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Which army are you most scared to play?

Which army are you most scared to play?

2K views 18 replies 10 participants last post by  The_Outsider 
#1 ·
Which 40k army scares you the most to play? If you were at a tournament which of these armies would you be hoping you don't have to face? Please leave a comment saying which army you play and why the army you voted for scares you.
 
#3 ·
#1. Imperial Guards. Their firepower is just too great. I think they are one of the best tournament armies.

#2. Space Wolves. One of the most balanced codex. Also very strong and efficient. IMO, one of the best armies out there.

#3. Chaos Space Marines. Still consistently successful in tournaments. Dual-lash is nasty especially against psychic-defenseless armies.

#4. Orks. Still a consistent tourney-winning army. Very tough and bloody to play against.

#5. Mechdar. The fastest, most resilient army out there.
 
#4 ·
I voted Imperial Guard... I haven't yet actually losed to them but many of my games have been very close draws and I have only fought horde armies, not vets-and'-chimeras kind.
 
#5 ·
I'm surprised that no one else has said Tyranids. The nid armies are some of the best balanced and most dangerous at the tournaments I normally play in. Their ability to spawn new troops and shut down your close combat units by reducing their WS to 1, is devastating.

Imperial Guard isn't that scary. Peel open their transports and you'll do fine. They're shooty, but they're far from invincible. I will note, however, that there are some army setups (Chaos Daemon Epidemus lists, footslogging marines, Grey Knight Land Raider lists) that are nearly impossible to play against IG with.

This may surprise you, but I voted for Dark Eldar. Dark Eldar players are DANGEROUS. Yeah, their army isn't the best, but the people who bring the Dark Eldar to tournaments almost always know what they're doing, and the last time I played against them my Orks got erased in short order. Believe me, if played right, they're one of the deadlier armies in the game, and most people who play them know how to use them right.
 
#7 ·
I voted Imperial Guard and Blood angels because they are overpowered.

Imperial Guard have almost everything their way. Huge guns and blasts, loads of cheap infantry but nasty infantry if they want them. All Imperial Guard units are good at what they do even if it's just getting in the way and dying. They have the Hellhound and it's variants with very nasty long-range templates. But the Hellhound and variants is still fairly cheap, especially when compared to the horribly high points cost of the Tyranid Tyrannofex which has an inferior template weapon despite it's much higher points value.

Blood angels are far too good in assault for Marines. Mephiston for example was a character I liked when he was balanced and he made me like BA, even think of getting them. Now Mephiston is so nasty it's made me feel somebody made his rules that way because they couldn't stand the idea of him losing. Special characters should make the game interesting, they should not be so loved by the game developers that they are in effect spoiled with their rules. The Blood angel combo of very good Marine BS with extreme assault ability makes it too easy for them to win.

I'm surprised that no one else has said Tyranids. The nid armies are some of the best balanced and most dangerous at the tournaments I normally play in. Their ability to spawn new troops and shut down your close combat units by reducing their WS to 1, is devastating.
Only the Tervigon can spawn broods and only the Hive Tyrant can reduce WS to 1 and neither task is fool proof. Both of these are very, very pricey monstrous creatures and are both HQ so there aren't that many of them.
 
#6 · (Edited)
I'm not surprised so many people are afraid of Dark Eldar....but that's because those people are playing MEQ armies. DE consistently have problems against IG, Tau, shooty Space Wolves and shooty Nids. They also have problems at 2000pts+ as they don't scale as well as some of the other armies. They are scary, but there are many builds that they are scared of as well. That's why I didn't even rank them in my top 5 scariest armies. Top 10 sure, but not among the top 5.

Nids, please. They're a good army, but they're not a great army. A lot of armies have problems against them, but then they also have a lot of problems against some armies. Space Wolves Rune Priest/Long Fang-spam, Witchhunter Immo spam, IG, dual-lash and some assault-heavy armies do good against nids.
 
