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I'm currently an Ork player gearing up to begin a collection of Skitarii and Cult Mechanicus and I'm looking for a bit of clarification on the contents of the Start Collecting! box and effective ways to build and use the units inside. The box looks like pretty good value, particularly through non-GW retailers and I will probably get three of them so I have a good amount of basic infantry, special weapons and three Onager Dunecrawlers. How many of these boxes I buy partly depends on which weapons are included.

I've read that there are actually two of these boxes, one of which comes with a formation datasheet that uses Vanguard and the other which uses Rangers instead. Do I have a 50/50 chance about which datasheet will be included or is one more prevalent than the other? If the box comes with the datasheet that includes Vanguard would it still include the sprues to build Rangers with?

How many special weapons of each type are included for the Vanguard/Rangers? I'm guessing it's probably just one of each. If I buy three SC! Skitarii boxes I'm thinking of building one unit of 10 Vanguard with 3 Plasma Calivers and one unit of 10 Rangers with 3 Arc Rifles. Is this a good idea compared to building multiple units of 5 with 2 special weapons? Would it be sensible to use the remaining 10 models to build two units of 5 Rangers with a Transuranic Arquebus or will I be better off buying another box of Vanguard/Rangers for the extra Arc Rifles/Plasma Calivers?

Does the Onager sprue come with all the optional weapons included? I'm hoping to be able to magnetise each one so I can equip them all with either Neutron Lasers with Cognis Heavy Stubbers or Icarus Arrays.

Once I've got this nailed down I'll look to expand my force with Sicarians, Katephron Servitors, Sydonian Dragoons and Kastelan Robots but I think I've decided on the numbers and loadouts of these units that I'd like and this expansion is probably something for further into the future anyway.

Any help on the above questions is much appreciated as well as any other bits of advice you can offer to a soon-to-be new AdMech player!

You could always look at the sprue breakdowns for the individual kits to see how they're set up.

With that said? You get one of each special weapon for the Rangers and Vanguard, and there's no way to include just Vanguard but no Rangers as they share components. You'd have to physically clip the heads and Galvanic Rifles off the sprue to do Vanguard but no Rangers. Same with the Onager weapons.

I can't guarantee you can find the Vanguard or Ranger ones specifically. The Vanguard one was the first run but the Ranger one was the intended one.

I would suggest buying it in a shop, and asking them if you could open the box before buying to see which formation it includes. The boxes aren't shrinkwrapped or anything so it's not something most shops would object to.

Yeah one of each Special Weapon is included for each, and the Onager has all weapons available. My rules were for Rangers, although I'd prefer the Formation synergy with Vanguards instead. Either way it has to be a squad of ten, so I'd grab another box if you plan on mixing and matching the Rangers/Vanguard.

Thanks for the quick replies. I see, I wasn't sure if the Start Collecting! boxes included all the sprues from their respective individually sold kits - sounds like they are exactly the same so I'll familiarise myself with their contents.

Ideally I would like both printed formations for flexibility but if I get multiples of the same datasheet I won't stress. Due to a lack of non-GW gaming stores near me I'll be ordering these online, I would have to travel quite far to find a discounted retailer in order to look inside the boxes so I'll just have to test my luck online instead.

It would be nice if the wording were changed to include either Rangers or Vanguards, but the FAQ says that you can use the data sheet that you own. As for the weapons included, at least the other boxes (Ruststalkers/Infiltrators) include enough parts for both weapon types. If I could do it all over again I would have built the special weapons for each unit first, then filled in basic weapons as needed to hit squad size. Now I have will have extra Rangers unless I decide to forgo using additional weapons.

Excellent. I will end up with a lot of Rangers and Vanguard as well but I'd like to keep as close to WYSIWYG as I can so the extra special weapons will be useful. I play in a very friendly environment so competitiveness isn't my highest priority and lots of infantry with powerful special weapons seems like it would be a lot of fun alongside some of the other Ad Mech units.