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I just posted this on Beasts of War & was going to put this in the Articles section but thought it would a) get more exposure here and b) be a place for us to discuss Battle Forces, past, present & future & whether or not we think them any good/good value. I believe this information is essential for any beginners/people wanting to start a new army.

GW’s sets of Battle Forces are the best way to start a new 40k army. Each has a section of Troops/Core units at its heart with a special unit or vehicle thrown in. On average they save you from £10-25 compared to buying the units separately. The 20% discount offered by most online retailers also takes another £10-15 off, making them superb value over the RRP (depending if you use all the contents in your army).

Many beginners may not know what the game involves. In order to play games you will need a certain amount of Troop/Core choices & GW’s starter sets which, although good, often don’t contain the bare minimum needed to play games legally. For example the Space Marine force in Assault on Black Reach doesn’t contain the bare minimum Troop choices needed to use them legally in games.

In this post I will break down each Battle Force & provide the basic points value of each with a bracketed value that estimates what they could be worth with all the wargear/upgrades listed within the relevant Codex. This way you know EXACTLY what you’re buying.

Space Marine Battle Force – 470pts (500+/-) @ £51.25/$90 (£41.40/$72)
15 Tactical Marines (enough for a 10 man Tactical Squad & a 5 man Combat Squad), Rhino, 5 man Assault Squad, 5 Scouts.
3-4 Troop Choices, 1 Fast Attack, 1 Dedicated Transport.
You can find the AOBR set for about £20-30 on eBay.

Blood Angel Battle Force – 420pts (700+/-) @ £60/$100 (£48.60/$79.99)
10 man Tactical Squad, Rhino, 5 man Assault Squad, 5 man Death Company.
3-5 Troop Choices, 1 Dedicated Transport.
This set can easily be used to make a 10 man Assault Squad or another 5 Death Company – potentially you can squeeze as much as 750pts out of this box. The Death Company kit contains many spare parts that can be used to make your Tactical Marines & Assault Marines look better.

Space Wolf Battle Force – 410pts (500+/-) @ £51.25/$90 (£41.40/$72)
20 Space Wolves (Grey Hunters or Blood Claws) 5 Wolf Scouts, Drop Pod
2-4 Troop Choices, 1 Elite, 1 Dedicated Transport & lots of bits left for Long Fangs etc.

Ravenwing Battle Force – 370pts (410+/-) @ £51.25/$90 (£41.40/$72)
6 Bikes, Attack Bike & Land Speeder
1 – 2 Fast Attack for Dark Angels & Space Marine Armies (the best way to buy Bikes/Land Speeder by far)

Chaos Space Marines – 558pts (700+/-) @ £51.25/$90 (£41.40/$72)
15 Chaos Marines, 8 Khorne Berzerkers, Rhino, 5 Possessed
2-4 Troops Choices, 1 Elite, 1 Dedicated Transport

Eldar – 280pts (400+/-) @ £51.25/$90 (£41.40/$72)
10 Guardians. 5 Dire Avengers, 1 War Walker, 1 Wave Serpent
2 Troops Choices, 1 Heavy Support, 1 Dedicated Transport

Orks – & 230pts (350+/-) @ £51.25/$90 (£41.40/$72)
20 Boyz, 1 Trukk, 3 Warbikers
1-2 Troops, 1 Fast Attack, 1 Dedicated Transport
You can find the AOBR set for about £20-25 on eBay.

Imperial Guard - 235 (370+/-) @ £56.50/$93 (£45/$76)
5 Man Command Squad, 20 Guardsmen, 3 Heavy Weapons, 1 Sentinel
1 Troops, 1 Fast Attack (1 HQ, 2 Troops, 1 Fast Attack)
You can make the Infantry Squads Veterans, the Command Squad an HQ choice with the Heavy Weapons spread between them for a small 450pts +/- army.

