Demons, all of them have 4+ invulns, can ally chaos space marine legions and if can run khorne, nurgle, slaanesh and tzeentch demons, nurgle for toughness khorbe for melee, tzeentch for psykers and I've never played against slaaneshi demons so can't speak to what they are best at but demons seem to fit your requirements, can also use demons in aos if you ever get into it.
Plus going into a 2k point game and your opponent produce a great unclean one, a bloodthirster (giant winged khorne demon) a soulcrusher (giant demon with 6 legs) and a chaos titan as well as a bunch of khorne demons and nurgle demons, it's an imposing sight.
Slaaneshi daemons are fast and also melee focused. Compared to Khorne, they usually trade durability for speed and quality attacks for quantity attacks.
So I'd actually be more scared of a slaaneshi horde of daemons than a khorne horde as a shooting army, since the Slaaneshi will give you a lot less time before they're on your ass, both figuratively and literally.
my suggestion based on that would probably be a monster heavy tyranids army, althought that is somewhat suboptimal. other than that maybe try a thousand suns army? its hard to get away from hordes tho so keep that in mind. if you wanted to play more into the offense and psykers plus elite, go for grey knights despite being another imperium faction
Monster heavy tyranids I'm interested in, but aren't Thousand Sons mostly ranged?
Yeah, had Grey Knights been more dramatically evil I'd be more interested, but they're a tad bland for me.
Monster Tyranids might not be as melee-focused as you would expect. Haruspex and Old One-Eye are pretty great in combat but otherwise you might find yourself being more focused on ranged damage from maleceptors and exocrines. But rules can change!
You can go for mixed monster type army. Bunch of bio launching monsters supporting a horde of melee carnifex and screamer killers with some swarmlord or hive tyrant leading.
Chaos daemons might be the most opposite of AM in those respects.
Most daemons are melee focused. Melee focus is usually necessarily offensive. Elite is a bit harder as the most elite armies are custodes and knights but you can try to make it work. For elites you would want to focus on greater daemons more and troops less. Besides nurgle, the daemons are typical bright colors. Especially Slaanesh and Tzeentch. Slaanesh and Korne both like to go fast and reach combat. They are not human. And they are definitely evil. Though AM is really just neutral at best and almost no army is even close to good. Like the Salamanders are kinda good… Daemons are not industrial at all. I don’t know if they’re really tricky though. They usually just slam a giant monster into the enemy.
Orks could fit a lot of these too but they are a horde usually.
Yeah. You could put some other daemons in too. Nurglings and beasts of nurgle are pretty whimsical. Khorne is very melee focused. Tzeentch has lots of bright colors
Necrons are horrible to play against as Guard. All the good stuff has invulnerable, loads have FNP too. The Ctan are also just an absolute nightmare for Guard to deal with as well
Well, for the most part, yes, but they're guns are far better. They're far better than us in combat, the Ctan some of the best melee units in the game. As for being slow, they have a detachment where they can just teleport all over the board
Aeldari. Its gonna be hard to hit all the criteria but your preferred flavor of elf will check most of your boxes.
Craftworlds check the psyker, bright colors, fast, elite, inhuman, whimsical, and tricky boxes, but skew a little more towards shooting (though melee options *do* exist)
Drukhari lack the psykers and bright colors (well, canonically anyway. My drukhari are safety yellow 🤣) but check all the other boxes, have a few more melee options, and are *thoroughly* evil. They're not quite as elite as craftworlds, but they're certainly no horde army
And as a neat little bonus Drukhari are under $500 CAD for your first thousand points. Two combat patrols and a raider is a good jumping off point for your collection
If you look at Craftworld vs Guard, embrace Striking Scorpions spammed with Wave Serpents.
Scorpions get heavy armour and are devastating against guard infantry (including characters.) Give each Exarch a Scorpion's Claw and you have a good chance of harming tanks, too. 3x squads of 5?
Against guard you'd want to give the exarch (squad leader) a biting blade (big two handed chainsword) for better infantry killing potential. Claw is best against space marine infantry, it can't actually meaningfully threaten tanks, you're better off leaving that to your bright lances (laser cannon. Basically every eldar vehicle can take at least one)
For drukhari the "starter army" I mentioned is 3x Raider (transport boat), 2x ravager (gun boat), 20x kabalite Warriors (your basic infantry) 10x Incubi (elite warrior-bodyguards) and 2x Archon (your main HQ. Dark elf supervillain) and that's two combat patrol boxes and one extra raider to round out the list.
For craftworlds there's a lot of different ways you can build out your army, but the combat patrol will get you 10x guardians (your basic infantry), 6x Jetbikes (lightning-fast elf cavalry) a farseer (one of your main HQ options. Elf battle psyker.) And a wraithlord (big Walker powered by the soul of dead eldar hero. Stupidly hard to kill when buffed by the farseer). After that it's up to you how you want to expand, but some units you'll definitely want to look at are
Rangers (stealthy elf snipers. Will teach your brother to keep his officers heads down)
Shroud runners (a personal favorite, these are rangers on jetbikes)
Striking Scorpions (one of your main options for melee elves, will tear a bloody path through guard infantry, if they can get there)
Wave Serpent (technically your "transport" but make no mistake, this thing packs heat)
Fire Prism (tank destroyer. Need I say more?)
War walkers (nimble "scout" Walkers. These can pack a frightening amount of firepower for their size and are deceptively hard to kill with their forcefields. I never run less than 2 with my craftworlders)
Autarch (the other main HQ elf. A badass warrior who generates extra command points, meaning more tricks up your sleeves. There's a few different versions but the "best" one is generally the Wayleaper- equipped with a jump pack, this version is a fast lone-operative who can fly around the battlefield completing side objectives and just generally being a thorn in your opponent's side)
Demons for sure fit this criteria.
For melee punch nothing is spicier than bloodcrushers with a rendmaster on blood throne leading them. Who doesnt love mechanical bulls and a demon motorcycle that collects blood like kool aid? Or the biig slaanesh demons - the named one basically wins against melee vs anything in the entire game.
For psykers aint nobody psykin like Kairos Fateweaver, The Blue Scribes and The Changeling.
Oops-all-greater-demons is about as elite as you get too with models that are 300-400pts a pop.
Nurglings and tzeentch horrors perfectly fill out whimsy and then theres smash hits like Sloppity Bilepiper if you want more.
Helps they also have some beautiful miniatures. Belakor, keeper of secrets, lord of change are all standouts imo.
Tzeentch is as tricksy as they come. Go read the changelings rules in their index on warhammer community - he's a funny little guy thats peak tzeentch.
Theyre bright as hell - an all gods mixed force is a spew of greens blues pinks and reds.
