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.

I've been reading a lot of tips threads for getting started as a brand new 40k newb, and it seems a lot of vets scorn the battleforce sets as army starters/expansions. I have the Black Reach set and am planning to expand both my orks and marines so I have 2 armies when I need them.

Any thoughts?

There is some feeling that the units you get in the battleforces are sub-optimal. It varies by army, of course, but some people feel that way. The AoBR box was pretty sweet, but some of the battleforces are almost as expensive as buying all the component pieces individually. The starter sets (Dark Vengeance, AoBR) have nice stuff, but the single army battleforce boxes usually do not contain anything exclusive. Just some thoughts.

If you find them to be a good value for your money, then rock on! Good luck, and I hope this helps.

Dakka mostly hates the battle force sets because they aren't proper starter kits for new players, since only a few contain HQs to field a legal army. Also it seems that the older the battle force the better, with those that have been around since before 5th edition generally being the best value (or at least that's the idea I've gotten from reading the discussion here). Also it's hard to find a battle force that doesn't have a throw away unit you don't particularly care for, like the Sentinel in the IG battleforce or Ripper Swarms in the Tyranid one.

I'm not sure how useful the space marine or ork battle forces are, as I play Guard, but I'm sure someone will chime in.

Because they often have poor unit choices. For example, the IG battleforce isn't even a complete army. It doesn't have enough infantry to make a legal foot platoon army, and it doesn't have the special weapon upgrades or transports to use the infantry as veterans. And since you'll never use the "free" Sentinel (they're an awful unit) you don't really save any money over just buying some basic infantry boxes. Finally, it doesn't even come close to the point value of a small (500-750) point game, so no matter what you do you're going to have to buy more stuff to have a complete army. In the end, it's a newbie trap purchase: it looks appealing as a 'discount' (and if you're in a GW store they'll tell you all about how much money you save), but it's not something a newbie ever wants to buy.

And of course other armies are even worse. You usually get a random selection of units without any real synergy, so no matter what direction you eventually go in with your army you're going to have some useless models collecting dust. Ignore what GW's used car salesmen tell you, as a new player you're almost always better off asking an experienced player for a list of individual boxes to buy.

It really depends on the army. I got the Necron battleforce because it actually contained all of the basics.

It had 20 warriors, 5 Immortals/Deathmarks, Scarabs and an Ark. All you needed to buy after that was a CC Barge and you had a legal army.

They don't have good units. They don't have good savings. The better question to ask would be why would you want one?

As a new player myself I found the Battleforces and Megaforces underwhelming. They each had a bunch of units that I honestly didn't need. Sure the Necron forces would have given me a bunch of units but they were never the "key" units you would need - HQ choices and particularly effective precision units. It seems to me like they took a bunch of Troops and tossed them in with whatever they had the most stock of - usually because it was subpar.

I got the Marine Battleforce for a couple reasons. One, I had a Commander Kit already, so I could field a legal army. Two, my mother bought it for me, so it was her money. Three, I plan on getting as many models as I can for the 5th Edition Marine Codex.

When the 6th ed comes out, I'm still getting all of the models from the 5th ed codex, excluding Special Characters... But that's just me.

Battleforces lack focus. A good rule of thumb for any game that involves list building is multiples of good things in order to provide redundancy. Battleforces almost always have one each of totally different things and never enough to be useful. The dead unit in every one destroys the value of the 'bulk' purchase.

Oddly enough the Dark Angels force is an exception, if you intend to build Ravenwing. Land Speeders are actually feasible choices unlike things like ASM outside BA or a Sentinel.

Battle forces and starter sets are generally held in different regard. While the starter sets for the past two editions have been good (although there is a complaint that the chaos half of Dark Vengeance is only decent), the battle forces are generally very hit or miss. The SM battleforce contains 15 tactical marines (a tac squad and a combat squad), a rhino, 5 scouts with bolters/bp&ccw, and 5 assault marines. While that seems decent at first, 5 of the normal marines don't come with any weapons options (and you never want to take a squad of just 5 marines anyways, you want to take a unit of 10 and then use the combat squad rule), scouts are better with sniper rifles and cloaks (which aren't included) and assault marines are only good for Blood Angels (who get them as troops). The Ork Battleforce is better, as it includes 20 boyz, a trukk, and some bikes, all of which are reasonable options. Basically, for the battle forces, in many cases the theoretical 'savings' you get from buying the battleforce are outweighed by the fact that some of the units will just end up sitting on your shelf. So realistically, before buying a battleforce, look to see what units from it you want. If you aren't spending more money to get what you want, go for it, but otherwise just stick with individual purchases.