Tau - 420pts (500+/-) @ £51.25/$90 (£41.40/$72)
1 XV8 Crisis Suit (can be a Commander), 12 Fire Warriors, 12 Kroot, 1 Devilfish, 4 Gun Drones, 1 Markerlight Drone
0-1 HQ, 2 Troops, 1-2 Elite, 1 Dedicated Transport
The only Battle Force that’s actually a whole army in a box, enough said.

Necrons - 738pts (818 max) @ @ £51.25/$90 (£41.40/$72)
28 Necron Warriors, 7 Scarab Swarms, 3 Destroyers
2 Troops, 2 Fast Attack

Tryanids – 378pts (450+/-) @£61.50/$105 (£49.20/$84)
3 Tyranid Warriors, 8 Gnestealers, 16 Termagants, 16 Hormagaunts
4 Troops

So there you have it. On average if you buy a Battle Force & a character you’ll have about 500-750pts depending on what character you buy. Buy 2 Battle Forces & that’s the bulk of your Troops bought, with Transports, for £80-100 at anywhere between 500-1,000pts. You can never have enough Troop choices in your games. For me the Battle Forces remain the best value product GW sell.

I'll try & edit the OP whenever a BF changes or a new one is released.

A very thorough writeup of the various battleforces. I would encourage you to emphasize, however, that you are only getting a good deal if you intend to utilize all of the components in your final, competitive army (or sell them off to net back some of your costs). For example, and this isn't to pick on IG, but I don't see sentinels run in most of the IG lists I encounter on the forums or the tabletop, and that's £15.50 of the "intrinsic value" of the battleforce.

You should also put up a per point cost. So if the vanilla box has a minimum 470 points and costs #51.25 (sorry I'm american, don't have the *pound* symbol), then you get 9.17 points per pound spent. Compare that to Orks which only get 4.49 points per pound. I think that shows value much more accurately. Just a suggestion.

Oh, and maybe US dollars in there too. There are plenty of us Yankees on here too.

Battleforces are probably a good way to start a couple of friends playing (although maybe AOBR is better for that), probably ignoring FOC but getting used to a few of the basic rules. Like said, a very good write up, and not very useful if you don't want all the stuff inside. From that point of view, you have to say the Space Marine one is ok, but Assault Squads are not used very often, i'm not 100% sure of the weapon options you get on the Tacticals, but i don't think its very much, rhino's are mostly/often used and scouts are useful.
BA is a bit all over the place, not many armies will be using Death company, assault marines and Tacticals.
Space Wolves is decent if you are using a Drop Pod army.
Ravenwing is amazing value, still good value if your not going to use attack bike. (very good for standard Marine bike armies as well.)
Chaos is alright, but most don't use possessed, and haven't seen too many lists around with CSM and Zerkers (although they could become Chosen.)
Eldar is a bit all over the place as well, could be useful for footdar, but Wave Serpent is no good for that really. And Guardians aren't used in mechdar.
Orks is not very good value when you consider AOBR, but still alright for a speedfreaks army.
IG is a nice Battleforce, but you feel a bit robbed after the last one, which had a Russ in it didn't it?
Tau is best for stating army, Gun drones only thing that may not be very useful.
Necrons, too many Warriors in it 20 is enough.
Nid one, is all troops, although Warriors could become Prime.
So really your looking at Ravenwing and Tau at being best value, with Space Wolves and IG coming next in my opinion.

Dollars now added based on Dice Bucket

I would encourage you to emphasize, however, that you are only getting a good deal if you intend to utilize all of the components in your final, competitive army (or sell them off to net back some of your costs). For example, and this isn't to pick on IG, but I don't see sentinels run in most of the IG lists I encounter on the forums or the tabletop, and that's £15.50 of the "intrinsic value" of the battleforce.

QFT However the piece was originally written for beginners in mind & as a beginner you don't really know what you want other than a solid base & Sentinels look cool. What more experienced people do not wish to use I'm sure they are sensible enough to sell/swap with friends - I'm sure you'd get at least 50% of the asking price of anything you didn't want on an ebay auction if you sold it as new on the sprues

With the BA and CSM I know many people won't use the Possessed/all units in an army, however they can use the spare parts to make some very cool looking Marines

I noticed as I was doing this they've actually reduced the IG one by £5 - that's a first for me

For me the Necron one is great value & will only be better when the new Codex comes out - unless they pull it OOP which I can see happening. You can never have too many Necron Warriors.

