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Like, is it a cheaper way to have full scale battles? Just wanted to know, as I'm looking into it, and I like games like Btech because you can paint a few mechs (or infantry bases in this case) and have a decent force without hundreds of bodies, and this seems similar in the 'paint a bunch of dudes on a base' idea that BT infantry abides byc
Any arguments for why/why not?

It's generally cheaper to buy a 3k point LI army than 2k of 40k or 3k of HH, and that 3k points represents a much larger force than either of the other two games.

If anything it's probably more individual models on the table, though. If low model count is your goal then I'd probably look at something like Titanicus instead.

 bullisariuscowl wrote:
Like, is it a cheaper way to have full scale battles? Just wanted to know, as I'm looking into it, and I like games like Btech because you can paint a few mechs (or infantry bases in this case) and have a decent force without hundreds of bodies, and this seems similar in the 'paint a bunch of dudes on a base' idea that BT infantry abides byc
Any arguments for why/why not?

its quite different to battle tech in how its played, not so much the "tick boxes for damage" thing but more the way the activations work - e.g. there is none of the activation balancing BT has.

its certainly playable with largely armour, or armour and pretty quickly painted infantry.

the rules are not scaled around smaller battles though, its playable but be prepared to maybe make a few adjustments and discuss with an opponent to avoid lopsided games.

its not hard to paint though, and not too expensive to start off with - though it will go up unless you have alternative sources for vehicles.

depends on the scale of game, it doesn't feel like BT, or even Alpha Strike in its mechanics, though could be worth a try if you like the scale as terrain will quite easily cross between the two and BT buildings will feel at home, you do need more infantry than a BT formation would typically have, I'm funning a detachment as typically 8 bases for example, and a formation is two/three of them

if its the mech stuff that appeals knights and titans are good, you don't get many though there is nothing stopping you and an opponent running all knight/titan forces if you both fancy it at which point it becomes a streamlined version of Adeptus Titanicus that can have a few warm bodies added to it

best bet if there is someone local is give it a go and see what you think before shelling out

I'd buy whatever you can find opponents for, tbh.

LI ain't particularly cheap per game element, you'd be better off with Kill Team in that regard. Titanicus is pretty great but eternally sold out.

leopard wrote:

best bet if there is someone local is give it a go and see what you think before shelling out

Especially handy in that unless you got models already going to be wait to get models(especially marines). Largely sold out.

I figure i have to get by with 2 sets of infantry fmr several months. Prolly get drop pods and bikes before more infantry.

tneva82 wrote:

leopard wrote:

best bet if there is someone local is give it a go and see what you think before shelling out

Especially handy in that unless you got models already going to be wait to get models(especially marines). Largely sold out.

I figure i have to get by with 2 sets of infantry fmr several months. Prolly get drop pods and bikes before more infantry.

well for seeing if you like the rules suitable MDF counters are fine, 25mm round for stuff thats on them and probably some suitable rectangle ones for vehicles, sized to suit whatever you have

heck if you know someone who can print some basic printed in colour proxy tokens also good for learning the rules and seeing if you like it, think board game quality stuff to print fast

I dont think this game is anything for OP, as it is all about fielding hundreds of models for each player.

Rules are designed around each player having 3000p forces, if you take all models in the 2p box, you are only at roughly 900p for each force. Doing 300-500p forces are nice for learning the game, but it aint balanced, nor how the game is ment to be played.
Allso you need to realy invest in 8mm scale board terrain, the board has to be somewhat dense else it is just a massive snipefest, and nonone wants that.

Titanicus would be more for OP, 5 titans is all you need for a battleready force that dont need expanding.

People keep repeating the 3000 points non-sense (that can allow you to field around 300 bases of Marines, that would be a great game, right?).

Getting one box, swapping the other half, and getting a couple of boxes of what you fancy (Heavy Armour/Planes/More infnatry/Knights...) and you are good to go with a sizeable force.

have been playing circa 1,500 here, without the legion specific rules, some of which scale better than others

going ok so far, indeed if the game does go up to 3,000 I seriously hope we get some sort of reserve deployment or the deployment zones are going to look ridiculous

It's really hard to say at this point whether LI will be a flash in the pan or not. So far, it seems popular, but that's so hard to gauge.

It does seem to me that 3000pts isn't actually a good size for a game in spite of what GW say.

