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I have 2 friends that have a "Not sure if want" attitude towards WH40K. Both haven't loads of money so perhaps they'll settle at 1000 or 1500 points worth of army.

One likes the aesthetic of Tau Empire and the other likes the Orks. Again, since they're not precizely having loads of money, they'll have to save some timem and I've told them that I'd help them scratchbuilding vehicles and such. The question is, are the battleforces of both armies any good?

What would be good 1000 or 1500 points lists for them so they start?

Both battleforces are worthless I wouldn't buy either of them, to be honest. Just pick up two troops and an HQ and have a couple games.

Samus_aran115 wrote:Both battleforces are worthless I wouldn't buy either of them, to be honest. Just pick up two troops and an HQ and have a couple games.

I wouldn't say they're worthless, but i'd say that they're not the best battleforces. I wouldn't buy them, but they're good to get you going, and good for new players.

But that's the thing. They aren't. They give you two usable units and a bunch of junk you'll never use. That's almost always the case. The Ork one is actually one of the best, except for the fact that you only save three dollars over buying things separately. The tau one is awful, IMO. Kroot are nothing but meat shields, and that random battlesuit isn't going to get you anywhere..... But I suppose if you're playing proxies, battleforces are good

So, not battleforces for them then xD Though saving $3 is good, since that's $15.6

And well, while we won't use proxies, I won't be hard on WYSIWYG with them.

Thanks for the imput on that, though I'd still like a buying list for both of them ^^

First thing on both lists is a codex for each army of interest. The Ork battleforce is actually quite good, though the bikers probably won't see the table. And the orks need a plastic warboss kit

Orks- x2 boxes of boyz (maybe even four )
A couple trukks (or you could make them)
A warboss/ big mek
Something else, like kans or bikers.

Tau- x2 boxes of fire warriors
A couple crisis suits
A broadside or two.

I happend to have an AoBR Warboss and the boyz, so perhaps the orks friend is saved and only needs to buy a single boyz box, the trukks and killa kans will be done by me.

My tau friend... is screwed xD Unless, he buys a single broadside and see if I can scratch build them and the Crisis suits using that as a model, but that's pushing my habilities quite too far for now xD

The Tau Battle Force is actually a very good buy. You get a decent core choice of units plus a playable army straight from the box (the Crisis suit can be the commander, and the Fire Warriors and Kroot fill out your two troop choices. Steath suits work wonders as cheaper, point wise, versions of Battle suits with somewhat higher survivability). After that, get him a Hammerhead weapons sprue to turn the devilfish into a Hammerhead.

As for Orks, AoBR should be your first buy. It comes with a core Ork force, as well as the manditory Core Rulebook. I'm actually building my entire Ork force solely out of pieces from the AoBR set (literally, the Power Klaws are made out of the sprues the Boyz came on). With the addition of some cheap dollar store wheels, the Deffkoptas can be turned into warbikers, and Deffkoptas themselves arn't too shabby either.

Dark wrote:I happend to have an AoBR Warboss and the boyz, so perhaps the orks friend is saved and only needs to buy a single boyz box, the trukks and killa kans will be done by me.

My tau friend... is screwed xD Unless, he buys a single broadside and see if I can scratch build them and the Crisis suits using that as a model, but that's pushing my habilities quite too far for now xD

AoBR is a good start for the Ork player, when i started Orks i got 1 and my bro got 1 and we swapped sm for Orks, so i got 2 lots, that built up my force a lot.
Look on eBay you can often get a lot of cheap Tau on there, or i've noticed some good stuff anyway. I'd say you want 3 crisis battlesuits, and 2 broadsides, as well as a couple of squads of fire warriors to start

I have to disagree with Samus_aran115 about the Tau battleforce being a bad value
A devilfish ( always useful)
A Crisis battle suit ( with a bit of conversion could easily be used as a HQ choice )
12 firewarrirs ( one big squad or the popular two 6 man teams )
3 stealth suits ( which I personally find many uses for )
12 kroot ( and contrary to the above esteemed poster can be very useful for more than " meat shield " ( I hate that term, I never consider any unit disposable)
6 drones and 1 marker drone ( all useful for conversion into sheild/marker, gun varients )

all that for $90.00 USD otherwise priced apart 149.50
if thats not a good deal to start with I am not certain what is from GW
And please Dont start on this or that can't compete, I have found everything has its uses and sometimes the things people underestimate preform well above expectations.

