Starting up a new Fantasy Army? A few helpful ideas.

[i]This was such a comprehensive response to possibly starting a Warhammer Fantasy Brettonian army, I thought it was worth sticking, for anyone looking into any first army.[/i]

"A very good question!

Bretts are very straight forward and it is reflected in their unit selection, you basically have two types of foot sloggers (archers and men at arms), 5 or six types of Knight (with varying cost / stats), Flying Knights, and the trebuchet. If you don't like knights, I mean really like Knights, they will get boring faster than a more varied army. The games themselves can vary a great deal and you'll probably see the army get harder to play as your opponents figure out what to do about all those knights.

Getting good with the Bretts is about careful application of force, you need to find the part of your opponents army that if lost will cripple him and then bash its brains in. Playing well against Bretts is to avoid playing to their strengths. As a Brett player you will have great saves (both a very nice armor save, and a decent ward save), great speed (since the majority of your army will consist of knights and flyers), and great damage on the charge. My games against Earnest have been cat and mouse games were he attempts to get the charge off via maneuvering and magic, while I tried to send him where he didn't want to go and then flank him.

If the above sounds like months of fun, then the Bretts are for you! Otherwise, you might want to consider an army that is more balanced over the various phases in the game. Bretts are very good in the movement phase, great in the combat phase (if charging), ok in the magic phase, and pretty lack luster in the shooting phase.

Some armies that will always have more to offer you regardless of how many games you'll play include Empire, Orcs and Goblins, and any of the Elves. The first two have more options individually than pretty much any other two army books combined. You can fine tune forever and never need to play the same army twice (of course, this is expensive...). Empire seems to have a bit of a learning curve, and Orcs and Goblins can suffer from their randomness. They are also probably the easiest armies to panic off the table. Empire is a jack of all trades army. While Orcs and Goblins are a Horde army with the option to take a little of everything for cheap.

The High and Dark Elves are pretty strong in every phase of the game. They are both elite armies; So while your elves will be pretty good at whatever they try to do, you'll really feel the loss of even a single unit. They have great leadership, weapon skill, ranged attacks, and magic. With the right equipment (great weapons) they can even have great strength. They do, however, suffer from being a little fragile for elite troops at toughness 3.

If you still want to concentrate on bashing in heads, but you want to do it with a few more options consider the Warriors of Chaos. They lack in the shooting phase, but compared to the Bretts are more configurable and don't rely nearly as much on getting the charge off. The models are also some of the nicest in Warhammer fantasy. Just messing around with the unit upgrades can really change the feel of the army. They have a lot more flexibility in army design than most armies.

These armies are going to have a lot of flexibility in how they play and are still pretty straight forward in army design and execution (if you want them to be). Those would be my suggestions for a new player getting into the game who wanted a fairly straight forward army and plenty of choices in army construction.

I would highly warn against Ogre Kingdom, Beastmen, and Wood Elves. Ogre Kingdoms has a lot of built in weaknesses that need to be addressed (they rarely get rank bonus, almost always outnumbered, easy to panic, unreliable shooting, expensive, and multi wound weapons tear them up). I'm sure they can be played well, but there are going to be some built in road blocks. Beastmen are in dire need of an update. In a lot of ways Wood Elves do everything that the Beasts do and they do it better, oh, and they can shoot really well while the Beasts don't get much of any shooting? I think that the beasts were really designed with the mixed chaos rules in mind. Beastmen can be played very well, I've actually lost to them in small games with my Skaven (where the Skaven are supposed to be amazingly good), but I think Wood Elves are a better investment right now (Dryads >> Beastigors, Treemen/Kin >> Minotaurs, Wild Riders >> Centigors, merely my opinion of course).

So I just talked up Wood Elves, why would I not suggest starting with them? Because I don't understand them. As a Skaven player I don't know what they would do against me besides bring a ton of treemen, or load up a Hero with the panic arrows. Against vampires it is even worse, since the treemen/kin lose their psychology advantage, and the panic arrow doesn't work. It isn't that those armies are bad (well, except maybe Ogres), they just require even more finesse than average to be played well.

Sorry about getting a little off topic. The games would be as varied as you make them. Even in the list that I outlined you could spice things up by including mages, by changing the hero distribution, by changing the size of the knight units (I've only seen units of 9 or 12 in order to take advantage of the lance formation, but units of 5 or 6 can be very handy as well). Deployment can also be different every game. Whenever you are working from a fixed collection of models you are going to rely on your opponent to spice things up. That Brett army will also play very differently against Skaven than it will against high elves for instance.

When choosing an army I'd suggest looking at the models and deciding which armies appeal to you visually. Then start thinking about how each of those armies play. Also watch a few games, particularly games with the army you have in mind if you can manage it. Some questions you would then want to ask yourself would be;

Do you want a jack of all trades army? (Empire, Orcs)
Do you want to be exceptionally mobile? (Beasts, Wood Elves, Brets, All mounted Chaos)
Do you want to play with a horde (also known as static CR)? (Skaven, Orcs, Vampires, and to a lesser extent Tomb Kings)
Do you want to win via ranged attacks? (Some Empire builds, Dwarves, Wood Elves, some High / Dark elf builds)
Do you want to win via wounds in close combat? (Daemons, all elves potentially, some empire and orc builds, Bretonnians, Beasts, Warriors, some dwarf builds)
Do you want to win via magic? (Dark / High Elves, Warriors of Chaos, Daemons of Chaos, Skaven, Vampires, Tomb Kings, Lizardmen, Some Empire and Orc builds)
Do you want potentially over powering heroes? (Anything but Skaven and to some extent Empire)
Do you want an exceptionally reliable army? (Vampires, Daemons, Dwarfs, Tomb Kings, Lizardmen)
Do you want big monsters? (Anything except for Skaven, and Dwarfs)
Do you want crazy randomness? (Orcs, Skaven)
Do you want cheap troopers? (Skaven, Orcs, Empire, and some Warriors of Chaos and Dark Elf builds)
Do you want elite troopers? (All elves, all chaos, dwarfs, lizardmen, and some empire builds)
Do you want Knights? (Everything except for Skaven, Dwarfs, and beastmen)
Do you want assassins? (Skaven, Dark Elves, and Fanatics in Orcs and Goblins)
Do you want an army that will be updated soon? (Lizardmen, Skaven, beasts)
One that will be updated in 2 years? (Bretts, Tomb Kings, Wood Elves, Dwarves)
One that might never be updated? (Ogre Kingdoms, Dogs of War, Chaos Dwarfs)
One that nobody is already playing regularly? (Bretts, Dark Elves, Beasts, High Elves, Vampires, Ogre Kingdoms, and Wood Elves)
Do you want something cool that no other army can have / do? (Any army!)

Keep in mind that none of my examples above are absolute, they are just examples off the top of my head. Also none of the factions feel over represented at this point.

For instance, when I was picking out my first army I narrowed down the models I liked to Vampires, Skaven, Tomb Kings, and Wood Elves. After playing Cygnar I didn't want a fragile high points cost army, so wood elves were out. Zack was thinking about Tomb Kings, which narrowed it down to Skaven and Vampires. The Vampires were scheduled for an update within a few months, so I went with Skaven (I didn't want to have models that were immediately out of date).

When choosing my second army I went with one that was as different as possible from my Skaven. I wanted Knights, close combat focus, resilient troops, and good leadership. I narrowed it down to Vampires, Bretts, and Warriors of Chaos. Andy was already working on a Knight oriented Chaos army, and I liked the look / concept of the Vampires better. Also, since they are unbreakable the Vampires had the best leadership by default.

Man that was fun. Good luck picking an army!"

-Griff