Warhammer 40K - Basic Army Theory

When beginning a table top miniature war game, your army is a big investment in time, money, and effort. To help out, here’s a few tips for new Warhammer 40k players to help you get started on the right foot.

Learn The Rules.

Obtain the main book and your codex of choice. Once you have them, take time to read both of them thoroughly before you start building an army. When you pretty well know how it’s supposed to all work, it makes it much easier to put together a decent starting force.

Get What You Like.

Getting what you like sounds obvious, but as you’re designing your army list, be sure to 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. Also, the vast majority of units in 40k can be made useful. Since that’s so, just pick out a few favorites that you’ve just gotta have and go from there.You need something that will deal with all the main types of enemy.

That would be Psykers (like Chaos Marine Sorcerers), heavy infantry (like Space Marine Terminators), horde infantry (like ork boyz), light tanks (like Eldar Vypers), and heavy tanks (like Necron Monoliths). You can deal with them at range or up close, just be able to kill it. Once you’ve got at least 1 thing to do that, 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.Make Sure To Cover All The Mission Objectives.

At this point 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. That will keep you covered for the other 4 basic missions.

Try Proxy first, then buy later.

Before shelling out the dough, make a list then try to proxy it with stuff you have handy. First, try playing a couple games and make sure you like it. Try tweaking it a few times. After you feel like you’ve got a decent start, you can make the plunge and start collecting that army. And you never know, maybe I’ll see you on the battlefield!

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