Warhammer 40K Newb tips

Savagezion

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I just started getting into Warhammer 40k miniatures games and am stoked but it is a tad overwhelming. I am hoping our site has some Warhammer vets to kind of point me in the right direction. I always wanted to play Chaos if I played and stared at it from afar. However, now a league is starting in my town and me and a buddy are diving in. We got the Defiance box set that is out right now and he took the marines while I took the Chaos guys. I need to know beginner stuff for Chaos. I would like to run the Black Legion faction but have read some things that discourage them in small games because they are a specialty army. How small or large do games get?

We played a sample game out of the book tonight but we aren't sure if we did it all right anyways. It was an ambush mission on a 5' x 5' table. Not much terrain except his dining room table's centerpiece. I got clobbered but I think my cultist armies suck. I am looking for a good beginner faction and some justification for choosing that faction. I REALLY would like to play Black Legion. SO much I have thought about just playing an unbound army and making a faction up that would be the Death Knights or something. (I like the black and gold color scheme) I ain't really sure what else to put so I am just gonna post this and see what happens. No information is worthless information to me at this point.
 

nomotog_v1legacy

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The right direction is maybe a different forum like dakkadakka. If it was your first game, then ya you likely did a lot wrong. I think chaos is underpowered, but it's been awhile since I played.
 
Aug 31, 2012
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Buy on Ebay.

Painting all the little fuckers gets tiresome. Luckily you chose Black Legion. Can of Hycote Matt Black Acrylic car paint costs about £2.99. Bam! Your army is painted in about 5 minutes. You can add detail later.

40K is generally meant to be played with a decent amount of terrain. You can of course do whatever you like with friends, but lots of terrain is common.

You can still play dudes painted as Black Legion and use a standard chaos marine army list. Anyone who says otherwise is a twat.

If you'rr playing with friends don't be afraid to mix things up, use your imagination. If you want to give something a go that deviates from standard rules, armies, scenarios or whatever then why not? See what they think.

Can't really get into specifics with chaos, latest chaos army lists I've got are in the Realm of Chaos books.
 

Muspelheim

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I don't know if it has changed from back in my days (2005-ish), but I think Space Marines could be a good beginner's choice. They're fairly forgiving, last I knew. They can take a good amount of punishment and they're less likely to run away on you. They had a lot of different units for different tactics, too, if memory serves. You could go for a mobile and dynamic force, or just root a good line of heavy guns into place and blast stuff. And they had rather few numbers on the battlefield back in the day, so it was a bit more economic, although I doubt that's still the case these days.

They are fairly boring as a faction, but it was a nice and safe place to start. As for the colour scheme, you could invent your own chapter that incorporates the features you want. The old sphess mehreen codex had a guide for that, and I'd imagine there's still a system for it in the newer ones.

They're also already fairly knightly, so if that's a theme you'd like, you're covered. You could give them a distinct death theme, too, and you'd be all set.

But that aside, if you like the army you've got and don't really want to play another faction, I'd suggest sticking to the army you've got and keep gritting your teeth, even if it feels like the hard way. The game is not really as difficult as it appears, and you'll git gud before you know it.

Captcha; push harder. It evidently suggest playing Imperial Guard, but they can be a tricky bunch to keep on the board...
 

Therumancer

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Nov 28, 2007
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Savagezion said:
I just started getting into Warhammer 40k miniatures games and am stoked but it is a tad overwhelming. I am hoping our site has some Warhammer vets to kind of point me in the right direction. I always wanted to play Chaos if I played and stared at it from afar. However, now a league is starting in my town and me and a buddy are diving in. We got the Defiance box set that is out right now and he took the marines while I took the Chaos guys. I need to know beginner stuff for Chaos. I would like to run the Black Legion faction but have read some things that discourage them in small games because they are a specialty army. How small or large do games get?

