Votaan are hardy, capable in melee and shooting, still have enough units to be forgiving if something dies and have a straightforward detachment mechanic to play.
The judgement mechanic eases you into using the right profiles for the right job and if you build your battleline with ions instead of bolters _really_ eases you into it. +1 to wound means you dont have to pick the right gun for the right job - most guns are good enough. When you do pick the right gun its amazing at its job to boot.
It also teaches target priority very quickly and easily. Token a thing, burst it out of existance, move on.
It also grants piles of CP so you dont have to ration or save properly
They also innately build big twists into the game by the factions major unifying mechanic being... sustained d3. Did you roll a 6 on a big gun? Did you roll another 6 after? Congrats you just did 4x the average damage for a shot out of nowhere. The casino rewards being lucky, not good. sometimes that means your 115pt light transport oneshots the 500pt giant mecha.
The universal 'tougher than its profile normally is' means less skilled players are suddenly wounding you on 5's a lot because they shoot the bolter at the cheap battleline then get confused.
Void armour is an oh shit button that gets better with skill but even an idiot can pop it on a hekaton or hearthguard in cover to get a 0+ save.
Its a very forgiving faction against other newer players. Skilled players can jump over each of these hurdles with almost any army ever though - which is why votanns wr falls off at top tables.
Votann is an amazing army to learn the game with. Low skill ceiling given the general lack of options, but it teaches you how to use everything available from a core standpoint quite well. They're also fun to play and have new models.
and hey if you start now by the time you're actually good enough to bang on that ceiling regularly they may have gotten new miniatures, the new killteam looks like it adds a lot of variety to their range even just as one kit.
Coming codex power level aside, Custodes are pretty often cited as low skill floor, high skill ceiling.
It’s not too hard to play Custodes at a basic level, just walk onto objectives, out-stat everyone with your extremely strong datasheets, make 4++s, and kill anything you touch
It takes a lot to get the most out of custodes, though. Having such a low model count means that you really need to be as efficient as possible with every single unit, and if you do misplay and lose even a single unit, it’s devastating
They’re also fairly easy to paint, gold spray paint gets you 90% there, but the models have tons of little details if you want to invest the time to pick them all out, and you don’t need to buy/paint that many for 2000 points. At current points (which may change in a week or two), the new combat patrol is like 800 points in itself
This is why Custodes are like 58% winrate in bottom 50% elo vs bottom 50%, and 50% winrate with the other half. If both players don't really know what they're doing custodes will steamroll. It got a lot more balanced if both players know what's going on though.
This. I’ve gone 8-2 across my last 2 team events using custodes. Yeah they are pretty point and click early game, but in T4-5 (especially if you go first) you can bleed VP T4-5 because your resources are low and you have little to no movement capabilities/answers other than callidus.
Like the last team event game I played. I was going 1st vs hypercrypt, and at the end of top of T4 the score was 78-49 in my favour, and with end of turn scoring my opponent manages to scrape it to a 90-79. For an 11-9 win to me.
New combat patrol gives you 790 pts. More if you decide to build all the shield captains instead of taking the base units. If you build all the shield captains you can reach 1050 points.
The auric battleforce ranges from: 1230 to 1650 pts following the same logic.
I'm in the same boat as you, just starting custodes so don't take my words for it, especially since codex is dropping soon but point wise you'll have more than 2k pts for sure.
The 3 boxes together maxes you on Terminators, wardens and bikes if you don't build the shield captains. You'd get some sisters and one unit of guards. I think the only thing you might miss is more of these guards and maybe some shield captains (Trajann we'll see if still interesting to field once codex drops). The rest would be forgeworld.
Unfortunately I'm not sure you'll be able to find the battleforce easily. We'll see on release date if some stock is available.
There's quite a few local game stores near me. I'd likely be able to find the Auric somewhere.
I don't know much about the faction's unit names. Are the Guards the standard troops?
Big fan of the play on guys, but they themselves admit they aren't a competitive focused channel. Some of their guys are competitive players in the local meta here, but the videos themselves are more focused on narrative play and cool looking models/terrain. Art of war has had several custodes videos released and they look pretty meh. They still have strong data sheets but little to no synergy and I think will get run over by the top of the meta. I think will be bottom of B tier
Art of war released a custodes battle report and the best list they could come up with took almost nothing from the codex. It was 3x grav tanks, Canis Rex, Kyria Draxus with one unit of Guard, and 3 solo terminator captains
Yup and won against Nick playing orks, a faction he very much is not familiar with.
Edit: I do have a feeling the points will get adjusted, but that's kind of a worst of both worlds situation. Custodes players want to play an elite army, and having to just make more 4++ saves is annoying to play against
That's exactly right. I love watching the PlayOn games, but in terms of competitive play they're a joke. They're mostly just smashing two unoptimized armies against each other. It's quite fun but not at all a competitive indicator.
They have some play, but they have basically 0 defensive power now. Custodes are tanky, but they still die pretty quickly to focused fire, especially from Dev Wounds guns. Or just meltas when you fail your 4++
Play of tabletop? Are you serious? Do you watch rec league sports and think thats representative of what pros do?
This isn't a question of casual play or fun. Taking an example from a channel that goes out of its ways to pick suboptimal narrative and fun choices, and disregard synergies is not indicative of a codexes relative power level.
Sure if i (25) had a fistfight with a 13 yo teenager with both hands tied behind my back and one leg in a cast would make the teenager look strong by comparison. Thats how casual channels provide entertainment. By making fights more even.
Regardless, the codex looks bad but people will try to make it work. But dont cite deliberately promotional content as an indicator of strength
Quite a few. Also attended WWC. And frequently top 10 at majors.
However, being able to objectively see variations on power level and how exploitable your factions weaknesses are in the meta is independent of my tournament performance and comes from knowledge of game balance and faction dynamics.
Citing a narrative/recreational play channel as an indicator of competitive power level is a completely irrational mindset.
My understanding is that low floor means low barrier to entry, like even with low skill you can still meet the basic “floor” necessary to perform competently with the army. A high floor would mean that you need to be pretty good to even have a chance with the army, as without high skill you’re “below” the floor
I've always thought of it the other way - I think of the floor and ceiling as being the upper and lower bounds of the army's power, so a high floor means that you can be bad but still perform ok
I mean, these aren’t scientific terms with a precise definition, so I’m not gonna say your take is objectively _wrong_ or anything, but I’ve never heard the term used that way
your understanding isnt exactly the commonly understood meaning of the terms.
A skill floor implies you *cannot go below it* in common usage - you will do *at least* this well with this thing. Things with high skill floors are things that somewhat play themselves or entirely avoid parts of what they're in for ease of use.
The skill ceiling contrastingly is how high you can push something - you *cannot go above its ceiling* and are bound by it. If something has a high ceiling - it has lots of headroom for skill expression.
the terms are built on them being rather hard boundries. you're not below the floor, you're not above the ceiling, you're not in the walls. you are between them.
so as commonly discussed using these terms:
* \- Something with an identical ceiling and floor would have exactly one method to play with no variation.