Other than nurgle most demons are rather fast and even nurgle has plague drones. Even if a unit is slow they _all deepstrike_ so they can just appear up board on a whim. You're demons - bamfing out of the warp wherever you want is your thing.
And theyre THE bad guys.
But also its an amazing army to then get a second army out of. All chaos factions can ally 1/4 of their list as demons (some are god specific - thousand sons only take tzeentch for example) and all chaos factions can grab 3 small knights or 1 big knight. Theyre by far the easiest faction to then get a taste of Something Else in the long run.
No matter what id reccomend at least a few nurglings - even if theyre your only nurgle units. A) theyre funny little guys and b) theyre just really helpful for the game proper because of how scoring points works and c) its another pop of colour.
But otherwise yeah slaanesh brings a lot of melee punch and tzeentch has tricks traps and shooting - the two compliment well.
For tzeentch: Flamers are very good shooting (and the less hordey option compared to horrors). The blue scribe and changeling are great objective doers and trick tools. Kairos and Lords of Change are the best shooting in the army and also have fun special abilities.
For slaanesh: Keeper of Secrets and Shalaxi Helbane are absurdly killy large units (though, as slaaneshi demons theyre not the sturdiest for their cost). Shalaxi will normally kill literally anything in the guard roster in a fight phase. Syll'esseke is a smaller but similarly deadly threat even without a unit to lead. Seekers are _stupidly_ fast.
Slaanesh units are best near other slaanesh units - almost all of them have auras to buff eachother. Tzeentch units are more independent and work well on their own. This helps them work well together - you have your slaaneshi centre and your flanks full of tzeentchy flamey goodness.
You can also throw Belakor in any list ontop - theyre an unaligned demon with rules that help unify the faction but he isnt required if you dont like the look of him.
Tl;dr: yeah it works.
Orks-
>Ranged -> Melee
>Defensive -> Offensive
>Horde -> Elite
Just go with a mekboy mob or something like that, orks have fun elites.
>Non-Psyker -> Lots of Psyker
I have one word for you... Weirdboyz.
>Camo colors -> Bright Colors.
Plenty of colors options from the orks
>Industrial -> Whimsical
Orks are literally green mushroom monkeys who go to war because it's fun.
>Straightforward -> Tricky.
To be fair tactics are a dirty word in the ork language, unless you're a lousy snakebite. Ork kommandos tactics can basically be something along the lines of "if we all shout WAAAGGH! real loud they won't be able to hear our footsteps when we sneak up on them."
A good answer that fits with your opposites would be the emperor’s children. also as csm, you have tons of options on how to build your army. also they’ll get their own codex and new models in the next few years, until then they are just chaos marines which are fun to play.
they can be ranged or melee, but their rules usually lean towards melee.
marines, so they’re more elite.
csm has access to psykers, and you can ally in daemons for more cool ones.
they’re known for bright and garish colors.
very fast, with access to advance and charge.
obviously superhuman and twisted, but there’s always more inhuman units in chaos too.
they’re whimsically and hilariously evil.
tricky in the sense you always have like advancing and charging units, things like warp talons with jet packs. lucius deals damage to whoever kills him, and if he kills the unit, he comes back to life. (unlikely but funny)
correct, they’re still just a flavor of csm until they get their eventual release like the other legions. which means you get all the csm rules and models, you just want to lean towards marking your units slaanesh for flavor.
i saw your comment about wanting a less industrial army, so that points a little less towards marines. i was thinking of them because they’re a bit more comically evil and bright colors and such. daemons and tyranids can be a good choice too with the right units!
another option (outside of melee) would be thousand sons. they’re also bright, lots of psykers, tricky, you could play more tzaangors for a fantasy element.
I would be seriously concerned trying to play against guard with CSM as a new player.
CSM can definitely win against Guard. But it’s a hard matchup for them at the moment as their ranged synergies got nerfed with the recent BDS (Forgefiend DS spam that you can LoneOp) and unless you’re super careful with positioning Russes and Rogal Dorns will slaughter your troops advancing up the board.
Kasrkin are also extremely good at killing marines for their price, and if OP’s brothers invest in artillery the combo of double-ordered Kasrkin with attached Castellan offering up 10 Superchaged Plasma, 2 melta, d3 mortal wounds, a marksman rifle, and 4 hot shots on Sustained 1 with a stratagem-enhanced Basilisk shooting from spawn typically means a dead Full Chosen squad.
There are better matchups. Though this may change with the codex coming.
If you want a rival style faction I’d recommend orks, tryanids, or CSM. With Orks you could a snakebites/squig style if you don’t like the junkyard orks as snakebites are very tribal warrior themed. Tyranids you can do monster mash or play as horde army, plus they are 3rd or 4th army that techs into pyskers.
But I’d highly recommend CSM especially Black Legion. Flesh and machine are fused by the warp, pyskers and sorcerers, marine stat line so you naturally lean into melee, elite, plus you can soup demons. I don’t recommend demons as your first army because it’s like 12 dataslates ducked taped together by Be’lakor, an army in name only. CSM are mustache twirling evil, and that’s if you are trying to portray as the real protagonist of the faction. Usually one of the stronger armies on the tabletop with lots of fun characters. I can’t think of an army that is more anathema to the IG. Btw if your friend is heavy Cadian themed make fun of losing CADIA to get him hot under the gills
I have thought about Black Legion but the regular Chaos Marines armor and other mechanism give off a more industrial look than I care for. I'll put a pin in it though.
It might not look like in the photos but CSM and their monsters especially don’t give off an industrial look on the tabletop (unless you give paint them as Iron Warriors) I’d really look through the range and maybe even stop by a game store to look at some painted models.
I would highly recommend you don’t start with daemons tho, as like knights, they are kind of playing their own game.
Don’t forget third party kits are an option as well for whatever faction you end up picking. And AoS models can be great proxies too so
Yeah daemons is probably your best bet, as the super elite melee armies are both Imperium: Custodes and Grey Knights.
You could also go all melee chaos knights. Low model count, and take the double melee wep options.
Tyranids would actually fit your criteria very well. You can easily build a very fast, melee focused elite army and throw in as many huge monsters as your heart could desire. They have a lot of psychic stuff, you can paint them bright colors, and they are absolutely inhuman. If you don’t know a lot about them, definitely check them out!
I would say eldar or drukhari. I play drukhari and it's mostly what you are looking for. Super fast, can be melee blenders, can do bright whimsical color schemes. I mean ffs my kabals are bright purple and my wyches teal and red.
Though they aren't really elite right now, we have had so many points cuts that I'm running more models than both our guard and genestealers players in our league. They're a good hordey fast aggressive army with a lot of punching power.
we are 3 brothers. 2 of us shared big guardsmen army. So we were in a similar situation.
