How to Fix the Legions Imperialis Starter Box

 Obviously the big news around the shire these days is the release of Legions Imperialis, the new epic scaled game set during the Horus Hersey from Games Workshop. It finally went on sale, after a long and unexplained delay, and people have been getting their hands on it and all sorts of pictures and videos are popping up.

There's just one problem, the starter set kinda sucks.

Full disclosure: I don't own the box nor do I plan to for a few reasons.

1) If I do I'd rather 3D print my dudes because I prefer the Mk.3 armor.

2) I don't want to have to assemble fiddly plastic tanks at 8mm scale. That sounds fucking awful.

3) $200 is way too much for what you get in my opinion.

Now, I do think there's a way to make this starter box a good value, but it needs some fixes to make it worth that $200. For that kind of money I expect a couple things out of starter, and most importantly is usefulness of the box set. I plan to do a whole other post discussing the value of starter sets and what makes a good starter, so I won't go too deep into that here. Suffice to say: you should be able to use the contents and play the game rules as written.

You do get a lot of stuff, to be fair.

Now why do I say this box sucks? Because it just skirts being an absolutely excellent set, but it does just a few things that I think can be changed to make it even better.

First thing I want to say is that for the purposes of this discussion we're going to continue to assume the box is $200, for the sake of simplicity. 

I think GW could have taken some cues from Battletech on doing a truly great box set, so be prepared for a lot of comparisons to that.

Drop the rulebook.

"What do you mean drop the rulebook?" I hear you say through the computer screen. I say drop it. You don't need a giant, heavy, $60 book in the set. Take a page from Battletech. In the A Game of Armored Combat box set, you get the rules you need to use the models that come in the box. You basically get the rules you need to use mechs, the stars of that game, and nothing else. If they had included the full Total Warfare book the box either would have had to drop at least half the models, or would be crazy expensive. 

By including a rules pamphlet with the rules needed to use the infantry and tanks in the box you could free up a lot of space/budget for other things. Then when people want to use stuff like Titans and aircraft, they can go buy the full book. Someone just jumping in who may not want to expand won't want to find themself with a 240 page book sitting on their shelf, and by keeping it simple and not having to keep flipping back and forth through a giant book (seriously 240 fucking pages) when trying to learn the game. 

"But what about the lore?!" Again, Battletech. It has a little lore document that lays out the basics to get people interested. A couple pages going over the basics is all you need in a starter set.

Brief aside while we're talking about the rulebook: don't make the book on it's own an online exclusive. That's a right dick move.

Drop the Warhounds.

You get two armies in this box: Space Marines and Solar Auxilia. But the points values are all over the place. From what I can tell, you get less than 500 points of Marines and around 600 of Solar Auxilia. 

And then there's these assholes.

You also get two Warhound Titans, and these things need to go. Yeah giant robots are cool and all, but these two are actually unusable in this box set rules as written. These guys rock in a 330 points a piece. But here's the thing: in LI an allied detachment, such as Titans, can never be more than 30% of your total points values. That means a Warhound Titan, again as per the rules that come in the box, can't be used with an army of less than 1100 points. That is more than double either of the starting forces in the box! 

I get it, Titans are visually appealing and big cool models. They're part of the appeal of playing at this scale, but for god's sake they're a bad choice given the rest of the contents of the box.

So, what happens if you drop the Titans? That brings me to my next solution.

Bump the armies to a minimum of 700 points each.

Dropping the Warhounds and the big rulebook gives you room to bump each army up to a playable size. This can go one of two ways.

Way one is to bring them up to 700 points, and then replace the Warhounds with two Knights. This gets each army a legal 1000 point army as the Knights are only in the 200 point range. This means you can use the models without having to fudge the rules or buy more shit to get up to 1100 points to use the oddly pointed Warhounds. This still gets you a couple of cool robots, but without making the lists illegal.

The other option is drop giant robots altogether and bring each army to 1000 points. This is a solid starting point for the game, allows you a decent variety of units between different infantry types and various vehicles. Could also, with the right models, open up the options of which Formations you can build.

This gives players more models for their investment, instead of having two big models that eat up a lot of cost and can't even be used without further investment. You can put in more usable models while keeping the cost the same. This gets players more actual bang for their buck.

And there you have it, my few simple fixes for the Legions Imperialis starter box. Just a few simple things would make this box a crazy good value for the money you pay, even if I think $200 for a starter box is just this side of absurd. That said, I think it could be better and be a better value to the customer than it currently is. It does some things right, but it just misses the mark of a really great starter set.

We'll take a look at some more starter sets in the near future, and discuss what I think makes a good starter set. Until then, stay sexy.