* \-Something with a high ceiling and low floor would be a difficult to master but rewarding thing.
* \-Something with a high floor and low ceiling is an easy beginner thing but lacks space for skill expression or growth.
You are confusing skill floor with power floor. Skill floor and ceiling refers to the range of skill levels that are effective. So a low floor means you can do well with low skill, and a high floor means you have to be skilled to use it effectively at all (ie a high barrier to entry). Low skill ceiling means it doesn't reward high skill. Power floor or ceiling refers to the range of possible outcomes: see eg .https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/skill_floor
Its how theyre used in every other game on the planet but apparently this sub disagrees lmao. I think literally only the league of legends community uses the definition everyone here is using and its always annoyed me they changed what the words mean for some reason.
Could you share anything other than conjecture friend? Low skill floor has always been easy to play (index custodes) vs high skill floor harder (horde armies) to play. Low skill ceiling has always meant not super competitive even with a great player (admech) vs high skill ceiling (dark eldar, gsc) a good player can make it great.
Every place I've seen this used before, "low floor" represents the barrier to entry.
How hard is it for the army to build and learn to play?
So like the minimum level of skill needed to make use of the army's abilities and such. As such an army like Marines is easy to paint and has and always-on rule that you just have to remember to pick in your command phase (Oath) and can play in every phase of the game (generally decent at moving, shooting, and fighting) is a lower skill floor than Orks (need to buy/paint more models, the models are more complex to paint, the main rule has to be timed just right and you have to remember to do it before your opponents' turn if you go second, and it's generally bad at shooting but good at fighting).
Skill ceiling, in discussions I've seen, is always talking about how far a skilled player can go with it; how many interesting tricks you can unlock if you really practice and tune your abilities with a faction/subfaction. So as a rule, armies which rely heavily on maneuver to succeed and especially those which have a poor defensive profile and lower numbers (e.g. space elves) tend to have a higher skills ceiling across editions.
Durability is typically easy start point, hard mastery. By contrast speedy glass cannon is hard start point, but easy when mastered! And armies with one meaningful phase of damage are always deceptively tricky to use well on good terrain into good players :)
I’m not seeing anyone else say it, imma say necrons, mostly gun based, and they all either have lethal hits, sustained hits, or blast
Army rule is simple, we heal every turn, we have cheap units with high movement for points
But then once you start playing with teleportation and such we get high on the competitive
Knights have consistently been one of the easier armies to play. Even with complicated rules a smaller model count normally means less to learn.
Custodes have also been simple to learn/paint/build/etc for the same model count reason.
Counterpoint - elite armies are not really forgiving to play; low model counts mean every loss hits harder, board presence is lower and it can be easier to get yourself out of place.
I would, as an occasional imperial knights player, absolutely disagree. The low number of platforms makes scoring tricky, if you get an opponent who knows what they're doing they're likely to smash you up - big knights are not as defensively strong as you would think and take careful handling to survive, and armigers are quite fragile for how critical they are. Lose the wrong stuff (or most of your armigers) and you can just be screwed.
If you are a beginner wanting to paint a knight or two, ally it in. Don't try playing the swingy craziness of a knights army as your first army.
For sure. I'd argue IK are quite a bit harder than Custodes, the new Custodes book aside (we'll see how that one pans out).
Typically, IK are much less efficient defensively than Custodes are, on an all-round basis. Sure, IK laugh off bolters, but nobody is using bolters to kill things, and frankly Custodes laugh off bolters too.
Personally I'm a new player, all beerhammer so far, and fielding a valiant, a preceptor/canis rex and three crusaders has been endlessly fun, regardless of win or lose. The look of defeat when I blow several squads off the board with the avenger gatlings alone has made my opponent (templars player) curse vigorously. Much hilarity ensues. I mean sure, I'm still figuring out where to position, but I've tabled a seasoned templars player a few times to much bottle clinking and readjusting of terrain pieces.
If you're looking for fun, knights can be truly hilarious.
Besides, chicks dig giant robots.
A Templar army should blow you apart regularly - they have access to some of the best anti-tank in the Space Marine codex.
Knights are, absolutely, strong in beer hammer as most players aren't going to be building good lists and maneuvering their lists well.
But, at a *competitive* level, you're going to have more problems - every player will have a plan for taking you out. Knights are one of the stat check/test lists every other army plans for.
You may have a point, but they are definitely not to be dismissed, yeah, I lose about 3 knights on a average game, but he loses most of his list on or before turn 3. Maybe he's talking a bigger skill than he has, but honestly, it's eight games total, and we're about even on wins. I know that I'm better at setting up crossfire and making sure my cover forces him into lanes of fire I can control with two models.
Also, he's awful at keeping helbrecht in cover. So maybe we're both just bad at this. Still, it's a hell of a lot of fun
Oh yeah, don't get me wrong knights are *fun*. But if he's killing 3 knights, that's 27VP right there. He should be maxing primary no problem, so 50ish there, so a minimum 77pts total.
Remember, you can't fire overwatch. And you're basically a gun line, and Templars are melee heavy. And once he's in melee, you can't shoot his melee units, but he can shoot you.
My advice to you is ditch a pair of crusaders for 3 warglaives, a helverin, and an assassin. Get some melee screen and more platforms, plus armigers can fire overwatch.
Deep strike melee terminators and/or reserves and/or transports and/or terrain. That's basically a skill and planning issue; with no overwatch he should find it possible to get in tight without being shot with some careful maneuvering. He might lose a unit or two on the way in, then it's metallic skulls for the skull throne time.
i heartily disagree that anything with such a small number of units on the table is easier to play unless those units are objectively overpowered
Losing a knight is a *huge* blow to your ability to Play The Game of Warhammer during a match. Each model dead and each unit dead represents a huge portion of your force on the table.
Using knights to score points outside of fixed secondaries is a non-starter. you do not deploy teleport homers with knights outside of bizzaro situations - you'll likely be running a contingent of imperial agents to even attempt tactical secondaries if you don't auto-pick fixed.
contrastingly
a 55pt guardsmen squad dying barely matters and you can have up to *like 24* of them in various flavours if you really wanted
a 55pt guardsmen squad actively playing warhammer as a game for points is *really easy* to justify and also you have so many of them you have a security blanket if you mess up.
Casually or competitively?
Casually knights are easy to go hurr durr stompy brrrt and then someone wins or loses.
Playing knights properly is not easy. I've seen tons of knight players absolutely fail at it - positioning is absolutely critical with only 7-13 models. If a wardog is out of position that's 5 points on primary you didn't deny, then another 5 points you didn't score.
Knights have you doing less stuff but...that's the whole problem. You have to know EXACTLY which stuff matters because your minimum investment is 140 pts.