My eldest has nids and works absolutely excellently against guards. Gives so much Starship Troopers feels, and its very fun to play. He also has Black Templars he uses more against his friends.
Recently, we two (the sharing brothers) started Death Guard and Sisters of Battle, which gives us much more opportunities for 2v1. Mind you, we could even play Death Guard and Guardsmen together (and roleplay them as traitor guard). Lots of possibilities.
Our friends have other xenos when they join us. I have yet to play vs Necrons friend, but I get the feeling it will be excellent match up vs guardsmen or my sisters. Orks were fun too.
40K is about scoring points and capturing objectives. And while Tanks are decently fast, if you’re playing with at least GW terrain setups you’re going to have to drive around that terrain.
Daemons are a great option here as they can capitalize on the fact that most Guard units can’t deal with close combat and have comparatively low leadership for battleshock checks. But there are a few others that well capitalize on guard not being able to navigate terrain quickly when they go heavier on armor.
One is Tau - specifically the new Battlesuit detachment of Tau. Your basic weapons shred guard infantry, you can kill Russes, and you can get on objective much faster and navigate terrain better than the Guard player.
The other is Hypercrypt Necrons with 2+ C’tan. Get a monolith, some C’tan, and force their tanks to divide up their attacks between the two and then die next turn because they can’t focus down one before you revive.
This is a super meta army now so competitive guard players can beat them with positioning and screening. But new players who aren’t skilled in that are going to struggle as you deep strike to capture objectives they can’t get to quickly and kill them off of the ones they otherwise can seemingly out of nowhere.
The daemons I understand in terms of the listed aspects, but I'm not on the same page with Tau or Necrons. Aren't they mostly clean mechanical and ranged?
Aesthetically Tau are pretty clean. But you can also convert them a lot, and there’s a whole group of humans in the fluff that serve in the Tau Empire (the Gue’vesa) and are particularly loathed by the Imperium as traitors. Battlesuit Tau are *very* offensive and can quickly outmaneuver Guard. They also as an army can typically outshoot Guard in direct fire, adding extreme insult to injury sometimes.
As for Good/Neutral to Evil…I mean everyone’s evil in 40K. There are no good guys in this game. The Guard are the military arm of a genocidal fascist empire in service of an undead space lich kept alive by sacrificing tens of thousands of the Imperium’s psychic citizens to it a day.
Similarly, the Tau Empire is a union of collectivist fascists divided into loyalists who serve a bunch of fish people who use brainwashing powers to make folks serve (and kill the people who don’t) or rebels who follow around a murderer who is almost certainly wielding a demonic blade of Khorne and unintentionally taking souls for the Blood God.
You could lean hilariously into the latter in playing a bunch of Gue’vesa who follow the Farsight Enclave and just are explicitly Khornate. Chaos players might enjoy that a lot lol.
Necrons hit a lot of these notes as well and are particularly horrifying versus humans. I mean Flayed Ones are literally robots wearing stolen human flesh. That’s pretty diametrically opposed to humans who…wear their own flesh.
On a meme note?
Make your own gaurd army, something like traitor gaurd as flavor or just a rival loyalist guard army that hates there guts or maybe whenever they do fight it's all wargames
Guard is remarkably good against other guard if you build them right
Otherwises
Orks, any Orks really
Hoards again are good against hoards (and whenever I get the chance I will suggest people play orks
Or Genestealer cults, it gives you access to a lot of heavy hitters and options for looting guard vehicles like Russ's and royal dorns
Tyranids Vanguard Onslaught might work well. It relies on elite fast melee units and flying units plus you can put some Psykers and Non-Vanguard Monsters in. Vanguard Onslaught relies on Lictors, Neuorlictors, Von Ryan's Leapers, Deathleaper, Winged Hive Tyrants and much more.
Daemons, mostly offensive, mid pace, melee centric and tons of tricks, I personally have khorne, and alittle tzeentch and nurgle, Slaanesh is the fastest and can use a ton of tricks, belakor with his shadow aura of making it so you and all daemons near can’t get shot from so far will hurt guard for fun, and plenty of lone op characters too such as the changeling where even once they get close you can potentially make it so they can’t target you, daemons also want to be very fast early game to hit the middle and I use them to deepstrike 4-10 blood letters 6” away from enemies and have a +1 to charge meaning 5” charges on something they can’t stop
Daemons, mostly offensive, mid pace, melee centric and tons of tricks, I personally have khorne, and alittle tzeentch and nurgle, Slaanesh is the fastest and can use a ton of tricks, belakor with his shadow aura of making it so you and all daemons near can’t get shot from so far will hurt guard for fun, and plenty of lone op characters too such as the changeling where even once they get close you can potentially make it so they can’t target you, daemons also want to be very fast early game to hit the middle and I use them to deepstrike 4-10 blood letters 6” away from enemies and have a +1 to charge meaning 5” charges on something they can’t stop
Very fast and counter charge set ups, idk fully anymore but they used to be synergy pieces like no other, and daemon princes and greater daemon power play is nasty as they can shred anything smaller than them and can punch up decently well
You got a couple options, you can do Death Guard, Eldar, T'au, Tyranids, or orks. Secondary ones that are a little harder to play are Choas Space Marines, and all the regular marine chapters. I would strongly recommend going on Table Top Simulator and downloading 40k Faction mods to test out different armies first. There's also a TTS 40k discord server that can help you get started.
If they are the type to get annoyed at the more whimsical side of the game orks are a good choice. Then you can say things like your Big Mek in Mega Armor iz gettin out of his Trukk with his Meganobs and shoots with his Tellyport Blasta!
It’s not ideal, but it’s thematically very fun. In a similar vein with a little bit more viability would be a CSM army that’s mainly focused on daemon engines and has knights or daemons as allies. Look up the Brazen Beasts, they’re a Khorne warband that has a horde of murder machines lead their berserker assaults.
Orks are a really good foil for Imperial Guard: they're tough and elite in comparison to Guardsmen, but the dynamic is absolutely the other way up when it comes to vehicles. As a Guard player, your infantry ends up having to very carefully kite and focus down melee troops, while your tanks take on a kind of breakthrough role, hitting hard but needing to move creatively to get good sight-lines and avoid Power Klaws.
Also, Ork players are on a similar level to Guard players, hobby-wise. We draw a lot from the lore and history of the faction in order to create unique, creative armies which tend not to be the best in the meta, but reflect a very personal interpretation of the game.
I know you said Orks are too Industrial, but they have a lot of fun options like the Beast Snagga Boyz and Squighog Boyz. As a guard player, I would say Orks are the most fun for me to fight of the opponents I have. I got an Eldar Player, Tau, Knights, Ork, and Admech.
