The new beginner army???

[Confessor_Atol]

Classically empire has been the a very straight forward WHFB army to run. After playing against the new book several times, it's clear that empire has it's own flavor and abilities that no other army currently has. In fact, I'd say it is firmly in the court of being an army that needs a lot of experience to run proplerly. If you were now going to reccomend an army to a new player, what would it be?

[Agoz]

Well, Ogres have access to most unit types, and have a pretty low model count with a very nice battalion box. So I'd say they are a pretty good option for a new player.

[Dreadlordpaul]

I would reccomend dark elves i started with them and while sometimes things go wrong 90% of the time my list works

[Voodoo1]

I still think Bretonnians are a good starter army... Not too many special rules, and it does not have too many play styles to learn.

[Grimmeth]

Warriors of Chaos can be quite straightforward, although The Eye of the Gods table could cause a few headaches to remember everything for a newbie, book is due to be replaced soon too so it could all change.
Orcs and Goblins have lots of humour and a large variety of troop types - they can allow for some mistakes to be made too, animosity can be a pain but it's not TOO hard to remember (and they're almost always fun, win or lose, which is all important for a new player!)
Ogres are probably up there with being fairly straightforward, but they can suffer from being outnumbered somewhat if the owner isn't careful.
I don't really think Fantasy has any one army that is such an easy one to use (like Marines in 40k for example)?

[Sexiest_hero]

VC, You get to play your cool Ubre leader or caster, and not worry about may of the game rules. I mean that in a good way.

[Leogun_91]

Highelves, apart from ASF its an extremely straightforward army that still have almost all unit types.
Lizardmen is in a similar position by not having too many strange rules and all unit types (except monstrous cavalry and warmachines).

[The bearded one]

Almost everybody mentioned a different army, so I'm going to run through all of them.

Beastmen; not a particularly powerful army, so it would be a bit more of an uphill struggle for the new player than it would usually be (and it's usually not a picknick for a new player anyway). leadership is fairly important for beastmen for primal fury, keeping frenzied minotaurs in check, and keeping the generally low leadership units in good order. I wouldn't recommend them as a beginner army.
Bretonnia; a cavalryarmy in an infantry edition. I'm gonna say 'no'. At least they are blessed with a cavalrysystem (lanceformation) that is better adapted to 8th edition than any other cavalry (the lanceformation means easy, cheap ranks, so that you have decent odds of getting through steadfast. It's still not what you want from a beginner army.
Daemons; more or less 4 different types of army in one, and an oddball. Internal balance is skewed badly, and for a beginner it is very hard to recognise which units are awesome, and which are terrible. Daemon core is mostly really good, and daemons have limited dependency on generals or BSBs compared to other armies, even the undead ones, which is a boon for a beginner, but the crappy units are harder to use. I think you can easily imagine a beginner thinking; "cool, screamers, they do slash attacks when passing over units, how awesome" ?
Dark elves; fast and hardhitting, but squishy.. really squishy. Some of the nastiest tricks dark elves have rely on a bit of experience to get the most out of it. Someone new to the game isn't going to be able to wield a pendantlord, or use the appropriate magic on the appropriate units.
Dwarfs; easy beginnerarmy. Deploy in a corner or on a hill, stand back, shoot stuff, and hit whatever is left in the face. With lots of metal to drybrush, and fairly large details (large arms, hands, axes, noses, beards etc. almost anything but their stature, basically), they're not too hard to paint either, or to get a decent result out of simply by colouring in between the lines. Getting more out of the army except castling in, such as a combat army with an anvil, or armies using the deploymentflexibility of rangers, miners and the gyro, is a fair bit harder though, but as a beginner army they are easy to handle, because they don't require an enormous amount of imput except targetpriority.
High elves; Squishy but expensive. I wouldn't recommend them. White isn't the easiest colour for a beginner to paint neatly either.
Lizardmen; skinks, or any other skirmishers, are not the easiest thing to learn how to manoeuvre correctly. The skink aspects of the army are not good for a beginner, but the saurusian aspects of the army are straightforward to use. Lizardmen are not the easiest thing to paint though, with all those scales on the one hand, and large stretchy surfaces of skin (legs and arms in particular) on the other.
Ogres; easy beginnerarmy, beginner army per excellence almost. They're great to start with on most counts. They are easy to use (march forward, charge stuff, stomp it, and eat it) and the resilience of ogres surely encourages a new player when playing, instead of scooping hands full of models off the table. They also have a low modelcount, so are probably the cheapest of all armies to collect. The only issue might be painting them, because skin is not the easiest thing to paint when you're new, especially such .. erhm.. large 'canvasses' of it. On the other hand the models are enormous, making them easier to paint. Ease of use and low cost of starting make ogres ideal.
Orcs&Goblins; wacky and hilarious. They certainly exhibit some of the best things about warhammer, in their vicious brutal comedy. What other kinds of fantasy settings have goblins spinning around in random directions, swinging large metal balls through both friend and foe? They are fun to play, though leadership can be an issue just as with beastmen, and animosity can ruin plans. The modelcount is generally quite high too and a new player will have trouble identifying how to properly use blocks of goblins as all they appear to do is die by the boatload while killing little. Subtleties as tarpitting and steadfast will take a while to master for the beginner to properly use the goblin hordes. Really big units of really badass models like black orcs will probably appear to be the best way to go in a beginners eyes at first, trying to beat the opponent's own big bad unit to a pulp 1 on 1.
Skaven; the same issue as with goblins. To a beginner they don't seem to hit very hard except for the big and awesome stuff like plague furnaces and hellpits. The modelcount on skaven reaches into the absurd as well. On the flipside skaven have the bonus of being in the starterset, meaning you can get a fair amount of models for a low price. I still wouldn't recommend them as a beginner army though, unless an experienced player can help out to properly use those big blocks of puny rats.
The Empire; With the bigger emphasis on synergy and more expensive models, empire is now less of a beginnerarmy. They are still a jack of all trades however and central to the setting. Plus, who wouldn't like to shoot with cannons at people? They may not be the easiest thing to paint though.
Tomb kings; if the beginner knows about the miracle of spraying white and washing it sepia, painting tomb kings will be the easiest thing ever. They will be quite hard to play however, as their powerlevel is not terribly high and tomb kings depend on synergy but are pulled down by it at the same time as well. They will be distraught to see the enemy smash their fragile skeletons to piece and see their sphinxes and chariots collapse to dust as a result.
Vampire counts; faces similar issues as tomb kings, but I think they will be easier to play because the book is more powerful than tomb kings and has a lot more infantry than just skeletons, and hardhitting elites and characters. Painting them will be a lot harder however and I still wouldn't recommend them to a beginner unless he thinks they look awesome (which they do).
Warriors of Chaos; quite a good army for a beginner, because they just need to walk forward and smash people to pieces with their absurdly powerful troops. They can build an army of only chaos warriors, knights and chosen for a very low modelcount and fairly easy to paint models. A marauderheavy army is very powerful too, but harder to paint and exponentially more numerous, so lots of marauders are not adviced for a beginner.
Wood elves; I'm going to stick with 'no.. just no' with them. A skirmisherheavy army with a lot of expensive, squishy models, which are not that easy to paint either, is not the best army for a beginner at all.

