WesWorld

Anybody playing Warhammer 40,000 now and then?

I don't play it, but I am familiar with it. What is the reason you only mentioned Warhammer 40k?

I played a related game, "Necromunda", for a time, and was familiar in passing with 40K up till a few years ago.

Several years ago some of my friends had small armeis of Space Marines, Orcs and Eldar and we played now and then. A cool game and I liked it a lot. However, I never bought some stuff as I didn´t had the money. I spend everything for BattleTech... *g*

Anyway - two or three days ago I talked to another friend of mine who is also always interested in any kind of strategic tabletop game (we played Great War at Sea together for example). He also thinks WH40k is quite interesting but he doesn´t have much experience with it. so as we talked he came up to get started with WH40k - to buy some used stuff from ebay etc.

Not a bad idea in general but over the years WH40k changed somewhat as I heard (4th edition today where I used to play 1st Edition back then) etc. I also have no idea of how much stuff is really necessary to get started and thus I have no idea what to buy and how much to spend...

So see my dilemma - I´m interested but buying "something" doesn´t seem a good choice.

So if somebody out there could enlighten me what I should focus on at the very beginning...

Many thanks,

HoOmAn

Cost is what kept me from getting into 40K proper.

Each vehicle or squad of troops can cost $C30-50 (so...what, 20 - 35 Euros?), and you need several of these just to field the smallest "army". If you want some extras to swap in and out of your order of battle, it's that much more to buy.

The basic game usually comes with two sets of models. The last version I ever saw was Space Marines and Dark Eldar (awful looking models, in my opinion, but Games Workshop didn't ask for it) but there may be a more current version. You could probably find a fair bit of them floating around on Ebay or even just being sold locally by folks who aren't playing any more.

What particular army you'd want would depend on how you like to play - some are better suited for melees, others seem best used for stand-off shoot-'em-ups. And, of course, some armies of equivalent point value need more troops (thus money, painting time) than others...

If you can find a few used editions of Games Workshop's "White Dwarf" magazine, each usually contains a battle report - a few of these will give you a taste of how each army operates and the number of models you'd need. Should be in local gaming stores and any German equivalent of "Chapters" or "Amazon".

I liked Necromunda because it was a skirmish game - essentially, a gang of eight to twelve guys on each side. It only cost around $50 to field this group, and the limited number of models allowed each to be a character with his/her own specialties and weapons. Sadly, the game was only in production for a sort while, though you may be able to find it on Ebay still. Somewhere in my basement I've got about four-five gangs worth of models in a box. Perhaps I'll post some pics of them sometime.

Thanks for you input... The cheapest tabletop game I´ve ever played and collected was Diskwars by Fantasyflight Games. For ~10 Euro you could get a starter box for one race (out of eight) - enough for your first attampts and with two or three boxes you soon had enough for larger battles. Not that expansive - except you started collecting it.

Each box contained of several fixed disks while the rest was random (including common, rare etc.). So it was somewhat like a collecting card game but far from being comparable to Magic - the Gathering. They puplished one base series and about 6 extensions. I got them all for all races including all promos ever puplished and still I get it all in one relatively small box.

So that game is/was really cool. Easy to get, more easy to learn and best thing was there was no luck factor as everything was solved without using dices. Well, okay... When shooting arrows you took some arrow counters and dropped them from two feet above the table. Whereever they landed that target was hit. Could be one of your own disks.. *g*

As I recall, some of the heavier artillery in 40K requires you to guess the range to target. Once you've made the shot, you measure out that distance, and roll die to see how far away the shot deviates. Flattening your own troops is a distinct possibility.

In general, artillery doesn't seem to be worth much in 40K. Unreliable, inaccurate, etc.

Never heard of Diskwars, I fear...

I just browsed their boards and it seems as if Fantasy Fligth Games put all Diskwars-stuff (Original Diskwars and all clones) out of print. You can´t find anything about it anymore...

And the link www.diskwars.com doesn´t serve much purpose anymore too... :o/

You can probably find some info here: http://www.geocities.com/bakija6/diskwars.html

On top of that page you´ll at least find two pics of two disks used for the game...

I play it quite often. A good general web board to check out is Dakka Dakka It can be expensive, especially if you don't plan ahead as to what kind of army you are interested in. Space Marines are the most common army, and probably the most affordable since you need fewer troop models, etc..., than one of the "horde" armies like Orcs or Tyranids. Chaos is nice too. Eldar are due for a redesign in the next year or so, so now might not be a great time to start one of their armies. Tau is interesting as well, more of an anime feel than the gothic look of the marines. Imperial Guard is nice too, but requires more models to make a viable army, especially tanks.