Dips toe cautiously into the water...

[me_in_japan]

Tl/dr - my kids want to play with space marines. I have eldar. 40k seems the sensible way to do this, but 9e is big and scary and I don't know how to play. How do I get started?

Longer version:

So as I've mentioned elsewhere in the forums, my kids are showing some interest in playing 40k. Now, hitherto this has not been actual 40k, but we have played a little one page rules and some house ruled made up stuff that borrows heavily from all the other games I've played. But, having actually gotten a hold of what amounts to (what I think) is a small but useable Ultramarines army (um...
10 assault intercessors
10 regular tac marines
3 prim outriders
A prim captain
A prim lieutenant
A regular stumpy dread
3 prim melta-bois (eradicators?)
8 Reivers)

And what with me having All The Eldar Ever, it seems like in order to really get the full grim dark dakka fest we need, we should really be looking into playing actual 9th ed 40k.

The thing is, having obtained a copy of the rulebook and relevant codexes (yes - even the eldar one!), I'm feeling a bit intimidated by the new rules. I haven't played 40k for years, and in that time many, many things seem to have happened. The basic tabletop gameplay stuff (ie roll to hit/roll to wound/save) seems ok, but bugger me there's a ton of stuff about objectives and army special rules and CP thingies and crusades and whatnot that all seem super important to how the game actually plays but which I'm struggling to wrap my head around. I also really, really need to understand this comprehensively before I go about explaining it to my 8yo and 10yo. They're good kids but they will absolutely get bored and wander off if it takes more than 5 minutes before somebody gets shot/chainsworded inna face.

So, do any of you more experienced players have any advice as to how I should approach this? Like, maybe if the kids and I could play several short games, adding complexity with each iteration? What would you recommend covering first? What things are important for general gameplay, and what do you suggest for the various armies? If my banshees charge his assault intercessors, will that be a miserable experience or a glorious punch up? Any advice would be most welcome.

For context, with the occasional hint/assistance, my kids can play x-wing and MtG reasonably competently, and did fine with 1p40k. I'm just looking at the full 40k rules and thinking "erk".

Many thanks for what I'm sure will be wise words

[The Other Dave]

I'd say just start with "Open Play" with some rough and ready eyeballing-it objectives. You won't need to worry about army building, CPs, objectives, victory points, or any of that nonsense, and can just mess about with the (still as basically simple as ever) base rules for moving, shooting, and fighting, and the (indeed, rather complex all on their own) unit special rules and army special rules. (I'd also recommend just only ever using power level for eyeballing army composition, as it's very much close enough for government work, as they say.)

For the next step, I'd start by either picking up the 9th edition Open War cards, or looking for a friendly transcription of the 8th edition ones (they should still work), and add some simple objective play. You could also at this point give the crusade rules a skim and think about adding some of them in for flavor / connection with your spacemans, but "core rules plus open war missions" will probably give you a lot of flexible fun for quite a long time.

TBH the last things I'd add for "playing with preteens" is command points and stratagems and basically anything to do with matched play, as they're probably the most crufty and unnecessarily complex part of the game right now.

[Jye Nicolson]

Agree with Dave 100%, couple more things just to get my 2c in:

- The fight phase is significantly more complex than shooting because it has all that extra movement in it, a few wrinkles like double ranking, and the fight first/fight middle/fight last buckets being their own alternating subphases. It's not too bad since the getting stuck in and hitting people stuff is straightforward and you can neglect a lot of the detail I mentioned initially, but it's worth making sure you've got a lock on shooting first

- Terrain is an extra level of complexity but an important one since Concealing and Dense terrain are big contributors to ever having a fight phase instead of people hosing each other off planet bowling ball. You could play some games without it but I would be prioritising it when I felt like I had learning bandwidth to introduce some complexity.

- When you do introduce strategems, maybe a curated subset for each side. It's tempting to do without the damn things since they're the number #1 culprit for frontloading complexity but they do also carry a lot of the flavour; if you remember a unit used to be able to do something and it's now missing from their datasheet, odds are it's a strat now.