#8 ·
I play a mechanised space marine force.
ALthough the Imperial Guard have a scary output, I feel my list has enough firepower to distract the guard army until I get close, and when ten marines charge ten guardsmen I think I know who'll win. And mechdar more annoy me than scare me. Tyranids just make me laugh for some unknown reason. (I just like the scenario of the bug squishing the human).

So instead I cheated and voted for two armies: Dark Eldar and Necrons.
Firstly Dark Eldar. Due to their rarity I have never played against Dark Eldar, which means I can only use advice for my tactics. My list is mechanised and so their numerous dark lances would wipe it out and then their disintegrators would mop up the remains. A noob dark eldar player would be fine, but unfortunately most Dark Eldar players are experienced and so scary (also they're going to do bad things to my marines...).

I chose necrons because they are my worst nightmare. A nooby necron player is easy to beat, my army just blasts holes with my 3 vindicators and tank-shocks, blows smoke, then next turn disembarks and murders everything in combat. However, my friend has played necrons for two years now and nothing else. He knows every weakness and strength of the codex and exploits them madly. His tactic: to put 2-3 monoliths in front of his warriors, with destroyers on the wings and a necron lord with res-orb in the middle of the warriors. First turn his destroyers fly sideways to attack my side armour whilst the rest of the army advances. When I get close, the monoliths move sideways to let me in. Now you may think this is a mistake but it is not. The opening allows him to bring 50-60 gauss rapid firing shots at me, capable of killing anything they target. If it survives then I charge but he normally holds (as there so hard to kill and have Ld10). He then uses the monoliths to teleport the warriors out and repeats the gause.

A necron player who plays like this against space marines is evil. My extra speed gives me little advantage due to his castling up (although mechanising has helped me a lot, allowing me to capture objectives opr tank-shock him away from the res-orb). And he adapts his tactics welll to other armies. Except against nids, eldar and perhaps dark eldar, a truly experienced necron player will never win, but nor will he lose, he will almost always draw (how do you stop him contesting an objective if he puts a monolith on it???!)


Then again, my friends army containing eldrad, a farseer, warwalkers with missile launchers and 2 squads of reapers isn't nice (thats all the squads guided, or some enemies doomed (also using a hole in the rules, a farseer may use his powers per turn which unless specified refers to a player turn, meaning he fortunes his units during my turn). My friend is also ridicoulously lucky, (an avatar holding off 1500pts of necrons and then killing 600pts of it) (Eldrad Ulthran, surviving against a 1500pt daemon army after all the other eldar were dead (in fact he actually was runnning away, but then rallied, cast fortune on himself, mind-warred a greater(?) daemon and then doomed something and killed lots).

So really after this enormous psot, I'm not scared of any army, just my "friends".
 
#9 ·
I voted for Imperial Guard, but not because they are scary. It's because I have the hardest time consistently beating a Guard player.
 
#11 ·
Hmm, i'm not sure which army is the most difficult to take on. DE are scared of IG and eldar because both armies have the exact right strengths to DE's weaknesses and both armies have reasonable to high mobility, which makes a huge difference to DE - an army known for its speed - as it slowly chips away at their ability to do exactly what they want where they want.

WH on the other hand don't care about eldar at all and guard only pose a problem if you don't bring excorcists and a sensible smattering of melta weaponry (of any sort) and the odd eviscerator.

The real answer though, is an army played by a good player that can throw unusual tactics at you - marines are a prime example because you can have a very mutable force without changing up a list, but nearly all other forces will be mostly predictable due to a reasonable level of specialism in each unit (you won't expect 10 guardsmen to charge anything for example).
 
#12 ·
So far the poll has shown me what I expected to see, with some exceptions. Guard are obviously far and away the army most feared and for good reason, they get everything handed to them with very limited drawbacks. I did however expect Blood Angels to be a little closer to IG in terms of votes. I guess people just really fear the 5th edition codexes (codices?) Also I'm suprised to see that Dark Eldar recieved as many votes as Space Wolves. Granted I've never played against or even ever seen a dark eldar player I just find it interesting that a 12 year old codex is striking fear into peoples hearts. Like I said i've never played them so I'm not in any way saying they aren't a threat, and they probably are pretty scary to play.
 
