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Battle force: This box set contains 29 multi-part plastic miniatures, including: one Cadian Command Squad, 20 Cadian Shock Troops, three Cadian Heavy Weapon Teams and one Sentinel.

For IG, one troop choice is an infantry platoon. This must contain:
1 platoon command squad, 2-5 infantry squads, 0-5 heavy weapon squads, 0-2 spec weapons squad, and 0-1 conscript squad.


thats not even one troop choice. an infantry squad is 1 sargeant and 9 guardsmen.


I mean seriously

Or a Command Squad and 2 Veteran squads. Broaden your mind a bit.

it comes with 20 candian shock troops. can you make vets out of them?

sorry, im new and wanted to get the BF, but i didnt think it was a fully army.

As said, use them as veterans. There is nothing against it, just make sure you put a lot of kit on them. It's not the best battleforce ever, but it is what it is. Don't start with IG if you are new and want to get a playable army out of one battleforce box.

QFT FoxPhoenix.

I don't expect an out-of-the-box army, I just wanted a starter kit. You would get CRUSHED with that battlforce. I mean theres not even a leman russ! They took that out and put a sentinel instead! Ugh, I'm going to have to buy tanks. But I can manage.

yes you can easily make two squads of vets out of the two basic squads and your left over bits from the command squad I did.

Is the sent a scout or armoured?

The sentinel kit can be built as both, as I recall.
On a related note, do any of the battleforces actually come with a playable army?

Well both tyranid ones could somewhat work. The 4th edition carni can just be trygon and you can just make a warrior into a prime for a good leader in lower point games. Decent amount of genestealers and gaunts to.

The Ork one is playable if you add an HQ, if you don't mind having a gakky army

Grotzooka wrote:On a related note, do any of the battleforces actually come with a playable army?

I believe the Tau one is playable out of the box. They need 1 squad of fire warriors right? And kroot are troops?

Well I thought the battleforce for guard was garbage compared to other armys, I just bought what I needed to make mine.

Happygrunt wrote:

Grotzooka wrote:On a related note, do any of the battleforces actually come with a playable army?

I believe the Tau one is playable out of the box. They need 1 squad of fire warriors right? And kroot are troops?

Yep it playable right out of the box and kroot are troops. I think it one of the only ones to come with a HQ.

sckum555 wrote:I don't expect an out-of-the-box army, I just wanted a starter kit.

Which, sorry to say, is not what the Battleforces are intended for. They're a 'booster' pack, not a starter army.

Well, they are the bare minimum for the force organization. I think thats a starter kit to me. Think about it like a card game. If you buy a premade deck, sure you can play with it, but you will probably lose. Now if you make your own deck, with better cards, you can add on to that starter deck to. And a battleforce, sure you can play with just one, but you will sucks. you have to buy more stuff like leman russes.

They aren't really bare minimum. Bare minimum would be 1 HQ and two troops.

Most come with a few troops choices and a fast attack. Some also may have a Heavy Support and/or Dedicated Transport.

But very few come with an HQ choice, or something that can be used as an HQ choice.

Yeah, none of them actually come with an HQ choice. Some models are ambiguous enough that you can play them as HQs, but that isn't the intention. Like Insaniak said, they aren't a starter set, but a discounted way of expanding your army quickly.

TheTrueProtoman wrote:Well I thought the battleforce for guard was garbage compared to other armys, I just bought what I needed to make mine.

The last one was not too bad, I liked getting the russ, but with the new one I must agree

While it does have the basic building blocks for a functional IG list, the battleforce is often a subpar choice unless you really plan to expand on it (field sentinels in larger lists, and so on).

I'd highly recommend hitting up the army list/tactics boards for some ideas of what you want and building a small scale list, then checking your FLGS, ebay, and so on for the pricing and comparing it to what you'd get out of the BF before slamming down 95$ just because it comes in one box (though costwise it isn't a bad deal, iirc).

battleforces are meant to bolster your army.

they're not meant to provide playable armies.

sckum555 wrote:thats not even one troop choice. an infantry squad is 1 sargeant and 9 guardsmen.