Ravenwing is amazing value, still good value if your not going to use attack bike. (very good for standard Marine bike armies as well.)

The Ravenwing one is truly immense for people wanting grimdark bikers.

Eldar is a bit all over the place as well, could be useful for footdar, but Wave Serpent is no good for that really. And Guardians aren't used in mechdar.

I also think the Eldar one is all over the place. I'd rather have a full 10 Dire Avengers & a Support Weapon rather than a War Walker or a Falcon instead of the Wave Serpent.

I miss the fact they used to come with some Scenery though - like the trees, barricades or gothic ruins from the 3rd Ed. sets. Marines are always going to be better value because they cost more points than the majority of armies.

There's also the megaforces which might IIRC be removed from sales. The Ork one was ridiculously good priced - £100 got you 40 boyz, 5 lootas/burnas, a trukk and 9 warbikers. The value of purchase at the time, of the contents by its shelf price, was around £160. Now I'd imagine it's about £170.

This was kind of helpful, if a little late. I am a beginner and I thought that the battle force have everything you needed to start with. I play Tau, so mine did, but shouldn't GW change the contents to be more reflective of what people expect?

Juvieus Kaine wrote:There's also the megaforces which might IIRC be removed from sales. The Ork one was ridiculously good priced - £100 got you 40 boyz, 5 lootas/burnas, a trukk and 9 warbikers. The value of purchase at the time, of the contents by its shelf price, was around £160. Now I'd imagine it's about £170.

IIRC, you also get a copy of the codex. You do in the SM one, anyway.

Very good write up, I really hope that with future ones they come out with they focus more on making small (legal) starter armies. The Tau BF is amazing, great price for whats inside ande everything is usuable for a small army. Not to mention, buy 2 of those (convert the gun drones into marker drones) and buy a few Heavy's and a few suits and you have decently competitive 2000ish army.

I personally felt bad for my friends when we started playing (they played Ork and Tyranid) both of which put much more money into their armies, but I was still able to have higher pt armies, not to mention after we all settled into how our armies worked, I pretty much crushed them every time. And I honestly think that this had much to do with the superiority of the Tau BattleForce.

Good write up there dude! That ravenwing box IS craaaaazy value, never really noticed it before like. But with all of these box set's all you have to do if you want to get gaming quick sharp, is to add an HQ mini. Or convert one of your troops in those boxes to be an HQ.
Agree muchly with the Eldar one being a little messed up, having bought it twice before now. Drop the Falcon and gimme more Dire Avengers I say!
As for the Space Puppies box, meh. The Drop Pid is a nice mini but the rest can go spin IMO.
The Blood Angel's box is pretty sweet thou, it's amazing how I never really paid much attention to these box set's really. I guess cos I rarely have the dollar to drop on them I passed them by.....seems ive been a little narrow in my focus, that will have to change dammit!

Because of the amount of power armoured options in a Space Wolf list you can make a lot more points out of a Space Wolf Battleforce.

I was just considering starting a thread on why the battleforces all seem to be a bad value, unless you want to play the army style the 'force is built for. Look at the ork force; It forces you into playing speed freaks. when i built my army, a footsloggin sluggaboy-focussed list, I bought 3 boxes of Black Reach, sold the marines, and had a great core for my army, the only thing missing was a heavy support option.

I'm currently considering either a Chaos or Tau army (will probably have both by the end of the year ), and looking over the battleforce they both force you into an infantry list.

