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I will start off by admitting my ignorance in order to save time later. :biggrin:

 

I was a huge fan of Epic back in the days of Space Marine and revived my lists briefly when Epic Armageddon came out. LI definitely seems to scratch the same itch and a couple of people at my local club are playing it so I have a ready-made gaming group. The main issue is I don't quite know where to start. My main questions are as follows:

 

  • Does the starter set represent good value for money for a complete beginner? I am guessing that having the rules and everything is probably a good idea.
  • I can see it is a mixture of Marines, Solar Auxillia and a pair of Warhounds. Does that make a decent basis for a starting force?
  • Are there any drawbacks to running a mixed list?
  • Should I focus on a single faction?
  • Do I need any other rulebooks?
  • Is there a sensible route for getting the box contents up to 3000 points?

 

Any advice welcome.

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You can mix factions to some extent (a proportion of your force can allies). So let's say you want marines, then up to a third of your force can be Solar Auxilia and/or titans/knights.

 

Force selection is bound by detachment cards. These have been expanded in each of the subsequent books, but, if you are going with the starter set, you would probably want to buy some Baneblades and Kratos tanks to make legal armour detachments with what is in the box and using the detachments in the main box. I would also advise picking up a box of marine infantry so that you can reach the minimum unit sizes to take terminators, assault marines and heavy weapon squads as a unit rather than an attached group to a tactical legionnaire unit if you want marines. Extra solar auxilia infantry would also be good, but may not be as pressing as for the marines. 

 

All that said, there is a starter scenario using the box contents that can be found on the GW website.

 

After that it's a question of what interests you and what expansion to pick next.

4 hours ago, Karhedron said:

I will start off by admitting my ignorance in order to save time later. :biggrin:

 

I was a huge fan of Epic back in the days of Space Marine and revived my lists briefly when Epic Armageddon came out. LI definitely seems to scratch the same itch and a couple of people at my local club are playing it so I have a ready-made gaming group. The main issue is I don't quite know where to start. My main questions are as follows:

 

  • Does the starter set represent good value for money for a complete beginner? I am guessing that having the rules and everything is probably a good idea.
  • I can see it is a mixture of Marines, Solar Auxillia and a pair of Warhounds. Does that make a decent basis for a starting force?
  • Are there any drawbacks to running a mixed list?
  • Should I focus on a single faction?
  • Do I need any other rulebooks?
  • Is there a sensible route for getting the box contents up to 3000 points?

 

Any advice welcome.

 

 

The starter set is okay, I actually think you'd be better of considering one of the boxed armies. 

 

I'd focus on the mix of marine and solar aux, get an army box for whichever you think will be your primary army and supplement with a few boxes from the allied force. Warhounds can always be acquired later. They're a good way to pad out points but I think its best to focus on making a 1k or 1.5k list of pure li stuff before adding titans or knights. 

 

A mixed list is likely optimal, at any point level you can spend 30% of your points on allies. 

 

I think it's good to focus on a primary faction, and supplement with allies as needed. This lets you grow second factions slowly to the point where you can eventually allie either way, like 70/30 marine to aux or vice versa. 

 

The other rulebooks are okay, I'd personally say with the lack of support from gw on faq/errata front I would suggest not rewarding them as there are very few pages of actual new units in each, if you value fluff they may be worth the purchase, but for the most part the legion builder app works well enough. Works quite well actually for making lists. 

 

3000pts is so far beyond what is needed for a good game. It's absolutely something to aim for but 1500 point force is quite significant and would represent a decent game. 1k is also a great starting point to learn the ins and outs. 3k is very aspirational, and also arguably more suited to weekend gaming when more time can be alloted, very difficult to do evening gaming at 3k and not be up to the early hours of the morning. 

 

 

 

The best advice I'd give is realizing that the army construction cane be a bit convoluted, but also largely doesn't limit very much at all, as there are no limits currently on how many detachments or formations and army can comprise, only its point level. So, formations largely tax certain units with compulsory stuff like say a few units of infantry, but those limits are largely superficial. The issues currently is, on account of the game being alternating activation is disparity in activation can really limit the balance and quality of play. An example of that would be an army with 20 activations vs an army with like 5. They've recently made titans their own faction, so as you can imagine if you have a whole army of walkers and infantry and vehicles and flyers and your opponent has 5 big robots, the game can be a bit weird. It really requires both sides be on the same page in terms of the kind of battle/game they want to have. Certain rules like infiltrate can also really conspire to make the game less than enjoyable for one or both sides. Lastly the quality of balance is also dependent somewhat on having a good variety of terrain. I'd avoid having too many structures, or worse, only structures, as the only form of terrain, the game is already very stilted towards infantry and that helps them a bit too much. A good mix of hills/forests/rivers etc is also worthwhile. 

 

 

 

 

 

2 hours ago, DemonGSides said:

I plan on only using 3-4 Marines per stand to stretch out my starter set and just get some extra bases.

 

Ya that's a good way to get more bases. Even 3 assault marines per base looks decent. Same with terminators, who in fact look a lot better with 3-4 to a base, 5 is very cramped. 

I’d echo giving the Battleboxes a look instead of the Starter. The Starter obviously comes with the BRB, but otherwise neither the Astartes nor the Auxilia are a complete legal formation so it’ll help bolster an existing force, but it won’t get you very far in playing an actual legal game. 
 