We played a sample game out of the book tonight but we aren't sure if we did it all right anyways. It was an ambush mission on a 5' x 5' table. Not much terrain except his dining room table's centerpiece. I got clobbered but I think my cultist armies suck. I am looking for a good beginner faction and some justification for choosing that faction. I REALLY would like to play Black Legion. SO much I have thought about just playing an unbound army and making a faction up that would be the Death Knights or something. (I like the black and gold color scheme) I ain't really sure what else to put so I am just gonna post this and see what happens. No information is worthless information to me at this point.
Chaos is relatively easy to set up, and really with that army I wouldn't worry too much about "faction". Half the point of Chaos is that it's roving bands of warriors and scattered cults and the various "chapters" of Chaos Space Marines and such can be heavily separated. As the novels and stuff show some of them only even bother to talk to others in the same chapter under extreme circumstances. While a chaos force can be "themed" and you could say do everything Black Legion, that doesn't play to the strengths. As a player you should be thinking in terms of your warband being that of a leader strong enough to hold these various factions together. That said Black Legion is fairly easy to work with, those are Abaddon's guys if I recall, and really he's pretty much the poster child for exactly what I'm talking about since his entire schtick is to organize competing chaos factions and the various warbands and launch a crusade which inevitably ends with him getting his butt kicked and running away to try again later.

One of the big "strengths" of running Chaos Marines is that your get to use certain elite units as regular troops. Assuming of course your playing battleforged rules which is where this becomes important. Basically you have up to two HQs units and both of them by being pledged to a chaos power then gets to select the elite unit of that chaos power as a regular troops choice. Being all one chapter generally means your either faction neutral and won't have any of these special selection abilities, or will only be able to select one elite troop choice as a normal unit. Basically if you have a Chaos leader who is dedicated to Tzeentch and marked you can select "Thousand Sons" as a normal troop choice as opposed to an elite troops choice. This also sort of demonstrates my point sort of as "The Thousand Sons" are chapter (sorcerors leading the animated armor once worn by their brothers) but are spread around so much they will join any particular army or warband that can convince or force them to swear fealty. If you do Slaaneesh, Khorne, or Nurgle you can get Noise Marines, Beserkers, or Plague Marines respectively. If you say build a force where your leaders are a Tzeentch sorcerer and a Slaaneesh chaos lord for example you can thus put both Thousand Sons and Noise Marines into your force and count them as regular troop choices. This means you can say use your elite selections for other things like Chaos Terminators, Chosen, or Dreadnought/Hellbrutes. While they can stack pretty high (ie if you buy a lot of figures you can put a lot of them into one single unit of troops) regular chaos marines and cultists tend to be fairly weak, more or less fodder, which is compensated for by your ability to use elite troops as normal troops which is what your supposed to be doing for the backbone of your army. That said mobs of cultists are great for tying up units (since there are only so many turns) or soaking up damage as cannon fodder, you shouldn't be relying on them too much to actually kill anything of note, or seriously hold objectives. In 40k there are always exceptions, but as Chaos your big strength comes from your elite units and the ability to potentially put a lot of them on the table.

I've recently gotten into 40k somewhat and have been slowly building up some different forces on the principle of buying cheap or broken figures, repairing, and (re)painting them when needed. I have a decent collection of chaos, ultra-marines, and Black Templars right now. It looks fairly eclectic though due to some of the repair jobs and lots of old and new figure mixing and such to fill out units. That said I'm a newbie myself and not someone to ask for deep tactical advice since I don't really get to play, but I have done a bit of reading, and have some experience with playing Warhammer Fantasy back when I was in a more intense tabletop gaming phase (albeit this was years ago) so I get the principles pretty well and can get the gist of what the various armies are supposed to try and do.

