Wargaming: How to get started playing Warhammer 40k?

I rarely experience tried and true cheaters, but mostly people who don't fully understand the rules, or they interpret them differently than most people. There are so many rules, and FAQs, house rules, and interpretations, that miscommunications and confusion is a part of the game. I know people who were considered vets and played for years still misinterpret rules, or be surprised when an Army that isn't theirs does something odd and they think it's cheating - until you spend 10 minutes looking it up, discussing it, and eventually rolling a die to decide :/

It doesn't help that they're on the 5th edition of the core rules and they change Army books like underwear.

Arise thread!

Background:
I am starting to get into 40k. I have been collecting a Tau army for a while, and putting together an eldar army for my wife. Neither of us paint, but her brother is a gifted artist and paints figures for us for holidays/birthdays. We are just now at the point where we both have decent sized armies that we can play with.

Problem:
Neither of us knows what they hell we are doing.

Solution:
?

We both have the interest in the game, and my father-in-law and brother-in-law are both very into the game, so it would be fun to do as a family. Unfortunately (at least in this instance, hehe), they live in southern Indiana while we live out in Kansas City. Have any of you had any luck trying to find gaming groups to play with? The wife and I are pretty outgoing and would be willing to go play with random people - but I am just afraid people would be rude/short with us (typical fanboy behavior) for being n00bs at the game. It is a really cool game, but it is pretty dense for a person who is new to the genre. The inlaws were out over the weekend and they lead us in a game of 40k, watching and coaching us and not playing, and we all had a blast, but we won't see them again until October.

Any tips on how to find people that will help us get more into the game?

Do you have a local gaming shop? Scout it out and see what the clientele is like, talk to the owner, he/she will probably play you and teach you the game and be very nice about it (they'll want you to be a customer after all!) ask around and see if there are any gaming clubs in your area. You can also post on one of the major 40k forums to see if there is anything in your area, the two big ones are dakkadakka.com and warseer.com

I use craft store paints (Michael's specifically) for painting my most recent miniature painting surge. It depends on the brand you buy, but I've actually had some success with the cheapo paints and "The Dip" method for painting large volumes of non-hero figures. Considering that you can get 3 triple sized paint pots for less than $2 in these parts, and the fact that they never seem to dry out, it's tough to go back to the expensive citadel paints.

I'm planning on doing the same method with my Space Hulk Terminators and Genestealers as I don't have the free time anymore to hand shade every single model anymore.

I think you should figure out if the store has a 40k night and try out the game before you commit. I was thinking the same awhile back then I realize that this game is just to freaking complicated and nobody plays it (in my area and within my group of friends)

I am going to necro this thread. My mom found a box of my stuff that included a whole bunch of Necron stuff that I never even opened and played with among my high school belongings. When the package gets here I'll post the contents and if I have enough I'm going to be asking about getting an army going.

The most cost effective way to get into 40k is to go to a few gaming clubs and find an army that you like the look and feel of once you have picked a race for you purchase a codex either thru your gaming store or carboot sale or ebay and study up on your troop choices and HQ etc after that make a rough army list of what you would like in your army and then either find a mate at your gaming club with the same army who has some spare models that you can buy and have a play around with them or find a sale on ebay once you have a basic army built and painted return to your games store or club and watch without making it obvious how other people play with or against your army watch battle reports on youtube and pick up the white dwarf if it is characterised towards a certain section about your race.

good starter armies are

necrons
chaos
Orks
and space marines

more complex armies
Eldar
Dark Eldar
and Tau

these armies are more suited towards seasoned veterans who know the game inside out but dont let that concept stop you from starting one of these armies if you fancy a challenge

dont get suckered into buying any of the starter sets from gw there a waste of time and money
Be carefull when asking for advice from other gamers how to play there methods may not work for you as they work for them and be carefull of beardy gamers who prey on new players as a chance to highten there ego

good luck mate

Thought this would be a good place as any to stick my thoughts on war-gaming from the perspective of a relative noob to tabletop war-games but as a connoisseur of game mechanics and game design.

I've been playing war-games for about 1 year now. First I played High Elves in Warhammer Fantasy Battles. I probably spent $200 (most starting costs are higher but I saved some using ebay and taking advantage of unwanted halves of the 2 player starter box). Did lots of assembly and horrible paint jobs. I probably played about 4 games total (against one Skaven opponent) and really got frustrated with the game itself. The pace of the game is so slow. You have 2 big cool armies marching at each other but with the way movement works and such, it feels more like naval combat where big boats kind of lumber at each other, bump hulls and one eventually wins. Magic is interesting but too powerful and chaotic at the same time. A few dice rolls determine the win when you bring wizards. I abandoned WFB for 40k and my High Elves are rotting in a box.