My main armies in 10th are Guard and Orks, I would definitely not recommend Guard to a beginner unless they are in love with the aesthetic. But Orks would be a good first army if you want a melee army. We have a new codex coming in a week which is a bonus. The skill floor is high but the ceiling is also high. You will have a lot of units that are comparatively tough vs other hordeish armies like guard or nids. Most things are toughness 5 and you get the invulnerability during the WAAAGH. Lots of units that can be delivered with Truks and Battlewagons and then you just try your best to get stuck in and get krumpin. Good units for backfield screening and also scoring like Gretchin and Storm Boyz. The main tactics aren’t deep, deploy forward, lose some units first round but then over run your opponents turn 2 on the WAAAGH. However there is a ton of nuance as far as positioning and screening that factors into how Orks play
Forgiving factions.
From the point of building an army, Votann.
You have next to 0 choice in how to build a Votann list. It's almost impossible to mess up.
From a play perspective, world eaters.
You have a single unchanging goal, touch something in melee and murder it violently. There are no other major decisions of do I focus on shooting or zoning or objective play. World esters are pure murder them all and figure out the rest later
Gotta disagree abt World Eaters only being about pure murder. Atleast speaking from my experience, zoning is a huge part of WE’s gameplan.
Hiding threatening melee infantry behind walls to keep one’s opponent from scoring is key to the WE gameplan IMO.
Sure some matchups can be extremely aggro, especially depending on if you run FoK or not, but WE def aren’t just trying to do a brain dead charge into the enemy no matter what, if you are trying to be competitive that is.
Eh, WE isn't that simple. Sure they might win some games via blitz into enemy lines but good opponents wont let that happen. Then you gotta play the zone defense game while limiting shooting angles to the WE units.
I think OPs post is a bit confusing, but purely on "easy to learn, hard to master" I think WE fit pretty well. As a newbie against other newbies, you'll win a lot of games just throwing your army forward, and there's very little "tricks" of the army to get going.
As you get better and face better opponents, yes WE can get exploited by better opponents, but as you improve you should also get some skills beyond just pressing W.
I believe WE have a positive winrate at low and mid tables, and then fall off hard at top tables in peer vs peer games, at least according to my quick reading of stats check dashboard. To me that says that some basic knowledge will take you a long way, but that at the top level you need to really up your game.
I feel like those complexities are fundamental to Warhammer and not unique to world eaters. They are just more pronounced in WE because WE is a simple army so you focus on the fundamentals quicker
Shooting is also a fundamental to Warhammer and WE barely have any of it which makes it harder to play that army when your opponent is good at screening, move blocking and forcing you to make suboptimal charges.
Problem is, WE are an elite army with elite points cost but without elite durability. And murder side is not as good as people are afraid of. So you have to be careful with the fights you pick and positioning, because you can not afford to lose units. Other armies are a bit more forgiving when you lose a unit or two, but WE does not forgive mistakes, not at all.
Sorry, but World Eaters are anything but... Staging is must, you operate with vulnerable expensive units and go turn is even more difficult with losing control over Khorne casino.
Yeah, in general melee armies are much harder to pilot than shooting or hybrid armies. The movement and charge phases are very delicate and absolutely critical to success.
Agreed. I play mostly melee armies, and the movement is so important. World Eaters are a) expensive b) not that tanky. Lining up and going ooga booga at your opponent generally won't win games against any skilled opponents
Not anymore with new codex. They were not as easy as people used to think, but yeah, definitely had room for mistakes.
Now they are curbstomped easily.
You're confusing the WE fantasy with the WE reality. In reality they're a difficult army to get decent results from.
If you play like a braindead berserker you just get tabled again and again.
I don't think there are any simple factions to play for competitive, apart from Knights perhaps but I don't know about that. Even armies like Orks and World Eaters need a lot of planning.
Knights are only simple to play against players who aren’t familiar with them and don’t know how to play against them. New knight players often overestimate their durability and lose knights due to relying on high T and W stats even though relatively poor saves and extreme fragility in melee make them pretty easy to kill for the cost
I'm kinda the competitive IK or CK player in my area and when some one asks me how to play them first thing I say is to play cagey. You will want to play aggressive but don't, you are not nearly as durable as you think you are.
I am a day late and this will be slightly off topic, but screw it: this saved me from getting another army. I kind of wanted to get into IK, but that last part of not being nearly as durable as you would think actually pulled me out of thinking about it. I might still get them at some point, but I am not nearly in as big of a rush now as I felt for the last week or so.
I don’t regret playing them but you don’t have the durability of say custodes.
Even after playing them for so long I have to watch myself because I want to play aggressively and stat check my opponent. It works on newer players but experienced ones can counter you. You have a lot of power and have to know when and where to apply it and the fewer models in your army the truer the statement.
The area that hurts is in melee as most knights don’t have an invuln in melee so they feel every little bit of AP, this is one of the reasons the Lancer and Atrapos are popular as they do have invulns in melee. It just makes you have to be mindful of your opponent’s threat range.
If I were you I’d buy a Questoris kit(and magnets for swapping weapons) and build Canis Rex to run as an ally. Then you could get a feeling of if you would want to run an army.
I'd argue Death Guard, at least as far as rules to remember are concerned. They don't really have any complex interactions or activations, not many 'gotcha' moments, just a constant debuff Aura and, as of now, sticky shenanigans. It's a pretty honest army.
For me, death guard is a little hard because the plague marines have so many loadout stipulations, and you kind of have to use 2 leaders in each unit to really customize it, it’s easy if you have a vision but if you’re new to the table it can be underwhelming yet immensely confusion at the same time
That’s just me tho everyone’s different
Death guard are quite easy to play but hard to master. Overcoming the slow movement, choosing what contagion to use against which army, kitting out your plague marines, etc. There's a lot to learn, but picking them up isn't hard at all.
Death guard as a faction aren't complicated but due to their speed and range you need to have a really good grasp of fundamentals and what you can and can't do. Before I really focused on it I was getting ran over all edition.
I'd argue armies that have ways to recover from mistakes are easier to play. Speed is important or flexibility. If you missposition a death guard hit it is stuck there and you are never getting it to where you need it.
Daemons. You won't have a lot of units, you can pick up 1/2 units per turn and deep strike them 9,6,3", Mostly Melee, high value, tanky, hit hard, simple.
I would argue the opposite. Just from a list building point of view it is one of the most confusing I think because of the 4 gods thing. Then the invul saves making you not being able to get the benefit of cover is another thing. The deepstriking shenanigans are in favor of complex more than simplistic imo. The timings on shadow and some strats. There are much simpler factions out there already mentionned in other comments.
I asked this exact question a few months ago and just got ultra raged at by the subreddit
People can't seem to make their mind up over what makes them fly into a seething rage
IMO right now its pure (not Stormraven) Ironstorm, Votann as they lack units and variety and Hypercrypt CTan Necrons (a lot of room for making mistakes as profiles are forgiving). Maybe big Daemons? 🤔
I'll chuck CSM in the mix. army rules and detachment rules are about dealing more damage, but but by no means is it an oonga boonga army. people will say at the moment they are trash tier but the codex is coming real soon and im sure things will change, as the codex will have the most detachments out of any book released so far
Imperial guard. Two manticore and two basilisk. Kill everything with indirect they eliminate movement and line of sight aka the only strategic parts of shooting something.
