Who won 5th Edition?

[ArmyC]

If we look at 5th edition as a sports season, which army won?

As new books rolled out one after the other, which army had staying power. Which one had a hot streak, but fizzled out?

My awards go to:

IG - regular season winner
GK - Most Improved
DE - Playoff Champion

[VendableFall]

Blood angels, best mix of competitiveness, fluff and staying power!

[Thrax]

I nominate Games Workshop.

[Alarum]

I vote Dark Eldar. The models are some of the best I have seen. They have a pretty good codex and have been very fun to play.

[Scribe of Khorne]

Your out of your mind if you dont think for variety, 'character', and competitive longevity the Ork book won. They may not have been taking #1, but they where in the final tables, with a number of builds, year after year. :]

[Sexiest_hero]

I agree with orks, followed by chaos lash, just for longevity.with the shoota boy and lash prince as dual MVPs.

[kamedake88]

In terms of what though. lets break it down.

Best Codex overall. Space Marines bar none, this codex went from being a Monster at launch for obvious reasons, to a middle of the ranger come the close of 5th. But never once has Codex: Ultra Space Marines lost its punching power in games and in the right hands amateur or otherwise it can still be a monster to deal with.

Best Army overall: For 5th though IMHO goes to Dark Eldar. this was a toss up between Necrons and DE for me. Necrons has sheer ingenuity and that new car smell that comes with being almost totally revamped rather then being modded and expanded upon like DE but in terms of scope, complexity and design DE take it. Damn near the entire range has been redone. I don't even play the dex or quite frankly like the army but credit where credit is due the entire range is magnificent from codex to models.

Worst Codex Overall: would have to go to Grey Knights. I know they are powerful and what not, both in fluff and on the table top, but lets face it just about everything in that book from rules to fluff is phoned in and hackneyed. I wont elaborate to much because this is only my opinion and it quite frankly has nothing to do with Ward, etc. As a Veteran of 40k for almost 9 years, when I put the book down after my first of ,quite frankly many a read through, the whole situation just felt wrong. Like someone farting loudly in a church.

Worst Army Overall. TAU... kidding. Personally, I can't decide on this one. I don't like Orks, it seems they're slowly loosing their charm with each iteration and from my experience nid players have lots to be angry about but really what else is there. Chaos, Tau, Templars, Dark Angels and Eldar are all children of 4th and Sisters aren't even a real army anymore considering White Dwarf has about as much bearing on my life as a vampire's reflection has to his. Wolves are middle of the road, great dex but the whole thing(army and codex) has the "air" of "that'll do" about it. As if it was conceived when the entire development office had the cold or flu and just wanted to get it done. Also So much wasted plastic as well on the upgrade sprue. Put it this way every single model in a great company representation (ie a fully built great company) with wolf claws will look the same with no conversions. (I hate it when GW does plastic kit pieces with odd one off poses.)

Oh wait, there's Daemons. Someone shat in their own shoe with that one. Again these are only my opinions.

[d6juggernaut]

Best sales..PPFFFFBAAHHHAA

Best overall, Dark Eldar. Gorgeous models, very well written, interesting units with good rules, pretty competitive, and will get stronger if the 6th edition skimmer rumors are true. It's obvious how much work has been put into updating DE. It's probably the best army in the past few years.

Best competitiveness, Guards. I was tempted to go with Grey Knights, but Guards tend to do well against Grey Knights so I put them on top. Cheap vehicles, cheap guns, cheap troops, can field 6 transports while at the same time bring enough anti-light armor to flatten the opponent's transports in a single turn(autocannons for days). This is an entire army designed to take advantage of the 5th edition meta while at the same time completely counter it. It doesn't get better than this. I feel that Grey Knights are a bit easier to play, but I feel Guards are still the king of 5th edition at the highest level.

Best gameplay, Grey Knights, I hope the childish Ward hate has finally worn off so people can assess this codex more objectively. This is one of the few codices that has multiple competitive builds, the fact that people can complain about so many different GK builds isn't a necessarily a bad thing, it means a player can actually play the army according to his own style. Want a rock army? Draigowing. Want a powerful generalist army? Purifiers. Hell, you can make a "fluffy" Inquisition warband with a few Grey Knight allies and now you have a powerful henchmen list. If all future codices can maintain the same level the strength, the books will actually have decent internal AND external balance.

