Armageddon recently burst onto the scene, giving 40k players a launch box for the 11th Edition of Warhammer 40,000 – but what about people who are looking to start the game for the first time or just to have a whole 1000 points sized table to play over? This is where the Starter Set comes in, an excellent value box that contains not just a pair of Combat Patrols and the core rules, but also an entire board of scenery to fight over!

In this full review we’ll be checking out the Starter Set, taking a look at the contents, building and painting it all up while having a talk about who this box is best aimed at.

Massive thanks to Games Workshop for sending us this to check out on the site. If you would like to support the site then why not pick up your set through our affiliate Element Games and save yourself some money too?

We also have a full review of the new Introductory Set up on the site today, if you’re maybe wanting to dip your toe in to see if you like the game before jumping into this full Starter Set.

We’ve also filmed a full unboxing and review which you can see just below or over on YouTube

So let’s dive into this massive box and take a look at what’s inside.

Warhammer 40k Starter Set Review

So let’s jump straight in with the big question – How much is this box? While Armageddon was an eye watering £185, this one looks to be much better value retailing at £155 – Still a lot of money, but I think you get a lot more bang for your buck in this one. So what’s inside?

From a miniatures point of view you get a lot of the models out of the Armageddon box, but not everything is included here. For the Space Marines you get the Captain, Librarian, Land Speeder, Jump Veterans and 5 Intercessors. Interestingly, this is a new sprue of 5 Intercessors (Armageddon came with 10) and there’s not the options for helmets or heads that you saw in the previous set. What’s really cool though is the fact that these 5 Intercessors are actually different sculpts to the ones in the Intro Set, meaning that if you pick up both boxes you have enough for a squad of 10 Marines.

For the Ork side of the Starter Set you get the Warboss, Weirdboy, a Wartrack, 20 Orks and 10 Grots, which is a great assortment and possibly even worth adding to the models from Armageddon. These are all the exact same kits from Armageddon, with the Boyz able to be built in multiple ways to add some variety across the entire squad.

What is new here though is the brand new plastic Warhammer 40k terrain. You get enough here for a 1000 point sized battlefield (along with boards to place it on) and in a nice move you can pick up a second set separately in order to have enough terrain to cover a full 2000 point battlefield.

This stuff is amazing! It’s push fit and goes together in a couple of pieces in no time at all. We got sent enough to do a full 40k battlefield and I managed to build and paint it all over a Saturday by using a faily simple scheme making use of rattle cans, drybrushing, washes and the odd spot colour. You could of course go to town with detail on these, but I wanted to have something that was quick to get on the battlefield but still looked good. This terrain has just the right amount of detail to let you do just that and still look good regardless of how much time you spend on it.

These are the same sculpts as the upcoming pre painted terrain (which does look gorgeous in the flesh) but these come on plain blue plastic allowing you to paint them up in your own designs.

The terrain also has a hidden feature – in the corner of each piece is a letter. These correspond to the letters listed on the terrain layouts on the Matched Play terrain guide over on Warhammer Community – you simply find the corresponding letters and clip them together to get the correct piece of terrain for that setup, which is a brilliant little addition to them. On the table you can’t even see these letters, but it makes setting up a game so much easier.

All set up on the table it looks great. The Starter Set comes with a couple of sturdy fold out boards that make up a full 1000 points battlefield – and again, pick up a second box or the separately available terrain set and you’ll have enough for a 2000 point game. One side of the board has pre set area terrain sections, while the other is without them allowing you to place your own, which is a really nice touch.

It’s been a long time since a Starter Set had everything you needed from a terrain point of view, so it’s amazing to see it here and I think this catapults this box way ahead of other sets we’ve seen in the past – with me even going as far as saying I think that this is a better buy than Armageddon for a lot of people!

There’s dice and rulers in the box too, so you can get playing straight away with the contents!

Rather than the datasheet cards that were found in the Armageddon box, the Starter Set comes with some rules packs that contain all of the relevant rules for all the models in the box – in a nice touch these also include tear off wound counters that can be used to mark units that are damaged too! While I like the cards in Armageddon, these is a more complete army roster than also includes rules for your detachment too, which is a nice touch.

The full softback Warhammer 40k 11th Edition Core Rules are also included in the box – this is the exact same one that came in the Armageddon box and is a brilliant inclusion in the set, allowing players to learn the full rules of the game and play with their armies straight out of the box!

We’re not going to dive into the rules here, as we previously did a full deep dive into them which you can read here.

If you missed out on Armageddon this is a nice way of picking them up alongside the new terrain and the awesome miniatures.

The Starter Set also includes a 88 page softback book too – this contains the assembly instructions for all the models in the box, but also lore about the models in the box and a number of intro scenarios that walk you through all the main concepts and phases in the new game. While a lot of players will dive into the Core Rules first, this allows you to build up the contents of the box and use them to slowly learn the rules step by step by playing out scenarios that explain these concepts. For a lot of people this is a much easier way of learning the game and it eliminates some of the pitfalls that people might make when skimming the rules for the first time – we’ve all been there!

So what do I think of the new Starter Set and do I think it is worth the money? A lot of people complained that Armageddon was not really suited to brand new players, and that’s because it was never intended to be a Starter Set but rather a Launch Box aimed at existing players who wanted to pick up all the new models in one place. The Warhammer 40k Starter Set on the other hand is designed to give players everything they need to get playing (though you will still need to pick up a card deck to play Matched Play missions). The miniatures are great, but the real selling point for me is the fact that it contains an entire Battlefield’s worth of terrain for 1000 point games (with the option of expanding this to a 2000 point sized board really easily)

It’s been a long time since we’ve had a decent terrain setup in a Starter Set, and I hope this is something that Games Workshop sticks with in the future. There’s something really satisfying about getting both of the armies and the terrain painted up and on the table, and it really feels a complete and good value box. £155 RRP is most likely £124 from 2rd party sites such as Element Games making this a real bargain! What’s more, this is a main line item and will be in stock over the lifetime of the edition, meaning that there’s no worries about this selling out and not being available again in the future – which is a great thing as I feel this is a box that most 40k players will want to pick up at least one of!

The new Warhammer 40k Starter Set is up for pre order today and is released Saturday 25th July

Games Workshop provided Sprues & Brews with free copies for review purposes.