The Nid box also comes with 3 ripper swarms adding another troop choice. Think they are 10 pts each and you can give then range by adding spinefists for 5 pts per model, but whole unit must take the weapon so 15 for the 3.

tavoittamaton wrote:

Juvieus Kaine wrote:There's also the megaforces which might IIRC be removed from sales. The Ork one was ridiculously good priced - £100 got you 40 boyz, 5 lootas/burnas, a trukk and 9 warbikers. The value of purchase at the time, of the contents by its shelf price, was around £160. Now I'd imagine it's about £170.

IIRC, you also get a copy of the codex. You do in the SM one, anyway.

Sadly not, otherwise I would've snapped it up faster

I loved the old Cadian battleforce so much that I bought five of them, even ringing around other stores as they were getting pulled to get my last one. Now I have six leman russes to form the core of my tank company.

However, I like the new one even more, although that is probably because I have enough tanks already. If you don't want sentinels I could see why you would avoid it, but sentinels are good and I will probably pick up more than the one new battleforce I have. With one purchase I can get extra men, heavy weapons and command bit for conversions and add to my Emperor's Talon recon company. Not bad for a bit of a saving.

Battleforces are a waste If you don't want everything in them though.

I mostly pick them up just to get the plastic boxes for cheaper. Thirty dollars for a rhino/drop pod is a lot of money.
Can the ravenwing force be assembled to look like vanilla marine units?
Oh, the Tau also have some stealth suits as well. That deal just got better.

Juvieus Kaine wrote:

tavoittamaton wrote:

Juvieus Kaine wrote:There's also the megaforces which might IIRC be removed from sales. The Ork one was ridiculously good priced - £100 got you 40 boyz, 5 lootas/burnas, a trukk and 9 warbikers. The value of purchase at the time, of the contents by its shelf price, was around £160. Now I'd imagine it's about £170.

IIRC, you also get a copy of the codex. You do in the SM one, anyway.

Sadly not, otherwise I would've snapped it up faster

I did a little Google-fu, and it looks like you're right. Amazon has the contents listed as:

* 2 Space Marine Tactical Squads
* 1 Space Marine Assault Squad
* 1 Space Marine Scout Squad with Sniper Rifles
* 1 Rhino and 1 Predator
* 1 Dreadnought

However, I know for a fact there is an old "battleforce"-type box on the wall at my FLGS that has a whole variety of SMs. It includes the codex, and says as much on the box. I guess I'll have to swing by and find out what it is to sate my curiousity...

tavoittamaton wrote:

Juvieus Kaine wrote:

tavoittamaton wrote:

Juvieus Kaine wrote:There's also the megaforces which might IIRC be removed from sales. The Ork one was ridiculously good priced - £100 got you 40 boyz, 5 lootas/burnas, a trukk and 9 warbikers. The value of purchase at the time, of the contents by its shelf price, was around £160. Now I'd imagine it's about £170.

IIRC, you also get a copy of the codex. You do in the SM one, anyway.

Sadly not, otherwise I would've snapped it up faster

I did a little Google-fu, and it looks like you're right. Amazon has the contents listed as:

* 2 Space Marine Tactical Squads
* 1 Space Marine Assault Squad
* 1 Space Marine Scout Squad with Sniper Rifles
* 1 Rhino and 1 Predator
* 1 Dreadnought

However, I know for a fact there is an old "battleforce"-type box on the wall at my FLGS that has a whole variety of SMs. It includes the codex, and says as much on the box. I guess I'll have to swing by and find out what it is to sate my curiousity...

That's the one with all the veterans in it. Terrible pricing on it.

Son 0f Dorn wrote:I mostly pick them up just to get the plastic boxes for cheaper. Thirty dollars for a rhino/drop pod is a lot of money.
Can the ravenwing force be assembled to look like vanilla marine units?
Oh, the Tau also have some stealth suits as well. That deal just got better.

Never bought it, but I know that it comes with the bikes as they normally come plus the ravenwing upgrade sprue.

If you toss in a Lord to the Necron Pack, you've got a 600 point army. It's not a great army, but it is an army.

I remember getting the ork battle force, At the time I was living of online codexes, and I expected that I'd find a codex in the battleforce, silly child I was, no codex. But I had fun assembling and playing everything in the box. Awesome set.