[Kakapo42]

I'd say Dark Eldar. Almost every other faction seems to have either had it's power decay into impotency (Tau, Tyranids, Chaos, Eldar, the Ordo Hereticus) or been largely excommunicated with it's army hated for balance or lack thereof and/or it's fluff branded as heresy (Necrons, Grey Knights, Blood Angels, Space Wolves and to a lesser extent Imperial Guard). The Dark Eldar on the other hand got a top-notch codex and brilliant new model line.

The real victims of 5th edition seems to be, however, characterful choices and 'non-competitive' games. Now, this is probably in no small part due to the Internet rather than 5th edition itself, but I for one will always remember 5th edition as the edition of widespread uses of 'net-lists' built to maximise destructive power, and many characterful choices (Firewarriors, Skyrays, Stealthsuits, Sniper drones, Ethereals, Stormtroopers, Flash Gits, Thousand Sons, Noise Marines, Carnifexes, and these are just the ones off the top of my head, there are many many many more) being abandoned because of too high a point cost or not enough raw power, or some other reason. Perhaps one day the Internet will become more compromising to such choices. After all, variety is the spice of life, or so I've been told.

[bad dice]

Your out of your mind if you dont think for variety, 'character', and competitive longevity the Ork book won. They may not have been taking #1, but they where in the final tables, with a number of builds, year after year. :]

INDEED HUMIE

Zogging Mork whuts whit the flaming ork disrespect.
We still stomping them flat whit da boys and driving them over whit tha wagons (hurhurhur)
And now we got them flyboys to shoot em death two.
So we are going kill them humie boys and them robot boys and them pointie eared boys.

WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG HHHHHHHHHHHHHH

[Memnos]

I'd say Grey Knights won.

They went from an obscure army that nobody played to being a vastly inflated tournament army.

[Thanatos_elNyx]

I would say IG.
GK was winning at the end but IG were at the top for longest.

[Spiney Norman]

I voted Dark Eldar, for several reasons

1. The New Codex brought them right up to the competitive edge and there they have stayed since their release, they manage to be a strong choice but far less of a blunt instrument than GK and have much more tactical depth which makes them attractive to both new and established players.

2. They have the best model range in 40K, there are literally no screw-ups in the entire range, there are a few gaps left to fill, but based on what theyve done with DE so far I'm very optimistic

3. They also have the best written codex of the edition, certainly the best balanced, it just goes to show what can be done when you manage to keep ward and cruddace away from a project.

Necrons get an honourable mention for the coup that is getting ALL the models in their codex (inc SCs) by the close of the edition (and in less than a year) go Crons!

Sisters of Battle lose the edition by a landslide, they were in a bad place with codex Witch Hunters, but after that WhiteDex buried them under a ton of manure there was no way of going back.

[Sheena Easton]

Orks - cuz we neva lose!

[blackcherry]

Best overall: Dark Eldar. An entire range revamped and considering just how well the codex is balanced is a triumph of design.

Power: I would give it to the grey knights or IG. Both are very flexible and have some very powerful combos and represent the peak of their army type.

The most fun: still orks. Any codex that has the sentance 'orks on bikes may not take mega armour as the ork will just keep falling off' is a barrel of laughs and doing it right

[Kaelarr]

In the UK? Me!

but from a competitive point of view, Space wolves.

[IAMNOTHERE]

I voted GK but only for the last 12 months; for the longest period? Wolves or normal marines. IG only get powerful over 2000pts below that they're mediocre. DEldar have only had a short spotlight and still arn't making the top tables consistently.

Newcrons, et al are either too short in time or not punchy enough.

[TimLeeson]

Dark Eldar : fantastic model range, backround and best balance of rules. It had the biggest impact and excitement I think.

Runner up would be Necrons.

[All Cing Eye]

I'll say:

Orks = MVP, one of the older 5th books but still strong.
DE and Necrons = MIP, complete rebuilds from the ground up and brought new playstyles to the game.
Grey Knights = Rookie of the Year, in their first real codex they came out swinging.

[aenimosity]

Man it's depressing that cruddace made tyranids suck so badly they didn't even make it as an option on this poll.