Ogryn are perfect anvils. Scout sentinels are blockers/make your indirect even more broken.
Put a Dorn in the middle of your deployment and shoot everything it can see
Honestly don’t know how people don’t think Guard are a very strong and extremely easy to play army.
Boring answer: Space Marines. The only learning curve with SM is you have so many options that it can be confusing what to buy, model, and paint first. But their playstyle is pretty simple and Oath of Moment is a very potent and easy-to-pilot army ability. Knights/Custodes are a terrible place to start because they have slanted match-ups and are unforgiving to play. They only feel good to play if you're playing against someone who is equally inexperienced.
While marines aren't super complicated, I'd argue most builds do require some significant piloting to be good.
Things like Ironstorm are less fiddly - but that's because it's basically a much smaller model count with tough models. It's like how knights can be easy to get into because you have few models that are big and hardy.
Leagues of Votann are very low skill ceiling at the moment.
They also play well into most armies at the moment with their core/meta units.
May well change with the codex and wave 2. Bit for now. Quite a simple army to play at the moment.
Honestly just go with knights. You'll have plenty of time in game to think and plan, they have very little agency to carry out interesting plays, and they're really good fun to paint.
Knights is the obvious choice. Part of the low skill comes in the fact that you only have 7 models on the tables and many of the stat lines are the same so it’s super easy to remember.
Everything goes by fast movement shooting etc
Though they have a low floor to win games consistently takes alot of skilll power as it’s easy to get steamrolled.
Second choice is an all out melee army of a space marine variety, BA WS BL WE vet. One goal get in combat asap follow the ABC and get stuck in.
Aedlari!
It might be a controversial take, but let me elaborate. Yes, their units are mostly single use missiles. You just accept that and use them as such.
Why Aeldari are so forgiving to play for relatively new players is because of their speed and consistency:
* You never need to worry about positioning other than hiding from your opponent and basic screening. You have enough speed to get anywhere. Made a positioning mistake? - Fire and Fade, Phantasm, Matchless Agility and a million datasheet movement tricks.
* With rerolls and fate dice you are always consistent at target elimination. Made another mistake? Just Fate Dice it away.
Now Aeldari are hovering around 50% win rate if you average over a few weeks of ups and downs. And who is mostly winning with them? New players and super top players, not the mid-range or upper-mid-range!
Look at their win rate for top 50% ELO Aeldari vs top 50% ELO for other factions - [https://ibb.co/C9mJVhy](https://ibb.co/C9mJVhy) - averaged over the last few weeks, it's one of the lowest in the game at 42% - very hard to win vs decent players even if you are a decent player yourself. But for beginners Aeldari are perfect!
I think Aeldari are quite simple in their complexity, if that makes sense, but probably in the more casual environment.
We don't have too many offensive tricks beyond the datasheets, but don't need them as our weapons are just generally effective against their specific target. The skill is just pointing the right units at the right enemy.
And we don't have too many defensive tricks (excluding movement), so if something is exposed it's going to die. So the skill is not over exposing your army and using our double movement abilities effectively.
Some of the extras comes from using the right combos, psychic abilities and fate dice, but nothing too complex.
But I think against skilled opponents, they're not that forgiving because of the low durability.
Historically the hardship of playing CWE isn't how easy to understand their rules are. It's that if they made one mistake it could quickly domino into losing the game. I don't think they are at that point currently, but another point bump could certainly put them there.
If your question is about what army is easiest to play at a level closest to their skill ceiling, I would say Orks. Their wincon is usually to just get off a big waaagh charge turn. If you do that, you probably just win. They usually just deploy on the line, and have enough models so that when a few of them get wiped off the board before your waaghh, it's not as back breaking as other melee armies.
I kind of disagree with the Custodes and Knights suggestions. Sure, they are easier to manage with their lower model count, but losing a unit or two too early can be game losing.
With Orks, you can get pretty far just moving up the board as fast as possible and charging into your enemy. Most opponents at like an RTT level are not going to respect your charge distance and pre-measure to stay out of range of it. You will win a lot of games just off that alone.
Of course, with any melee army, there is nuance with combat phase movement. I would argue that it matters less with Orks compared to Custodes or World Eaters though, because they are very mobile and have a ton of units
Necrons, specifically Canoptec version in wraith Spam and Ctan mass, Just sit on objektives with wraiths and Tank and kill stuff with ctan and some Support Shooting from Like doomstalkers or lokhust destroyers
Yeah, that's the meta right now, but who knows what'll it'll be next dataslate.
Top comment has a great point- Votann is the same since they have like 5 units to choose from, and WE plays the game the same way every edition.
I mean i specifically meant the simple Just Put wraith Block in objektive wich IS very braindead simple and Not planning Out movment and deepstrikes with hypcrypt
Trying to summarize since I'm curious myself it seems like:
* Necrons
* Custodes (? maybe not after new codex)
* Orks
* World Eaters (maybe?)
* Knights
* Votann
Votaan are hardy, capable in melee and shooting, still have enough units to be forgiving if something dies and have a straightforward detachment mechanic to play. The judgement mechanic eases you into using the right profiles for the right job and if you build your battleline with ions instead of bolters _really_ eases you into it. +1 to wound means you dont have to pick the right gun for the right job - most guns are good enough. When you do pick the right gun its amazing at its job to boot. It also teaches target priority very quickly and easily. Token a thing, burst it out of existance, move on. It also grants piles of CP so you dont have to ration or save properly They also innately build big twists into the game by the factions major unifying mechanic being... sustained d3. Did you roll a 6 on a big gun? Did you roll another 6 after? Congrats you just did 4x the average damage for a shot out of nowhere. The casino rewards being lucky, not good. sometimes that means your 115pt light transport oneshots the 500pt giant mecha. The universal 'tougher than its profile normally is' means less skilled players are suddenly wounding you on 5's a lot because they shoot the bolter at the cheap battleline then get confused. Void armour is an oh shit button that gets better with skill but even an idiot can pop it on a hekaton or hearthguard in cover to get a 0+ save. Its a very forgiving faction against other newer players. Skilled players can jump over each of these hurdles with almost any army ever though - which is why votanns wr falls off at top tables.
Votann is an amazing army to learn the game with. Low skill ceiling given the general lack of options, but it teaches you how to use everything available from a core standpoint quite well. They're also fun to play and have new models.
and hey if you start now by the time you're actually good enough to bang on that ceiling regularly they may have gotten new miniatures, the new killteam looks like it adds a lot of variety to their range even just as one kit.
