A beginner's guide to buying Warhammer 40k stuff

[Black Hydra]

For my first thread, I want to do something useful and help out new players with the most glaring problem regarding Warhammer 40k. Price. I know players can usually just go to a shop and browse to check out prices. If they're lucky they will find a store that has discounts. But for many across the world, buying online is the only way sometimes, whether through the GW store or some other online stores.

So, I'll be putting together the most comprehensive list I can muster concerning how to start out buying your first 40k kits. I'll break it down to sections, maybe even one more thread.

The way it'll be broken down:

- First I'll talk about each army's battleforce and why it's more cost effective and what to add. If the battleforce plain and simple sucks, I'll suggest what kits to buy to make a better battleforce.

- I'll briefly go into bitz stores because they are great bargain places as well. For those of you who don't know, certain stores sell the kits on sprues as well as each piece separated from the sprue. That's a bitz store. Also, you can customize your starting army right off the bat.

- I'll talk about the stores I have come across that sell 40k products and ways to maximize purchases. Unfortunately, some of the best deals are found in Europe and Britain. But since GW has banned those online stores from selling outside of the countries they listed, it is difficult to buy from them. There is a way to circumnavigate that problem, but it will be talked about later.

- Finally, alternative models from other companies. This one is a bit of a grey area. Many 40k players are purists, some to the point where they frown on people using alternate models. Fortunately these are far and few in between. Chances are you'll be running a lot more GW models than not anyway. Still, what if you want to go for an army look not available from GW? And you don't want to go through the pains of green stuffing details. And! You don't want to spend a lot of money on conversion bitz. Those alternative models seem a lot more justifiable now don't they?

Overall, this is to help you get started at the lowest possible price possible. I'm fortunate enough to have an awesome LGS near that has discounts for returning customers. Now I'm almost done with a 3,000 Necron army and am working on a CSM/IG 3,000 army as well. And I just started 5 months ago.

TL;DR?
Enough rambling, the next post starts off the guide with battleforce prices. Thank you for reading (if you did.) This is not a tactica discussion. I will recommend some models more than others, but won't delve into strategy. Any additional details anyone wants to add, you're welcome to do so. I may be posting this on the wrong board as well. Hope not.

[Black Hydra]

Alright, so here we go. I'll be using American dollars as currency for the prices. These are easily converted using Google. I'll only be covering 3 armies right now, since it's late at night. More will be included in each post after this one. Total costs will include the appropriate codex's price.

1) Space Marine Battleforce, price: $110

- A combat squad, tactical squad, a scout squad, rhino, and an assault marine squad. Basically 3/5's of this battleforce are worth it. Everything except the assault marines and scouts are worth it for a beginner. Scouts are situational in battles and while they are troops choices, don't have the most bang for their buck. Assault marines just plain and simple should only be used in a Blood Angels army. They just are worth it there. Here not so much.

A simple fix to this dilemma? Keep the scouts. At least they can capture objectives. Convert the assault marines into regular marines. Buy the backpacks from GW and try to get bolters and bolter arms from bitz stores. While it'll increase the cost a bit more, you'll have a solid starter marine force. Addendum: Tzeentch's Dark Angel says you can swap out assault marines to tacticals.

- Add a space marine commander and another rhino for an additional $53 dollars.

Total cost: $199 (bitz prices not included)
With 20% discount: $159.20
Buying all the bf stuff separately: $153.25

2) Space Wolves Battleforce, price: $100

- Grey Hunter squad, Blood Claw squad, Wolf Scout squad, and a drop pod. Talk about a deal! This is definitely one of the best battleforces around. And for a great codex to boot! Just make the Blood Claws into a Grey hunter squad or get extra bits to make Long Fangs. Nothing much more to say about it. It's one of the best deals around. I'd even suggest it to regular Space Marine players. Almost. Needs some scraping of the SW details.

- Add a Wolf Lord (Logan's model is awesome, so might as well use it) and a rhino/drop pod. If you go for Long Fangs, buy another Space Wolves pack as SW scouts don't score (aren't troops, you'll be short.) This all adds about $92.50 or less, depending on what you go for.

Total cost: between $188.25 and $225.50 (bitz prices not included. Difference of prices is because of the inclusion of the grey hunter pack.)
With 20% discount: $150.60-$180.40
Buying all the bf stuff separately: $132.50

3) Blood Angels Battleforce, price: $100

- A rhino, tactical squad, assault marine squad, and a death company squad. One of the better deals but not completely great. Here's why: tactical marines. While tacs are useful in a blood angels army, assault marines are where it's really at. They are troops choices and have a bunch of neat rules that increase their efficiency. Keep the tacs if you want, but for $16 more you can convert them into assault marines by buying the jump packs. Still a great deal.

- Add an sm commander. Skip the special characters until you're sure of what you're doing. Mephiston is great, but he's not an IC, for example. Another rhino isn't really needed since jump infantry will most likely footslog it.

