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See, I wouldn’t see the “1000 point army in a box” as being aimed at a starting collector. I’d see these as a second-army kickoff, in most cases.

I play for a while, and enjoy my army, but everyone likes variety. So I start looking at the iconic units from other factions. Now I see a box with a little bit of everything from that faction at a solid discount from combined retail and I’d take the plunge.

I picked 1000 points for a few reasons. It lets you take something from each FOC slot, on top of a basic Battalion. Many armies have 2-3 troop types, so you can take one of each of those. You can afford a transport, which tend to be iconic models as well.

On a 6x4 board, 1000 points usually gives you enough board presence to play to objectives, but also leaves enough room to have movement be important. If a person wished to quickly hit 1500 points (my local sweet spot) then adding a single “Big Unit” centrepiece like a Knight, Baneblade, Tesseract Vault and another filler unit would get you there.

In my experience, games less than 750 don’t have enough resources on the board to properly play to objectives, so 1000 pt starters would still let people play games if they disliked a unit or two from the original group.

I think that including a recommended build for the army would be ideal, as well. GW could make an escalation league out of the contents.

1000 points is far to high for a starter army. 500 points is the sweet spot.

GW considers detachment more then points cost when selling starting armies, it's why start collecting boxes are almost all universally a patrol detachment. GW al;so considers a few hundred points the starting area. 500 or so, not the 1000 Dakkadakka seems to

 greatbigtree wrote:
See, I wouldn’t see the “1000 point army in a box” as being aimed at a starting collector. I’d see these as a second-army kickoff, in most cases.

I play for a while, and enjoy my army, but everyone likes variety. So I start looking at the iconic units from other factions. Now I see a box with a little bit of everything from that faction at a solid discount from combined retail and I’d take the plunge.

I picked 1000 points for a few reasons. It lets you take something from each FOC slot, on top of a basic Battalion. Many armies have 2-3 troop types, so you can take one of each of those. You can afford a transport, which tend to be iconic models as well.

On a 6x4 board, 1000 points usually gives you enough board presence to play to objectives, but also leaves enough room to have movement be important. If a person wished to quickly hit 1500 points (my local sweet spot) then adding a single “Big Unit” centrepiece like a Knight, Baneblade, Tesseract Vault and another filler unit would get you there.

In my experience, games less than 750 don’t have enough resources on the board to properly play to objectives, so 1000 pt starters would still let people play games if they disliked a unit or two from the original group.

This is some pretty good logic, and pretty much mirrors my thinking when I built my 1000 points of Eldar. 1K is a good sweet spot - large enough to be useful on a 4x6 table, not too large to crowd a 4x4 table badly, and you get some variety and can bring some interesting units (well, most armies can) without allowing tons of cheese (again, mostly). 1000 points gets you a useful army and it's easy to expand from there, and some wiggle rooms to swap stuff in and out while still having a Battalion.

Now, my 1000 point army consisted of about $300 CAD retail worth of models, enjoying SC and Wake the Dead discount bundles. It would have cost $410-ish if I had bought pieces separately. So a 1000 point army costing $300 CAD ($250 USD) seems to be the ballpark. GW would probably be better off varying the price on each army bundle rather than trying a one size fits all price point for 1000 point armies.

I would agree. They don’t need to be equally priced, money-wise. Good value is more important than loading all armies up with highest points / dollar units.

And regarding 500 points as a starting point, I don’t disagree for the first few games. That’s why I’d suggest that an escalation league that tops out at the 1000 points could be a good marketing strategy. Run them once or twice a year, maybe once every nine months instead. Start off as low as two troops and an HQ... 400 to 500 points, and then add 150 every two weeks. 400 might be best as you can grow to 550, 700, 850 and then 1000. That could be a 3 month grow period ending in some kind of tournament maybe.