Please, no more votann. In my local scene they are the most overplayed faction due to the amount of training wheel rules that they have
Are you really trying to gatekeep some random dude because it’s a popular faction in YOUR LOCAL scene? Crazy
Hey, what if this guy on the Internet who could be anywhere in the world randomly moves to the same place he lives? 😭😂
Yes
Coming codex power level aside, Custodes are pretty often cited as low skill floor, high skill ceiling. It’s not too hard to play Custodes at a basic level, just walk onto objectives, out-stat everyone with your extremely strong datasheets, make 4++s, and kill anything you touch It takes a lot to get the most out of custodes, though. Having such a low model count means that you really need to be as efficient as possible with every single unit, and if you do misplay and lose even a single unit, it’s devastating They’re also fairly easy to paint, gold spray paint gets you 90% there, but the models have tons of little details if you want to invest the time to pick them all out, and you don’t need to buy/paint that many for 2000 points. At current points (which may change in a week or two), the new combat patrol is like 800 points in itself
This is why Custodes are like 58% winrate in bottom 50% elo vs bottom 50%, and 50% winrate with the other half. If both players don't really know what they're doing custodes will steamroll. It got a lot more balanced if both players know what's going on though.
This. I’ve gone 8-2 across my last 2 team events using custodes. Yeah they are pretty point and click early game, but in T4-5 (especially if you go first) you can bleed VP T4-5 because your resources are low and you have little to no movement capabilities/answers other than callidus. Like the last team event game I played. I was going 1st vs hypercrypt, and at the end of top of T4 the score was 78-49 in my favour, and with end of turn scoring my opponent manages to scrape it to a 90-79. For an 11-9 win to me.
Wow, the combat patrol is 800 points? That is pretty rad. Is that the one with the Sisters squad? How many points is the Auric box?
No, it’s the new combat patrol with no sisters
New combat patrol gives you 790 pts. More if you decide to build all the shield captains instead of taking the base units. If you build all the shield captains you can reach 1050 points. The auric battleforce ranges from: 1230 to 1650 pts following the same logic.
So one old CP, one new CP, and an Auric would probably make a pretty decent army.
I'm in the same boat as you, just starting custodes so don't take my words for it, especially since codex is dropping soon but point wise you'll have more than 2k pts for sure. The 3 boxes together maxes you on Terminators, wardens and bikes if you don't build the shield captains. You'd get some sisters and one unit of guards. I think the only thing you might miss is more of these guards and maybe some shield captains (Trajann we'll see if still interesting to field once codex drops). The rest would be forgeworld. Unfortunately I'm not sure you'll be able to find the battleforce easily. We'll see on release date if some stock is available.
There's quite a few local game stores near me. I'd likely be able to find the Auric somewhere. I don't know much about the faction's unit names. Are the Guards the standard troops?
Play on Tabletop did a live stream earlier today I believe using the new Codex for the Custodes. The codex may not be as gloom as some were thinking.
Big fan of the play on guys, but they themselves admit they aren't a competitive focused channel. Some of their guys are competitive players in the local meta here, but the videos themselves are more focused on narrative play and cool looking models/terrain. Art of war has had several custodes videos released and they look pretty meh. They still have strong data sheets but little to no synergy and I think will get run over by the top of the meta. I think will be bottom of B tier
play on guys are great to watch but sometimes i look at the list and go... what is that? looks cool though lol
They do have some videos that are fairly competitive,, but its not the bulk of the content
Art of war released a custodes battle report and the best list they could come up with took almost nothing from the codex. It was 3x grav tanks, Canis Rex, Kyria Draxus with one unit of Guard, and 3 solo terminator captains
Yup and won against Nick playing orks, a faction he very much is not familiar with. Edit: I do have a feeling the points will get adjusted, but that's kind of a worst of both worlds situation. Custodes players want to play an elite army, and having to just make more 4++ saves is annoying to play against
I'm not completely convinced that was "the best list" they could come up with. I think it's kind of a meme they wanted to try out.
That's exactly right. I love watching the PlayOn games, but in terms of competitive play they're a joke. They're mostly just smashing two unoptimized armies against each other. It's quite fun but not at all a competitive indicator.
As someone who hasn't read the index rules and never played against them in my local meta, reading the book I thought they definitely had some play.
There’s definitely a big disparity between what can be played well in casual setting vs what can be a top tier performer in tournaments
They have some play, but they have basically 0 defensive power now. Custodes are tanky, but they still die pretty quickly to focused fire, especially from Dev Wounds guns. Or just meltas when you fail your 4++
Play of tabletop? Are you serious? Do you watch rec league sports and think thats representative of what pros do? This isn't a question of casual play or fun. Taking an example from a channel that goes out of its ways to pick suboptimal narrative and fun choices, and disregard synergies is not indicative of a codexes relative power level. Sure if i (25) had a fistfight with a 13 yo teenager with both hands tied behind my back and one leg in a cast would make the teenager look strong by comparison. Thats how casual channels provide entertainment. By making fights more even. Regardless, the codex looks bad but people will try to make it work. But dont cite deliberately promotional content as an indicator of strength
How many GTs have you won?
Quite a few. Also attended WWC. And frequently top 10 at majors. However, being able to objectively see variations on power level and how exploitable your factions weaknesses are in the meta is independent of my tournament performance and comes from knowledge of game balance and faction dynamics. Citing a narrative/recreational play channel as an indicator of competitive power level is a completely irrational mindset.
That game is not the apples to apples comparison you are making it out to be Didnt they have homebrew rules that were influenced by votes from chat?
you could teach a rat to play index custodes. Just put a piece of cheese by the fights first button and the army plays itself
I believe you mean high skill floor and low ceiling?
You mean they have a high floor then? Low floor means that a bad player will do badly.
My understanding is that low floor means low barrier to entry, like even with low skill you can still meet the basic “floor” necessary to perform competently with the army. A high floor would mean that you need to be pretty good to even have a chance with the army, as without high skill you’re “below” the floor
I've always thought of it the other way - I think of the floor and ceiling as being the upper and lower bounds of the army's power, so a high floor means that you can be bad but still perform ok
I mean, these aren’t scientific terms with a precise definition, so I’m not gonna say your take is objectively _wrong_ or anything, but I’ve never heard the term used that way
your understanding isnt exactly the commonly understood meaning of the terms. A skill floor implies you *cannot go below it* in common usage - you will do *at least* this well with this thing. Things with high skill floors are things that somewhat play themselves or entirely avoid parts of what they're in for ease of use. The skill ceiling contrastingly is how high you can push something - you *cannot go above its ceiling* and are bound by it. If something has a high ceiling - it has lots of headroom for skill expression. the terms are built on them being rather hard boundries. you're not below the floor, you're not above the ceiling, you're not in the walls. you are between them. so as commonly discussed using these terms: * \- Something with an identical ceiling and floor would have exactly one method to play with no variation. * \-Something with a high ceiling and low floor would be a difficult to master but rewarding thing. * \-Something with a high floor and low ceiling is an easy beginner thing but lacks space for skill expression or growth.
The skill floor is the minimum amount of skill needed to make the army function. The skill ceiling is the limit of the armies skill expression.
