The Quest for Perfection.....

There's a lot of choice available to a new 40K player,

He can go with an army of space robots, super soldiers, nuns with guns, space bugs or any number of other army flavours and when he's decided on the codex he wants to use he can then take that choice in any direction he wants...from pure assault, to gun-lines and anything else in between.....

That's the theory at least.

The reality is somewhat different...

Codex choice is more often than not based around the model range that it represents with the armies play preference being secondary or even tertiary behind a predetermined theme of some description. Of course there are always those people who will pick an army based on it's (often perceived rather than actual) superiority to its competitors and that's fine too.

All codices have issues of their own that effect their viability whether that be fluff, design (or poor design), models so crappy that nobody in their right mind would use them, incomplete model ranges, high costs to purchase viable units and any number of other inherent issues.

Somebody who want's an army that's terrifying in assault (for example) would be at a disadvantage if he chose to use the Tau codex and somebody who was a fan of tanks might find the Tyranid codex just a little bit disappointing or even worse the army you picked worked just fine until a new version of the codex was released or a new edition managed to ruin it for you.

To muddy the waters even further it's entirely possible that the idea you wish to express on the table-top cannot be accurately recreated using any of the available codices in their purest form and certain liberties must be taken in order to obtain a result that satisfies you.....I of course refer to the often maligned use of 'Counts-as' or 'I'm a Chaos player who would quite like to win a game of 40K once in a while' as it's more commonly known ;-)

Go on...make a viable army around 'Thousand Sons' using the Chaos Codex...

We all have an idea of what would make a perfect army. Whether that be a force so beautifully converted and painted that it makes Golden Daemon winners throw themselves off bridges due to it's total eclipsing of their own work or a competitive list so perfect in it's point by point optimisation, balance and redundancy that Stelek and Kirby immediately shut down their blogs due to the fact that the perfect list is now in the grasp of mere mortals such as ourselves. Maybe it's a home-grown Chapter of Space Marines who's background fluff is so exquisitely written that all the Black Library authors immediately form their own cult to worship it...... I personally would be happy with an army that wins more than it loses and looks like somebody with opposable thumbs had painted it, but then again I'm cursed by my own low standards and/or lack of imagination, lol.

So with that lot in mind I have a deceptively simple question.....

What do YOU consider to be the perfect army???