If your looking for simplicity it seems like the easiest force to play is to simply do Space Marines, a basic chapter like Ultramarines or whatever that doesn't mix it up with a lot of weird rules. They have good basic stats and a pretty straightforward strategy. They aren't very sneaky as in what you see is what your getting, but they are tough enough to compensate for how relatively basic they are. They also have a little of everything potentially, psi, ranged, melee, armor and artillery, etc... with Chaos it's similar but you need to keep an eye on all the weird little things your units can do, without that, or without making good use of it, chaos is going to be defeated in a straight up slugfest most of time since the game is balanced considering it. More than other forces it seems like having a good plan is important since the way you ally with chaos powers and get to choose your sorcery and elite units/mark advantages/icon advantages off it and you want all of that stuff to play off of it. Sort of like in Warhammer Fantasy (at least when I played) a chaos force that say just throws down a bunch of basic units and rushes straight for the objectives (hold territory, etc...) is usually going to just get torn down no matter how big and intimidating the demons and stuff look (the other guys all have their own nasty stuff, they always do), against some armies you might get away with it if your like running 100% Khorne and have tons of boosts, but that winds up suffering against enemies ready for it or with a lot of finesse. With say a mixed force (wise) or running any of the other three chaos powers you need to play to your strengths. A Nurgle army for example shouldn't be expecting a lot of short term success or to drop units really fast, or to be able to just move into an objective area and hold it (or whatever) instead you need to play around with your plague abilities, adjust the odds in your favor, and play a relatively long game based on what your sorcerers can do and how they can syngergize with allied units. With Tzeentch your largely trying to get into a position where your sorcery can do most of the real damage, your units are mostly there to back up what is going to be a magic heavy strategy, etc... For example in 40k (which your doing) half the point of Thousand Sons who are slow, with a minor durability boost, is that every unit has a sorcerer (how high powered comes down to what you spend on them). They do okay damage but are largely going to be soaking damage for that guy. The very fact that mark of Tzeench gives a durability boost (an extra invulnerability save) sort of demonstrates that your playing guys who should be expecting to take a lot of fire (and yeah, if you say have a level 3 sorcerer in the unit, 150 points just for that, your opponent is probably going to be trying to kill it before it can do anything, have multiple units with sorcerers in your force as normal troops, plus a sorcerer commanding, and well... you can see where that's going and sort of how you play it since it's difficult to kill all of them before they can do anything, and well played sorcery is nasty in both fantasy and apparently 40k).
 

L. Declis

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Right; if you want to play Cultists, it may be worth grabbing some various human/Chaos models and simply making a crap ton of them. You want at least 30 though. The Fantasy range, as well as the Imperial Guard mixed with Chaos parts, will help provide both character and model count.

But you're right, cultists in of themselves are not game-winnings; they are great for simply pinning a unit under weight of numbers, or holding an objective.

Also, half of 40k is the terrain; it's worth investing in the terrain, as you'll use it more than any unit in your army and it makes the game both MORE balanced and better to look at. And with 40k, looks are 90% of the game.

Also, please note that the starter set is not great for Chaos; we get considerably less things in the starter box. If you've got the Codex, use points.

My advice is this; you see the other box set, with the Land Raider and Terminators and such? Grab that, and then grab Abaddon the Despoiler.

(Forgeworld has a MUCH better Abaddon, if you're willing to shell out the cash).

If you have Abaddon, the army is as Black Legion as it gets. Make sure to grab Veterans of the Long War to help against Space Marines.

In terms of what to get, my advice is this: Pick units you want to play, or want to paint, or love the fluff. Because you have to paint them, and if you don't like the unit, painting it won't be fun. Remember you're not going to Golden Daemon standard; just go for base, flat colours to start with, throw on some basing, and you're done. So spray them black, paint the edges gold, paint the metal bits silver, give them red eyes, paint bone bone coloured and fur brown.
A snow base always looks good with Black Legion, so paint the base white and then put the snow basing (with glue) on it.

You can always go back to spruce them up later, but just get them done. Trust me, when you're playing, just getting the paint on them will do, they don't need light sourcing or non-metallic metal.

Also, a great way to save money; DO NOT BUY ANY NEW UNITS UNTIL YOU HAVE PAINTED WHAT YOU HAVE.

Also, PLAY GAMES WITH WHAT YOU HAVE. THINK ABOUT WHAT YOU'RE ENJOYING USING, OR WHAT YOU ARE MISSING. MAKE THAT YOUR NEXT PURCHASE.

