Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

So after playing 40k for a good while, i've decided to buy some FW models in the foreseeable future and play 30k. Anything i need to know, or tips for it are appreciated. My assumption is that it is very similar(or for all intents and purposes, is) to 40k.

Rules wise its pretty similar - the base rules are the same, with obviously different armies and scenarios.

the two biggest changes resulting:

Scoring units - unlike 40k, only troops are scoring (aside from Implacable Advance units - generally veteran versions of troops), and not even all of them. Cybernetica battle automata are really potent fighters but pay for it by not being scoring, for example. As a result, taking objectives is a bit harder, and mission-killing an army by taking out all scoring units (rather than tabling it entirely) is a very sensible and achievable goal.

Morale - fearless units are rare - or at least rarer than 40k. And they shall know no fear doesn't exist, and fearless units tend to either cost you an arm and a leg (fearless legion veterans) or come with a massive drawback (see battle automata, above). As a result, morale checks hurt more, fear is a real issue, leadership penalty abilities are worth buying, and losing combat can cost you an expensive elite unit. Cataphractii plate's inability to sweeping advance is a genuine downside for this reason.

units are generally cheaper and/or larger, but that depend on army choice. A legion elite army can easily have less models than an equivalent 40k one.

Also, there aren't any really cheeesy units (grav centurions!!) or units that no one uses, like vanguard vets. Heck, the only really "bad" things are rotor cannons, and even they see plenty of use and can be good. Basically, if it looks cool, take it!

Plus, there aren't as may home brew armies in 30k, almost everyone chooses a legion. This means people tend to stick with the fluff, so I'd recommend buying a few HH novels from BL after you choose you legion just to understand what their feelings and tactics are. And there are things called Rights of War (RoW) that let you customize your arms further, mostly be giving you different compulsory troops and/or buffs to you legion.

And remember, tac squads have NO heavy weapons, those are veterans squads and building your dudes with specialist weapons will result in you ahveibg to take Pride of the Legion and locking you out of all the other cool RoW.

My suggestions to you would be:

Think carefully about what legion you want to run (if you are going to run a Space Marine Legion)
You will want to find a method you are comfortable with for painting your guys, because unless you run a highly elite force with a primarch, terminators and/or tanks, you are going to be painting A LOT of them (even smaller forces can be comparable in model count to an average/large 40k marine army).

As mentioned already The black library novels are great inspiration and a couple of my past projects (one never really started and the other embarassingly painted) were motivated by my reading of them.

Planning and forethought go a long way, Forge World models are not cheap and rushing into my last project and realising it wasnt right for me was a costly lesson.

I am however moving onto pastures new and am ploughing steadily through my first Thousand Sons Tactical squad, wiser for past mistakes.

Keep us appraised with how you proceed. Best of luck

30k brings me much more joy than 40k used to. The game play is more fun and things matter more in the game. (I.e. movement, cover, morale, etc) This is also a great time to get into the game with awesome starter sets that basically get you a 1500 point army out of the box. The betrayal at calth box is how I started and had 1500 points of Raven Guard right away. I've since added another 1500+ points of troops, tanks and primarch for much less money than going from the ground up. There is also the new Burning of Prospero box as well. Instead of a dreadnought you get some nifty Custodes and some Sisters of Silence, neither of which I've seen on 30k tables yet, but I imagine that will be changing soon.

If you are having trouble picking a legion, people on here are very helpful in assisting in that regard as well as first purchases, though one of those starter sets would be the best way to go about it.

If you have any other questions send me a pm boss.

HAPPY HERESY!

Thanks to all of you for these responses, it really helps.
@locarno24 thanks for the clarification. I was afraid i was about to jump into uncharted territory.
@emberlordoffire8 unfortunately, going off of looks was a strategy of mine from earlier years! the fluff of 40k/30k is a major influence on my work right now, and i'm currently working through book 4 of HH. As for tactics, essentially, i shouldn't use vet squads, and instead run tac squads for RoW?
@freakish1987 I've vaguely thought about my legion choice, but mostly in color scheme terms. I'll list them with the rest of my decisions/ideas at the bottom. Painting-wise, i do like the idea of an elite force and will probably make one, but for the basic troops, batch spray basing will most likely be my weapon of choice.
@Castellan Alaric The BaC set seemed like a good idea, I might just need to wait until more cash flows in. I'll be sure to pm you once any big questions arise.

Legion possibilities:
Emperor's Children
Death Guard
Iron Warriors
World Eaters
Ultramarines
Thousand Sons
Legion starting point:
BaC fw kit
Near future additions:
2x rhinos
Character series model
Predators?

