Every new Warhammer 40K player gets the same advice: choose the faction whose aesthetic you love most, because you'll be looking at these miniatures for years. That advice is correct. But understanding what each faction plays like and what it costs to build helps you confirm that your visual instinct is matched by a playstyle and budget that will keep you in the hobby. This guide covers the six most commonly chosen starter factions.

Space Marines

Visual identity: Power-armored superhuman soldiers in baroque gothic styling. Dozens of chapter variants (Ultramarines are blue, Blood Angels are red, Space Wolves are grey/brown and wolf-themed, Dark Angels are green, etc.) each with distinct character and lore.

Playstyle: Generalist army with good units across all phases. Shooting, melee, and psychic options all exist. Forgiving to learn because stats are good across the board — individual Space Marine models are durable and capable. Not the highest skill ceiling but not forgiving of completely ignoring strategy either.

Cost to 2,000 points: $450–700 retail, depending on chapter. Intercessors are the backbone infantry and are reasonably priced. Veterans going deep into elite Marine builds (Terminators, heavy support) push the cost up.

Midwest community: The largest faction community in virtually every Midwest gaming store. If you play Space Marines, organized game nights will always have opponents. The flip side: you'll fight mirror matches frequently.

Combat Patrol box: Space Marine Combat Patrol ($120) — includes Primaris Captain, Intercessors, Assault Intercessors, Inceptors, and Impulsor. Strong starting point.

Necrons

Visual identity: Undead robot skeletal soldiers. Ancient Egyptian aesthetic combined with science fiction. Green energy weapons and black/metal armor. Stark, alien, immediately recognizable.

Playstyle: Durable, relentless. The Reanimation Protocols rule means Necron models stand back up after being killed at a meaningful rate — the army is exhausting to play against in a game-design sense that creates legitimate dread in opponents. Infantry-focused with excellent support units and strong vehicles at higher points levels.

Cost to 2,000 points: $400–600 retail. Necron Warriors are cheap to buy, cheap to paint (drybrushing works extremely well on the skeletal aesthetic), and efficient to field. One of the more budget-friendly paths to a complete army.

Midwest community: Second or third most popular faction at most Midwest stores. Strong presence at organized play events and consistently represented at AdeptiCon.

Tyranids

Visual identity: Alien swarm horror. Chitinous exoskeletal creatures ranging from small skittering gaunts to enormous bio-titans. The visual language is recognizably H.R. Giger-influenced and deeply effective.

Playstyle: High model count infantry with powerful synapse creatures providing buffs and leadership. Tyranids swarm in melee and close distance. Hormagaunts and Termagants are cheap individually and deployed in large numbers. Higher-level play involves complex synapse networks and bio-weapon combinations.

Cost to 2,000 points: $500–750 retail, higher than average because competitive Tyranid lists want many models and the cost per-model is similar to Space Marines despite being nominally "horde" units.

Midwest community: Strong and growing. The Tyranid community tends to have enthusiastic painters because the varied creature designs reward creativity in color scheme choices.

Orks

Visual identity: Greenskinned military-industrial chaos. Ramshackle vehicles, enormous choppy weapons, cartoonish violence. The most visually chaotic faction and deliberately so — the lore establishes that Ork technology works because Orks believe it does.

Playstyle: High model count, melee-focused, unpredictable. Ork rules have mechanisms that introduce randomness that other factions don't have — which can be frustrating for control-minded players but genuinely fun for players who enjoy chaos. Orks reward aggressive play and creative problem-solving.

Cost to 2,000 points: $450–650 retail. Boyz boxes are reasonably priced per-model. The hobby cost is higher — Ork painting can be intensive due to the detail and variety of the models.

Midwest community: Ork players tend to be enthusiastic hobbyists who treat the modelling and conversion aspect of the hobby as seriously as the game. AdeptiCon typically has strong Ork representation in both competitive and hobby categories.

Chaos Space Marines

Visual identity: Corrupted Space Marines warped by millennia of chaos influence. More baroque and horrifying than loyalist Marines — mutations, daemon-touched weapons, corrupted armor. Multiple Chaos God-specific subfactions (Khorne berserkers, Thousand Sons sorcerers, Death Guard plague marines, etc.) each with distinct aesthetics.

Playstyle: Similar structural flexibility to Space Marines but with more offensive character. Chaos armies tend to be more aggressive and punishing when they connect than loyalist Marine equivalents. Slightly less durable, more damage-oriented.

Cost to 2,000 points: $450–700 retail, comparable to Space Marines.

Astra Militarum (Imperial Guard)

Visual identity: Human soldiers. Not superhumans — regular people with lasguns and faith facing horrors they are categorically outmatched against. Tanks, artillery, regimental identity. The only faction where the primary unit is a normal human with an assault rifle.

Playstyle: Very high model count (competitive lists can run 100+ models), heavy firepower through tanks and artillery, relatively fragile infantry that wins through overwhelming numbers. The most logistically demanding army to assemble, paint, and transport but the Leman Russ tank and Basilisk artillery piece are among the most satisfying models in the game to paint.

Cost to 2,000 points: $600–900 retail — Infantry Squad boxes are cheap but you need many of them, and vehicle kits push the total cost up. The most expensive faction to build competitively.

Getting Started

Every faction listed here has a Combat Patrol box (~$120) that provides a functional starting force. Buy one Combat Patrol, assemble and paint it, play a few Combat Patrol format games (approximately 500 points), then decide whether to expand before spending more. The Warhammer 40K beginner guide covers the full startup approach. The Warhammer army calculator estimates your build cost at any points level.

Warhammer 40K faction rules, points costs, and retail prices change with Games Workshop updates. Information reflects available data as of 2026.