But if you don't really know, get the starter set and the starter set expansion for Chaos, and then grab Abaddon on top of that. You now have a 2000pt Chaos list with a bit of everything, as well as Abaddon, 5 Terminators and a Land Raider which is what we call a Deathstar (anything it hits, dies).

EDIT: Also, don't forget you're Chaos. Back in the day, we only had access to a few Daemons. But now, they have an entire Codex of their own you can also use. So if you're interested in any Daemon models, grab them and use them as well (new Bloodthirster looks good)
 

Aeshi

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I don't play 40k myself (so I don't know how much help these'll be), but I do know a little site by the name of 1d4chan that has a collection of 40k guides. [http://1d4chan.org/wiki/Warhammer_40,000/Tactics]
 

Therumancer

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Nov 28, 2007
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L. Declis said:
Right; if you want to play Cultists, it may be worth grabbing some various human/Chaos models and simply making a crap ton of them. You want at least 30 though. The Fantasy range, as well as the Imperial Guard mixed with Chaos parts, will help provide both character and model count.

But you're right, cultists in of themselves are not game-winnings; they are great for simply pinning a unit under weight of numbers, or holding an objective.

Also, half of 40k is the terrain; it's worth investing in the terrain, as you'll use it more than any unit in your army and it makes the game both MORE balanced and better to look at. And with 40k, looks are 90% of the game.

Also, please note that the starter set is not great for Chaos; we get considerably less things in the starter box. If you've got the Codex, use points.

My advice is this; you see the other box set, with the Land Raider and Terminators and such? Grab that, and then grab Abaddon the Despoiler.

(Forgeworld has a MUCH better Abaddon, if you're willing to shell out the cash).

If you have Abaddon, the army is as Black Legion as it gets. Make sure to grab Veterans of the Long War to help against Space Marines.

In terms of what to get, my advice is this: Pick units you want to play, or want to paint, or love the fluff. Because you have to paint them, and if you don't like the unit, painting it won't be fun. Remember you're not going to Golden Daemon standard; just go for base, flat colours to start with, throw on some basing, and you're done. So spray them black, paint the edges gold, paint the metal bits silver, give them red eyes, paint bone bone coloured and fur brown.
A snow base always looks good with Black Legion, so paint the base white and then put the snow basing (with glue) on it.

You can always go back to spruce them up later, but just get them done. Trust me, when you're playing, just getting the paint on them will do, they don't need light sourcing or non-metallic metal.

Also, a great way to save money; DO NOT BUY ANY NEW UNITS UNTIL YOU HAVE PAINTED WHAT YOU HAVE.

Also, PLAY GAMES WITH WHAT YOU HAVE. THINK ABOUT WHAT YOU'RE ENJOYING USING, OR WHAT YOU ARE MISSING. MAKE THAT YOUR NEXT PURCHASE.

But if you don't really know, get the starter set and the starter set expansion for Chaos, and then grab Abaddon on top of that. You now have a 2000pt Chaos list with a bit of everything, as well as Abaddon, 5 Terminators and a Land Raider which is what we call a Deathstar (anything it hits, dies).

EDIT: Also, don't forget you're Chaos. Back in the day, we only had access to a few Daemons. But now, they have an entire Codex of their own you can also use. So if you're interested in any Daemon models, grab them and use them as well (new Bloodthirster looks good)
To my knowledge the Demons are their own faction now, and from what I've seen in the core rules they don't have unity with the Chaos Marines the way various imperial factions do in among themselves. So while in theory you can bring demons in they can't start treating each other's abilities as friendly, which represents something of a disadvantage given that your going to probably want to use icons and stuff for radial buffs. It's probably better to stick with either Chaos Marines OR Chaos Demons. Of course I could be mis reading that but I do not think so.

Right now it seems like the only faction that can really do mixed armies is the Imperium, and even that has limitations on it. It's easy enough to say bring in general inquisition or witch hunters into say a marines force or whatever since your largely using a fancy, multi-talented command unit that might say have monkeys that can buff the weapons of all your troops before the battles, or an assassin, but some forces don't play well with each other just the same. For example there might be a backdoor way but as a general rule it seems like you can't legally have Sisters Of Battle and Space Marines fighting together as part of the same force, even if the SoB are technically flagged under inquisition, excepting of course the Grey Knights which seem to be able to get around that limitation by playing around with the faction rules.