If you guys could give me the low-down on each legion, how it plays, and models to buy after the box kit, that'd be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
JATW

So there are pluses and minuses to each legion and how they'll play off the bat. With all of them you'll be playing smaller games, hopefully against someone who moderates their lists to accommodate your lack of specialized units. If you're going to go with a legion such as death guard, big lumbering units of infantry with apothecaries in support are great. With BaC that'd be 2x15 tacticals (you can snag an apothecary upgrade sprue from FW as well) and then you'll have some terminators and a dready with you.

For all of them getting more firepower is key. I LOVE rapiers for this reason. Doesn't matter your flavor, they are point efficient killing machines. My 3 favorite are the laser destroyer, graviton cannon and the ever-maligned quad mortar! The quad mortar really is a jack-of-all-trades and can kill anything. The laser destroyer is a no-nonsense tank killing weapon, while the graviton cannon is a solid tank hunter that can slow down the advance of infantry with it's left over difficult terrain.

While character series models are AWESOME, I might suggest leaving them until the 3rd phase of purchases to build up your legion base a touch more. The 2nd phase firepower units are somewhat as follows:
Tactical support squads (plasmas are my favorite here - flamers are super DG fluffy, getting them there to unload with chem-flamers is the trick)
Heavy support squads (I have 5 lascannons and they work great in tandem with a siege breaker to get tank hunter - note: this also unlocks phosphex if you purchase quad mortars)
Dreads of all types - leviathans are all-around monsters, deredeos can be good at lots of different things, and contemptors (or cortus-contemptors) can also be very all-around
Sicaran - great tank that can kill light armor and shred infantry
Legion specific special unit - DG have deathshroud and grave warden terminators (both are great choices)

Just a couple of suggestions for you. Let me know what you think.

Victory conditions (null deploy loses, only troops score), allies (no battle brothers so can never mount each other's transports ever), morale (vast majority of models are vulnerable to shenanigans so Ld stat actually matters).

I disagree that your 30K armies will be bigger, everything costs more in 3K than 40k, especially troops. Only folks making that claim are those who run 20-man tactical blobs, and unless they are Sons of Horus/Night Lords/World Eaters despoilers, 20-man blobs are dead weight.

@Castellan Alaric Those suggestions are really helpful, thanks! Support squads sound like a good step in the right direction, but should I buy the rapiers too? Also, dreads appear to be good, but i feel that a leviathan or deredeo would be a lot for a starting army, but you know more than me. The sicaran was on my to get list, but it seemed to be a later game model. As for legion specific units, that's why I have mostly traitor legions as my choices, along with their paint schemes, they have around 1-2 special unit models. Probably something lightweight, like palatine blades, grave wardens, or rampagers.

Rampagers are second worst special unit in the game.

HandofMars wrote:
Rampagers are second worst special unit in the game.

Are the worst headhunters?

Rule of Cool > All. If it looks good to you , field it regardless of its performance on the table. I, and a lot of other players I've ran into, don't really care if we win or lose, as long as there are a ton of awesome looking, painted models on the table.

Get the two Red Books before you buy a single model for 30K. Read them, then decide on what Legion you want to play, unless you already have an idea.

30K is not 40K with Forge World models. There are enough gotcha's and tweaks to rules buried throughout the HH books that you can't just assume it's just like 40K.

Go big, or go home. Don't play MSU or try to make Death Stars- you will fail. 20 model Legion Tactical Squads with all bolters are a thing. Foot slogging is a thing. Primarchs, Warhound Titans, Super Heavy Vehicles are all common place units in 30K. Embrace it, roll with it, have fun with it.

The Horus Heresy Big Black Books might be a little out dated by the Red Books, but they are the finest game books I've ever purchased or read. The artwork in them is stunning. The Legion Histories even more so. The examples of Legion arms and armor is second to none. These are the definitive source books for the Horus Heresy, and if you want/need inspiration, or want to know the history of your favorite Legion, get these books.

Here's everything you need to know about 30k.

People will insist you play "fluffy" armies consisting of giant blobs of infantry. Then they will one-shot the entirety of each of those giant blob with mega weapons.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 EmberlordofFire8 wrote:
Also, there aren't any really cheeesy units

I'm rolling my eyes at you.

Emperor's children were my first love and I still have a unit of painted Phoenix Guard terminators in storage somewhere.
Assault is the name of the game (More specifically, winning the first round and ending it rapidly with huge charge advantages and sweeping up those loyalist scumbags)

The paint scheme I was following looked great but it felt time consuming and I wanted a more assembly-line friendly method of painting. If you do go down the line of the III legion, don't be afraid to be a flashy, prissy little madam and spend points on shiny toys. Why should the Perfect Warriors have anything less?

