Welcome to part two of my ramblings about starter boxes. Last time I talked about big boxes designed for two players, or at least to give one player the ability to demo the game all in a single purchase. Today we're going to talk about the solo experience, boxes for single players.
Let's go over the basics again, just in case. A good starter should either give you enough to play a "standard" level game, or get you close enough that a single purchase should get you there easily. And it shouldn't cost you a fucking fortune in most cases. I'm also keeping this to a single set per company.
That being said, let's dive in.
Bot War - Pretty damn good.
I'm going with the Beastlord starter because...well fuck yeah dinobots.
Bot War has some really solid starter sets that tick all the marks. You get a good selection of models, plus the stat cards for those characters. And you get enough models to play the game at the standard level, and then some! This set, in particular, gets you around 120ish points, with a standard game being 80.
Yeah you'll need the dice specific to the game, but otherwise this is a complete single player experience (since the rules are free).
The one downside is the cost. The one player sets usually run you about $95. I know skirmish games made by smaller companies will generally be more expensive, but I can see how $100 for a single player can be off-putting.
A Song of Ice and Fire - Solid.
I think as far a single player experience goes, A Song of Ice and Fire has some of the best bang for your buck. You get three units, plus a variety of single characters, cards, movement trays, the rules, terrain, a measuring tool and dice. It's honestly a great value for $110.
And this gets you to the normal 40 point game level. And from here it's really easy to expand buying a heroes box, or another unit. And these starters tend to give you what is considered the core units for the faction, so you can easily expand to more specialized stuff with ease.
If you want to play this game, absolutely grab your faction's starter set.
Bushido - Generally solid.
I'm using my boys the Ito Clan again, because fuck you this is my blog and I'll play favorites.
The single player starters for Bushido are, generally speaking, very good deals. These boxes will run you about $45, and get you 70 points worth of models. A standard size game of Bushido is 100, but I feel like the game seems to function really well at 70. 100 is the tournament standard, though, so you would need to grab another model or two (depending on what models you grab) to get you up to that 100 point limit easily. Considering some characters are 20+ points, you can easily do this with one more purchase.
Some factions have alternative themed box sets, and those are usually closer to that 100 points. They're a little bit more expensive since they come with more models, but they're a great full game in a single purchase type deal.
The other thing I really appreciate about Bushido faction starters is that the stat cards have rules references on them. So when you're just learning you have a breakdown of what all the special rules/abilities for each character are without needing to flip through the rulebook or keep the Bushido Companion app open to see what they all do.
Heavy Gear Blitz - Excellent
Yep, more Heavy Gear!
The single player starters for Heavy Gear are such good deals. These boxes will get you between 130-150 points (which if you recall from last week is the standard level of play), sometimes more depending on the loadouts of your gears, and will run you, at retail, between $63 and $74. This particular one is about $69, and if you've seen my unboxing of the contents, you know you get a lot of shit for that money.
Considering the rules are entirely free, and through the glory of Gear Grinder you can make a list and print out stat cards, this basically gets you all you need to start an army.
These boxes are a great way to get started in Heavy Gear, even if I have my gripes about the assembly of some of the newer models. I tend to use these as my go to for doing an army box right.
Wargods - Okay, but not great.
Wargods is one of those game systems that I find myself not talking about as much as I probably should. It's a game with a great premise, solid rules, beautiful models and the folks at Crocodile Games are clearly super passionate about it and very friendly.
That being said I'm sort of torn on the starter sets. Generally they're a good place to start, they get you a Harbinger (your army leader), a hero, a couple of individual characters and a unit of infantry. But they vary pretty wildly. Some come with a melee unit, others with a ranged unit. And the prices vary from $80-90.
Here's the real problem: I have no idea what a standard sized game is for Wargods. I priced out a couple of the starters, and they came to like 500-600 points I believe. But nowhere in either of the books (Aegyptus or Olympus) can I find what a normal game should be. Judging from the costs of stuff I would assume around 1500 should be sort of perfect, but I also think the game works great with a smaller army. The books and the Croc Tales magazines have example lists anywhere from 1200 points all the way up to like 2500 points. So it's hard to say how good of a value these really are. I mean, You can probably bump the points up by slapping the most expensive equipment on everything, but is that practical? How much do you need to buy to effectively expand one of these? It's so hard to say.
So I'm torn. I want this game to get more attention because it's fucking awesome, but the starters are a bit of a tricky pitch.
Malifaux - Pretty good.
The Malifaux starters have always been a pretty solid deal, and in 3rd edition nothing has really changed on that front.
Technically there are two starter types available: faction and master. The faction starters come with versatile models that any master can use with no trouble, along with a fate deck, tokens and a measuring tool. These retail for $45. The master specific starters are usually around $60 MSRP, and come with a master, their totem, an elite minion and three regular minions.
Both of these are good deals, and if you grab both that's a solid start to any force for $105. And since you can use a regular deck of cards in place of a fate deck, even the master starters are a solid enough choice. I think the master starters, at least the ones I've looked at, get you 30-40 points, with a standard game being 50.
Expanding from either is pretty easy. If you have the faction specific grab yourself a master, if you have a master then grab the faction. If you have both, then you can just buy stuff that'll gel with your master, or even buy another master. So you have lots of options, and buying an expansion box will run you around $30-40 and get you enough options to mix up lists without needing a huge investment.
Warcry - Damn good.
And we'll close this out with some Games Workshop. I'm sticking with Warcry because these warband boxes are a great deal.
These boxes, as far as I can tell, get you a full 1000 point warband, or close enough. That means you can buy one of these, build it and be set to play. You don't need anything to expand, but if you want to mix up some weapon loadouts or just general options you can grab another box of the warband for $60, or grab a single thrall model to ally in and give you some more options (like getting some ranged models in your warband that may not have the option otherwise).
These are such a great self contained single player option for the game, which is why when I see GW make sub-par starters it bothers me so much. They know how to do it right, so fucking it up in other games just boggles my mind. Either way, these are awesome and with a good variety available you can pick just about anything you think looks dope.
And that'll wrap up our look at starter sets. I tried to find some truly bad starters to use as an example here, but then realized that the games I have interest in generally don't seem to have bad starters? Or if they do I tend to blank them from my memory and just focus on the good ones. I suppose I could have talked about 40k starters, but I don't know shit about the points levels of that game anymore so it would have been largely moot. I know the battleforce boxes back in the day were obnoxiously composed sometimes, but I'm in not way an authority to comment on the value of those these days.
And I think that'll be the last post of 2023. Thanks to those of you who have been here, and I'll catch you guys in 2024 with more ranting.
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