I didn't really look at earlier versions of the rules, but I'm guessing it was decided for balance reasons that being able to perfectly stack all the Demon and possible Marine benefits together would be potentially overpowering. Of course then again I admit I'm going by the core rules, but by what the Demon codex itself says. It also supports the fluff to an extent because in both the wargaming fluff and the novels, Chaos Marines are pretty much pathetic schlubs being taken advantage of by chaos as opposed to being partners with it. Demons wouldn't really give them much respect because at the end of the day any Chaos Marine or Cultist who dies gets to enjoy an eternity of having their soul tormented by those same demons depending on who they bonded with, or everyone if they didn't ally with any particular power. Every once in a while some Chaos Marine actually does well enough to get elevated to demonhood and avoids this fate, which is why they all remain faithful, hoping to remain spared despite having fallen prey to corruption. At the end of the day the forces of chaos kind of want the chaos marines to fail so their souls can be playthings, and of course the more damage they do in the meantime and chaos they spread trying to prove themselves the better. It seems to be somewhat implied that this is one of the reasons why the Black Crusades always end so badly, not only aren't the forces of chaos quite as powerful as they present themselves to be, but the powers running the show fundamentally don't give a crap and they probably get more tainted souls watching someone like Abaddon choke than they would if he actually succeeded more, especially since they he'll inevitably go and rebuild to do the same thing again and as long as he does they get ancient souls and delicious misery to feast on... some of that is speculation of course, but the point is that the lack of demon-chaos marine solidarity seems to make a degree of sense. The demons probably look down on the chaos marines for the most part.
 
Aug 31, 2012
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Therumancer said:
To my knowledge the Demons are their own faction now, and from what I've seen in the core rules they don't have unity with the Chaos Marines the way various imperial factions do in among themselves. So while in theory you can bring demons in they can't start treating each other's abilities as friendly, which represents something of a disadvantage given that your going to probably want to use icons and stuff for radial buffs. It's probably better to stick with either Chaos Marines OR Chaos Demons. Of course I could be mis reading that but I do not think so.
Nope, they are battle brothers. Seperate faction, but work together just like the Imps do.


Thats from WD but it's the same in the MRB
 

rorychief

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If you've got troops and a hq from a starter box you're well on your way.
I wouldn't invest in something like imperial spacemarines just because they are the most standardized and easy to start with. Models are expensive, assembling and painting is time consuming, so if you like chaos go chaos. You'll only regret wasting time with an army that seems vanilla and uninspiring by comparison

Play as many small games as you can with what you have and decide what to buy next from what you feel you're missing. You can play games where you have your marine units equipped with two melta guns (anti tank) and then play another where they're equipped with two flamers (anti light infantry) or two plasma guns (anti heavy infantry) From there then decide what works most effectively and bring in something more specialized to the role if you feel you're lacking. Most people don't mind letting you count a special weapon as something different than what's on the model, though if you do so be sure to tell your opponent first in the interest of sportsmanship.

Try monogod lists for the experience. Proxy (count as) your marines as berserkers for a game and give everything else the mark of khorne. Do this with each god and get a feel of how these troops operate before investing in actual models for them. This way you can discover what mix of gods suits your preferred playstyle.


If you're building an army according to fluff don't feel limited by anything. The fluff is written in such a way as to allow justification for any combination of troops. Contradictions breed excellent stories. Have plaque marines and cultists with the mark of tzeentch in the same army but tzeentch and nurgle hate one another? That's ok. Your powerful chaos lord has them behaving themselves under his will while manipulating their mutual hatred to fuel competitiveness which ultimately serves him in controlling them further. A lord of slaanesh might be keeping a disgraced lord of khorne as a leashed pet, and its only a matter of time until the lord of khorne snaps out of his drug induced stupor and kills him, while the lord of slannesh is too sadistic and proud to simply kill him before this happens etc.