#13 ·
Granted I've never played against or even ever seen a dark eldar player I just find it interesting that a 12 year old codex is striking fear into peoples hearts. Like I said i've never played them so I'm not in any way saying they aren't a threat, and they probably are pretty scary to play.
Dark Eldar is still an extremely competitive codex. Granted, it seems like you have to take the perfect army to win, but that army will win most of the time. It may not be on par with all of the 5th ed codex's but, it certainly can hold its weight against them better than others.
 
#14 ·
I'm sure it is, I hear it can shred mechanized armies and meq so I hope I dont have to face them with my chaos marines. I've also heard that they have trouble dealing with horde armies? Any truth to this? If I ever have to face dark eldar I hope its with my orks.
 
#15 ·
2 Ravagers with desentigraters will pwn anything. Even Horde armies.

I have never really seen DE loose against a horde army, mainly because the horde army will never catch the DE vehicles.
 
#16 ·
The problem is unless you load up on disintegrators the army lacks the firepower to remove squads wholesale when a unit is 20+ strong and anything that comes in such huge unit sizes (including guard blobs) will beatdown DE CC units via sheer attrition - incubi lack attacks to down hordes and wyches lack the durability to last in combat against large units.

It is doable to really curbstomp a unit with overwhelming force, but it leaves your force baaaadly out of position.
 
#17 ·
In a tournament though it seems like a DE list would probably put higher emphasis on fitting in a bunch of dark lances instead of massing anti-horde weapons. Would a typical all-comers DE army list likely have what it takes to handle a large horde army with no trouble? Specifically one with lots of lootas?
 
#18 ·
Hey

I have based my assumptions on the worst armies that I have played on the armies that I play, ie. Dark Eldar, Space Wolves and Necrons. The army I hate to verse is in red next to my army.

Dark Eldar - Dark Eldar
Yes that is correct. Granted, like most other people, coming up against Dark Eldar is a rarity, but the times that I have, it has been sheer hell, and I think my opponent would say the same. Being of absolutely equal strength, everything that I threw at my opponent, he could take out, and everything that he threw at me, I could take out. Without a doubt, whenever come up against another Dark Eldar player, they are the greatest games that I play, but also the scariest. With all of the Dark Lances we both take, so long Raiders and Ravagers on turn 1-2, and with the sheer amount of Disintegrators we both take, so long infantry. My Archon somehow always gets tied up with theirs, and it is no holds barred. Crazy.

Space Wolves - Imperial Guard
You would honestly think that genetically altered super-humans would utterly decimate their small, weak counterparts. But... no. I have a lot of trouble against these guys, mainly because of their dexterity and ability to work as an unstoppable force. Not to mention the sheer amount of shots. Alright, IF I make it to close combat they do not stand a chance, but there was a time when I didn't even get within 18" of their frontlines! Damn Orders.

Necrons - Tau Empire
I am giving the Tau the benefit of the doubt here, but seriously, how many S 5 shots do you want to pop off?! Well, we will blow you to pieces, move back so you are still out of range, and then blow you to pieces some more. How's that? My opponents laugh when they see a C'Tan on the board. Yeah, well, I... laugh when I see 6 XV88 Broadsides on the field... no, not really. I leave. I don't care about my models, I just leave.

Good Hunting.
 
#19 ·
Necrons - Tau Empire

Historically it has been necrons > tau as tau have only 2 weapons that can actually deny WBB at range (railgun and fusion blaster) so the army will struggle to actually deal damage to necron units. Destroyers and immortals absolutely tear through anything short of crsis suits and even they aren't safe due to their low numbers - you try passing that many saves.

Scarabs are a hard counter to anything that isn't in a crisis suit and with disruption fields hammerheads and devilfish are going to feel pain.
 
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