So 40k... I picked up probably $400 worth of Tyranids (the realistic minimum starting cost including the codex). I liked the game more from a rules standpoint. My armies moved better, looked cooler, took to the magnets in the bases better and thematically, 40k is fantastic. I really enjoyed my first games but a few things started to really bug me. The pace is very slow. My 1500 point games vs 10 year veterans still took 3 or more hours to complete. I also found that once my models were on the table, I had very little in the way of real choices to make. Tyranid models have very specific strengths and weaknesses. They also have no in-game options. So once they're down, you've pretty much committed to a script to follow. You've already either won or lost, the only real variable is the dice and your opponent. I'd look across at the various space marine flavored enemies and see them shoot from 40 inches away, select bullet types, give strategic orders... meanwhile my guys just march across and chew face.

I was also frustrated by the lack of support from Games Workshop. List building is a difficult process made even more annoying by the lack of any assistance. I had a 3rd party simple piece of software (thats technically illegal thanks to GW's draconian property control) that really helped by having a simple GUI take me through army building including all options and giving me a print out that includes all of the (pages of) special rules the models I have chosen have for quick reference.

Ultimately, I was having too little fun with the game to continue and started to stray and explore another system. Warmachine. Tyranids joined the High Elves in the closet.

I came into Warmachine as Privateer Press, the publisher, was celebrating their 10 year anniversary with a big sale. (Hordes is a sister game, built with complete compatibility with Warmachine in mind.) They were selling bundles for armies that included the starter kit for the faction of your choice + tokens for your faction + the main rule-book for the game for about $60. Less than the price of JUST the rule-book for 40k. I and 6 other folks from the office, including people who had never played war-games before, jumped in on this deal and we all started putting things together. Of the 7 of us, 3 chose Hordes armies. In the past 4 months, we have all constructed and expanded our armies and have probably played a dozen games each.

I'm playing Cygnar, a faction centered around gritty WW1 style trench warfare, pistol wielding gun-mages, heavily armored infantry wielding lightning weapons and elegant high tech lightning toys all at the same time. This lets you build around a lot of different flavors, or have a nice variety to your army. I have probably spent $400 so far and have a well rounded collection (including the starting bits of a new Skorne army, a Hordes faction that are more like sadomasochistic desert elves who enslave cyclopsi, and other massive beasts to fight for them)

We are all enjoying the game immensely. The rules are well built and allow for matches at a faster pace. Your units have no pre-game options but plenty of in-game options. For instance, my dual-chaingun wielding warjack, the Cyclone, has 2 ranged attack options. One is laying down covering fire, placing 2 AOE templates on the battlefield which will trigger on any unit that enters it during my opponent's turn. The other is straight gunning. Then there's the melee combat options. He could do a power slam to knock an opponent back into his buddies, doing lots of collateral damage. He could trample attack over a swarm of infantry. He could pick up an infantry and chuck him at his buddies. He could do the same to an enemy warjack and potentially crush some baddies. He could headbutt a guy to the ground and start wailing on him. Finally, he could just walk up and start pounding on him.

On top of a fun game, Privateer is much more liberal with its permissions than Games Workshop. People have created web and smartphone apps for army building, rule reference and collection management with the blessings of Privateer Press. I can sit in bed and poke away at my phone to noodle around with army ideas.

So for months we have been playing and we are all 7 still heavily interested in the game. Some of us are continuously buying new models as temptation becomes too great (me!). Some are getting deeper into the hobby aspects of building and painting. Some are staying fairly close to the starting kit but still playing with the rest of us every time, just taking expansion slowly and utterly ignoring the painting aspect. Everyone gets excited for game night and we all wish we could play more often and that is a rare amount of excitement and dedication from a jaded pack of gamers like us.

That includes the two 10+ year Warhammer vets. They miss 40k, but they agree that Warmachine is just more fun as a game.

If you guys like the idea of low model-count tabletop games, check out Malifaux, it's pretty hot right now. A lot of the guys at my club play it (myself included) between games of Warhammer/40k, of course.

I haven't played since 3rd ed. Was the 90s so while ago. I do keep up with figs a little and get e-mails from GW. I'm curious if they're going to do a reboot of sorts. What with the Primarchs coming back and the new type of spacemarine they have.

Still got some miniatures laying around that are halfway painted from this set, and a chaos land raider.

I was well into GW stuff when I was a lad late 80s to mid 90s. Had a sizable collection, 100s of mostly metal figures which were left, stored in the cellar when moved away for college, uni. My parents then moved themselves about 8 years after that and yep guess what... I've since found out the lot went in the bin during that move. Ouch.

I don't know how the later editions have changed things, but honestly I don't like the ruleset as much anymore now that I've experienced some alternatives. My biggest issue is the "entire armies move as one unit" rule, which don't like the pacing and momentum of.

I recommend Dystopian Wars for nice rules and affordable (but still quality) figurines. Although I do like tweaking even that a bit.