If you have an existing Titanicus collection, I’d highly recommend getting Mechanicum. They’re a new army so you could grow your force as more is released and you can use your Titans in a Mechanicum army without incurring the 30% ally penalty. 
 

Otherwise, collect whichever faction interests you the most (or all of them if you’re made of money lol). Obviously both Astartes and Auxilia are more fleshed out and have plenty of options to run a variety of formations and all-encompassing themes you may like. Both are still lacking some elements which we’re all hoping will be addressed at some point in the future (Super Heavies for Astartes, fast attack and whatever for Auxilia I don’t know). 
 

I do feel compelled to point out that this is not a cheap game to get into. Despite the scale, it’s alarmingly expensive to build up a 3,000 point army. 

Really well just agree with what Crablezworth had said.. unless you are collecting two armies, a faction starter is a better option (especially if you can get from an independent store with a unit discount on top of the saving you get from the box anyway, makes it not a bad deal)

 

Also re-iterate aim for 1500 or even 1000 to get going. Absolutely no-one I know plays 3000 as standard and I haven't seen any events (inc. the GW ones) which run at 3k. It's not a bad idea to expand towards 3k just to mix in some variety in your force and try different things but I would start smaller and go from there, once you realise what area of the game you enjoy.

 

If you are not aware of it, there is an awesome online army builder. I literally could not play the game without this, it is so damned useful both for army list building and quick rules reference:

https://legionbuilder.app/lists

 

Finally, welcome and hope you enjoy! :)

OK, my current plan is leaning towards the Adeptus Titanicus starter set as I can play this as AT or LI. I can also expand this with the a Mechanicum box set to add some infantry and tanks later on as I gather that Titans and Mechanicum can ally without the usual points restrictions in LI.

 

Does this sound like a good approach?

 

I assume that the AT starter set contains everything I need to start playing that game. And when I branch out into LI, I would need to pick up the core rulebook and also the Rise of the Dark Mechanicum book. Have I understood this all correctly?

3 hours ago, Karhedron said:

OK, my current plan is leaning towards the Adeptus Titanicus starter set as I can play this as AT or LI. I can also expand this with the a Mechanicum box set to add some infantry and tanks later on as I gather that Titans and Mechanicum can ally without the usual points restrictions in LI.

 

Does this sound like a good approach?

 

I assume that the AT starter set contains everything I need to start playing that game. And when I branch out into LI, I would need to pick up the core rulebook and also the Rise of the Dark Mechanicum book. Have I understood this all correctly?


Yeah, that’s a pretty good idea. The Titanicus Starter Box is a good start for a Legio and at the very least will allow you to field a Ferrox Maniple. Depending on if you intend to play Loyalist or Traitor, you’ll need to grab the corresponding book to get the rules. 
 

The Mechanicum Battlebox is a good buy and will go a ways toward getting you into the game. Just a little warning, they do not have Air Support or reliable Anti-Air capabilities, so you’ll need to shore that up if you want to play pick up games as I can almost guarantee you will wind up opposite at least one aircraft. This can be done either through Acastus Knights or Warbringers if you want to stick with “pure” Mechanicum at the cost of less reliability and higher point cost, otherwise you’ll have to look at some Astartes or Auxilia allies. 
 

The good news is that Mechanicum have / will soon have the rest of everything else covered. There’s also some really cool themes you can go with, between making your Mech bound to your Legio of choice or going with all-encompassing Forge World theme, as there are many unique Mechanicum worlds that have their own color schemes, favored units and accompanying Titan Legios and Knight Households who hail from the same planet. Unfortunately at this point, there are no rules for the various Worlds but it offers a great opportunity at personalizing your force. 
 

Start out with those two boxes and take it from there. As I mentioned, grab the AT book (Loyalist or Traitor) before you flesh out your Legio, as some have special rules to take specific Titan chassis’ or rules that favor a particular play style. Grab one Mechanicum Battlebox to start and if you choose to, get more after that. Assemble and paint your first box before you go crazy is my advice, as these little guys are more involved when it comes to assembly and painting than the other two. 

18 hours ago, Karhedron said:

Does this sound like a good approach?

 

 

 

Not really, at least not for li. AT it sounds like the right approach. The thing to keep in mind is titans in li don't fit very well as its alternating activation. And let me be specific, li requires a decent balance in activations to function well. Armies with titans will have a lot fewer activations. There is a game mode for li called titandeath where both sides run titans, might be better for that. Titans are a good way to add points, but AT is really where its at for titan combat, in li they're basically just gun platforms that can split fire. Also, you may want the rulebook but in honesty you don't really need the other books unless you want fluff imo. Legion builder has all you need.  

Edited by Crablezworth

The AT Starter is a good companion for the Mechanicum Battlebox. I may have misread, but I would not recommend grabbing the AT box before the Mech box if the goal is primarily LI. If you’re getting both simultaneously, that’s fine as like I said, you can use Titans (and Knights) to bolster your Mech force, but Titans (or Knights) as a standalone faction in LI are bad and quite frankly, GW should feel bad for the lack of effort they put into both. 
 

Grab both at once or, if the idea is to get one at a time, get the Mech box first.

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