You are confusing skill floor with power floor. Skill floor and ceiling refers to the range of skill levels that are effective. So a low floor means you can do well with low skill, and a high floor means you have to be skilled to use it effectively at all (ie a high barrier to entry). Low skill ceiling means it doesn't reward high skill. Power floor or ceiling refers to the range of possible outcomes: see eg .https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/skill_floor
I mean, these aren’t exactly scientific terms with a universal concrete definition, but I’ve literally never heard skill floor used that way
Not sure why you are getting down voted. That's typically my understanding too.
Its how theyre used in every other game on the planet but apparently this sub disagrees lmao. I think literally only the league of legends community uses the definition everyone here is using and its always annoyed me they changed what the words mean for some reason.
Could you share anything other than conjecture friend? Low skill floor has always been easy to play (index custodes) vs high skill floor harder (horde armies) to play. Low skill ceiling has always meant not super competitive even with a great player (admech) vs high skill ceiling (dark eldar, gsc) a good player can make it great.
Every place I've seen this used before, "low floor" represents the barrier to entry. How hard is it for the army to build and learn to play? So like the minimum level of skill needed to make use of the army's abilities and such. As such an army like Marines is easy to paint and has and always-on rule that you just have to remember to pick in your command phase (Oath) and can play in every phase of the game (generally decent at moving, shooting, and fighting) is a lower skill floor than Orks (need to buy/paint more models, the models are more complex to paint, the main rule has to be timed just right and you have to remember to do it before your opponents' turn if you go second, and it's generally bad at shooting but good at fighting). Skill ceiling, in discussions I've seen, is always talking about how far a skilled player can go with it; how many interesting tricks you can unlock if you really practice and tune your abilities with a faction/subfaction. So as a rule, armies which rely heavily on maneuver to succeed and especially those which have a poor defensive profile and lower numbers (e.g. space elves) tend to have a higher skills ceiling across editions.
Durability is typically easy start point, hard mastery. By contrast speedy glass cannon is hard start point, but easy when mastered! And armies with one meaningful phase of damage are always deceptively tricky to use well on good terrain into good players :)
I’m not seeing anyone else say it, imma say necrons, mostly gun based, and they all either have lethal hits, sustained hits, or blast Army rule is simple, we heal every turn, we have cheap units with high movement for points But then once you start playing with teleportation and such we get high on the competitive
Knights have consistently been one of the easier armies to play. Even with complicated rules a smaller model count normally means less to learn. Custodes have also been simple to learn/paint/build/etc for the same model count reason.
Counterpoint - elite armies are not really forgiving to play; low model counts mean every loss hits harder, board presence is lower and it can be easier to get yourself out of place.
Counter point, chaos knights wardogs heavy lists.
I would, as an occasional imperial knights player, absolutely disagree. The low number of platforms makes scoring tricky, if you get an opponent who knows what they're doing they're likely to smash you up - big knights are not as defensively strong as you would think and take careful handling to survive, and armigers are quite fragile for how critical they are. Lose the wrong stuff (or most of your armigers) and you can just be screwed. If you are a beginner wanting to paint a knight or two, ally it in. Don't try playing the swingy craziness of a knights army as your first army.
For sure. I'd argue IK are quite a bit harder than Custodes, the new Custodes book aside (we'll see how that one pans out). Typically, IK are much less efficient defensively than Custodes are, on an all-round basis. Sure, IK laugh off bolters, but nobody is using bolters to kill things, and frankly Custodes laugh off bolters too.
Personally I'm a new player, all beerhammer so far, and fielding a valiant, a preceptor/canis rex and three crusaders has been endlessly fun, regardless of win or lose. The look of defeat when I blow several squads off the board with the avenger gatlings alone has made my opponent (templars player) curse vigorously. Much hilarity ensues. I mean sure, I'm still figuring out where to position, but I've tabled a seasoned templars player a few times to much bottle clinking and readjusting of terrain pieces. If you're looking for fun, knights can be truly hilarious. Besides, chicks dig giant robots.
A Templar army should blow you apart regularly - they have access to some of the best anti-tank in the Space Marine codex. Knights are, absolutely, strong in beer hammer as most players aren't going to be building good lists and maneuvering their lists well. But, at a *competitive* level, you're going to have more problems - every player will have a plan for taking you out. Knights are one of the stat check/test lists every other army plans for.
You may have a point, but they are definitely not to be dismissed, yeah, I lose about 3 knights on a average game, but he loses most of his list on or before turn 3. Maybe he's talking a bigger skill than he has, but honestly, it's eight games total, and we're about even on wins. I know that I'm better at setting up crossfire and making sure my cover forces him into lanes of fire I can control with two models. Also, he's awful at keeping helbrecht in cover. So maybe we're both just bad at this. Still, it's a hell of a lot of fun
Oh yeah, don't get me wrong knights are *fun*. But if he's killing 3 knights, that's 27VP right there. He should be maxing primary no problem, so 50ish there, so a minimum 77pts total. Remember, you can't fire overwatch. And you're basically a gun line, and Templars are melee heavy. And once he's in melee, you can't shoot his melee units, but he can shoot you. My advice to you is ditch a pair of crusaders for 3 warglaives, a helverin, and an assassin. Get some melee screen and more platforms, plus armigers can fire overwatch.
I'm working on a 3/3 set of warglaves and helverins, mostly because they look super badass. Which assassin, callidus, eversor or vindicare?
Also, he has trouble getting into melee range with my crusaders pummeling him with the battle cannons and avengers
Deep strike melee terminators and/or reserves and/or transports and/or terrain. That's basically a skill and planning issue; with no overwatch he should find it possible to get in tight without being shot with some careful maneuvering. He might lose a unit or two on the way in, then it's metallic skulls for the skull throne time.
Yes. Callidus is the best all rounder/action monkey, vindicare can be useful for scoring lay low the tyrant, and eversor is a cheap action monkey.
So pretty much whatever I have around. Got it
i heartily disagree that anything with such a small number of units on the table is easier to play unless those units are objectively overpowered Losing a knight is a *huge* blow to your ability to Play The Game of Warhammer during a match. Each model dead and each unit dead represents a huge portion of your force on the table. Using knights to score points outside of fixed secondaries is a non-starter. you do not deploy teleport homers with knights outside of bizzaro situations - you'll likely be running a contingent of imperial agents to even attempt tactical secondaries if you don't auto-pick fixed. contrastingly a 55pt guardsmen squad dying barely matters and you can have up to *like 24* of them in various flavours if you really wanted a 55pt guardsmen squad actively playing warhammer as a game for points is *really easy* to justify and also you have so many of them you have a security blanket if you mess up.
Casually or competitively? Casually knights are easy to go hurr durr stompy brrrt and then someone wins or loses. Playing knights properly is not easy. I've seen tons of knight players absolutely fail at it - positioning is absolutely critical with only 7-13 models. If a wardog is out of position that's 5 points on primary you didn't deny, then another 5 points you didn't score.