Don't feel obliged to have representatives of all four gods if you're going black legion. Also don't feel obliged to keep everything undivided (unaligned to any particular god.) This limitations are stifling and will punish you when awesome models are released and you have to go 'oh well I already promised I wouldn't have x so guess I can't use them.'

Buy a heldrake. They're considered overpowered because they're fliers and are dificult to hit without specialized anti air troops, while their bale flamer is ap 3 (marine melting value) and torrent, which means you get to place the thin end of the flamer template anywhere with 12 inches of the heldrake. This is devastatingly effective, many tournament armies field three. Even though its overpowered, you can take one to give you an edge which will allow for more personal but less effective troops. As in if you really want something because it looks cool, fits your theme or aesthetic, but the rules for that model make it impractical in terms of winning battles, make up for that impracticality with something like a heldrake. This freedom allows your army to contain both themed and competitive elements.

Consider allies. Daemons work great and count as battel brothers so they're essentially the same army as your chaos marine primary army. You get only one hq for allies, daemons allow you to field four heralds as one hq choice. There is a playstyle called deamon factory that can be so effective as to be overpowered, employing it as an allied detachment will reign it back into the realms of fair.
It works like: Take four tzeenth heralds, give them all master 2 or 3 and daemonology psychic powers. Each turn these heralds will use summoning powers to summon units of daemons, most all units of daemons are available this way. Heralds can also summon new heralds that come in at mastery 2 so your ability to summon multiplies exponentially as these new heralds make more heralds etc. One of the powers a herald can roll sacrifices it to become a greater daemon. By using this I have had six greater deamons on the field at once, generating over 2'000 points worth of models which I did not pay for or begin the battle with. Again this is such a broken exploit that it takes all fun out of playing, but as an allied detachment it can allow you access to all daemons based from taking one hq and one troops choice. Keeping this small will mean you only summon one or unit a turn and later two, preventing the unstoppably multiplying horde effect from getting out of hand in a six turn game, as your opponent can always just target the fragile heralds.
 

Therumancer

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Nov 28, 2007
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Zykon TheLich said:
Therumancer said:
To my knowledge the Demons are their own faction now, and from what I've seen in the core rules they don't have unity with the Chaos Marines the way various imperial factions do in among themselves. So while in theory you can bring demons in they can't start treating each other's abilities as friendly, which represents something of a disadvantage given that your going to probably want to use icons and stuff for radial buffs. It's probably better to stick with either Chaos Marines OR Chaos Demons. Of course I could be mis reading that but I do not think so.
Nope, they are battle brothers. Seperate faction, but work together just like the Imps do.


Thats from WD but it's the same in the MRB

I stand corrected, though I did double check to see if maybe I had a misprint. Kind of odd though since I just had a lengthy conversation with someone online who was commenting on exactly the same thing I was and the unfairness of his Emperor's Children themed army not being able to field Daemonettes of Slaanesh as full allies for some reason, and while I can't find where I read it, I am pretty sure at some point I saw them marked as allies of convenience myself, but I am apparently wrong.
 

Ieyke

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Savagezion said:
I just started getting into Warhammer 40k miniatures games and am stoked but it is a tad overwhelming. I am hoping our site has some Warhammer vets to kind of point me in the right direction. I always wanted to play Chaos if I played and stared at it from afar. However, now a league is starting in my town and me and a buddy are diving in. We got the Defiance box set that is out right now and he took the marines while I took the Chaos guys. I need to know beginner stuff for Chaos. I would like to run the Black Legion faction but have read some things that discourage them in small games because they are a specialty army. How small or large do games get?

We played a sample game out of the book tonight but we aren't sure if we did it all right anyways. It was an ambush mission on a 5' x 5' table. Not much terrain except his dining room table's centerpiece. I got clobbered but I think my cultist armies suck. I am looking for a good beginner faction and some justification for choosing that faction. I REALLY would like to play Black Legion. SO much I have thought about just playing an unbound army and making a faction up that would be the Death Knights or something. (I like the black and gold color scheme) I ain't really sure what else to put so I am just gonna post this and see what happens. No information is worthless information to me at this point.
Allow me top direct you to my original home forum, the absolute pinnacle of all things you could ever need regarding Space Marines and Chaos, The Bolter & Chainsword.
http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/

It is the tightest run ship on The Internets that I've ever encountered.


