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Hello, long term reader first time poster!
Just a quick question. I haven't played 40k, I am a long (long) time 40k fluff-follower and painter, and used to play WHFB many years ago. I really want to start playing HH (love the novels) and the Betrayal box has got my juices flowing big time. I was just wondering how hard it's going to be to learn/get into HH games without having played 40K? If I get a copy of the 40k rules and the FW HH rules will it make sense or do you really need to have a good working knowledge of 40k system before it makes sense (these are the sort of problems that no doubt make certian people in Nottingham very happy)?
I plan on doing a Death Guard legion so that if I want I can add some more Nurgle-y flavour and use it for 40k also.
Cheers.

They're the same game for all intents and purposes. 30k just adds more things to it and puts in a sense of balance and diversity between Power Armor guys. You have to know 40k to play 30k since 95% of the game is the same. Missions and Army Building are really the only differences. Other than that, movement, shooting, assault, Special Rules, Character interactions, Vehicle interactions, that's all straight from the 40k rulebook.

Worth noting that I don't think 30k has a self contained rulebook. I think you still need to have the 40k rules on hand.

Remember that Betrayal at Calth is a board game using 40k style models. It will have the full rules for that mini-game contained within it. But that's not really playing Warhammer so I don't think that's what you meant with your question.

Cheers, yeah I realised that with the Betryal board game, just want it for the miniatures to kick off my long intended plan to play 30k proper!

Perfect that's what I was hoping. I realised that the FW 30k rules were intended to use on top of the base 40k rules but wasn't sure of the extent of the differences so if it's just missions and Army Building then I guess it's not that much of a difference in terms of learning the rules. Thanks!

The board game is boring as hell after one or two games.
You could go two routes going either for a regular 40k vanilla Marine army or for a 30k HH army. But the latter is generally a lot more expensive.

Also worth noting that the HH books from Forge World are very expensive (£74 each.) That's on top of the £50 for the main 40K rules.

This sort of pricing is aimed at serious enthusiasts.

40k is the entry game for 30k, not the other way around

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Also worth noting that the HH books from Forge World are very expensive (£74 each.) That's on top of the £50 for the main 40K rules.

This sort of pricing is aimed at serious enthusiasts.

But the FW books are not necessary unless you want a) the tons of fluff, diagrams, background and artwork and b) want to actually play the specific campaign missions. The actual rules content you'll want is:
http://www.forgeworld.co.uk/en-GB/The-Horus-Heresy-Legiones-Astartes-Crusade-Army-List

For the generic stuff for every Legion, and then
http://www.forgeworld.co.uk/en-GB/The-Horus-Heresy-Legiones-Astartes-Isstvan-Campaign-Legions

If you want to play Sons of Horus, Death Guard, World Eaters, Word Bearers, Emperor's Children, Night Lords, Iron Warriors, Iron Hands, Raven Guard, Salamanders, Imperial Fists or Alpha Legion. The specific stuff for the other Legions (Blood Angels, Dark Angels, White Scars, Ultramarines, Space Wolves and Thousand Sons) will likely be collected in another volume, some time next year at a guess.

Note that the two current books are available as a bundle if you do want to use one of the published Legions, saves you a few quid overall:
http://www.forgeworld.co.uk/en-GB/The-Horus-Heresy-Legion-Astartes-Gamers-Collection

If you want to play Knights or Solar Auxillia, you'll want the large book Conquest, if you want to use The Imperialis Militia/Chaos Cult you'll want book 5, Tempest, and if you want to play the Tagmhata Omnissiah (Adeptus Mechanicus) they have their own smaller book like the ones linked above.

 Lithlandis Stormcrow wrote:
40k is the entry game for 30k, not the other way around

No objection.
However, if you have the 40k rule book and HH book one or three, you are set to play HH. No need for a codex.

And even cash-wise - 30k is horrendously expensive even when compared to the already pricy 40k.

 Lithlandis Stormcrow wrote:
And even cash-wise - 30k is horrendously expensive even when compared to the already pricy 40k.

Well, it depends.
With the new board game, you could get two or three boxes giving two larger Tactical units (10 to 20 Marines, bolters only up to the Sergeant), two Devastor squads (one with heavy bolters and one with missile launcher), one or two Cataphractii Termie units, Contemptor Dreads, and two Praetors (you need one per 1000 pts).

30k ain't a good start with grimdark future imho.
It might turn you off 40k if you're not much into IoM plus sooner or later you will need to buy fw models as plain plain mk4 rines and couple of termos doesn't represent the fun of legion unique troops and named chars not even to mention bonkers of the vehicle pricing. Don't forget to check if there's HH community in your environment at first.
Even tho 40k has some horrid balance issues it's still a better entry as there's just much more variety of minatures aesthetics etc.

Probably the biggest drawback to 30k as a beginners game is the availability of people to play with. I imagine this new boxset will bring some new people to 30k, but its likely most people will still be playing 40k.