Im not sure about other armies but i find the BA battleforce great, i can get them for a little under retail from a store nearby (about $30 under) and it gives me 10 tacticle marines and a rhino to transport them, 5 assault marines and 5 Death company (which have a great amount of bits for conversions) then all you need is an HQ (which you could make out of the DC parts and only make 4 actual DC) and you have a 500 - 600 point army depending on upgrades.

Space Wolves was a good one, one drop pod, five scouts and twenty troops. Easy enough to make one of the troops into a RP or WP and bam there's your HQ.

Mostly because they will inevitably have units you don't need and there is no discount incentive. It's a way to dupe you into buying things you don't need.

I dont like battleforce boxes for 2 reasons:

1. it should be a starter set for the player of that army. It simply isn't.

2. Half the time you can only use 1/2 to 1/3 of the units inside in any particular edition of the game. This means you will lose money buying the box in the short run, which is why you bought the box in the first place: to save money.

I think example wise an eldar battleforce should come with 1 generic farseer, 1 squad of dire avengers (10), 5 rangers, 1 wave serpent. Ork box should be 1 warboss, 10 boyz 5 nobz and a trukk....you get where I'm going here. 2 different troops, 1 HQ choice, and one vehicle and you should be gtg.

Well, I been learnt.

Seems like the response was almost universally negative, except for some of the specialty SM chapters and the Orks. I will wait till my codexes arrive before I start making purchases.

Thanks you for all the responses.

I think all the SM battleforces have uses. However the SW one is the best throw ina second pod and you have a fantastic start.

Here are my thoughts
IG (catachan or cadian)-only useful if you want sentinels.
SM- decent a good add-on or build around.
SW-The mack daddy. 20 of the best troops in the game lots of bits a pod and 5 scouts.
BA- The tactical squad is a little unusual but not bad.
RW-Awesome very useful if you want to start a bike army but it is short special weapons.
Eldar-War walker cool Wave serpent cool half a squad of dire avenger and 10 guardians not cool.
Orks-I find it underwhelming but not bad.
Necrons-A good overall choice gives you 3 troops and a heavy support and a fast attack
Dark eldar-Schizophrenia at its best a unit of kabalites a unit of wyches and bike and a raider.
Chaos Space Marines-5 possesed 10 troops and 3 bikes...... PASS.
Tau-This can actually be a legit army but the stealth suits kinda hold it back.
Tyranids- again another legit choice but hormies are weak in this edition.
Demons-Well the one being released tomorrow could be changed by the rules so we just don't know.

I'm rather shocked that anyone said the ork battleforce was good. You save about $5, and you get three bikes, 20 boyz and a trukk. Trukks and bikes don't actually synergize(?) very well (you ought to spam one or the other) three bikes is far to little to do anything with, and with twenty boyz, you can't even fit them all in your trukk. You want to fill up the trukk with twelve, but you can't use just eight boyz. So you have to put just ten boyz in the trukk and slog the other ten. 12 in a trukk are fragile enough, and ten isn't even fearless. Ten slogging boyz are equally worthless. Also, they are sluggas too.

The only good thing I can say about it is that it contains a metric assload of bitz. If you are willing to buy legs and torsos from other sources, you will be able to double the amount of boyz you get due to all the extra arms and heads.

 GreyHamster wrote:

Oddly enough the Dark Angels force is an exception, if you intend to build Ravenwing. Land Speeders are actually feasible choices unlike things like ASM outside BA or a Sentinel.

Except that with people breaking up Dark Vengeance as they currently do, you could build a ravenwing three times the size of the battleforce for the same cost and still have enough left over to find a speeder somewhere; Two times the size if you're dead-set on a new speeder.

i know it isn't a battle force but i looked at getting the Defenders of Rynn's World set to make a display out of since i already have an alright army. For what was offeredc in the pack i could of gotten the same figures but with different and better accessories,(power fists etc) for the same money. i think GW have tried to throw a pack together for the beginers but imo it just isn't the same as buying and building the select models you want/need.

My thoughts anyway

I actually like the battle forces For example back in 5th ed I brought the chaos marine battle force as it was god value (you got a rhino 15 chaos marines 8 zerkers and 5 possessed) overall it was a nice battle force. I do rather like the battle forces I must admit

Battle forces are meh, as espoused previously. If you want to save some money starting off your army, there's plenty of ebay retailers who offer decent savings on new-on-sprue units, and offer free shipping in bulk. much better route than any battleforce.

The christmas megaforces, however, are better. There's still some sub-optimal units, but the savings are a good deal better than a battleforce. The last space marine one was actually pretty good, with the razorback being the only real "meh" unit, but GW being GW, they didn't have enough of them to go around.

