Starting Off

`````The aim of every person who plays Warhammer 40,000 is to pit their force of miniatures against other players across war-torn futuristic battlefields. Win or lose, all battles are entertaining challenges in which you try to out-think and out-play your opponent, taking advantage of what good luck comes your way, but ultimately relying upon sound tactics to win the day.
To start down the road of enjoying this exciting game, and hobby, you'll need a few things! First, and most importantly, you'll need an army. Next, you'll need to find an opponent – either a friend that lives right down the street or someone you've bumped into once or twice at your local Hobby Center. However, before any of this can take place, you'll need to get your hands on the rules. Here is a downloadable pdf file with the basic rules and tables on how to play the game.

 

Countless Variety

```````Before you can collect an army and play large and satisfying games of Warhammer 40,000, you'll need to choose which force ``you'd like to play. This is a difficult decision because there are around a dozen different armies to play and countless variations on ``each army.

 

Getting Started
`````A small number of players know which army they intend to collect immediately, while others take their time and make detailed comparisons before choosing. To make your best decision, the first thing to do is to collect all the information you can, and find the aspects that are most important, or appealing, to you. While they are certainly not definitive, here are some of the major areas to think about:

Your Style of Play
`````Do you think of yourself as an aggressive, risk-taking commander who is looking for an army to bring the fight to the enemy, or would you prefer a defensive posture? Are you more interested in close combat, massed weapons fire, or a mix of both? Do you want lots of large squads to overwhelm the foe, or are you looking for a few powerful models to carry most of the fighting? It is quite possible to achieve some or all of these tactics with the same army, but each different force has unique abilities. Eldar, for instance, have some troop types that can stand and fight toe-to-toe with any enemy, but Eldar really excel in well-timed, hit-and-run tactics and pinpoint assaults along narrow fronts. A player looking forward to swamping the foe with numbers or to savage the entire enemy battleline with brutal hand-to-hand fighting should probably look to another army to fulfill his wishes.

 

Background
`````Each army type in the Warhammer 40,000 universe has its own background, homeworld, history, and goals. For many players, getting into their armies means they must first find out where that army is from and what makes that race of creatures tick. For example, Tyranids are an alien race that has a single consciousness, hive mind, and the multitude of individuals act like a swarm with a single mind. Tyranids drift through space looking for lifeforms to consume. The majority of troop types are mindless engines of destruction, deliberately evolved to destroy all in their path. If a player was looking for a small army with lots of individually named characters and a noble history, then the hordes of the Tyranids are not it.

 

Miniatures
`````Many players choose armies based strictly on whether they like the look of the miniatures! Since collecting and painting will play a large role in getting together any army, going on looks is a sensible way of choosing a force. After all, the more you like and enjoy the models, the more involved you are going to be in the collecting, painting, and modeling aspects of the hobby. A player that enjoys painting and modeling military insignia or vehicles would do well with an Imperial Guard army (which has different levels of officers and platoon markings as well as tons of tanks). Conversely, if a player hated to paint with the color red, collecting a Blood Angels Space Marine army would be torment in the painting stages. To find out more about each line of models, see the army pages for a view of most of the armies models.