Control: Which Army Do I Choose

I, Dalton Lewis, need to choose an army for my favorite game, Warhammer 40k. I have many, many choices, and they are all wonderful.

I love the ad mech, or Adeptus Mechanicus. They rock. They are the good-guy AI’s and therefore the rock stars of the good guys for me. The army has ridiculously great shooting and a lot of cost-efficient units. The Ryza Destroyers do ridiculous damage with their plasma cannons. The tanks and dunecrawlers are pretty strong in fire support and cost around 120 points each — not a lot in 8th — but that might change a little when 9th edition comes out. I’m trying the mounted cavalry on mechanical horses because they look awesome and have a ridiculous number of shots per model. I bought two planes because they look like an awesome new unit. All in all the army has a stacked lineup, top to bottom.

I also love the Chaos Knights. I have played them for most of the year with some success and some failure. I won the bottom bracket at a tournament. I won some games amidst the plethora of losses, and I am getting better with the army. They have a ridiculous number of powerful shots and a lot of wounds. However — and this is a big however — the top people know about Knight lists and how to beat them. They are something that everyone knows to game plan for. That makes them a mid-tier army instead of a top-tier army. Still, they are fun to play.

There are other candidates: I could play berserkers. They die really fast but do ridiculous damage to the enemy. I don’t know if I should play with them because I would lose every game. I don’t want to lose every game — I lose enough games as it is. Berserkers are a unit that does ridiculous, overwhelming damage in melee — but it has to survive until melee in order to do so, and that’s not going to happen.

Thousand Sons are an army with more bodies — they have tzaangors and rubric marines screening for sorcerers and daemon princes doing damage with psychic powers. I like the concept but haven’t ever been able to defeat marines with them. Marines are powerful and impressive and can shred my screen and I don’t know how to do enough damage to them to win with a spellcasting army.

The other choice is Abaddon and friends. Abaddon is the Warmaster of Chaos, the leader of the Chaos Space Marines (except for maybe Magnus). He offers a full to-hit reroll for Black Legion units near him. That makes his obliterators and havocs worth taking. I know that he is a big point sink, but he does really well at everything that he does. I think that taking him in an army might be a real positive.

I can play death guard. They are the plague marines, and they are pretty good. They have new rules coming out, too. I don’t know if the new rules will help them a lot, but I always play terribly when I play them. I don’t know why — they just don’t fit my playstyle.

So — I have options. We’ll see what happens.

Thanks, and take care, friends.