I think it would be good for beginners and vets, as this would mix the two groups together on even footing in terms of model availability.

wont work as i see it.
too high price level and quite frankly, too many models that you have to assemble and paint even before you know if you realy like the army or not. (the never ending debate of grey vs painted)
even the december battleforces costs quite a lot and i doubt they even get clouse to 1000p.

the core problem is that none of GWs army games are playable under 1200p.
plus meta changes from CA to CA, Q&A to Q&A. it is better to just buy single units and build up the army from small steps according to the meta.
the only thing that can help new gamers is the one thing GW cant do as it will hurt their sales: a guide over what units is crap and what units are good in the current meta, what armies are comp material and what armies are pure fluff.

Starter boxes are great, both dual faction with rules and the Start Collecting! / Battleforce boxes, but a whole army? That's half of the fun isn't it - buying the codex and putting together the units you like over time?

https://www.games-workshop.com/en-FI/Chaos-Space-Marines-Army-2017

Two more troop units for this, but it is better to choose itself what you take.

GW offfered a Praetorian Army box set. It had 2 squads with a heavy weapon team, a command squad and, a set of 3 heavy weapons. IIRC it had an MSRP of $200 US.

Ok first a rant about MTG, I used to play for like 20 years, and I remember that Event Decks were AMAZING. They were a great way to get key staples for modern/standard format. I remember grabbing some for playsets of rare lands and uncommons/rares I needed to fill out a deck.

The problem with event decks, is that new players actually rarely bought them, it was mostly collectors and secondary market sellers who were buying out the "best value" decks and keeping the cards they needed and/or selling off the singles for profit. Beginners would a lot of the time end up buying the theme decks that didn't always have cards that were legal, never mind meta.

Anyways enough ranting about MTG. 40k isn't the kind of game where you should chase the tournament meta (except for a very certain breed of player. 40k the game is just a single aspect of the hobby. It really is more like a lifestyle. You need to assemble and paint, two things that can take a LONG time to do and finish, especially if you are like me and take breaks for other stuff.

40k is a GREAT hobby and I love it very much, but I honestly think the start collecting sets or splitting a two-faction boxset is the best way to go. Stuff may not be "meta" but honestly the balance is pretty decent this edition and if you are a new player going against other casuals, it won't really matter. Not to mention that even IN game, tactics are KEY way more than just smashing in a bunch of units you read were OP online. If you don't know HOW to use the units, than it won't matter. In addition, if you find you don't even like the playstyle or army as much as you thought, $80 feels like way less of a waste of money then a set that would easily be $200+ for certain factions.

 FrozenDwarf wrote:
wont work as i see it.
too high price level and quite frankly, too many models that you have to assemble and paint even before you know if you realy like the army or not. (the never ending debate of grey vs painted)
even the december battleforces costs quite a lot and i doubt they even get clouse to 1000p.

the core problem is that none of GWs army games are playable under 1200p.
plus meta changes from CA to CA, Q&A to Q&A. it is better to just buy single units and build up the army from small steps according to the meta.
the only thing that can help new gamers is the one thing GW cant do as it will hurt their sales: a guide over what units is crap and what units are good in the current meta, what armies are comp material and what armies are pure fluff.

Can you explain the conclusion that the game is unplayable under 1200 points? I've played games as small as 250 with what ever standard rules were at the time under multiple edition and never had any issues.

Sure certain things work better at certain point levels but the game still worked fine.

In my experience, I find that 1000 points is the minimum to play a game that’s satisfying to me.

Most units are around 100 to 150 points. So at 1000 points most armies run around 7 to 10 units. Fewer than that and I don’t find the game works in a satisfying way. There aren’t enough units to interact with multiple objectives. Nor is there enough units to do much piece trading.

At 250, two minimum troops and an HQ is about all you’d get. Many factions could pull off a mini-Battalion with an upgrade or two thrown in at 500 points.

Adding a FA, EL, HS, and DT at an average of 125 points each takes you to 1000 points. To me, that gives the basic selection of an army with enough variety to be interesting.