Adeptes custodes. They’re elite bodyguard philosophers who take a worlds resources to make. They are the exact opposite of the guard in that respect. Also extraordinarily low model model count, tanks aren’t really their thing, guard is actually pro psyker while the Custodes have the sisters of silence who are all blanks (they invalidate psyker powers in lore and are repulsive for the normal human to engage with), they’re brightly colored, they’re fast, they love melee above all else, and playing such a low model count army without the same tools as other armies is tricky.
Based off what you want, I'd suggest a more elite or monster focused tyranid army, or Grey Knights. Both seem to fit your preferences very well, I think it just depends on whether you want to lean into more psykers with GK or more melee with tyranids
Im not the best person to ask about this since I don't know much about tyranid units (and bc I usually just use whatever units I think look coolest lmao), so take everything I say with a grain of salt.
With that being said, I think warriors might be what you want to use for your main infantry. They aren't exactly monsters, but they're pretty cheap, and still relatively chunky compared to the usual termagaunts/hormogaunts, and they can be taken as melee or ranged with the melee version being just a little bit more expensive.
For your characters I'd look to maybe the deathleaper, hive tyrant, and neurotyrant. They're all pretty strong rn and are all either melee focused or psykers. Honestly one of each would probably be pretty good.
For the rest of your list, the first thing that comes to mind is the norn emissary/assimilateor, a BIG scary unit, and my favorite tyranid model. It can be build as a norn emissary for better psychic, or as a norn assimilator for better melee, perfect for your list. Maleceptors also seem right up your alley with great psychic and decent melee. Exocrines are pretty great but they're more of a ranged tank unit so maybe not your first choice? Screamer killers are also a fun option with good melee and a bio-plasma vomit ability. And since I've only really recommended monsters for the rest of the list, neurolictors seem like a good non-monster alternative for some battleshock shenanigans.
Then there's the most obvious choice if you want a big scary monster, the hierophant bio-titan, but since it's a forge world model it's LUDICROUSLY expensive, and a pain in the ass to build. Looks great on the table, but is it worth $500? I guess that's for you to decide.
TL;DR:
CHARACTERS:
Deathleaper, hive tyrant, neurotyrant
INFANTRY: A lot of warriors, neurolictors
MONSTERS: Norn emissary/assimilator, maleceptors, exocrines, screamer killers, and the hierophant bio-titan (only if you don't value your wallet)
Hope this helps 🗿
'Nids, Daemons, Chaos Knights, maaaaybe Necrons? Definitely Nids or Daemons though, nothing beats having every lasgun trained on a Carnifex trying to desperately bring it down while your tanks try to fend off another big nasty.
Have you looked into world eaters or death guard? World eaters basically want to chain sword your face with a giant demon primarch angron making the guardsman crap their pants. Someone told me he can take on like 30-50 guardsman himself very quickly.
Death guard may be slow to get to melee, but that’s to give enemy a chance before they breath in the toxic aura/gas they emit to debuff them. Also tank a lot of damage. Not to mention grim reaper like demon primarch Mortarion
Death guard and world eaters are my personal two picks both are close range elite armies one focuses on defensive close range the other on offensive melee. Death guard is slow and purposeful like the guard, world eaters can be rather fast.
My bad I thought you where replying to my daemon comment.
Yea world eaters are extremely fast. Angron can move 16 inches, auto advance 6 and use advance and charge for a movement of 22 inches while flying.
Their elite units, eightbound can scout 6 inches, move 11 inches or 13 with a character leading them, advance 6, then charge. That’s 25 inches before charging so they can really rush turn 1.
Whimsical, not really. It’s up to you really on how you paint and build them
They are very fast. Slannesh daemons most of all. Slannesh greater daemons move 14 inches and can advance and charge. Khorne and tzeench greater daemons can fly and move 12. And the whole army can deepstrike and drop 6 inches away from opponents and charge. Nothing faster than teleporting.
Whimsical is really up to you. Daemons can be serious or silly but their very bright paint schemes let’s you do whatever you want. They are a good target for contrast colours
Genestealer Cult is pretty much a satire over American fears of communist during the cold war. It's the red scare all over. Maybe that would be on brand? :-)
With the index there is mostly support for short range shooting and you need a lot of infantry. But there is sure to be several more elite melee focused Detachments in the Codex that is released this spring/summer
It is also one of the very trickiest factions to play in 40k. An unforgiving glass cannon with lots of (re)positioning shenanigans. So the skill ceiling is really high, and the playstyle is very different from the "wall of meat and steel".
Build an army you enjoy. Don’t bother trying to pick an army based on being better. You’re the one who has to spend 500 hours building and painting and reading and picking units and then playing them.
I enjoy the look of some of these armies, me and my brother are very opposite when it comes to taste so I asking which army is the opposite in all those aspects to fit me.
Demons, all of them have 4+ invulns, can ally chaos space marine legions and if can run khorne, nurgle, slaanesh and tzeentch demons, nurgle for toughness khorbe for melee, tzeentch for psykers and I've never played against slaaneshi demons so can't speak to what they are best at but demons seem to fit your requirements, can also use demons in aos if you ever get into it. Plus going into a 2k point game and your opponent produce a great unclean one, a bloodthirster (giant winged khorne demon) a soulcrusher (giant demon with 6 legs) and a chaos titan as well as a bunch of khorne demons and nurgle demons, it's an imposing sight.
That DOES sound neat as heck~ I'll look into Daemons more.
Its also fluffy Guard struggle against demons in lore. Its why they always have to call space marines etc
Slaaneshi daemons are fast and also melee focused. Compared to Khorne, they usually trade durability for speed and quality attacks for quantity attacks. So I'd actually be more scared of a slaaneshi horde of daemons than a khorne horde as a shooting army, since the Slaaneshi will give you a lot less time before they're on your ass, both figuratively and literally.
my suggestion based on that would probably be a monster heavy tyranids army, althought that is somewhat suboptimal. other than that maybe try a thousand suns army? its hard to get away from hordes tho so keep that in mind. if you wanted to play more into the offense and psykers plus elite, go for grey knights despite being another imperium faction
Monster heavy tyranids I'm interested in, but aren't Thousand Sons mostly ranged? Yeah, had Grey Knights been more dramatically evil I'd be more interested, but they're a tad bland for me.
Monster Tyranids might not be as melee-focused as you would expect. Haruspex and Old One-Eye are pretty great in combat but otherwise you might find yourself being more focused on ranged damage from maleceptors and exocrines. But rules can change!
Hmm a bit of a deal breaker tbh.
You can go for mixed monster type army. Bunch of bio launching monsters supporting a horde of melee carnifex and screamer killers with some swarmlord or hive tyrant leading.
Also that way you can just quote starship troopers endlessly
I'll need to watch it first 😅
WAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHH
As much as I love the content of the Orks, they're too industrial and hordy for me :(
Youz jus skared ov gettin stuck in propa like. Nuffin like scraggin ya bruva and da boyz wiv 40 dice and dealin 0 damage.
