Warhammer 40K - Basic Army Theory
Monday, November 24th, 2008 Subscribe To Our Feed
When starting a table top miniature war game, your army is a big investment in time, money, and effort. So here’s a few tips for new Warhammer 40k players to help you get started on the right foot.
Study The Rules.
Get your codex of choice and the main book. Take time to read both of them thoroughly before you start building an army. Putting together a decent starting force is much easier when you have a pretty clear idea of how it all is supposed to work.
Pick Out Models You Like.
It may sound obvious, but remember as you’re designing your army list, start with models you like. After all, if you don’t like the models, you won’t be as motivated to get them built and painted, and you probably won’t enjoy fielding them as much. Taking into account the vast majority of units in 40k can be made useful, just pick out a few favorites that you’ve just gotta have and go from there.Your army needs something that will deal with all the main types of enemy.
That would be heavy infantry (like Space Marine Terminators), horde infantry (like ork boyz), Psykers (like Chaos Marine Sorcerers), light tanks (like Eldar Vypers), and heavy tanks (like Necron Monoliths). Whether you decide to deal with them up close or at long range, just be sure you can kill it. After you’ve got at least one thing to do that, then find 1 or 2 more that can pull it off in a pinch, preferably one of your other existing units. If that one squad gets plastered, you don’t want the rest of your army to be crippled.Cover the mission objectives.
By this time you can kill most enemies, and that covers 2 out of the 6 basic missions. Now you need to make sure you have a few units that can take and hold objectives. Doing that will keep you covered for the other 4 basic missions.
Proxy first, buy later.
Before shelling out the dough, make a list then try to proxy it with stuff you have handy. Try it out by playing a couple games and make sure you like it. Try tweaking it a few times. Once you’re pretty sure you’ve got a decent start, make the plunge and start collecting that army. And you never know, maybe I’ll see you on the battlefield!
