starting bfg please help

[Azula]

i was thinking about starting bfg, and I was wondering what is a good way to start this game, I play 40k necrons, but iv heard that crons have so much cheese that a grey knight would feel like a grot against them. So id probably go imperial navy, so how much £ would i be spending, where can i get a rulebook? Thankyou so much for your help. Also is it an easy game to grasp, like 40k? Im new to this hobby.

[Ancalagon]

It's all pretty much direct order from GW, and you can order the rulebooks from there. Alternatively, you can also download them for free from the GW site, the same as all of the other specialist games. <LINK> Even if you want to buy the rulebook, you might still need to download some of the fleet lists and supplements.

The Imperial Navy and the Chaos Fleet are the best starting points for BFG. They both embody the 'standard' rules of BFG, whilst the other fleets have all sorts of special rules. They also have the widest range of models, and can work out relatively cheap compared to other fleets and other GW games. The Imperial and Chaos cruiser kits are the only plastic models available, and each kit will build two cruisers, so a cruiser-heavy fleet works out cheaper. For an example - the cruiser kits currently sell for £13.80, and depending on which classes you choose to build they'll give you ~ 350-450 points worth of ships. Standard games tend to run to similar points sizes to 40k, so something like 1500-2000

Chaos fleets can probably be built a little cheaper than Imperial, because they are really a cruiser-based fleet, while the Imperials work best with a mix of ships - escorts, cruisers and battleships. I built my Chaos fleet a couple of years ago, and it cost me less than £100 for over 2000 points worth of stuff. Actually, I've forgotten how much I've got! I'll have to total it up...

<THIS> (Plague Fleet of Nurgle) is my Chaos Fleet, if you're interested.

EDIT: Yep, before paying the points for any warlords or upgrades, that's 2305 points' worth of ships.

Though, the prices have gone up a little since then. And, like I said with Imperials you'll be wanting a few more metal models.

Probably the best thing to do is to download the rules and the fleet lists, and have a look through them - even if you end up buying the rulebook later. Pick ships you like the feel of. Unlike GW's main games, BFG tends to be quite well balanced, and nearly every ship class is useful to some degree. You just need to figure out how to use them right.

For the Imperials, I'd recommend mostly cruiser and escort based lists heading up to around 1500 points, which is the level where you can start considering adding a battleship to the mix. Which ships you pick exactly depends on the playstyle you go for, lots of carriers, line-of-battle, swarms of torpedoes and so on. You'll find the basic fleet lists in the pdf "Ships of the Gothic Sector."

I'm sure we can help more once you decide what you want to go for.

As for the rules themselves, I think they're fairly simple to get your head around. Like I said, you can download them right away and have a look yourself. Lots of people think that it's one of the best rulesets that GW have ever produced.

[The_Giant_Mantis]

Necrons are incredibly powerful, no two ways about it. That doesn't mean they're unplayable, or that people will accuse you of cheesing out, but expect your opponents to be slightly scared of playing you.

The balancing factor with Necrons is that enemy gets extra victory points for damaging and destroying Necron ships, meaning that your opponent can sometimes break even even if you seemed to do much better in the game. In practice, I think the general feeling is that this doesn't quite make up for how good Necron ships are. They also have a whole bunch of rules which just seem designed to kick Eldar players in the balls, and while Eldar are quite overpowered too, they don't really have much of a hope in hell against Necrons, which can be a bit mean.

Just to run through the fleets which I've played against or understand.

Imperial Navy

Imperial Navy are the real jack of all trades fleet. Their ships can do anything, but don't really excel in any particular area. Beware though, this doesn't make them necessarily the easiest fleet to play compared to some others. I've also heard the common complaint that they're ever so slightly underpowered in the standard rulebook, although the 2010 FAQ (available Here) seems to gear them up a little.

Chaos

Do you like guns? Chaos like guns too! Chaos ships are fast and have enormous firepower, generally at much better ranges than the Imperial Navy. They're a really strong starting fleet and like Ancalagon said will save you money by not needing escorts. They're also one of the biggest lists in terms of ship choice, so you have a nice variety of options to pick from.

Orks

I play orks, and I consider them a lot of fun, especially with the new klanz rules (which I already linked to above). They benefit from high-risk, high-reward strategies like ramming, boarding and close range gunnery and can also make a terrifying ordinance-based fleet (which is how I play them). The downside is that because there's only a few viable strategies your fleet will probably play roughly the same way every time, and there are a few key weaknesses with orks which take some working around. Still, I started with them and I had no problems.

Eldar

Eldar are one of the "odd" fleets because they have a radically different movement system to everyone else, but they're not so difficult to play that you should be put off. Eldar ships are fast, impossibly manoeuvrable, pretty fragile and rely on hit and run or torpedo tactics. They're probably the most expensive basic fleet in real money as well because they're highly dependent on escorts. The upside is that Eldar are really good, almost to the point of certain fleet tactics almost being unbalanced.

[Bikerboy]

We play this a fair bit at our club and have people with huge armies of all types. Where abouts are you based? We are in Ainsdale, Merseyside.