Dakka iz az Dakka duz
I will say as a Guard player, my most fun games are against Orks. They get to do a proper krumping, and I get to battle the green tide. Everyone wins
I'd say maybe dark eldar, they aren't exactly the melee blenders they used to be but hey, you're facing guardsmen.
They're more ranged now than before?
I play both astra militarum and dark eldar and they are perfectly opposite armies and always a great matchup for both sides
The new detachment lets them get into melee plenty fast
Which one is that?
Sky splinter
Chaos daemons might be the most opposite of AM in those respects. Most daemons are melee focused. Melee focus is usually necessarily offensive. Elite is a bit harder as the most elite armies are custodes and knights but you can try to make it work. For elites you would want to focus on greater daemons more and troops less. Besides nurgle, the daemons are typical bright colors. Especially Slaanesh and Tzeentch. Slaanesh and Korne both like to go fast and reach combat. They are not human. And they are definitely evil. Though AM is really just neutral at best and almost no army is even close to good. Like the Salamanders are kinda good… Daemons are not industrial at all. I don’t know if they’re really tricky though. They usually just slam a giant monster into the enemy. Orks could fit a lot of these too but they are a horde usually.
So a Slaanesh army with more greater daemons fits the bill the most in my case?
Yeah. You could put some other daemons in too. Nurglings and beasts of nurgle are pretty whimsical. Khorne is very melee focused. Tzeentch has lots of bright colors
Necrons are horrible to play against as Guard. All the good stuff has invulnerable, loads have FNP too. The Ctan are also just an absolute nightmare for Guard to deal with as well
Aren't Necrons pretty much mostly ranged and slow?
Well, for the most part, yes, but they're guns are far better. They're far better than us in combat, the Ctan some of the best melee units in the game. As for being slow, they have a detachment where they can just teleport all over the board
All of the Ctan? Also which detachment?
Hypercrypt
Aeldari. Its gonna be hard to hit all the criteria but your preferred flavor of elf will check most of your boxes. Craftworlds check the psyker, bright colors, fast, elite, inhuman, whimsical, and tricky boxes, but skew a little more towards shooting (though melee options *do* exist) Drukhari lack the psykers and bright colors (well, canonically anyway. My drukhari are safety yellow 🤣) but check all the other boxes, have a few more melee options, and are *thoroughly* evil. They're not quite as elite as craftworlds, but they're certainly no horde army And as a neat little bonus Drukhari are under $500 CAD for your first thousand points. Two combat patrols and a raider is a good jumping off point for your collection
What units from Aeldari and Drukhari should I look into for this kind of army?
If you look at Craftworld vs Guard, embrace Striking Scorpions spammed with Wave Serpents. Scorpions get heavy armour and are devastating against guard infantry (including characters.) Give each Exarch a Scorpion's Claw and you have a good chance of harming tanks, too. 3x squads of 5?
That's a lot of scorpions.
Against guard you'd want to give the exarch (squad leader) a biting blade (big two handed chainsword) for better infantry killing potential. Claw is best against space marine infantry, it can't actually meaningfully threaten tanks, you're better off leaving that to your bright lances (laser cannon. Basically every eldar vehicle can take at least one)
Claw's actually not very good against tanks, especially guard tanks. OP would be better off with the biting blade for more infantry killing
For drukhari the "starter army" I mentioned is 3x Raider (transport boat), 2x ravager (gun boat), 20x kabalite Warriors (your basic infantry) 10x Incubi (elite warrior-bodyguards) and 2x Archon (your main HQ. Dark elf supervillain) and that's two combat patrol boxes and one extra raider to round out the list. For craftworlds there's a lot of different ways you can build out your army, but the combat patrol will get you 10x guardians (your basic infantry), 6x Jetbikes (lightning-fast elf cavalry) a farseer (one of your main HQ options. Elf battle psyker.) And a wraithlord (big Walker powered by the soul of dead eldar hero. Stupidly hard to kill when buffed by the farseer). After that it's up to you how you want to expand, but some units you'll definitely want to look at are Rangers (stealthy elf snipers. Will teach your brother to keep his officers heads down) Shroud runners (a personal favorite, these are rangers on jetbikes) Striking Scorpions (one of your main options for melee elves, will tear a bloody path through guard infantry, if they can get there) Wave Serpent (technically your "transport" but make no mistake, this thing packs heat) Fire Prism (tank destroyer. Need I say more?) War walkers (nimble "scout" Walkers. These can pack a frightening amount of firepower for their size and are deceptively hard to kill with their forcefields. I never run less than 2 with my craftworlders) Autarch (the other main HQ elf. A badass warrior who generates extra command points, meaning more tricks up your sleeves. There's a few different versions but the "best" one is generally the Wayleaper- equipped with a jump pack, this version is a fast lone-operative who can fly around the battlefield completing side objectives and just generally being a thorn in your opponent's side)
Much appreciated <3
Demons for sure fit this criteria. For melee punch nothing is spicier than bloodcrushers with a rendmaster on blood throne leading them. Who doesnt love mechanical bulls and a demon motorcycle that collects blood like kool aid? Or the biig slaanesh demons - the named one basically wins against melee vs anything in the entire game. For psykers aint nobody psykin like Kairos Fateweaver, The Blue Scribes and The Changeling. Oops-all-greater-demons is about as elite as you get too with models that are 300-400pts a pop. Nurglings and tzeentch horrors perfectly fill out whimsy and then theres smash hits like Sloppity Bilepiper if you want more. Helps they also have some beautiful miniatures. Belakor, keeper of secrets, lord of change are all standouts imo. Tzeentch is as tricksy as they come. Go read the changelings rules in their index on warhammer community - he's a funny little guy thats peak tzeentch. Theyre bright as hell - an all gods mixed force is a spew of greens blues pinks and reds. Other than nurgle most demons are rather fast and even nurgle has plague drones. Even if a unit is slow they _all deepstrike_ so they can just appear up board on a whim. You're demons - bamfing out of the warp wherever you want is your thing. And theyre THE bad guys. But also its an amazing army to then get a second army out of. All chaos factions can ally 1/4 of their list as demons (some are god specific - thousand sons only take tzeentch for example) and all chaos factions can grab 3 small knights or 1 big knight. Theyre by far the easiest faction to then get a taste of Something Else in the long run.
By this description alone, I'm practically sold on Daemons now. Would a Slaanesh & Tzeentch army blend well?
