Thanks for the welcome Greg23.
@Deathpepper. lol. Nice catch. It definitely puts the weights in favor of appearance. However, I'm still not sure that I should completely ignore army play style.
[1]What other armies look "cool" for you. This is important, because if you think an army looks like poop, you won't want to play them, no matter how cool the rules are.
[2]Do you like to have a shooty army or a hth heavy army?
[3]How important is magic for you?
[4]How important is a variety of troop choices for you? (e.g. Trolls, Ogres, Dragons, swarms, chariots, heavy cavalry, skirmishers, warmachines, etc)
[5]How "Horde" are you willing to go? 200+ Skaven slaves? 80+ man zombie units? etc.
[6]And last but not least, how deep are your pockets?
1) Empire, Tomb Kings, Dwarves, Lizardmen, Orks & Goblins, Slaaneshi and Tzeentche Daemons,
--I like the way Wood Elves look the best by far.
2) Primarily shooty, with counter charge units and some screens/blockers.
3) I have absolutely no idea whether magic would be important to me or not.
4) I especially like the dragon, dryads, and tree people of the Wood Elves. I like the mage/priest on a throne in lizardman army. I like griffons, but I couldn't find them in unit form anywhere, only as a mount for Empire characters. I like the Tomb Kings chariot(s?). Nothing especially stands out in Orks & Gobbos or Dwarves to me, I just like the over all appearance of that one, but I like the overall appearance of the others mentioned too. Slaaeneshi and Tzeentche Daemons were already mentioned.
5) I'm not sure I understand what you mean. I don't mind having an insane model count, but I'd prefer some unit diversity.
6) For the sake of this argument, we'll say infinite. In reality, I'm broke. Part of the fun is planning what to buy, and I take forever to put things together and paint.
Really though, those questions still require weighting to actually give me any definite answers, and without having played the game or owning any codexes, I don't know how to do that (effectively and accurately anyway). I'm pretty sure I shouldn't play dwarves, because it's a slow elite army like CSM's. I kinda want to get away from Chaos, just through negative association even though I didn't play Slaanesh or Tzeentche CSM's.
I have a weird feeling that Lizardmen aren't for me, because it's mentioned that they're a good starter race in one or both of the noob guide stickies (again, because CSM's and their emperor loving counterparts are always "good starter races").
I know Wood Elves are an elite army, but their strong magic could change how they play enough for me to really like them. Without a good 40k comparison, Magic is such a big wild card for my decision. Empire's description of their units all working together nicely sounds like something I'm after. I do like the way the army looks, but it's on the lower end of that totem pole. Orks and Goblins have the numbers. As far as their play goes, I'd either think their random factor is hilarious or it would really make me angry. I'm not sure which. It's another thing I wish I could test out. Tomb Kings have about the same perks as Empire to me. They look slightly better IMO, but if there's a way to get a unit of griffons or griffon riders in Empire I rate them overall the same.
Let me rephrase:
Wood Elves: high risk, but high reward
Empire: good Safe choice
Tomb Kings: good Safe choice
Orks and Golbins: good choice, but high risk
Chaos Daemons: I don't know, but I'm not really that interested.
Dwarves and Lizardmen: probably bad choices
I'm probably going to go with wood elves unless someone brings up a horror story of how he/she came to hate their first fantasy race that they chose because it looked cool but hated the way it played. He/she would then need to tell me that magic probably won't make a big difference in the grand scheme of things. He/she would also need to tell me that with a bunch of Wood Elf units, a large portion of their points cost stems from statistics that are not used frequently (e.g. good armor saves, being good at both cc and shooty (so no matter what role you're using the unit for against someone, it's only using 50% of its awesome).
If that happens, then I'll probably buy both the Tomb Kings and the Empire codexes.