I'd try and figure out if the people playing in your potential gaming group are into 30k before investing too much. It would kinda suck to dump money into it if there's noone to play against.

Indeed. Our gaming group has agreed to go up in 500 points or so at a time, give everyone time to accumulate money and paint on the models.

Well, 30k games make sense at a larger pt level, 2000 to 2500 pts.
At a lower level, I'd still play 40k.

My opinion: the game is way more balanced then 40k, but only at 2000+pt games. This, plus how cheap marines are compared to 40k, means that you will need a lot more models then you would initially think for a "starter game". I have also noticed that the auxilia and cult/militia armies tend to be outmatched against legions or mechanicum armies just by how close to apocalypse the game is in how easy units die to mass firing.

Really the only thing I would consider a good starting point is 3rd party killteam rules for 40k. Necromunda is great, but is a terrible intro to how the game of 40k plays given it has artifacts from several editions ago.

The Crusade army list book actually says it's aimed at games of 1,750-3,500 points.

I play 30k in the 1k to 1500 point range most of the time. Went up to 1850 a couple as well. This is due to only 40k players in my area.

The boxed set is going to get you a basic army thats less than 1400 points. It's nothing spectacular...but it'll get you some games in once you buy both Redbooks.

My suggestion is read the 1d4chan 30k tactics thread and see what legion you want to run before even assembling anything as all the legions play differently and then the Rites of War change up the styles as well.

Let me know if you have any questions. I run Night Lords, Mechanicum, and Solar Auxilia.

We play 30k at the 2000 to 2500 pt level.
My main opponent has IF and the games vs. my WE are always rather even.
We are looking forward to get more 40k players in our group into 30k.

 foto69man wrote:

The boxed set is going to get you a basic army thats less than 1400 points. It's nothing spectacular...but it'll get you some games in once you buy both Redbooks.

The highest I've managed to get out of the box thus far is just a hair over 1500 using Pride of the Legion. Still not massive, but by the time you've added some transports or tanks, and a more elite squad or two, you could be pushing 2k pretty easily. Add a Primarch, you've hit 2.5k.

At lower points levels, there is still fun to be had with Horus Heresy. HH and Zone Mortalis go together like Lego and Star Wars or cheese and Marmite, so that's a good way to get use out of a smaller (500-750) HH force, and while it won't be making the most of everything HH has to offer, games at 1500 points still work (particularly against other HH armies rather than 40k ones).

 Paradigm wrote:

 foto69man wrote:

The boxed set is going to get you a basic army thats less than 1400 points. It's nothing spectacular...but it'll get you some games in once you buy both Redbooks.

The highest I've managed to get out of the box thus far is just a hair over 1500 using Pride of the Legion. Still not massive, but by the time you've added some transports or tanks, and a more elite squad or two, you could be pushing 2k pretty easily. Add a Primarch, you've hit 2.5k.

At lower points levels, there is still fun to be had with Horus Heresy. HH and Zone Mortalis go together like Lego and Star Wars or cheese and Marmite, so that's a good way to get use out of a smaller (500-750) HH force, and while it won't be making the most of everything HH has to offer, games at 1500 points still work (particularly against other HH armies rather than 40k ones).

Well, 1500 pts is a lot.
In 30k, you could give the army a center piece like a LR or Spartan tank.

Yeah, I meant compared to the 2-3k that HH is 'built' to work at. But yeah, 1500 is still giving you a good-sized battle.

It might net you a 1500 force under "pride of the legion", but its a non-functional force.
Just throwing around a bunch of veterans, with no transports, no support pieces, etc-and walk up the board?
You'll get erased by any half-decent list. don't even need to be a 30k player to know it.
I mean, veteran spam is nice and all. but they are not any faster than line marines. not pack meaningful range to outperform heavy weapon teams. and the box don't contain nearly enough heavy weapons to deploy heavy weapon teams.

 BoomWolf wrote:
It might net you a 1500 force under "pride of the legion", but its a non-functional force.
Just throwing around a bunch of veterans, with no transports, no support pieces, etc-and walk up the board?
You'll get erased by any half-decent list. don't even need to be a 30k player to know it.
I mean, veteran spam is nice and all. but they are not any faster than line marines. not pack meaningful range to outperform heavy weapon teams. and the box don't contain nearly enough heavy weapons to deploy heavy weapon teams.

As always, it depends on the environment you're playing in. It's not winning any tournaments, but using my old gaming group as an example (very casual, rule of cool trumped all, no real competitive element) I'd feel confident taking it; either they win, or they die looking awesome. So if you're playing in that kind of setting, I think it can work, if not then there's scope to build a smaller/less points-intensive list, or add stuff to bring it up to scratch.

But that's a different discussion altogether.

I agree, a bunch of tac marines and a praetor walking across the battlefield are going to get slaughtered. Even at 1500 I bring a thanatar which should be able to wipe 6-8 of those guys a turn with no saves allowed and while firing from out of LOS.