As for how cheap, in USD it's probably in the realm of $250-300 for a 1500pts force (assuming you start with the starter set) going up from there. This site then gave some estimates of points value per box...

https://www.chaosbunker.de/en/2023/12/10/legions-imperialis-point-values-of-the-1st-wave/

...in the range of about 200-300pts per box (with some outliers like Rhinos at only 100pts per box, or Xiphons that are 510pts but you're probably not going to use all 6 Xiphons until very large games).

There'll be some variability depending on what you want to take, if you don't want the Warhounds in the starter for example they are a big chunk of points you'll need to buy separately, or if you can find someone to trade with on the starter set you'll get an extra 500pts or so.

I wouldn't be buying big right now, as we know more waves are coming out soon, so what looks like a good army now might not in a few months time.

Do you want to remain in the 30k universe? In February Mantic will launch Epic Warpath, written by Alessio Cavatore, it will probably be cheaper and have a better ruleset.

I think it mostly comes down to whether you like the models or not. Games at this scale tend to work well using any kind of model that looks about right. There are several other older GW Epic rulesets, the upcoming Warpath version and totally model agnostic things like Horizon Wars available. With Battletech Mercs just around the corner, then these models will be just as usable in Alpha Strike as the official BTech vees.

The minis seem worth it, if pricy. Then you use whatever ruleset you fancy or is popular in your back of the woods.

Personally, I'm postponing getting into LI. While the core rules themselves seem solid enough, there are not enough units out yet for building interesting armies IMO. Thankfully, this issue will become moot within the next year most likely.

For small model count games in the same setting and scale, Adeptus Titanicus might be worth taking a peep at. The AT starter came back in stock a few weeks ago, so its not getting discontinued any time soon, plus the same models will be fully compatible with LI if you decide to branch out later on.

As a matter of fact, I do believe I have a copy of the AT starter somewhere under the Xmas tree.. to be unboxed later tonight!

Otoh when new units come no quarantee you can get original models. Having drop pods etc nice but without marine infantry...

If you want army seems better to get models when you can

tneva82 wrote:
Otoh when new units come no quarantee you can get original models. Having drop pods etc nice but without marine infantry...

If you want army seems better to get models when you can

If there's no such core sets as the infantry, the game is pretty much dead anyways. Unless you mean out of stock instead of discontinued, of course, in which case it'd be simply in very rough shape instead.

And they they do get discontinued... well, 3d files won't.

First batches of new games always sell out. That doesnt mean there wont be plenty of stock of that exact same stuff months later.

This is very evident with something like HH2 models, for example. The latest HH2 plastic kit to have just released is always hard to find, while almost every LGS you go to will have ample stock of the older items. ATM I can buy any plastic kit for HH2 from all the Helsinki area LGS's, except for the MKVI Assault squad, which none of them have stock of

Heck, even something like KT21 Kasrkin box used to be unicorn rare to see, now the box is on every LGS shelf over here

Yes but with gw stock issues no idea when. Have fun starting game when new units come to sale and then old unit you want is out of stock months or even year.

Atm can't quarantee kit out of stock comes back within year...

https://www.warhammer.com/en-US/shop/Gloomspite-gitz-bad-moon-loonshrine-2019

Has this been even available past year? I know gloomspite git forums are constantly asking for it. Can't even really start army without it.

Tzeentch endless spells, after starting army got tired of waiting after 8 months. Dunno have they come back.

Most of the LI stuff sold out on launch day and is already being restocked.

Most of the range is in stock on the UK store.

Much of the range is OOS on the US store, but the starter and some tanks are available.

In Oz, it all pretty much sold out within a few minutes of launch, but now the tanks and terrain are back in stock and if you look around independents a lot of the other stuff can also be found. Mainly just the starter and SM infantry that's hard to find. But given how fast it sold out, I was a bit surprised when I went to the FLGS and most of the range was on the shelves ready to buy.

But who knows, maybe in a few months when the other stuff releases the stuff we have now will be hard to find. If you absolutely know you want to start the game, maybe worth grabbing a few things now, if you'd rather wait to see the other stuff that comes out, there'll be a risk that some stuff will become hard to find.

If stuff is hard to find, I'm going to guess it'll be a bad sign for the health of the game as it'll be more because GW aren't investing a lot in keeping it in stock (like with aeronautica imperialis...).

Replying directly to the OP's comment, I don't think Legions is the kind of game you are after if you just want a few minis on the tabletop and perhaps Titanicus would be a better choice. Or Battletech itself in fact, which would be cheaper than either game. Or something like Horizon Wars (I think has already been mentioned above).