Awesome thought, what If the battle force had mini codices only containing the rules and points value, similar to the AOBR rulebook, but smaller.

Edit: damn Ipad, it says I heated my ork battleforce, and AOBR became boar...

That would be a really nice incentive for new players actually. But since it's a good idea GW will never do it or charge more for it. Oh how cynical dakka has made me since I joined.

It would also put me off buying more than one battleforce, and put people off buying the codex. Seems like a bad idea.

Son 0f Dorn wrote:

tavoittamaton wrote:

Juvieus Kaine wrote:

tavoittamaton wrote:

Juvieus Kaine wrote:There's also the megaforces which might IIRC be removed from sales. The Ork one was ridiculously good priced - £100 got you 40 boyz, 5 lootas/burnas, a trukk and 9 warbikers. The value of purchase at the time, of the contents by its shelf price, was around £160. Now I'd imagine it's about £170.

IIRC, you also get a copy of the codex. You do in the SM one, anyway.

Sadly not, otherwise I would've snapped it up faster

I did a little Google-fu, and it looks like you're right. Amazon has the contents listed as:

* 2 Space Marine Tactical Squads
* 1 Space Marine Assault Squad
* 1 Space Marine Scout Squad with Sniper Rifles
* 1 Rhino and 1 Predator
* 1 Dreadnought

However, I know for a fact there is an old "battleforce"-type box on the wall at my FLGS that has a whole variety of SMs. It includes the codex, and says as much on the box. I guess I'll have to swing by and find out what it is to sate my curiousity...

That's the one with all the veterans in it. Terrible pricing on it.

Right you are:

Space Marine Spearhead wrote:1 x Codex Space Marines
1 x Space Marine Drop Pod
3 x Space Marine Scout Bikes
1 x Space Marine Thunderfire Cannon
5 x Space Marine Sternguard
5 x Space Marine Vanguard
1 x Space Marine Scout Sergeant Telion
1 x Space Marine Sergeant Chronus
1 x Space Marine Crimson Fists Pedro Kantor
1 x Space Marine Ultramarine Captain Sicarius
Price $273

How fething random...no troops, HQs from different chapters...

Weighs about as much as a brick too.

Lonecoon wrote:If you toss in a Lord to the Necron Pack, you've got a 600 point army. It's not a great army, but it is an army.

Or add in the deceiver, and you have 1000pt army, it isn't the greatest 1000pt, army, but it is a FOC legal army, cheap as $h!t to boot; 60 pounds (conveniantly, all necron plastics have been withdrawn from online retailers (most retailers actually) including Wayland that normally have Direct only stuff. Due to the soon to be incoming notice

warspawned wrote:Tau - 420pts (500+/-) @ £51.25/$90 (£41.40/$72)
1 XV8 Crisis Suit (can be a Commander), 12 Fire Warriors, 12 Kroot, 1 Devilfish, 4 Gun Drones, 1 Markerlight Drone
0-1 HQ, 2 Troops, 1-2 Elite, 1 Dedicated Transport
The only Battle Force that’s actually a whole army in a box, enough said.

Tryanids – 378pts (450+/-) @£61.50/$105 (£49.20/$84)
3 Tyranid Warriors, 8 Gnestealers, 16 Termagants, 16 Hormagaunts

Tyranid battleforce can technically make a full army as well. If you use the Warriors to make one Prime, you have a HQ and 3 troops choices. Unfortunately it leaves you with an understrength squad of Warriors. If you add adrenal glands to the Hormagaunts and give a few options to the Genestealers, you can get close to 500 points too.

tavoittamaton wrote:
How fething random...no troops, HQs from different chapters...

That's because it's a Spearhead. GW used to release these and they'd have one of every new model for a release, and usually a codex. I picked up the Ork one at a convention flea market a couple years back - had the Weirdboy, Shokk Attack Gun, Trukk, 3 Bikers, and a bunch of boyz in it if I recall.