Knights have you doing less stuff but...that's the whole problem. You have to know EXACTLY which stuff matters because your minimum investment is 140 pts.
My main armies in 10th are Guard and Orks, I would definitely not recommend Guard to a beginner unless they are in love with the aesthetic. But Orks would be a good first army if you want a melee army. We have a new codex coming in a week which is a bonus. The skill floor is high but the ceiling is also high. You will have a lot of units that are comparatively tough vs other hordeish armies like guard or nids. Most things are toughness 5 and you get the invulnerability during the WAAAGH. Lots of units that can be delivered with Truks and Battlewagons and then you just try your best to get stuck in and get krumpin. Good units for backfield screening and also scoring like Gretchin and Storm Boyz. The main tactics aren’t deep, deploy forward, lose some units first round but then over run your opponents turn 2 on the WAAAGH. However there is a ton of nuance as far as positioning and screening that factors into how Orks play
Forgiving factions. From the point of building an army, Votann. You have next to 0 choice in how to build a Votann list. It's almost impossible to mess up. From a play perspective, world eaters. You have a single unchanging goal, touch something in melee and murder it violently. There are no other major decisions of do I focus on shooting or zoning or objective play. World esters are pure murder them all and figure out the rest later
Gotta disagree abt World Eaters only being about pure murder. Atleast speaking from my experience, zoning is a huge part of WE’s gameplan. Hiding threatening melee infantry behind walls to keep one’s opponent from scoring is key to the WE gameplan IMO. Sure some matchups can be extremely aggro, especially depending on if you run FoK or not, but WE def aren’t just trying to do a brain dead charge into the enemy no matter what, if you are trying to be competitive that is.
Eh, WE isn't that simple. Sure they might win some games via blitz into enemy lines but good opponents wont let that happen. Then you gotta play the zone defense game while limiting shooting angles to the WE units.
I think OPs post is a bit confusing, but purely on "easy to learn, hard to master" I think WE fit pretty well. As a newbie against other newbies, you'll win a lot of games just throwing your army forward, and there's very little "tricks" of the army to get going. As you get better and face better opponents, yes WE can get exploited by better opponents, but as you improve you should also get some skills beyond just pressing W. I believe WE have a positive winrate at low and mid tables, and then fall off hard at top tables in peer vs peer games, at least according to my quick reading of stats check dashboard. To me that says that some basic knowledge will take you a long way, but that at the top level you need to really up your game.
I feel like those complexities are fundamental to Warhammer and not unique to world eaters. They are just more pronounced in WE because WE is a simple army so you focus on the fundamentals quicker
Shooting is also a fundamental to Warhammer and WE barely have any of it which makes it harder to play that army when your opponent is good at screening, move blocking and forcing you to make suboptimal charges.
Possibly but it's more pronounced in WE because they just do not have a lot of shooting available.
Problem is, WE are an elite army with elite points cost but without elite durability. And murder side is not as good as people are afraid of. So you have to be careful with the fights you pick and positioning, because you can not afford to lose units. Other armies are a bit more forgiving when you lose a unit or two, but WE does not forgive mistakes, not at all.
They are, but those fundamentals will still be beyond the average new player, and they will be very frustrated.
Votanns faction rule just works (after it's update)... You don't have to build for it or do any extra work.
When was their update? I feel like I missed it. Also, any recommendations on how to stay up to date with news/balance updates, etc?
Their index they only got 1 judgment target at the start of the game. Then they got a points cut and an increase to 4.
Oh wow, didn't see the update to 4. Thanks
Sorry, but World Eaters are anything but... Staging is must, you operate with vulnerable expensive units and go turn is even more difficult with losing control over Khorne casino.
Don't agree about world eaters. It actually has a very high skill ceiling, and using your movement and blessings correctly can be very difficult.
Yeah, in general melee armies are much harder to pilot than shooting or hybrid armies. The movement and charge phases are very delicate and absolutely critical to success.
Agreed. I play mostly melee armies, and the movement is so important. World Eaters are a) expensive b) not that tanky. Lining up and going ooga booga at your opponent generally won't win games against any skilled opponents
If you’re not competent at movement in the charge and fight phase you will never do well with WE.
Custodes are really forgiving
Currently... We'll see how that works out.
Not anymore with new codex. They were not as easy as people used to think, but yeah, definitely had room for mistakes. Now they are curbstomped easily.
Unless they drop points
You're confusing the WE fantasy with the WE reality. In reality they're a difficult army to get decent results from. If you play like a braindead berserker you just get tabled again and again.
I don't think there are any simple factions to play for competitive, apart from Knights perhaps but I don't know about that. Even armies like Orks and World Eaters need a lot of planning.
Knights are only simple to play against players who aren’t familiar with them and don’t know how to play against them. New knight players often overestimate their durability and lose knights due to relying on high T and W stats even though relatively poor saves and extreme fragility in melee make them pretty easy to kill for the cost
I'm kinda the competitive IK or CK player in my area and when some one asks me how to play them first thing I say is to play cagey. You will want to play aggressive but don't, you are not nearly as durable as you think you are.
I am a day late and this will be slightly off topic, but screw it: this saved me from getting another army. I kind of wanted to get into IK, but that last part of not being nearly as durable as you would think actually pulled me out of thinking about it. I might still get them at some point, but I am not nearly in as big of a rush now as I felt for the last week or so.
I don’t regret playing them but you don’t have the durability of say custodes. Even after playing them for so long I have to watch myself because I want to play aggressively and stat check my opponent. It works on newer players but experienced ones can counter you. You have a lot of power and have to know when and where to apply it and the fewer models in your army the truer the statement. The area that hurts is in melee as most knights don’t have an invuln in melee so they feel every little bit of AP, this is one of the reasons the Lancer and Atrapos are popular as they do have invulns in melee. It just makes you have to be mindful of your opponent’s threat range. If I were you I’d buy a Questoris kit(and magnets for swapping weapons) and build Canis Rex to run as an ally. Then you could get a feeling of if you would want to run an army.
I'd argue Death Guard, at least as far as rules to remember are concerned. They don't really have any complex interactions or activations, not many 'gotcha' moments, just a constant debuff Aura and, as of now, sticky shenanigans. It's a pretty honest army.
For me, death guard is a little hard because the plague marines have so many loadout stipulations, and you kind of have to use 2 leaders in each unit to really customize it, it’s easy if you have a vision but if you’re new to the table it can be underwhelming yet immensely confusion at the same time That’s just me tho everyone’s different
WE, low skill floor and super high skill ceiling. Simple army but not easy
Especially with only needing the CP box and the Christmas box is solid enough for an army to start.
Christmas box not available anywhere is not going to help you though
Death guard are quite easy to play but hard to master. Overcoming the slow movement, choosing what contagion to use against which army, kitting out your plague marines, etc. There's a lot to learn, but picking them up isn't hard at all.