I think the general idea behind GW bundles (I'm not counting the recent "1-click bundles, as they're not actually bundles, with savings of $0) is that they'll give you several useful units, and maybe one or two units you hadn't considered using, but since you're getting them for cheap, why not?

At least that's the theory, and keeping that balance between "core" and sub-optimal units is apparently difficult.

They got real expensive over the last few years. I remember back in 2007 the IG Battleforce came with a Leman Russ, two squads of Imperial Guardsmen, and 3 Heavy Weapons teams, and was $75.

Now they swapped out the Leman Russ for a Sentinel and a Command squad, in terms of $$ value that's probably fair, but now the whole thing is $120 and Sentinels are rather pointless units that most people would never bother with, unlike a Leman Russ.

I find the tau BF is pretty good as it has troops, extra drones suit transport. The stealthsuit is the 'free' unit but as I'd be buying the rest anyway I might as well get a free unit.

RivenSkull wrote:
It really depends on the army. I got the Necron battleforce because it actually contained all of the basics.

It had 20 warriors, 5 Immortals/Deathmarks, Scarabs and an Ark. All you needed to buy after that was a CC Barge and you had a legal army.

In fact, the Necron battleforce is quite good and I bought it. But now, my competitive army only contains 10 Warriors and 20 Immortals, no Ark and no Scarabs. So its have way useable.

I think pretty much all of the battleforces are a good deal.

I play orks and in the ork battle force you get a truck 20 boys and 3 bikes,

While I don't really use bikes..your pretty much getting the bikes for free.

So why not buy it?

Minus the stealth suits, the Tau box is pretty decent. The eldar one isn't too bad either. When I re-did my army I used two of those as a basis. The walkers and wave serpents are great, the dire avengers are awesome, and the guardians can be used in a footdar set-up, or the bodies can be used to convert the awful looking jetbike bodies.

"I think example wise an eldar battleforce should come with 1 generic farseer, 1 squad of dire avengers (10), 5 rangers, 1 wave serpent. Ork box should be 1 warboss, 10 boyz 5 nobz and a trukk....you get where I'm going here. 2 different troops, 1 HQ choice, and one vehicle and you should be gtg"

This. I started my Eldar about a year ago, and didn´t even consider the Battleforce. eBay´s the way to go...

I think the Battleforces are a good deal as long as you plan on using the models in the box. If you don't, you might as well buy individual boxes.

I like the Blood Angels box. I wouldn't recommend it for a starter but if you guy some cheapo jump packs, it is very easy to turn those Tacticals into Assault marines. But I also use Death Company.

Only way I can describe it as, is

if GW sold 3 boxes of models, for £70

Or

IF GW sold 3 boxes of models, and a fishing rod, for £80

Yeah, you get a big discount, but one of the 3 thing's is most likely useless to you anyway, so you are not really saving anything.

Depending on the Battleforce, you will get some mixture of useful units and units you'll probably never field; some Battleforces have more useless units than others.

Good:
Ravenwing: You're going to be using pretty much everything if you're playing Ravenwing, even if you aren't they make pretty helpful backup units for a mixed force.
Imperial Guard: It's actually a fair starting point; you get an entire infantry platoon right off the bat, and Sentinels are decent.
Space Wolves: You get a fair amount of use out of pretty much everything in the box in most army builds.

Mediocre:
Blood Angels; you probably won't have much use for a Rhino or for a Tactical Squad in most builds, but they can be used situationally/casually.
Dark Eldar; they tend to get better with specialization, but the box gives you both Warriors and Wyches, meaning one of the two is probably sitting a lot of games out (even if they aren't you still need another Raider to play the army); Reavers are workable, though.
Tau; most of the box is marvelous, but Kroot are pretty bad and Stealthsuits are of debatable utility.
Tyranids; you get some numbers, but most Tyranid armies live or die on the strength of their Monstrous Creatures, and you don't get any of those.


Bad:
Chaos Space Marines; you get one useful box and three mediocre to bad units out of the deal.
Eldar: Five Dire Avengers aren't enough to do much, Wave Serpents are grossly overpriced, one War Walker isn't enough to do much, and Guardians are a poor choice for pretty much everything; it's an army badly in need of an update, so...
Orks: Trukks suffer from the new vehicle rules, twenty Boyz isn't enough to do much of anything, and Warbikes are overpriced.
Space Marines: Shotgun scouts are pretty useless, Rhinos are a waste of space, and if you want a Tactical Squad and an Assault Squad you can get them cheaper individually.

Reserved Judgement:
Necrons; I'm not as familiar with the army as I'd like, so I'll refrain from declaring units 'useful' or 'lame'.