Ok Ork battleforce:
A Wartrukk ( always useful)
3 Ork bikers ( some people love these guys some don't its all down to play style )
20 Boyz ( always useful , orks need boyz)

Thats all for $90.00 a value of 123.75

so both are good deals but point-wise the Tau battle force is Way more of a value.

and a good expansion from these base sets could easily be..

Tau:
2 X Crisis suits
1 X Hammerhead
and perhaps more stealths or some-pathfinders, which could easily be converted from a plastic firewarrior set.

Orks:
You could invest in a AOBR set and sell off the Marines for half the cost of the box set
so for around 40 ish dollars you would get
A warboss
3 deff copters
5 Nobz
20 Boyz
that combined with the Ork battle force makes a decent size base force which you can expand on in any way...

Well I hope this helps

I'll get Samus advice on the Orks, and I think I can get in touch to whom I've borrowed the rest of the AoBR Orks and get them back for my other friend, that and I'll tell him to save $130 and get a Boyz box.

Soo'Vah'Cha makes a good point, and most of the games will be just for kicks (I play SW, but I'm guessing that I'll use my GH "count as BC" and won't be fielding LF at first, or AoBR vanilla marines, 1 Squad, 2 combat squads with the Captain, 1 Rhino, 2 Razorbacks).

I'm not going to get into the weeds of advise about what to purchase and the value of battleforce boxes; I find the forums full of people eager to shout out bad advice (more often) lately.

Instead, OP: E-bay is FULL of AoBR leftovers. That will help your Ork friend tremendously.


The best advice I can give you for your friends is this: Don't invest in models or towards an army until your friends know what they want to play. Loan them models to try it out, take them to the FLGS to borrow some small armies to try it out, proxy stuff if you have to.....you can even use Vassal and play 40k from your computers to try out different army builds. Vassal40k.info is the place to go get the module from.

Before either your Tau or Ork friend buy ANY models, they should play with the armies, and see if they like the playstyle. And if they do, they should explain what kind of army they'd like to play, so that folks can help them build a list - whether you do this locally or on the internet.

The best route that a new 40k player could EVER take would be to gain a basic grasp of the playstyle for each army, decide which one is most appealing to them, give it a try a few times, have someone explain the strengths and weaknesses of it to them, have them decide if those things are still ok...and from there develop an army list from the codex. Then submit the armylist for review to a knowledgeable person based on whatever their goals in the list are, and LAST...is to start acquiring models.

Buying models first is ass-backwards. I did that, and ended up with 5,000 points of Tau before realizing that they weren't nearly as fun to play as Orks, and that I'd much rather be in close combat than shooting it out. I chose Tau because in video games, I was always a ranged type. Hunter/Ranger/etc.

Have them learn about the hobby before spending the money that they have precious little of. Make it count.

Well, been checking Ebay before, and even at the low prices ($10 for the Ork Boyz), the international shipping and customs taxes makes it cost the same or more than buying directly from a retail shop here.

The orks are pretty much solved anyway, but I guess I'd make my "Tau want to be" friend to proxy them and see if he might not like something else (they both chose them based on fluff and aesthetics)

Hmm, a friend of mine took orks 'cos he "liked the look of them" but didnt look at fluff or playstyle, then realised they cant shoot for toffee, so now I'm trying to help him find a suitable army - he's not so great tbh, very little experience, so it's probably gonna end up as sm, them being simplest to use for beginners.