's up your fast attack slots for even more speeders and makes bike squads an option. (as before, most players likely never gave bikes a thought because they compeated for space with speeders & assault marines who were always better in a BA army!)

cheers!