The folks there know EVERYTHING you could possibly need. The depth of tactics and lore they've accumulated is as vast and deep as it could possibly be. The moderators strict, but utterly fair. There are veterans members who can tell you things about Imperial and Chaos factions that you yourself are unlikely to ever discover on your own. Things long forgotten, long out of print, obscure, or things they themselves have pieced together from a thousand scraps of information.

Some of the members GENUINELY know more about 40k than Games Workshop's authors themselves, and indeed some of the authors are member and come seeking our advice and opinions.

More specifically, let me direct you to the Chaos Space Marine Sub-Forum:
http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/forum/20-x-chaos-space-marines-x/

-TEC
 
Aug 31, 2012
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Therumancer said:
I stand corrected, though I did double check to see if maybe I had a misprint. Kind of odd though since I just had a lengthy conversation with someone online who was commenting on exactly the same thing I was and the unfairness of his Emperor's Children themed army not being able to field Daemonettes of Slaanesh as full allies for some reason, and while I can't find where I read it, I am pretty sure at some point I saw them marked as allies of convenience myself, but I am apparently wrong.
I only own a copy of the MRB, so it's possible there might be something in one of the codices that says otherwise, but technically the MRB would supersede any earlier codices (which CD & CSM are) and I can't see anything in GW's online errata about it.

Maybe it was some sort of force organisation issue?
 

Aetherlblade

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What you could also do is play a digital version of the boardgame, there are some people who remade most of the game in Maptools for example, if you are familiar with that. Allows you to learn how to play the game with friends, switch race, etc. without leaking money.

Not as good as the real thing of course, but wallet friendly.
 

Terminal Blue

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I haven't played in years, but I do still enjoy the painting and modelling, so I'll focus on that..

Undercoat in black

There are, IMO, two reasons to undercoat in white.

* You are a super good painter and you want really bright colours to show off all the fancy detail.
* The model you're painting is going to be mostly white anyway.

Black undercoating will almost always produce a better effect, and is usually faster to paint because all you have to do is work up from black to whatever color you want things to be.

Using a spray is a lot better than undercoating by hand, but if you do have to undercoat by hand make sure you water down the paint and don't use too much in one coat. There's nothing worse than a really thick, heavy layer of undercoat which obscures all the detail, and it won't do its job as well as several thin coats. Personally, I tend to use a spray coat first and then a hand-painted coat of watered down black paint.

Get into drybrushing

Drybrushing is an incredibly easy technique which takes virtually no effort to learn but produces a really nice effect. Basically, drybrushing means getting a completely dry brush, dipping it in a little paint, wiping most of the paint off and then brushing it lightly over the surface of the model. This creates a highlighting effect on the raised sections which looks really cool but actually takes almost no effort. By varying the ammount of paint on the brush and how lightly you press, you use drybrushing to make almost anything look more three dimensional and, as mentioned, it takes virtually no effort. You don't need a particularly good brush either, so it's a good way to make use of old beat-up brushes.

A little more about Black Legion colors

I should probably say that making "pure" black look good is a bit harder than most colours. If you add too many highlights, it won't look black any more. If you don't highlight at all though it will look unrealistic and a bit dull. To get around this, be extra-vigorous at wiping the paint off your drybrush and go very very softly so that only the most raised or flat surfaces get any paint at all. Some people recommend mixing a little bit of brown to the grey you'd use to highlight onto black, as it looks a bit more like natural light. I've never done that though.

If it gets too light, you can use ink or very watered down paint to bring the shadows back down.

For gold, highlight with silver. It might seem counter-intuitive, but actual gold colours don't tend to look realistically metallic because they're too dark.

For (white people) skin, start with a base coat of brown and then highlight with whatever skin colour you want. Most people like chaos characters to look very sickly and pale, so don't worry about picking a slightly unnatural skin tone.