Ultras were my second project but I was foolish when I went woth them, I bought and assembled too much too early and never worked up the effort to paint them up properly. But they play a cery easy to get-into kind of game, with plenty of synergies and reroll buffers. They also have one of the most powerful close combat units in the game in the form of Invictarus Suzerains.

@Tamwulf I assume you mean the age of darkness army list and age of darkness legions book? About the same price as the 40k book bundle, so not too bad. The black ones will be a later purchase, once I have a small army built.
@HandofMars & @MeanGreenStompa Those were just examples. Frankly the rampager squad doesn't appeal to me P&M wise.
@Freakish1987 As of right now, it's come down to a starting army of either EC or DG. CC isn't my favorite, but that's cause I play non-CC armies in 40k.

As people have said, the rules are basically the same. It's the missions (and scoring them), units and army organisation that is different.

Though armies are bigger than 40k in points, they often end up the same size or smaller in model count, because of things like Lords of War. Also, the game tends to play faster, partly because units tend to be armed identically - Tactical Squads have all Bolters, Support Squads all have the same special weapon. It's only really veteran or elite squads that have mixed weapons. This makes resolving combats much faster, but you should bear it in mind when organising units.

OK, after a good bit of research and ogling those beautiful FW models , I have a few more ideas and questions.

DG are very beefy, sloggy units with a side of toxic weapons. Cataphractii termies are good, but with grave wardens available, should I run more of my legion specific unit than them? I like the idea of the quad-mortar rapiers, and they seem like a DG kind of weapon. Vehicle-wise, one sicaran seem like a good idea, but I may or may not need something that can do combat with aerial units at the point level we're discussing.
The cost of the BaC starter bundle is rather large though, so it'll be a while until I get my hands on it. So follow-up question about P&M: How do you guys paint your infantry quickly, whilst maintaining quality?

Thanks again,
JATW

 JustaerinAtTheWall wrote:
OK, after a good bit of research and ogling those beautiful FW models , I have a few more ideas and questions.

DG are very beefy, sloggy units with a side of toxic weapons. Cataphractii termies are good, but with grave wardens available, should I run more of my legion specific unit than them? I like the idea of the quad-mortar rapiers, and they seem like a DG kind of weapon. Vehicle-wise, one sicaran seem like a good idea, but I may or may not need something that can do combat with aerial units at the point level we're discussing.
The cost of the BaC starter bundle is rather large though, so it'll be a while until I get my hands on it. So follow-up question about P&M: How do you guys paint your infantry quickly, whilst maintaining quality?

Thanks again,
JATW

Are you talking about the Death Guard upgrade pack from Forgeworld? There are cheaper ways to do it. Get the BaC box, $130. You can get 30 shoulder pads for $42 and 5 cataphractii pads for another $20, from a 3d Printer (PM me and I'll provide a link).

$200 instead up $300.

The most important thing to know is the importance of knowing your local community. If you thought the "casual at all costs" players in 40k were bad just wait until you see 30k. There are a lot of toxic people in the community who will rant on and on about how much of a you are for making unit choices based on their effectiveness at winning games instead of the CAAC player's personal version of the fluff. And if you don't change your army to comply they'll make it their personal goal to drive you back to 40k. So you'd better be very careful about knowing the power level of the lists people in your area use, and make sure that none of your ideas are too far above that level.

Also dont worry about Betrayel of calth for start up. Plenty of sellers are piecing those boxes on ebay for cheap. I have 60 mark 3 marines and 10 cataphractii for very low cost with ebay.

@peregrine that's the problem. My community is miniscule! most of us play 40k and it's an awfully small group.

@montambro True. Chaosorc has the bits for a good price, and large amounts of 'em!

There are a couple of black books you could start with. I think Book 4 has the rules for shattered legions, Book 6 has the rules for Black Shields. I think maybe Book 3 has the rules for Tactical Strike. These allow you to hodge podge a force together so that your players don't have to commit to a full on legion.

Keep in mind that 30k is much slower than 40k. A 2'000 point game of 40k can be decided as soon as turn 2 by sheer casualties. In 30k you'll find that the grind is a lot slower, allows rules like deep strike and outflank the time they need to truly shine.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Keep in mind that 30k is much slower than 40k. A 2'000 point game of 40k can be decided as soon as turn 2 by sheer casualties. In 30k you'll find that the grind is a lot slower, allows rules like deep strike and outflank the time they need to truly shine.