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I've been out of GW games for some time, although I still enjoy painting the occasional kit. I was looking to get back into 40k when the crazy rule glut put me off. A few friends have suggested playing with the 30k rules from Forgeworld and I'm just looking to know more, Starship Troopers style.

I understand the 30k books are quite the investment, but from what I gather you choose your Legion or the Mechanicum, and find the appropriate book and you're good to go. Or do I need all the books from the get go? I'm also interested in how it plays. Ideally it should be quite balanced due to the Astartes on Astartes action for the most part, but I don't want it to be boring.

Can't think of any other things I've missed, but feel free to chip in with things you think I ought to know.

I don't have it. From what I gather you can only have the first one if you wish. You don't need all 3 unless you want the complete saga.

From what I gather it just plays like 40K. You can play a 30K army with 40K, but some people say it's unbalanced why others says it plays ok.

The first book gives you the legion basic units and rules for weapons, the second gives you mortis dreadnoughts and some legion specific units.

30k is balanced around space marines fighting each other, there are some cool exotic weapons like the volkite weapons which cause additional if you fail saves, that's fine against 3+ but against nids or guard it would kill whole units in a single volley.

It's balanced against itself not 40k where the weapons could be too strong.

The first book is mandatory since it has the full generic list.

There's some debate as to whether you need anything else, a lot of groups play it whereby generic units (ie Tactical Squad) do not get the 'chapter tactics' equivalent rule in which case you don't need access to the legion specific rule (you only get 4 legions detailed per book) - however, aside from that being odd it also doesn't seem to fit with the wording of the Iron Hands rules.