I think the core 9th rules are pretty clean, don't think the total weight of rules you deal with in a 9th ed army is necessarily much worse than the complexity a lot of us cope with in video games, roleplaying games etc. It's just they open the full firehose at you from the go, and relatively little is locked away behind any kind of progression or gating to space it out (essentially Crusade, which I adore but is an extra helping of stuff on top of everything else).

GW *is* pretty good about making step by step tutorials available and have had that in magazines, getting started packs etc, but they drop off pretty fast and then there's a big gap between there and codex with all the trimmings. You do sort of need to do your own learning curve; people very frequently smash through that with sheer enthusiasm but it's a *lot*.

[Mattb]

Yeah, I think the vast majority of the complexity comes mostly from detachments, command points, strategems and some of the army wide rules (strands of fate, doctrines etc.). To that end I would just say ignore it all at first, since you can very easily play a game without them. The actual base rules for fighting and moving are actual not that complicated at all. Terrain can be a bit difficult at first but it's up to you to assign what traits your terrain pieces have, so I'd just recommend using 'obscuring', 'light cover' and 'difficult ground' as they're probably the ones you're most familiar with if you played older editions of 40k.

I actually introduced a friend of mine to 40k over the internet last year and I did a similar thing: we first played a small game with power levels and absolutely no complicated rules at all to introduce the basics, then another game where I introduced warlord traits and relics and then after that we played a game where I gave him a small handful of strategems and command points to spend. It worked fine and he enjoyed it, although he wasn't a kid.

[me_in_japan]

Thanks everyone I'm glad it's not just my poor ol' brain that thinks the current rules are a bit intimidating, taken all at once. I'll do what y'all suggested and start with a no-fancy-stuff, just deploy a few units and shoot each other kinda game. The kids are familiar with the idea of capturing objectives, so I'll probably put a couple of those down, if I can find a mission that uses em (I don't have my rules handy to check right now). After that I'll hopefully have their interest enough to try a second game with some army wide rules. I'll leave stratagems for last, as while personally I quite like their flavour, it's a whole 'nother layer of cognitive demand, and probably best left until the basics become a bit more familiar.

I had hoped to get a first game in this weekend, but (ahaha, as per usual ) painting has stalled a bit. The new season of fortnite hasn't helped, especially on the kiddo front, but even for me, I've been really knackered this week. Plus, for some reason my highlights seem to keep disappearing. Tis very strange. I keep adding brighter and brighter layers but the next day it still looks lacking in contrast. Anyway. I'm gonna abandon the blue as a lost cause and just do all the black bits now. At least that's straightforward enough...

[Jye Nicolson]

What things are important for general gameplay, and what do you suggest for the various armies? If my banshees charge his assault intercessors, will that be a miserable experience or a glorious punch up? Any advice would be most welcome.

OK so on the Aeldari vs Marines matchup specifically - you will probably want to take a little bit of care here. It may not be an issue, but I think there are potential feel bad moments lurking in this matchup. Take this with a grain of salt because I haven't been able to play Harlequins or Asuryani yet, I might change my mind about some of it after the next game day, but...

- Aeldari is a newer Codex with generally strong datasheets. There are some concerns around those units cost efficiency but in general a random grab-bag of Aeldari stuff probably has better focus, synergy and base performance than a random grab bag from the million and one Marine datasheets.

- You've got a classic glass cannon elite force vs a tough, jack of all trades force situation. Codex balance aside, it will be swingy. If the Aeldari have a bit of luck (like high rolls on shuriken) and get the right weapons on the right targets the Marines will be crippled quickly. If that doesn't happen and the Aeldari are all getting wounded on 3s and saving on 5s a lot of expensive 1 wound elves are going to die real fast. If you did end up getting a Retributor for your kids it will be very difficult for the Aeldari to deal with...except with any Bright Lances they may have that are in fact *perfect* for dealing with it, etc etc If you're happy throwing spaghetti at the wall and get variety from a lot of small quick games, the dice *should* give you that, but you'll need to watch out for if one side is consistently getting the better of it, or it comes down to the roll off for first turn etc.