HoundsofDemos wrote:

 FrozenDwarf wrote:
wont work as i see it.
too high price level and quite frankly, too many models that you have to assemble and paint even before you know if you realy like the army or not. (the never ending debate of grey vs painted)
even the december battleforces costs quite a lot and i doubt they even get clouse to 1000p.

the core problem is that none of GWs army games are playable under 1200p.
plus meta changes from CA to CA, Q&A to Q&A. it is better to just buy single units and build up the army from small steps according to the meta.
the only thing that can help new gamers is the one thing GW cant do as it will hurt their sales: a guide over what units is crap and what units are good in the current meta, what armies are comp material and what armies are pure fluff.

Can you explain the conclusion that the game is unplayable under 1200 points? I've played games as small as 250 with what ever standard rules were at the time under multiple edition and never had any issues.

Sure certain things work better at certain point levels but the game still worked fine.

a: 40k is primarely an objective grabbing and holding based game, not a "whoever is first to remove all enemy models wins"
b: elite vs horde. there is alot of codex armies in 40k, and they all play way too differently. their full playability is not unlocked until the 1200-1500p+ range.
c: current rules edition are targeted for horde armies with its "everything hits and wounds on a 6 no matter what" rule. and we all know that the more dices you roll, the more chanses of 6s you can get.
I am not saying 7th was good, but i am saying that it had rules more suitable for this game then what 8th has as its rules comes from a completely different game: age of sigmar.


Currently the moust elite armies are knights and custodes. the moust horde armies are IG, orks and tyranids.
The rest of the codex armies are somewhere in the middle of these, not horde, not elite unless they choose to be it. thouse armies in the middel can moust likely do ok in a 500p-1000p game, but the elites and horde will never ever work under 1200p whitout rule limitations on the horde armies unit selections OR if all objective grabbing victory senarios are excluded for the elite armies.

I will give you 3 known examples of games where army in a box works: adeptus titanicus, bolt action and warmahordes. why? Cuz they are skirmish games both designed to be played whit low amount of models in forces and they are in the middle ground between elite and horde aspect.

the get started boxes in 40k are a good idea, but current rules set, or current content in the existing boxes does not support the idea.

Plenty of us play at less than 1200 points so it's clearly not unplayable

Well great for people living in UK then. Here I have not seen a game at less then 1750pts. I heard about 1000pts, but it was a team tournament, so some people just had 2x1000.

I really don't get why GW can't make a box with 3x10 cultists or 3x10 IG. Stuff that people would actually use. Instead they make bundles like the one someone linked for chaos. CSM never see play, neither do termintor armored HQs, termintors maybe see play as does the dreadnought, but no one touchs a predator. If someone unfortunate enough to buy that army were to play a few games, the feeling they would get would not be good.

I mean GW could at least discount the bad armies or unit, it is not like people are killing themselfs to buy more models for them.

Aren't the IG defence forces 2x10+6+5=31 guardsmen, plus a leman russ for second HQ and then a free chimera. The loyal 32 basically is already a box.

Well, I've done 4 tournaments with 1000points so far. You don't have all the toys available as in 2000points, but the game works just as well. The "meta" might change a bit, some armies are stronger than in 2000points games, but overall I'd say 40K works better at 1000points than for example at 3000points...

CFW starter is pretty bad, you just can get 2 starters and have decent army. CFW have to much metal and resin models, can`t believe they release so much new models and did 0 updated for CFW.
I don`t count spiritseer because you have to buy 80 pound box

Completley agree. I think GW should have never gotten rid of Battle Forces. The ones around the early 2000s were awesome. The Tau Battleforce I remember came with 3 crisis suits, a pirhana, 12 firewarriors and 3 stealthsuits. I dont think the Tau one came with an HQ, but there were also the bigger boxes that were essentially bigger Battle Forces (Megaforces?). While more pricey than current Start Collectings, I would rather have those boxes alongside the current ones. Imperial Guard have the Cadian and Catachan Defense Forces which are exactly what Battle Forces were like, so why not?

