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So I've been collecting Starship trooper models for a couple years now, snagging bits here and there whenever I can find them on Dakka and on eBay, and now I think I have enough to play it. Figured once I have both sides painted up it'll be easy to get people interested. What I was curious about was what are the best books to get to play it.

You can still find starter sets fairly easily so if those have full rules and army lists that would be excellent. If not, I've seen books all over the place, but they seem to be scenario books and not the main book.

Will the starter set have all I need? Do I need other books? Are any of the scenarios worth using? I know theres one for the "Movie" MI troopers that I'm going to try and find, but no idea what the others have.


Would appreciate any advice you guys can give.

Judge Doug would probably be a good person to PM if his favorite game spidely sense doesn't tingle soon. Hopefully this thread will help as it has iirc some advice (although I may be confusing it with PM's with him)

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/666987.page

From looking at their products myself a few months back (and purchasing a core book), I'd say go with the hardback rulebook and the bug and MI core books. The pathfinder book is cool but only has a few paragraphs of real info (kind of like a 40k special force org and a few paragraphs of new rules specific to pathfinders).

Core rulebook has everything you need to start with Bugs and MI. The MI and Arachnid army books are good investments as they expand on the forces and abilities. Klendathu Invasion is good as you get the movie MI.
Skinnies army book is imbalanced but if you want to play Skinnies then you'll want it.
Pathfinders offers an elite MI unit but isn't really necessary or interesting (in my opinion).
Roughnecks gives you stats to play the characters from the cartoon. It's the only book I didn't bother to buy.

The books are still available to purchase as pdf files of for cheap.

Also, Mongoose still has the issues of Signs and Portents up for download on their site, with a bunch more SST content, including additional rules, faq and scenarios. It is worth it to check them out.

Awesome thanks guys, ill check those out

Just one other thing to mention though unrelated to the books. Many of the metal Starship Troopers figs (some with minor modifications for IP reasons) are being re-released by Rebel Minis who bought some of the molds.
You can find them here:
http://www.rebelminis.com/sciencefiction.html

Yeah I remember that site. I've picked up almost all the plastic kits but the metal ones are extremely rare. Thankfully this site has several of the models I'm missing if I decide I need them.

Only thing I've never found is a brain bug unfortunately, and from what I understand they were rare even when the game was still "alive" so to speak. I'll probably have to either make one from scratch or find a proxy I guess. Feels wrong running the bugs without one.