- Aeldari will have a significant mobility advantage against a Primaris only force. Marines make heavy use of jump packs and drop pods to deal with this, both of which are *largely* Firstborn. If you have or end up picking up an Impulsor they can help with this but currently I don't rate them compared to say a Wave Serpent (they are a little cheaper and do let you disembark after moving but Wave Serpents win in speed, capacity and offence), let alone a Falcon that's a fighting tank, Impulsor like transport and a Drop Pod all in one. So watch out for that in picking missions.

- The specific example you pulled out - Banshees vs Assault Intercessors - is always going to be feel bad because Banshees are specifically designed to make anyone they charge miserable I would expect whoever gets to fight first in that matchup will wipe out the other unit due to the AP on the Banshee swords and the sheer weight of attacks from the Assault Intercessors. A better matchup would probably be Bladeguard Veterans whose invuln will make them much more survivable. Or you can just deal with the rock-paper-scissors play of who gets to charge or shoot who. Note the Assault Intercessors are better compared to Guardians as a Troop vs Troop comparison - in that case the question of whether the marines can tough out a bunch of shuriken shooting and then get a charge to clean up the squishy Aeldari militia is probably a bit more interesting than if they can survive the charge of the charge specialist Aspect Warriors.

- The two forces will benefit at different points as you introduce complexity. Strands of Fate are IMO wildly better than Doctrines, but at least you can rely on Doctrines working when they're supposed to (and are really important for the identity of some chapters, like the melee focused chapters in particular "turning on" in round 3 if they can tough it out till then). There are some crucial stratagems that Marines will really miss - such as Transhuman Physiology for Primaris - but naturally the Aeldari strategem set is full of prime Elf Bullshit so rough to say who will benefit more from their eventual introduction. Aeldari will absolutely sweat harder than Marines when you introduce detachments, so using Patrols in your Combat Patrol games might be more helpful sooner than later. Keep an eye on who's getting what as you're dribbling complexity in.

- Do you have a psyker for the Marines? An old Librarian or a suitable Inquisitor model might help the cause by at least giving them some Deny the Witch capacity.


Edit: very unlikely any of this will matter more than who rolls dice good. So overall average luck to you and your kids!

[me_in_japan]

Thanks, Jye. Tbh, having played eldar for many years, I rather feared that they'd be playing the role of awkward bastards once again Their tendency to be really, really good at one thing but decidedly meh at everything else is something that may be problematic in early games, before the kids learn how to respond to the various aspects. I suppose if I explain the eldar's swingy nature to the kids in advance they might cope. I mean, their heads still explode when a counterspell gets played in Magic, but at least they've started eyeballing two open blue mana with great suspicion before making a power play

If I may be so bold as to pick your brain further:

Would scorpions be a less problematic unit to use? I'm just wondering what kind of army composition I should use for early games. I have storm guardians, jetbikes, dire avengers. I could paint up some scouts, although I don't see them as being especially "fun" to use. Likewise, dark reapers are probably a bit much against marines, at least initially. Warp spiders? Hawks? Heck, I even have shadow spectres. I'm trying to remember if I have regular guardians, though. Probably? Maybe?

Or, should I just tell those troublemaking craftworlders to go home, and use my commorites instead? Would that be more straightforward?

Again, many thanks for all your help, and please don't feel obliged to answer all my newby questions. Worst case scenario, me and the kids can always wing it and see how it goes.

Ps good call on the detachment limitations hurting eldar. Army composition used to drive me nuts...

[Jye Nicolson]

- Do not under any circumstances reach for Harlequins or Drukhari to tone things down Drukhari are very strong and even after many nerfs extremely efficient. Harlequins are cheating jerks. I plan on playing both this week but in the hopes that more experienced players can take advantage of their fragility and that I'll at least get points for not using Custodes.