The SM BF box from what I remember came with: a tactical squad, a rhino, a predator, and some more stuff I think, but from how that looks so far, early 2000's Battle Forces are much better options for actually starting an army

123ply wrote:
Completley agree. I think GW should have never gotten rid of Battle Forces. The ones around the early 2000s were awesome. The Tau Battleforce I remember came with 3 crisis suits, a pirhana, 12 firewarriors and 3 stealthsuits. I dont think the Tau one came with an HQ, but there were also the bigger boxes that were essentially bigger Battle Forces (Megaforces?). While more pricey than current Start Collectings, I would rather have those boxes alongside the current ones. Imperial Guard have the Cadian and Catachan Defense Forces which are exactly what Battle Forces were like, so why not?

The SM BF box from what I remember came with: a tactical squad, a rhino, a predator, and some more stuff I think, but from how that looks so far, early 2000's Battle Forces are much better options for actually starting an army

The 2000s-era $90 Battleforces were approximately one Start Collecting box plus a kit; the Space Marine one had a Captain, fifteen Tactical Marines, five Scouts, and a Rhino, I think. The current Start Collecting boxes have pretty much kept pace with price increases since then.

An issue for starting armies might be the insistence on selling $30 single-model blisters for HQ models; if more armies were organized like the Custodes (where the "official model" for a Shield-Captain is "put this alternate head/pauldrons/breastplate on a dude in this kit") the initial pricepoint and the contents of the starter boxes might be better.

123ply wrote:
Completley agree. I think GW should have never gotten rid of Battle Forces. The ones around the early 2000s were awesome. The Tau Battleforce I remember came with 3 crisis suits, a pirhana, 12 firewarriors and 3 stealthsuits. I dont think the Tau one came with an HQ, but there were also the bigger boxes that were essentially bigger Battle Forces (Megaforces?). While more pricey than current Start Collectings, I would rather have those boxes alongside the current ones. Imperial Guard have the Cadian and Catachan Defense Forces which are exactly what Battle Forces were like, so why not?

The SM BF box from what I remember came with: a tactical squad, a rhino, a predator, and some more stuff I think, but from how that looks so far, early 2000's Battle Forces are much better options for actually starting an army

That's how I started my army back up after losing my entire collection. Used my tax refund one year to pick up the SW battle force that came with 3 bikes, a rhino, and a bunch of troops. I also picked up the current box set with a bunch of marines.

The only other NIB stuff I bought since was the stormwolf/stormfang ship and the revol kit that has the dreadnaught and 5 termies. Everything else is ebay rescues.

is that before or after the dark angels finally get a start collecting box and we and the blood angels both stop having to buy pewter HQ's?

i think the best solution is for the battleforce boxes we now get over xmas period should be available all year round tbh, changing the contents once a year like they do now.

 AnomanderRake wrote:

123ply wrote:
Completley agree. I think GW should have never gotten rid of Battle Forces. The ones around the early 2000s were awesome. The Tau Battleforce I remember came with 3 crisis suits, a pirhana, 12 firewarriors and 3 stealthsuits. I dont think the Tau one came with an HQ, but there were also the bigger boxes that were essentially bigger Battle Forces (Megaforces?). While more pricey than current Start Collectings, I would rather have those boxes alongside the current ones. Imperial Guard have the Cadian and Catachan Defense Forces which are exactly what Battle Forces were like, so why not?

The SM BF box from what I remember came with: a tactical squad, a rhino, a predator, and some more stuff I think, but from how that looks so far, early 2000's Battle Forces are much better options for actually starting an army

The 2000s-era $90 Battleforces were approximately one Start Collecting box plus a kit; the Space Marine one had a Captain, fifteen Tactical Marines, five Scouts, and a Rhino, I think. The current Start Collecting boxes have pretty much kept pace with price increases since then.

This was not the norm. Marines were one of the better deals.

An issue for starting armies might be the insistence on selling $30 single-model blisters for HQ models; if more armies were organized like the Custodes (where the "official model" for a Shield-Captain is "put this alternate head/pauldrons/breastplate on a dude in this kit") the initial pricepoint and the contents of the starter boxes might be better.