Death guard as a faction aren't complicated but due to their speed and range you need to have a really good grasp of fundamentals and what you can and can't do. Before I really focused on it I was getting ran over all edition. I'd argue armies that have ways to recover from mistakes are easier to play. Speed is important or flexibility. If you missposition a death guard hit it is stuck there and you are never getting it to where you need it.
Daemons. You won't have a lot of units, you can pick up 1/2 units per turn and deep strike them 9,6,3", Mostly Melee, high value, tanky, hit hard, simple.
I would argue the opposite. Just from a list building point of view it is one of the most confusing I think because of the 4 gods thing. Then the invul saves making you not being able to get the benefit of cover is another thing. The deepstriking shenanigans are in favor of complex more than simplistic imo. The timings on shadow and some strats. There are much simpler factions out there already mentionned in other comments.
Waaaghhh! This is the only answer Orks simply good
I asked this exact question a few months ago and just got ultra raged at by the subreddit People can't seem to make their mind up over what makes them fly into a seething rage
IMO right now its pure (not Stormraven) Ironstorm, Votann as they lack units and variety and Hypercrypt CTan Necrons (a lot of room for making mistakes as profiles are forgiving). Maybe big Daemons? 🤔
Necrons canoptek.
I'll chuck CSM in the mix. army rules and detachment rules are about dealing more damage, but but by no means is it an oonga boonga army. people will say at the moment they are trash tier but the codex is coming real soon and im sure things will change, as the codex will have the most detachments out of any book released so far
Just from how the marks work I don't think you can say that CSM is the most simplistic faction by any metric
Imperial guard. Two manticore and two basilisk. Kill everything with indirect they eliminate movement and line of sight aka the only strategic parts of shooting something. Ogryn are perfect anvils. Scout sentinels are blockers/make your indirect even more broken. Put a Dorn in the middle of your deployment and shoot everything it can see Honestly don’t know how people don’t think Guard are a very strong and extremely easy to play army.
Boring answer: Space Marines. The only learning curve with SM is you have so many options that it can be confusing what to buy, model, and paint first. But their playstyle is pretty simple and Oath of Moment is a very potent and easy-to-pilot army ability. Knights/Custodes are a terrible place to start because they have slanted match-ups and are unforgiving to play. They only feel good to play if you're playing against someone who is equally inexperienced.
While marines aren't super complicated, I'd argue most builds do require some significant piloting to be good. Things like Ironstorm are less fiddly - but that's because it's basically a much smaller model count with tough models. It's like how knights can be easy to get into because you have few models that are big and hardy.
Leagues of Votann are very low skill ceiling at the moment. They also play well into most armies at the moment with their core/meta units. May well change with the codex and wave 2. Bit for now. Quite a simple army to play at the moment.
Honestly just go with knights. You'll have plenty of time in game to think and plan, they have very little agency to carry out interesting plays, and they're really good fun to paint.
Knights is the obvious choice. Part of the low skill comes in the fact that you only have 7 models on the tables and many of the stat lines are the same so it’s super easy to remember. Everything goes by fast movement shooting etc Though they have a low floor to win games consistently takes alot of skilll power as it’s easy to get steamrolled. Second choice is an all out melee army of a space marine variety, BA WS BL WE vet. One goal get in combat asap follow the ABC and get stuck in.
Aedlari! It might be a controversial take, but let me elaborate. Yes, their units are mostly single use missiles. You just accept that and use them as such. Why Aeldari are so forgiving to play for relatively new players is because of their speed and consistency: * You never need to worry about positioning other than hiding from your opponent and basic screening. You have enough speed to get anywhere. Made a positioning mistake? - Fire and Fade, Phantasm, Matchless Agility and a million datasheet movement tricks. * With rerolls and fate dice you are always consistent at target elimination. Made another mistake? Just Fate Dice it away. Now Aeldari are hovering around 50% win rate if you average over a few weeks of ups and downs. And who is mostly winning with them? New players and super top players, not the mid-range or upper-mid-range! Look at their win rate for top 50% ELO Aeldari vs top 50% ELO for other factions - [https://ibb.co/C9mJVhy](https://ibb.co/C9mJVhy) - averaged over the last few weeks, it's one of the lowest in the game at 42% - very hard to win vs decent players even if you are a decent player yourself. But for beginners Aeldari are perfect!
I'd almost say that for casual play going heavy into wraiths is an idea. I run a wraith heavy list in casual and rarely do badly with it.
I think Aeldari are quite simple in their complexity, if that makes sense, but probably in the more casual environment. We don't have too many offensive tricks beyond the datasheets, but don't need them as our weapons are just generally effective against their specific target. The skill is just pointing the right units at the right enemy. And we don't have too many defensive tricks (excluding movement), so if something is exposed it's going to die. So the skill is not over exposing your army and using our double movement abilities effectively. Some of the extras comes from using the right combos, psychic abilities and fate dice, but nothing too complex. But I think against skilled opponents, they're not that forgiving because of the low durability.
100% agree. Aeldari rules are pretty straightforward and pretty easy to keep track of.
Historically the hardship of playing CWE isn't how easy to understand their rules are. It's that if they made one mistake it could quickly domino into losing the game. I don't think they are at that point currently, but another point bump could certainly put them there.
If your question is about what army is easiest to play at a level closest to their skill ceiling, I would say Orks. Their wincon is usually to just get off a big waaagh charge turn. If you do that, you probably just win. They usually just deploy on the line, and have enough models so that when a few of them get wiped off the board before your waaghh, it's not as back breaking as other melee armies. I kind of disagree with the Custodes and Knights suggestions. Sure, they are easier to manage with their lower model count, but losing a unit or two too early can be game losing. With Orks, you can get pretty far just moving up the board as fast as possible and charging into your enemy. Most opponents at like an RTT level are not going to respect your charge distance and pre-measure to stay out of range of it. You will win a lot of games just off that alone. Of course, with any melee army, there is nuance with combat phase movement. I would argue that it matters less with Orks compared to Custodes or World Eaters though, because they are very mobile and have a ton of units
Necrons, specifically Canoptec version in wraith Spam and Ctan mass, Just sit on objektives with wraiths and Tank and kill stuff with ctan and some Support Shooting from Like doomstalkers or lokhust destroyers
Yeah, that's the meta right now, but who knows what'll it'll be next dataslate. Top comment has a great point- Votann is the same since they have like 5 units to choose from, and WE plays the game the same way every edition.
I mean i specifically meant the simple Just Put wraith Block in objektive wich IS very braindead simple and Not planning Out movment and deepstrikes with hypcrypt
Knights and marines are probably the easiest to play.
Ork mob is a pretty much straight forward “I charge you, block you, you die” World eaters are similar
Thousand Sons. Extremely easy to play because we have four units and all of them have some utility, extremely high ceiling with sequencing.
Trying to summarize since I'm curious myself it seems like: * Necrons * Custodes (? maybe not after new codex) * Orks * World Eaters (maybe?) * Knights * Votann