I mean seriously

You actually can make a small platoon out of that. The boxes of 10 shock troops come with the parts necessary to make sergeants as well as basic lasgunners, flamers, and grenade launchers. As already mentioned you could also make vets out of them since vets don't use separate models from ordinary infantrymen - vets and conscripts aren't physically any different than a regular guardsman. If you really wanted to you could also make penal legion out of that.

The new sentinel kit does allow either scout or armored sentinels with all options.

That'll get you a small but legal army with some parts left over. Somewhere around 300 points if you used everything. Yeah, you will have to buy more if you want a full size army. It's the Guard.

sckum555 wrote:Well, they are the bare minimum for the force organization. I think thats a starter kit to me.

They might accidentally have the bare minimum for a FOC, but they are not, and have never been marketed as, a starter set.


They're intended as nothing more than a way for people to buy plastic kits at a slight discount, to bolster their armies.

I think the Battalions are actually a good buy to get you started; heres a quick list to demonstrate why. You end up with a highly mechanised, decent sized force!

Bear in mind that I made this in 10 minutes, and have no idea how well it'll play. The platoons are also based around the Battalion box set to try and save you some cost, hence the inclusion of the Sentinels.
Everything included in the Battalion box is highlighted in red.
============

HQ

CCS: Commander (power sword, bolt pistol), Regimental Standard, Vox, 2 plasma gunners, 2 bodyguards, Astropath, Master of Ordnance, Fleet Officer
232

Chimera
55

Troops

1st Platoon
PCS: Platoon Standard, Vox, Plasma gunner
65

Squad: Vox, Grenade Launcher
60
Squad: Vox, Grenade Launcher
60

Heavy Weapons: 3 Lascannons
105

Chimera
55

Chimera
55

Special weapons Squad: 3x demo charges
95

2nd Platoon

As 1st Platoon

Fast Attack

Armoured Sentinel: Plasma Cannon, Hunter-killer missile
85
Armoured Sentinel: Plasma Cannon, Hunter-killer missile
85

Valkerie: Rocket pods, Heavy bolters
140
(For the Special Weapons)

Heavy Support

Leman Russ
115

============

This list by using the Battalions, works out at £257, for 1500 points.
Additional purchases are: Leman Russ, Valkyrie, 3x Chimeras, a Command Squad, and a squad of Troops.
You'll notice that I haven't included the 'Advisors' pack- thats because you'll have more than enough bits with which to convert them!

Bought separately, it would cost £295, so you end up saving £40: almost enough to buy an 'Imperial Sector' to fight over.

Hope that helps!

The guard battleforce allows you to get alot of gm quickly. Thats is basically the whole idea of it.

As already said Battleforce are awful for starting armies. GW advertise them as good starting armies but the people who design them have no idea about building an army. Most battleforces are worth getting (they will still save you money), but they need adding to. The IG battle set is good for starting off because you save a lot of money on basic guards and the CCS

The only 2 sets that GW thought about are tau and tyranids, as they actually contain useful units.

4M2A wrote:GW advertise them as good starting armies but the people who design them have no idea about building an army.

See, that's the point I've been trying to make: GW don't advertise them as starter armies. They sometimes list them as a good starting point for an army, which is an altogether different thing. But they are not, and never have been intended to be an army by themselves.

Ok, the 4ed battleforce for nids had a completely playable force and could be worth 750 pts. Many battleforces are just bundle deals. Some of the things you get in them you might not need.

Insaniak-
They don't in writing but everytime I am in a GW and some new guy is starting an army the staff go straight for the battleforce. I have been in many GW and I have seen this so many times. They tell the customer that the box contains everything needed, but don't always mention that they will need a load of other stuff.

Grotzooka wrote:The sentinel kit can be built as both, as I recall.
On a related note, do any of the battleforces actually come with a playable army?

The Necron battleforce, is a pretty awesome deal. All you need is a lord and your good to go.