And then people would whine that they don't get to have a full squad. Custodes work because they also have an Elite slot character that can be built out of the box as well.

People seem to forget that Guard literally have this setup in terms of the Command Squad boxes.

Personally I cant see these larger box sets selling very well. Heck they'd scare a lot of people out of the hobby. Also having a huge amount of grey plastic and then to paint would be off putting as well. Would be interesting to see sales statistics of the larger force collections.

I assume new players would start collecting box set and then the next box up which for guard is the Cadian/Catachan Defence force. The two box set has a points value of around 650pts. This is $255US

The xmas boxes were pretty much armies in a box. The issue as I see it is the prohibitive cost entry point. the start collecting boxes run the balance of sub $100 entry point.

I think the many boxed games that GW has put out recently usually make good companions to a start collecting box so one case get a stand alone game then expand that into an army.

I know when I first started out back in the early 90's, my purchasing choices hinged heavily on getting as many figures for my army as possible as quickly as possible.

This way I could start playing right away (our group almost always did 2000 pt armies) and have some variety in selection when building the list.

After that point, it was then buying the blisters and small boxes to fill in gaps or bolster what worked well.

I would think the same still holds true to many newcomers, therefore the bigger battleforce sets make sense as an early purchase when starting an army.

In an ideal world I think that it would be nice if every army had at least one box set that contained 2 HQs, 3 Troops and then one of the other smaller CP detachments (Vanguard, Outrider and I can't think of the others). It would also be nice if there were the same type of sets that were themed. So that you could have say Saim Han or Cadians as opposed to having a generic army selection. Also, ideally the boxes would be under $250 US.

I don't know how economically feasible that would be but I think that a person starting a new army might appreciate GW's help with initial selections.

 Blndmage wrote:
I spent years never playing more than 1,000 points (3rd-5th ed). We had monthly 500 point tournaments, it was wonderful for those of us with limited funds, or who were just starting out.

I'd actually never played 2,000 or higher until this past year.

I would honestly love that. 1000 point armies being the norm and 500 point tournaments being common. I'm not saying major tournaments need to be that way, but it'd be nice for my local meta to be that way. First of all, being a family man, I don't have anywhere near as much time as I used to. Please don't get me wrong, I wouldn't trade my family for any piece of plastic. I also tend to start losing interest in any one game that takes over about 90 minutes. It just starts feeling like a chore rather than fun. So, keeping the point count low would be a great thing for me. I especially love the idea of 500 point tournaments as you could play through the tournament and be done early in the day rather than it taking all day or two days.

Love this idea and wish it was more common.

SG

 ServiceGames wrote:

 Blndmage wrote:
I spent years never playing more than 1,000 points (3rd-5th ed). We had monthly 500 point tournaments, it was wonderful for those of us with limited funds, or who were just starting out.

I'd actually never played 2,000 or higher until this past year.

I would honestly love that. 1000 point armies being the norm and 500 point tournaments being common. I'm not saying major tournaments need to be that way, but it'd be nice for my local meta to be that way. First of all, being a family man, I don't have anywhere near as much time as I used to. Please don't get me wrong, I wouldn't trade my family for any piece of plastic. I also tend to start losing interest in any one game that takes over about 90 minutes. It just starts feeling like a chore rather than fun. So, keeping the point count low would be a great thing for me. I especially love the idea of 500 point tournaments as you could play through the tournament and be done early in the day rather than it taking all day or two days.

Love this idea and wish it was more common.

SG

The problem is that the game is inherently imbalanced at that points level, because it's just not possible to make a take all comers list with that many points for many codex. Like, how do you possibly prepare to fight a list with 3 Custodes Jetbike Captains in a Supreme Command, and potentially a list containing ~32 Scion models with 12 plasma guns, or someone taking a single Knight Crusader?

You can just can't take enough of your army's tools to make a balanced list, so any tournament will boil down to rock paper scissors.