- Scorpions will get you similar results to Banshees but with different math. More attacks at higher strength and less AP, proccing extra attacks or mortal wounds if you roll 6s on things. Better save but probably not enough better. Less mobile but can scout deploy. Exarch are potentially nuts in both cases. Marines can use Transhuman Physiology, Overwatch and interrupt strats more usefully against Scorpions but you don't want to start with those, and you're missing a good overwatch unit like Aggressors. It's probably a wash (especially since their peer units are Bladeguard Veterans or Vanguard Veterans; Assault Intercessors match up against Storm Guardians).

- Reapers conversely are not *that* bad - lots of dakka but they're spendy at 8PL and even with Battle Focus probably need to make themselves vulnerable to bolter fire to do anything.


Let's think this through. Based on the list of minis you gave, I'd probably do a marine list like:

- Primaris Captain (ideally meleeish, but whatever is probably fine) - 5PL
- Assault Intercessors x 5 - 5PL
- Eradicators - 7 PL
- Dread as Venerable Dread - 8PL

There's not a *lot* of 25PL lists from your set that fit neatly and make sense as Ultramarines to me. Eradicators stand out as benefiting from the Remains Stationary superdoctrine and wanting to fall back and shoot for the chapter tactic. Dreads are Good, Actually and pose a problem the Aeldari need something special to deal with (or at least a LOT of shuriken).

Versus that maybe:

- Farseer 5PL or Autarch 5 PL
- Storm Guardians 4 PL
- Dire Avengers 3PL
- Wave Serpent 8PL
- War Walker 5PL

I don't think this works if you load up both vehicles with Bright Lances but there should be some play if the weapon selection is a bit more varied. Both sides have two priority targets (the vehicles on one side, dread and Eradicators on the other) so there's decisions to be made. The Aeldari can protect their squishies by putting them in the Wave Serpent but the Marines could very well line up cracking that open and then charging the folks that fall out. It's still going to be swingy and I think you really want terrain rules here but I can sort of see the picture from both sides.


If you wanted something simpler, you could go:

Primaris Captain 5PL
Primaris Lieutenant 4PL
Tactical Marines x2 10 PL (with heavy weapons)
Outriders 6PL

This teaches the Marine player to use bubbles and throws a lot of lead downrange to sweep up T3 Elves. Outriders can hare off to do something or stay in the bubble as a countercharge threat.

You'd need something a little more user friendly to oppose it, like

- Farseer 5PL
- Autarch 5 PL
- Storm Guardians x 2 8 PL
- Dire Avengers 3PL
- Wind Riders 4PL

There's a lot more stuff on the Aeldari side, and the Marines don't have a good answer to the Farseer's spell, but everything is vulnerable to bolter fire a long as the Marine player doesn't roll too many 2s.


This is tough because it's a limited pool of Marines vs arbitrary Aeldari, but it feels like you could make matchups with decent play.

[Jye Nicolson]

Oh and you have enough Marines to fight *each other*.

Captain
1 Tac Squad, 1 Assault Intercessor Squad
1 Reiver Squad
Dread

vs

Lieutenant
1 Tac Squad, 1 Assault Intercessor Squad
Outriders
Eradicators

Would be almost balanced?

[me_in_japan]

marines v marines is actually a fairly enticing proposition. Mostly I'm hoping the kids can play each other, ysee, and I'll just be the dispute-settler. That might be a good way to play Game 1. Good call

I've been painting a little this evening, and am reminded how vexing it is trying to get in at all those joints between the armour plates. I'd paint em first, but I airbrushed the blue on, so fiddlyness must, alas, ensue. Still, progress is happening I'm waiting on some stuff to arrive via evilbay, so with luck that should arrive just as we're finishing painting what we have now. Hopefully we can get a game soon (tm).

Many thanks for the info and advice - it's been very helpful, and I appreciate it.