Total cost: $169 (seriously great deal. Includes jump packs.)
With 20% discount: $135.20
Buying all the bf stuff separately: $136.25

Later today I'll do the rest of the space marine forces, the Imperial Guard and anything else I can add.

[Tzeentch's Dark Agent]

Nice guide!

The Assault Marines in the SM Battleforce can be built with just regular backpacks that are in the box.
I'm using the SM Battleforce for a challenge at my local GW, and I think that there are 5 extra even after the tactical and combat squad.

[Brandoncbaker]

I also just wanted to say that you can't discount the importance of scouts in an objective game, give them camo cloaks,camp them on your home objective,and watch your opponents frustration when they try and shoot them off.

[Black Hydra]

Great Dark Gods! I posted a reply to you guys and had all the battleforces of the Imperium done! But it took so long that BOLS signed me out and when I posted it, it was lost due to me not being "logged in." The nerve! Now I have to do other things and don't have time to rewrite everything! GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH! Whatever, I'll get to you guys later. I have to blow off some steam...;(

[Black Hydra]

The following post was supposed to be for last night but Bols wasn't loading right. So I'm reposting this as it was.


Alright, I'm back and ready to go again. Just had an awesome game of 4,000 points (2v2 2000 for each player) of Imperium vs Xenos. My friend was Tau and I used my Necrons. Opponents were IG and Sisters of Battle. Annihilation, Imperium 11 to Xenos 10. So close.

Well that made me want to come back, but I'll only be doing 3-4 battleforces per post. To prevent another tragedy from happening. As always, codex price is included in total cost.

@Dark Angel- I added what you said. Thanks for the imput.

@Brandoncbaker- I agree Scouts are useful, but they have to be played very good to be end game objective grabbers. They're not exactly beginner material. But what else are they going to use to replace them? Devastators? So I digress.

Alright, on to the Battleforces. Originally I did the DA, BT, GK, IG, and SoB (with lists on what to buy, since not all have battleforces.) But seeing how late it is, I'll only do the IG and DA.

Unfortunately, some breaking news. Looks like price changes are on the horizon. This could potentially ruin this guide. So I'm only doing the battleforce prices and looking at alternative models from other companies. I won't be doing prices in other stores and will only mention how to bypass the embargo on European/British online stores.

4) Dark Angels Ravenwing Battleforce, price: $105.00

- Dark Angels suffer from being one of the most outdated codices. Not even the new FAQ can really make them beginner friendly. You can only reliably run 2 builds with them; the Ravenwing and the Deathwing. You can mix them, but that's about as much flexibility as you'll get. Any other space marine codex runs every other unit better.

So with that in mind, this battleforce gives you everything you need for a Ravenwing force (bikers mostly.) 6 Ravenwing bikes, one attack bike, and one land speeder. All you need is Sammael to make your bikes troops. Overall, the Ravenwing is solid. Heavy weapons shooters that are relentless always rocks. And the land speeder becomes AV14 on front and sides.

Now comes the other problem with DA. To run a Deathwing army, you need the upgrade pack. But the pack only brings one terminator upgrade. You're not going to be running tacticals, so the best thing you can do is sell the bits for tacs. The Warstore has a bits trade in feature. You won't be getting a ton of money out of it, but it's enough when it stacks up. Sadly, you're stuck with that option, unless you want to run plain termies in DA colors.

Total cost: $187.50 (Sammael included.)
With 20% discount: $150
Buying all the bf stuff separately: $137.50

5) Imperial Guard Battleforce, price: $115.00

- By far the most expensive battleforce, and in all honesty not sure if it is completely worth it. Has a Sentinel, a command squad, 2 infantry squads and 3 heavy weapons teams. Comes in 2 flavors; Cadian and Catachan. The reason why it doesn't seem worth it is because of the Sentinel. They aren't great and you would benefit more from a Chimera, even though it costs $5 more. The heavy weapons teams are a mixed blessing for the battleforce as well. This is because the battleforce would benefit the mech/vet IG style more than the regular platoon style out there. But you can run either, it'll just cost more to run mech.

- Add 2 chimeras and run the infantry as vets. You can use command squad as HQ. Or get another command squad and combine with one infantry squad and the heavy weapons teams. Run the second infantry squad as vets in a chimera.

- While I don't fully recommend this bf to a beginner, it still runs cheaper than all its individual components would be otherwise.

Total cost: $208 (w/ extra command squad and chimera for hybrid list) and $218 (w/ 2x chimeras.)
With 20% discount: $166.40 (hybrid list) and $174.40 (mech list)
Buying all the bf stuff separately: $151.75

So that brings an end to this post. Tomorrow I'll post up more, but for now good night to all. Also, if you want a battleforce moved up on the queue, just post what you would like to see. Hopefully the price increases won't be so bad. It definitely throws everything off.