Help - 4 well-balanced and fun/fluffy armies for new group: Eldar, SW, SM, Tau

[Power Klawz]

Tau can be "fun"...

Just spam Vespids and kroot.

[chicop76]

Tau can be "fun"...

Just spam Vespids and kroot.

That can still do well. I did that to be nice and it was ever worst on him. My whole army could fire at him in turn one. you can runlike 33 kroot per squad. That's almost 200 kroot.

[rle68]

one word for space wolves ... Njal always always always.. after that have fun

[GrauGeist]

Theme-wise you're pretty narrow with 2 flavors of Imperial Space Marines vs 2 flavors of "good" Xenos. Pretty limiting.

IMO, as you have Dark Vengeance you should reshuffle:

1. Your Eldar for Xenos

2. DV Dark Angels for the Imperials. Add a Razorback and Devastators.

3. DV Chaos Marines as Chaos. Add a box of Raptors and a Rhino, and consider a MaulerFiend.

At this point you've covered Imps, Chaos, and Xenos. The DA and Eldar can Ally OK, so you need an ally for the Chaos Marines:

4a, Chaos Daemons are the best fit, and permit excellent Eldar v Daemons battles. Chaos is the "hook" for 40k, so doubling down here is just great.

4b. Traitor Guard are your next best choice, but get super-pricey and require a lot of theme work. If you didn't have Eldar, they'd be a great choice to pair with the Dark Angels. Even if you get Daemons, Guard are iconic and fantastic if someone really gets into the game.

The fact that you've mostly got newbies playing DV starter against your Eldar doesn't really help them know what they want to play.

[Deadlift]

Personally my advice would be, buy and use what you like the look of. Painting is as much fun as playing and you should enjoy both equally. When painting models you like its much easier.

Mix in your gaming nights with painting nights. Just not so much beer when painting, what looks amazing on the night can look not quite so much the next day.

[chicop76]

Personally my advice would be, buy and use what you like the look of. Painting is as much fun as playing and you should enjoy both equally. When painting models you like its much easier.

Mix in your gaming nights with painting nights. Just not so much beer when painting, what looks amazing on the night can look not quite so much the next day.

I agree.

I think orcs and nids are fun armies to play with and against.

Daemons can be fun or can cause rage quitting.

The vengence set is actaully a good starter set. As long as you don't add heldrakes both armies will be fun. Also avoid daemon allies which can tip the favor heavily for chaos.

[GrauGeist]

If someone asks the question, then there should be no surprise when an answer comes up. As a "matched" set of armies, I'd like to assume the armies are built for fun vs WAAC play.

[Idaho11]

Thanks for all the advice, guys!

A few things:
1) My Eldar are still in plastic. We've just been playing the DV scenarios using those two armies.
2) I appreciate the recommendations for different armies, but they aren't going to change - people picked the ones they liked the look of, and none of us really care that much about how they play to pick an army that we don't want to build/paint/look at.

I think we're going to pick up a few troop choices, an HQ, and one other unit, and then build from there.