Another cool thing about chaos is that you can save a little effort by not painting pupils. It gives them a nice "possessed" look.

Avoid the standard green bases. This is a bit of a personal thing, but I think they never look good, especially for 40k. Go for dark brown or something muddy and war-torn. The base is textured, so you can highlight it. I always think it's a nice effect to paint the edges of the base in a different colour (black works).

Varnish

Painted miniatures are incredibly fragile without varnish. They will almost inevitably get chipped and end up looking bad. There are two types of varnish. Gloss varnish is stronger, but has a weird shiny, next-gen graphics look to it, although that might be what you're going for. Matt varnish is less obvious but also less protective. Ideally, you'd use a layer of gloss and then a layer of matt (and then perhaps a hand-painted layer of gloss on anything you want to look shiny) but that's time consuming and means buying more than one type of varnish. Any varnish will help a lot with longevity though.
 

Lightspeaker

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Dec 31, 2011
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On a somewhat related note...how is that introductory box? I've always been kinda curious to get into wargaming a bit and many years ago I had a bunch of Games Workshop Lord of the Rings stuff from a magazine series that me and my sister bought but neither of us really got into it properly.

But now that I'm a little older and a little wiser and a little more patient its been quite tempting to pick up the Dark Vengeance box to take a look and see what I missed about it when I was younger. It seems relatively cheap and its tempting to take the chance and try it out.
 
Aug 31, 2012
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Lightspeaker said:
On a somewhat related note...how is that introductory box? I've always been kinda curious to get into wargaming a bit and many years ago I had a bunch of Games Workshop Lord of the Rings stuff from a magazine series that me and my sister bought but neither of us really got into it properly.

But now that I'm a little older and a little wiser and a little more patient its been quite tempting to pick up the Dark Vengeance box to take a look and see what I missed about it when I was younger. It seems relatively cheap and its tempting to take the chance and try it out.
The box in itself is pretty good value, especially if you're looking at it from a # of miniatures/$,£ or whatever unit of currency you use. The Chaos Marine models are really nice too, the regular chaos marines look shit in comparison (though IMO they look shit anyway).

The main gripe people have is that you're stuck with marines or chaos, but if you're new to 40K and you want marines/chaos or don't really know what you want army wise it is a comparatively cheap way of getting 2 armies that you and a friend can play at home to see if you like the game and can be bothered painting the little bastards.

If you decide you want to play chaos, it's really good value, because you can paint the marines up as chaos units and if you're feeling adventurous you can get rid of or "defile" imperial iconography with a modelling knife. Or just paint them up as regular Dark Angels and claim they're a bunch of the fallen. The heavy plasma gun and terminator assault cannon would need to be "counts as" and you'll be a bit heavy on HQ type units, but you could use the marine commander as another aspiring champion and the librarian as a chaos sorcerer. It's all quite fudgeable. You would of course need to shell out £25-30 or your regional equivalent for the CSM codex though.
 

Here Comes Tomorrow

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Jan 7, 2009
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beastro said:
The only way to win at WH40K is to not play.
This. Wasn't going to say it but since someone else did...

There are better games out there. The obly real good things about 40k is how customisable the armies are and some the models themselves. Everything else is trash.
 

Savagezion

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Mar 28, 2010
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Thanks for the input guys. The biggest help was seeing that Chaos actually benefits from running multifaction. I am still looking stuff up and trying to paint some figures. I get really into the painting aspect. I think it is cool you actually get points in the league for painting figures. You guys handed me a good amount of information to work with and I appreciate it. I think I am gonna try and run Black Legion to get my feet wet (and probably ass kicked) then I may start looking into creating the Death Knights faction.

Admittedly, I just always wanted to paint the little figures but getting a strategy game that comes with it is awesome. It's probably the most complex (due to information being spread out) strategy game to learn I have encountered yet. It isn't discouraging, but it is a pain in the ass. With luck, I will get to play a couple sample games by league rules this week which should help. This will all probably be plenty to help me get prepared for that.