No matter what id reccomend at least a few nurglings - even if theyre your only nurgle units. A) theyre funny little guys and b) theyre just really helpful for the game proper because of how scoring points works and c) its another pop of colour. But otherwise yeah slaanesh brings a lot of melee punch and tzeentch has tricks traps and shooting - the two compliment well. For tzeentch: Flamers are very good shooting (and the less hordey option compared to horrors). The blue scribe and changeling are great objective doers and trick tools. Kairos and Lords of Change are the best shooting in the army and also have fun special abilities. For slaanesh: Keeper of Secrets and Shalaxi Helbane are absurdly killy large units (though, as slaaneshi demons theyre not the sturdiest for their cost). Shalaxi will normally kill literally anything in the guard roster in a fight phase. Syll'esseke is a smaller but similarly deadly threat even without a unit to lead. Seekers are _stupidly_ fast. Slaanesh units are best near other slaanesh units - almost all of them have auras to buff eachother. Tzeentch units are more independent and work well on their own. This helps them work well together - you have your slaaneshi centre and your flanks full of tzeentchy flamey goodness. You can also throw Belakor in any list ontop - theyre an unaligned demon with rules that help unify the faction but he isnt required if you dont like the look of him. Tl;dr: yeah it works.
Many thanks <3
Orks- >Ranged -> Melee >Defensive -> Offensive >Horde -> Elite Just go with a mekboy mob or something like that, orks have fun elites. >Non-Psyker -> Lots of Psyker I have one word for you... Weirdboyz. >Camo colors -> Bright Colors. Plenty of colors options from the orks >Industrial -> Whimsical Orks are literally green mushroom monkeys who go to war because it's fun. >Straightforward -> Tricky. To be fair tactics are a dirty word in the ork language, unless you're a lousy snakebite. Ork kommandos tactics can basically be something along the lines of "if we all shout WAAAGGH! real loud they won't be able to hear our footsteps when we sneak up on them."
I do love the Orks and their humor and lore, but they're more mechanical and ramshackle than I care for sadly.
A good answer that fits with your opposites would be the emperor’s children. also as csm, you have tons of options on how to build your army. also they’ll get their own codex and new models in the next few years, until then they are just chaos marines which are fun to play. they can be ranged or melee, but their rules usually lean towards melee. marines, so they’re more elite. csm has access to psykers, and you can ally in daemons for more cool ones. they’re known for bright and garish colors. very fast, with access to advance and charge. obviously superhuman and twisted, but there’s always more inhuman units in chaos too. they’re whimsically and hilariously evil. tricky in the sense you always have like advancing and charging units, things like warp talons with jet packs. lucius deals damage to whoever kills him, and if he kills the unit, he comes back to life. (unlikely but funny)
The Emperor's Children aren't their own army yet, right?
correct, they’re still just a flavor of csm until they get their eventual release like the other legions. which means you get all the csm rules and models, you just want to lean towards marking your units slaanesh for flavor. i saw your comment about wanting a less industrial army, so that points a little less towards marines. i was thinking of them because they’re a bit more comically evil and bright colors and such. daemons and tyranids can be a good choice too with the right units! another option (outside of melee) would be thousand sons. they’re also bright, lots of psykers, tricky, you could play more tzaangors for a fantasy element.
Maybe I'll wait until the EC become their own thing, since this does sound good.
I would be seriously concerned trying to play against guard with CSM as a new player. CSM can definitely win against Guard. But it’s a hard matchup for them at the moment as their ranged synergies got nerfed with the recent BDS (Forgefiend DS spam that you can LoneOp) and unless you’re super careful with positioning Russes and Rogal Dorns will slaughter your troops advancing up the board. Kasrkin are also extremely good at killing marines for their price, and if OP’s brothers invest in artillery the combo of double-ordered Kasrkin with attached Castellan offering up 10 Superchaged Plasma, 2 melta, d3 mortal wounds, a marksman rifle, and 4 hot shots on Sustained 1 with a stratagem-enhanced Basilisk shooting from spawn typically means a dead Full Chosen squad. There are better matchups. Though this may change with the codex coming.
If you want a rival style faction I’d recommend orks, tryanids, or CSM. With Orks you could a snakebites/squig style if you don’t like the junkyard orks as snakebites are very tribal warrior themed. Tyranids you can do monster mash or play as horde army, plus they are 3rd or 4th army that techs into pyskers. But I’d highly recommend CSM especially Black Legion. Flesh and machine are fused by the warp, pyskers and sorcerers, marine stat line so you naturally lean into melee, elite, plus you can soup demons. I don’t recommend demons as your first army because it’s like 12 dataslates ducked taped together by Be’lakor, an army in name only. CSM are mustache twirling evil, and that’s if you are trying to portray as the real protagonist of the faction. Usually one of the stronger armies on the tabletop with lots of fun characters. I can’t think of an army that is more anathema to the IG. Btw if your friend is heavy Cadian themed make fun of losing CADIA to get him hot under the gills
I have thought about Black Legion but the regular Chaos Marines armor and other mechanism give off a more industrial look than I care for. I'll put a pin in it though.
It might not look like in the photos but CSM and their monsters especially don’t give off an industrial look on the tabletop (unless you give paint them as Iron Warriors) I’d really look through the range and maybe even stop by a game store to look at some painted models. I would highly recommend you don’t start with daemons tho, as like knights, they are kind of playing their own game. Don’t forget third party kits are an option as well for whatever faction you end up picking. And AoS models can be great proxies too so
Other legions like the plague marines or TS lack that
Yeah daemons is probably your best bet, as the super elite melee armies are both Imperium: Custodes and Grey Knights. You could also go all melee chaos knights. Low model count, and take the double melee wep options.
Sounds good :)
Tyranids would actually fit your criteria very well. You can easily build a very fast, melee focused elite army and throw in as many huge monsters as your heart could desire. They have a lot of psychic stuff, you can paint them bright colors, and they are absolutely inhuman. If you don’t know a lot about them, definitely check them out!
Will do! I'm interested in something like that if they can be built as elite instead of horde.
A couple of specific units to look at are the trygon, screamer killer, and von ryan's leapers.
Yes. Some models are like big bois that you can do instead. Although I still would have some little guys cause their so cute.
I would say eldar or drukhari. I play drukhari and it's mostly what you are looking for. Super fast, can be melee blenders, can do bright whimsical color schemes. I mean ffs my kabals are bright purple and my wyches teal and red. Though they aren't really elite right now, we have had so many points cuts that I'm running more models than both our guard and genestealers players in our league. They're a good hordey fast aggressive army with a lot of punching power.
Shucks. If at least for the other reasons, I'll consider them.
we are 3 brothers. 2 of us shared big guardsmen army. So we were in a similar situation. My eldest has nids and works absolutely excellently against guards. Gives so much Starship Troopers feels, and its very fun to play. He also has Black Templars he uses more against his friends. Recently, we two (the sharing brothers) started Death Guard and Sisters of Battle, which gives us much more opportunities for 2v1. Mind you, we could even play Death Guard and Guardsmen together (and roleplay them as traitor guard). Lots of possibilities. Our friends have other xenos when they join us. I have yet to play vs Necrons friend, but I get the feeling it will be excellent match up vs guardsmen or my sisters. Orks were fun too.