Generally (not replying to the OP's specific context) I think the game itself is worth getting into as Epic is a wonderful scale for mass combat and this is the only way mere mortals will get to play lots of infantry, tanks, titans etc. on a tabletop. The game itself is more expensive than any previous version of the game, and apparently more miniatures are needed than any previous version, but its the fact that there are cheaper ways to play that help again bring it within the reach of averages joes; splitting the starter set for example, and the fact that the game lasted so long with 3rd party support, so you can get 3D printed minis or stuff from the likes of Vanguard Miniatures or Onslaught Miniatures, which again will keep the price down.

Also as Albertorius says you can play multiple rule sets with those minis: Armageddon, NetEpic/Space Marine, Imperius Dominatus etc. and move into the 40k realm very easily, so any minis you have will be extremely versatile.

SU-152 wrote:
People keep repeating the 3000 points non-sense (that can allow you to field around 300 bases of Marines, that would be a great game, right?).

Getting one box, swapping the other half, and getting a couple of boxes of what you fancy (Heavy Armour/Planes/More infnatry/Knights...) and you are good to go with a sizeable force.

There are some quite funny posts in the social media groups of someone who has 3000pts of the current range and the comment "how am I supposed to fit this into the deployment zone?" when the miniatures are literally covering a tabletop, and jammed together.
I am honestly struggling to think of a more obvious intercession from the GW sales team into the rules format of a game, it's quite clearly not tenable - not just for the space, but the time of play, and how on earth tournament or event organisers can use it if they want 3 games in a day. I suspect 1500-2000 will probably end up being a 'standard' format.

Of course those 3k pics tend to be without titans, flyers, plenty of transports but mysteriously all the infantry obviously deploys out of transports...

I think the 3k points standard will turn out to be the right size for the game after an expansion or two. Right now the bulk of the armies being built for the game are infantry/MBT heavy because thats what GW launched the game with. Once more artillery, superheavy tank, fast attack/vanguard options become available for the armies I expect the lists to become more varied and points to start getting invested into more diverse (and more expensive) units and assets like titans, etc.

Also as tneva said, buying a bunch of transports and then deploying your infantry outside of said transports because you want to use your transports for a game-breaking rhino rush to overwhelm your opponents tanks is a big reason for overly cluttered deployment zones.

I'm not so sure. I think what will probably happen is that it will go from 'comically unplayable', which it is now if you try and just play infantry and the stuff available, to it being very crowded and not really affording much tactical agency beyond a mass of miniatures resembling a group of 12-year olds playing football at school lunchtime. And as the points costs are generally lower than previous editions like for like (and as even those previous editions could look crowded) and now the scale is larger and you have 1ft less table width to play with, so it's logical that it is going to be a bit of a squeeze. Actually, as the game looked in that first WD battle report.

All it really needs is a way to stick more stuff into reserve, well that and going back to 6'x4' tables, or even better the actual 8'x4' tables of days sadly long past

but failing that, reserves, arriving turns 2-3, perhaps even with the ability to stick formations into outflanking (for some formations)

I still maintain the 5x4 table was a typo that they ran with and the game is properly played on a 6x4.

And there's already plenty of room for reserves - field lots of termies and use flyers as dedicated transports. Once drop pods are out you'll be able to do even more.

chaos0xomega wrote:
I think the 3k points standard will turn out to be the right size for the game after an expansion or two. Right now the bulk of the armies being built for the game are infantry/MBT heavy because thats what GW launched the game with. Once more artillery, superheavy tank, fast attack/vanguard options become available for the armies I expect the lists to become more varied and points to start getting invested into more diverse (and more expensive) units and assets like titans, etc.

Also as tneva said, buying a bunch of transports and then deploying your infantry outside of said transports because you want to use your transports for a game-breaking rhino rush to overwhelm your opponents tanks is a big reason for overly cluttered deployment zones.

Maybe. But even if one spends half of the points in those assests, it is possible to field 150 marine bases (around 1500 points) and swamp everything.

Pretty sure once the artillery units are added to the game that strategy becomes significantly less feasible.

chaos0xomega wrote:
Pretty sure once the artillery units are added to the game that strategy becomes significantly less feasible.

They won't use templates, if that's what you are refering to...

I don't see why they wouldn't, they stuck the templates in the starter box and put rules about template weapons into the rulebook for a reason.

yup, fully expecting artillery with 3" templates and scattering, though hopefully the unit fires as one, scatters as one and then is resolved based on the number of firing units.. not "this has six shots as a unit and they all scatter individually!"

I note I have yet to read that bit of the book as I've not used, or faced, anything that uses them