[tezdal]

WOC and Dwarves to me would be the easiest armies, tough, semi-forgiving yet fun to play, Lizardmen also wouldn't be to bad with tough Saurus infantry and a lot of other unit types to master and play with.

[Confessor_Atol]

Almost everybody mentioned a different army...........

Yeah, it's pretty telling that there's no consensus. Great points though.

I'm leaning towards High elves, dwarfs, Ogres, and WOC to a lesser extent. These are the only current armies that don't need a unique mechanic to run them

[Jind_Singh]

In which case go for love of models/imagary - High Elves do have added bonus of being Island of blood minis so easy access

[NTJ2010]

Almost everybody mentioned a different army, so I'm going to run through all of them...

Basically explained it fairly well.
As far as I'm concerned the most important thing is the army to have a wide variety of options/unit types etc.
I started with dwarfs which was easy and helped me learn shooting, combat and leadership quite well (back in 7th edition so I got to learn the hard way how much fear sucks). Although I knew how to dispell quite well I never really understood the magic phase and movement I knew but it's obviously a different game moving purely defensively and made my next army a little harder since there was a lot of major aspects of the game I never really learned.

Basically I'd say if practiced enough and read well enough most armies are fine except armies that miss out on major parts of the game either entirely or by a large amount or a lot of unit types (they don't need every single one but only infantry can be stunting) (Beastmen, Brettonia, Dwarfs, Vampire Counts, Warriors of Chaos). A lot of this is debatable but just thought I'd give my opinion. Obviously hard armies are not encouraged but that's not as consistent: wood elfs being difficult is a lot less constant than dwarfs not having magic.

[Jind_Singh]

My definition of a beginner army is based on:

1) Does an army wide special rule apply that doesn't to other armies - Both Undead, Dark & High Elves, Daemons fall into this category. Now we could argue Beastmen and Orcs & Goblins also have this stipulation but not in the context I am looking for. They are a side dish of flavor that adds to their respective armies, were the other 5 I mentioned it defines the flavor of the army.

2) Does the army require a usage of a rule over other armies - Ogres for e.g. are majority multi-wound beasts of burden! So someone who starts with such an army will not develop their skills in using rank & file core blocks - placement of units and movement is much more different and perhaps more forgiving in some respects with Ogres.

3) Does the army allow you to participate in all phases of the game? Some armies lack magic, some lack shooting, some lack decent close combat selections. Warriors of Chaos, Dwarf, Wood Elves, Beastmen are prime examples of such armies.

Based on the above three questions it then allows you to look at what armies would be 'ideal' starter armies.

Now take all the above into consideration and scrap it!!!

My new Warhammer pal, Bryan, walked in to the GW store - I never met him - and pulled out his new Wood Elves (never played them before). I played 3 training games with him, he beat me twice, but it was training. Now we let him off his training wheels and the last three games he:

1) SMASHED my Empire (and it wasn't a training game, he just smashed me!)
2) SMASHED the Tomb King Player
3 SMASHED the Ogre Kingdoms

Of the three games the other two are also new to Warhammer - but I am an old hand who:

1) Was over confident of my armies abilities
2) Did not respect what Wood Elf units could do (having not really faced them much)
3) Had bad dice - a result of bad judgment calls I made

And he's having the time of his life - the strange fellow then bought Beastmen and Brets - I'm now waiting for him to turn up with a Fishman army with - he's just got a liking for hard to use armies!