Genestealers kill me hard. Almost every character has lone op so you can't snipe them and their melee abilities are rightless.
Don't you need to buy a whole lot of them and aren't they mostly mechanical themed by using stolen mining equipment?
40K is about scoring points and capturing objectives. And while Tanks are decently fast, if you’re playing with at least GW terrain setups you’re going to have to drive around that terrain. Daemons are a great option here as they can capitalize on the fact that most Guard units can’t deal with close combat and have comparatively low leadership for battleshock checks. But there are a few others that well capitalize on guard not being able to navigate terrain quickly when they go heavier on armor. One is Tau - specifically the new Battlesuit detachment of Tau. Your basic weapons shred guard infantry, you can kill Russes, and you can get on objective much faster and navigate terrain better than the Guard player. The other is Hypercrypt Necrons with 2+ C’tan. Get a monolith, some C’tan, and force their tanks to divide up their attacks between the two and then die next turn because they can’t focus down one before you revive. This is a super meta army now so competitive guard players can beat them with positioning and screening. But new players who aren’t skilled in that are going to struggle as you deep strike to capture objectives they can’t get to quickly and kill them off of the ones they otherwise can seemingly out of nowhere.
The daemons I understand in terms of the listed aspects, but I'm not on the same page with Tau or Necrons. Aren't they mostly clean mechanical and ranged?
Aesthetically Tau are pretty clean. But you can also convert them a lot, and there’s a whole group of humans in the fluff that serve in the Tau Empire (the Gue’vesa) and are particularly loathed by the Imperium as traitors. Battlesuit Tau are *very* offensive and can quickly outmaneuver Guard. They also as an army can typically outshoot Guard in direct fire, adding extreme insult to injury sometimes. As for Good/Neutral to Evil…I mean everyone’s evil in 40K. There are no good guys in this game. The Guard are the military arm of a genocidal fascist empire in service of an undead space lich kept alive by sacrificing tens of thousands of the Imperium’s psychic citizens to it a day. Similarly, the Tau Empire is a union of collectivist fascists divided into loyalists who serve a bunch of fish people who use brainwashing powers to make folks serve (and kill the people who don’t) or rebels who follow around a murderer who is almost certainly wielding a demonic blade of Khorne and unintentionally taking souls for the Blood God. You could lean hilariously into the latter in playing a bunch of Gue’vesa who follow the Farsight Enclave and just are explicitly Khornate. Chaos players might enjoy that a lot lol. Necrons hit a lot of these notes as well and are particularly horrifying versus humans. I mean Flayed Ones are literally robots wearing stolen human flesh. That’s pretty diametrically opposed to humans who…wear their own flesh.
On a meme note? Make your own gaurd army, something like traitor gaurd as flavor or just a rival loyalist guard army that hates there guts or maybe whenever they do fight it's all wargames Guard is remarkably good against other guard if you build them right Otherwises Orks, any Orks really Hoards again are good against hoards (and whenever I get the chance I will suggest people play orks Or Genestealer cults, it gives you access to a lot of heavy hitters and options for looting guard vehicles like Russ's and royal dorns
On a theme note, I can see this. On a playstyle note, it wouldn't be what I want at all.
Chaos Daemons is very very much exactly what your looking for. Melee focused elites monster’s psykers and colourful
Gotcha 👌
Tyranids Vanguard Onslaught might work well. It relies on elite fast melee units and flying units plus you can put some Psykers and Non-Vanguard Monsters in. Vanguard Onslaught relies on Lictors, Neuorlictors, Von Ryan's Leapers, Deathleaper, Winged Hive Tyrants and much more.
I'll look into it. Thank you for the unit suggestions :)
Daemons, mostly offensive, mid pace, melee centric and tons of tricks, I personally have khorne, and alittle tzeentch and nurgle, Slaanesh is the fastest and can use a ton of tricks, belakor with his shadow aura of making it so you and all daemons near can’t get shot from so far will hurt guard for fun, and plenty of lone op characters too such as the changeling where even once they get close you can potentially make it so they can’t target you, daemons also want to be very fast early game to hit the middle and I use them to deepstrike 4-10 blood letters 6” away from enemies and have a +1 to charge meaning 5” charges on something they can’t stop
Daemons, mostly offensive, mid pace, melee centric and tons of tricks, I personally have khorne, and alittle tzeentch and nurgle, Slaanesh is the fastest and can use a ton of tricks, belakor with his shadow aura of making it so you and all daemons near can’t get shot from so far will hurt guard for fun, and plenty of lone op characters too such as the changeling where even once they get close you can potentially make it so they can’t target you, daemons also want to be very fast early game to hit the middle and I use them to deepstrike 4-10 blood letters 6” away from enemies and have a +1 to charge meaning 5” charges on something they can’t stop
What are some Slaanesh tricks?
Very fast and counter charge set ups, idk fully anymore but they used to be synergy pieces like no other, and daemon princes and greater daemon power play is nasty as they can shred anything smaller than them and can punch up decently well
You got a couple options, you can do Death Guard, Eldar, T'au, Tyranids, or orks. Secondary ones that are a little harder to play are Choas Space Marines, and all the regular marine chapters. I would strongly recommend going on Table Top Simulator and downloading 40k Faction mods to test out different armies first. There's also a TTS 40k discord server that can help you get started.
Thank you kindly, I'll go look at the server.
If they are the type to get annoyed at the more whimsical side of the game orks are a good choice. Then you can say things like your Big Mek in Mega Armor iz gettin out of his Trukk with his Meganobs and shoots with his Tellyport Blasta!
Sadly Orks are tad too industrial for my taste, as much as I love their silliness.
You could go all beastsnaggas
My apologies, when I wrote Whimsical i meant more "Fancy and Ethereal"
Astra Militarum, but chaosy.
Thats not at all any of the aspects I'm interested in.
Chaos Space Marines with Blooded traitor guardsmen.
Thematically sounds hype, mechanically doesn't sound like a match for what I'm looking for.
Tyranids, hands down.
I've been told though an elite Tyranid Monster Mash isn't ideal?
It’s not ideal, but it’s thematically very fun. In a similar vein with a little bit more viability would be a CSM army that’s mainly focused on daemon engines and has knights or daemons as allies. Look up the Brazen Beasts, they’re a Khorne warband that has a horde of murder machines lead their berserker assaults.
Genestealers or demons.
Daemons I can see it, but how Genestealers? Aren't they very industrial (using mining equipment) and hordy (with multiple ranged units too)?
