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I have been looking through all the different armies starter battleforces.
Some seem like really awesome ways to start an army but is it just me or does the Dark Angel battleforce seem a little .....underwhelming?

it is and i think they should label it as ravenwing battle force and try again with the dark angels

Well some of the battleforces are good while others not so good.
I don't know if your just starting with 40k or not but if you are and thinking of starting a dark angels army the Dark Vengeance is definitely a better deal because you get the rulebook which starts you off and then you get 3 bikes some termies a tac squad and 2 hq choices.

Much better deal in my opinion especially is you think of it this way:
Spend 135 on a battleforce with no rulebook
spend 120 on the dark vengeance box and get 2 armies and a rulebook
Sell the Chaos side for 40-50 bucks and sell the rulebook for 30 (these are just reasonable numbers someone might pay)
Really your only paying 40 to 50 bucks for all the dark angels sweet deal in my opinion.

The Dark angel's battle force is one unit.


yup.

The IG battleforce is awesome, and the Tau and Daemons used to be. The DA battleforce isn't much of a battleforce as it is a "ravenwing bundle"

 Color Sgt. Kell wrote:
The IG battleforce is awesome,

It is now... you effectively get a free sentinel.

The older IG battleforce that included a Leman Russ instead of the Sentinel, and some trees instead of the command squad (as they hadn't been made yet) was about the worst value of all of that generation of battleforces. From memory, it worked out almost identical to buying everything separately.

The starter battleforces to me seem a bit... cynically designed?
They are the only product which GW offers that gives you a discount for buying a bundle.
They give the appearance of being a good deal, but if you want to make a larger/more competitive army, one of those units needs to be left behind. This means that veteran players can't continue to buy multiples of that box set to build up an army, because they're already maxed out on one or more of those units. This allows them to sell a 'cheap' starter bundle to attract newbies without worrying that veterans will use it for discounts.

Take the new Tau battleforce: 12 Firewarriors, 3 Crisis, 3 Stealth, 1 Piranha. Effectively you get the firewarriors for free! Except when you build up an army, you're not really going to take more than 3 piranhas (if any) and stealth suits are generally inferior to crisis. So you end up with 2 useful units and 2 which will sit in a box, meaning that you effectively pay a 'tax' on getting those 2 good units.

Warmachine starter kits have a similar effect, but from a different cause. Warmachine starter boxes come with a single warcaster, and a few beasts; you can never field 2 of the same caster at a time, and generally you don't want to double up on any units. The thing is that this a natural consequence of the game design, so doesn't come off as cynically as GW deliberately putting a mix of good + bad units into the box.

Trasvi wrote:
...GW deliberately putting a mix of good + bad units into the box.

That's not actually what they are doing, though.

For one, GW don't care in the slightest about which units are competitive. That simply doesn't factor into their release strategy at all.

For two, in most cases the contents of the battleforces are dictated by what is actually available in plastic for that army, combined with wanting to provide a mix of units where possible. It's not about what is going to win you tournaments, just about what the think will make an interesting box, within the limits of their range at the time the box is put together.

 insaniak wrote:
For one, GW don't care in the slightest about which units are competitive. That simply doesn't factor into their release strategy at all.

This is the biggest point. People always complain battleforces, megaforces, army deals, etc have uncompetitive units in them and are just doing it in an effort to sell those units since they otherwise wouldn't sell. This is quite a contradictory statement - if they don't sell, then putting them in a more expensive box with some better units isn't going to make that more expensive box sell, if people are basing their purchases on competiiveness. People would just, you know, ignore it and buy the competitive choices outside of the box.

Battleforces and megaforces and the like are there to offer a mix of units to start, or add to, an army. Take, for example, the Tyranid box - it's got 3 troops choices considered sub par (Genestealers, Hormagaunts, Warriors), and one troop choice only considered good (Termagants) when combined with another, better unit. Packing them all together with a more expensive price tag won't sell those sub par choices on the strength of the Termagants in the box. Even when the set was released, it only had 2 good choices, Termagants and Genestealers. People wanting Termagants and Genestealers would be better off just, you know, buying Termagants and Genestealers.

What the box does do is gives you a broad selection of troops at a small discount - 4 troops choices, with all the bits necessary to make a wider selection of units. You can even use the spare guns to turn the Hormagaunts into more Termagants. If you have a fledgling army alreay and need a boost to troops or want to start an army and need a good base of troops to build on, it's a good box if you aren't considering comptitiveness.

They already make a great Dark Angels battleforce, and it's called Dark Vengeance. It just so happens to come with a bunch of Chaos guys too!

The DA battleforce really is just a Ravenwing squad, and that's cool. You're saving a few bucks from buying them separately, and if you don't want to convert DV bikers to get a more modernized look, it's a good way to build a biker army.

 Brother SRM wrote:
They already make a great Dark Angels battleforce, and it's called Dark Vengeance. It just so happens to come with a bunch of Chaos guys too!

Yep. It's even under the 'Essentials' tab in the Dark Angels section, and is cheaper than a Battleforce.

The Necron Battleforce is pretty amazing.

I've used the Dark Angels one to build my White Scars, for which it does the job very nicely

 Sasori wrote:
The Necron Battleforce is pretty amazing.

This. It was one of the reasons I started 40k with Necrons. A good price, lots of cool (and I later discovered, useful) units.

And yeah, the DA battleforce really should be named Ravenwing Battleforce.

And yeah, the DA battleforce really should be named Ravenwing Battleforce.

It always used to be called that didn't it?

Just to throw my 2 cents into the pot, my top 3 40K battleforces:

Top 3

Necrons
Dark Eldar
Nids

All 3 give you plenty of models and generally all useful as well.

Imho the old Tau battleforce was pretty good too and one of the few (probably even the only one aside of the megaforces) which could field a legal army just out of the box. The new one is still good and probably a bit easier to use for beginners.

 Hedgehog wrote:
I've used the Dark Angels one to build my White Scars, for which it does the job very nicely

I picked one up recently myself, so I could make a bike captain and flesh out my bike contingent to the point where I could field the 2xTroop picks. All of the DA iconography is on the (3x) special sprues, so the minis work fine for other armies. You are basically getting the DA sprues and the attack bike for free. It was a better deal when the bikes were $15 each, rather then 3 for $40, but still worth it.

And none of the units are bad, and work well with multiples of the same thing. As opposed to the vanilla battle force. While you might want a 5 man squad of bolter scouts, do you really need 10? 15? Same with the assault marines. One box is a good place to start, but don't get a second. But the DA box is just adding ~250 points of useful stuff to your bike army with every one you get.

 Nevelon wrote:

 Hedgehog wrote:
I've used the Dark Angels one to build my White Scars, for which it does the job very nicely

I picked one up recently myself, so I could make a bike captain and flesh out my bike contingent to the point where I could field the 2xTroop picks. All of the DA iconography is on the (3x) special sprues, so the minis work fine for other armies. You are basically getting the DA sprues and the attack bike for free. It was a better deal when the bikes were $15 each, rather then 3 for $40, but still worth it.

And none of the units are bad, and work well with multiples of the same thing. As opposed to the vanilla battle force. While you might want a 5 man squad of bolter scouts, do you really need 10? 15? Same with the assault marines. One box is a good place to start, but don't get a second. But the DA box is just adding ~250 points of useful stuff to your bike army with every one you get.

Well, Ravenwing squads have been $41.25 for quite some time, so it's no better or worse a deal than it used to be. Actually, that's kind of funny - for only $1.25 for than the bike box, you get the Ravenwing box with that lovely Ravewning sprue.