What is the best 40K army for beginners?

[Bigred]

What is the best 40K army for beginners?
Simple question - the tricky part is not only what your answer is - but WHY?

The army has to balance both ease if learning for a new player and ease of collectability and fielding a cost effective army (in points and real world dollars).

Space Marines
Space Wolves
Dark Angels
Blood Angels
Grey Knights
Imperial Guard
Chaos Marines
Chaos Daemons
Eldar
Dark Eldar
Tau Empire
Necrons
Orks
Tyranids
Adepta Sororitas

Lets hear it!

[Emerald Rose Widow]

Space Marines easy, they are fairly durable, and the rules are fairly straightforward. They have some decent strengths and weaknesses, and lots of options to play around with.

[Katharon]

Vanilla Marines.

[Mr.Pickelz]

"Vanilla" or Codex: Space Marines, they have basic and simple enough rules that a newbie can easily get into, while also offering a very straightforward unit by unit break down. Said units are also forgiving and plentiful enough to give expansion options as well. With the new book, the Chapter Trait system gives a bit more special rules to remember, but they are easy to incorporate and don't require lots of "book-keeping" or a table-top marker system.

Unlike: Orkz, tyranids, or IG where the player has a steeper learning curve and must have good understanding of basic mechanics to make an army-list, generated from these books, work.

[Deadlift]

I would have said marines, but to buck the trend I said Necrons. Dead easy to paint, and quite a forgiving army. No real bad choices in the codex and the rules aren't difficult to understand.

[Wolfshade]

Spacemarines

I would have to say Space Marines. Which, I know is kinda boring, but they are quite simple to play, their rules make them very forgiving to play, so if you make a mistake you still have T4 and 3+ Sv.
...
Then once happy with the mechanices, read the fluff, look at the models and which ever one you like the most play them

Interesting to see how things have or haven't changed from these:

[url]http://www.lounge.belloflostsouls.net/showthread.php?34976-A-Newbie-s-Guide-to-Army-Choice[/url]
[url]http://www.lounge.belloflostsouls.net/showthread.php?26952-Most-forgiving-army-for-a-new-guy-to-start-with[/url]
[url]http://www.lounge.belloflostsouls.net/showthread.php?20696-Best-Starter-Army[/url]

[Popsical]

Id go for tau gunline. No need to learn much about the assault phase. Plenty of park and shoot units. Can make small forces of suits.

[knas ser]

I voted Space Marines. It's the obvious choice. They are the standard against which all other armies are compared. If your army is faster than Space Marines, it's a fast army. If it has better fire power, it is a shooty-army. Everything you ever say about an army is based on the unspoken comparison to Space Marines.

I was tempted to vote Dark Eldar just for humour value, but there's always someone out there who will take me seriously.

[Mr Mystery]

Another vote for the Adeptus Astarters here.

They're iconic of the game, flexible in the system, easy enough to assemble (not too fiddly), and straight forward to paint to a decent level. Plus they have a decent back story to each Chapter, whilst leaving you free to create your own.

[Mike X]

Definitely Space Marines. Not because of any specific rules, but because they're basically half a dozen (if not more) armies in one. That means if the player doesn't like vanilla marines, he could easily switch to Blood Angels, Space Wolves, Dark Angels, Black Templars, or even Chaos Marines.