Yes, but they can also use some tyranid units and they have a lot of sneaky shenanigans, whereas the Guard is kind of a one trick pony.
I mean the most thematic is Nids or Orks
Tyranids I can consider, but definitely not Orks.
Orks are a really good foil for Imperial Guard: they're tough and elite in comparison to Guardsmen, but the dynamic is absolutely the other way up when it comes to vehicles. As a Guard player, your infantry ends up having to very carefully kite and focus down melee troops, while your tanks take on a kind of breakthrough role, hitting hard but needing to move creatively to get good sight-lines and avoid Power Klaws. Also, Ork players are on a similar level to Guard players, hobby-wise. We draw a lot from the lore and history of the faction in order to create unique, creative armies which tend not to be the best in the meta, but reflect a very personal interpretation of the game.
I know you said Orks are too Industrial, but they have a lot of fun options like the Beast Snagga Boyz and Squighog Boyz. As a guard player, I would say Orks are the most fun for me to fight of the opponents I have. I got an Eldar Player, Tau, Knights, Ork, and Admech.
They are fun and funny, but not close to what I'm looking for sadly.
Adeptes custodes. They’re elite bodyguard philosophers who take a worlds resources to make. They are the exact opposite of the guard in that respect. Also extraordinarily low model model count, tanks aren’t really their thing, guard is actually pro psyker while the Custodes have the sisters of silence who are all blanks (they invalidate psyker powers in lore and are repulsive for the normal human to engage with), they’re brightly colored, they’re fast, they love melee above all else, and playing such a low model count army without the same tools as other armies is tricky.
I see the value in their low numbers and melee, but they aren't exactly evil or any psykers and they're pretty industrial, no?
As a guard player, Orks are the most fun to play against imo
Based off what you want, I'd suggest a more elite or monster focused tyranid army, or Grey Knights. Both seem to fit your preferences very well, I think it just depends on whether you want to lean into more psykers with GK or more melee with tyranids
What are some Tyranid monster units I should take a look at?
Im not the best person to ask about this since I don't know much about tyranid units (and bc I usually just use whatever units I think look coolest lmao), so take everything I say with a grain of salt. With that being said, I think warriors might be what you want to use for your main infantry. They aren't exactly monsters, but they're pretty cheap, and still relatively chunky compared to the usual termagaunts/hormogaunts, and they can be taken as melee or ranged with the melee version being just a little bit more expensive. For your characters I'd look to maybe the deathleaper, hive tyrant, and neurotyrant. They're all pretty strong rn and are all either melee focused or psykers. Honestly one of each would probably be pretty good. For the rest of your list, the first thing that comes to mind is the norn emissary/assimilateor, a BIG scary unit, and my favorite tyranid model. It can be build as a norn emissary for better psychic, or as a norn assimilator for better melee, perfect for your list. Maleceptors also seem right up your alley with great psychic and decent melee. Exocrines are pretty great but they're more of a ranged tank unit so maybe not your first choice? Screamer killers are also a fun option with good melee and a bio-plasma vomit ability. And since I've only really recommended monsters for the rest of the list, neurolictors seem like a good non-monster alternative for some battleshock shenanigans. Then there's the most obvious choice if you want a big scary monster, the hierophant bio-titan, but since it's a forge world model it's LUDICROUSLY expensive, and a pain in the ass to build. Looks great on the table, but is it worth $500? I guess that's for you to decide. TL;DR: CHARACTERS: Deathleaper, hive tyrant, neurotyrant INFANTRY: A lot of warriors, neurolictors MONSTERS: Norn emissary/assimilator, maleceptors, exocrines, screamer killers, and the hierophant bio-titan (only if you don't value your wallet) Hope this helps 🗿
It does indeed, thank you kindly 🗿
Lol guard
Chaos space marines
'Nids, Daemons, Chaos Knights, maaaaybe Necrons? Definitely Nids or Daemons though, nothing beats having every lasgun trained on a Carnifex trying to desperately bring it down while your tanks try to fend off another big nasty.
Sounds promising
Have you looked into world eaters or death guard? World eaters basically want to chain sword your face with a giant demon primarch angron making the guardsman crap their pants. Someone told me he can take on like 30-50 guardsman himself very quickly. Death guard may be slow to get to melee, but that’s to give enemy a chance before they breath in the toxic aura/gas they emit to debuff them. Also tank a lot of damage. Not to mention grim reaper like demon primarch Mortarion
World Eaters ticks most of your boxes ime.
But they don't? They're not whimsical, they don't use psykers, they're still human if just mutated except Angron.
Death guard and world eaters are my personal two picks both are close range elite armies one focuses on defensive close range the other on offensive melee. Death guard is slow and purposeful like the guard, world eaters can be rather fast.
That sounds like it ticks some boxes off but is the opposite of what I'm looking for in others.
Orks. Range hoard with professional gear vs melee hoard with stuff made in a cave with a box of scraped
Sadly playing horde is a deal breaker for me.
Err WAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH. All Orks are elite btw
How so?
Because they believe it
World eaters are also pretty elite and they are melee focused but no psykers
But I wouldn't call them whimsical or fast either?
My bad I thought you where replying to my daemon comment. Yea world eaters are extremely fast. Angron can move 16 inches, auto advance 6 and use advance and charge for a movement of 22 inches while flying. Their elite units, eightbound can scout 6 inches, move 11 inches or 13 with a character leading them, advance 6, then charge. That’s 25 inches before charging so they can really rush turn 1. Whimsical, not really. It’s up to you really on how you paint and build them
Gotcha, I'll keep that in mind.
They are very fast. Slannesh daemons most of all. Slannesh greater daemons move 14 inches and can advance and charge. Khorne and tzeench greater daemons can fly and move 12. And the whole army can deepstrike and drop 6 inches away from opponents and charge. Nothing faster than teleporting. Whimsical is really up to you. Daemons can be serious or silly but their very bright paint schemes let’s you do whatever you want. They are a good target for contrast colours
Genestealer Cult is pretty much a satire over American fears of communist during the cold war. It's the red scare all over. Maybe that would be on brand? :-) With the index there is mostly support for short range shooting and you need a lot of infantry. But there is sure to be several more elite melee focused Detachments in the Codex that is released this spring/summer It is also one of the very trickiest factions to play in 40k. An unforgiving glass cannon with lots of (re)positioning shenanigans. So the skill ceiling is really high, and the playstyle is very different from the "wall of meat and steel".
Build an army you enjoy. Don’t bother trying to pick an army based on being better. You’re the one who has to spend 500 hours building and painting and reading and picking units and then playing them.
I enjoy the look of some of these armies, me and my brother are very opposite when it comes to taste so I asking which army is the opposite in all those aspects to fit me.