Warhammer 40K Faction Combat Patrols: Which Army to Start With

Here's the honest answer up front: Combat Patrol is the cheapest, gentlest, most complete on-ramp Games Workshop has ever made. Each box is a fixed roster that's a legal, playable force the moment the glue dries — no list-building paralysis, no staring down 47 datasheets wondering what synergizes. That's not an accident; GW built these as teaching tools, and it shows.

Two things beginners never hear until later, so let me front-load them. First, the rules are free. You do not need to buy the $50 Combat Patrol Companion to play. Games Workshop publishes every datasheet, every stratagem, and the full Combat Patrol mission pack as free PDFs on warhammer-community.com — no paywall, no guesswork. The Companion is a nice-to-have lore-and-reference hardback, not a gate.

Second, the game mode is deliberately tiny. Combat Patrol games run on a 44"×30" board (half a kitchen table), use just three bespoke stratagems per faction instead of the dozen-plus in full 40K, and let you field a max of three of any one unit. Three stratagems is genuinely the whole point — you can hold the entire ruleset in your head by game two. There are six built-in missions (Clash of Patrols, Scorched Earth, Sweeping Raid and friends) so it doesn't go stale. You're learning real 40K — movement, the shooting and fight phases, objectives — just with the training wheels thoughtfully bolted on.

Short answer: no — and the timing actually makes two of these picks better. Let me explain, because this is the single most important thing a beginner can know right now.

As I write this (mid-June 2026), Warhammer 40K's 11th Edition is days from launch. The new edition's flagship box, Warhammer 40,000: Armageddon, goes up for general release on Saturday, June 20, 2026 (pre-orders are live now). And here's the delicious part: Armageddon is a Space Marines vs. Orks box — the Marine half is tied to the Blood Angels narratively. So the two factions Games Workshop chose to headline the entire new edition are the same two I rank highest here for beginners. That's not me being cute; that's GW telling you who the welcome mat is for.

The thing that scares newcomers — "if I buy a Combat Patrol now, will the new edition make it obsolete?" — is a non-issue. Your miniatures are fully legal in 11th Edition. Plastic is plastic; a Beastboss is a Beastboss. GW also confirmed your 10th-Edition codex rules stay valid until your faction gets its 11th-Edition codex, so the transition is gradual, not a cliff. Rules are free PDFs that get updated for you. The only honest caveat: a few datasheets and stratagems will shift over the next year as codexes roll out, so check the current free PDF before a tournament. For learning at the kitchen table, buy with total confidence.

If you take one recommendation from me, take this one. Blood Angels are pure, glorious aggression — and they're the faction GW just put on the cover of the new edition, so the community spotlight is blinding right now (read: easy to find opponents, painters, and tutorials).

The box is 17 multipart plastic models: a Blood Angels Captain, ten Assault Intercessors, and six Sanguinary Guard. That's a deliberately lean, forgiving roster. The Sanguinary Guard alone justify the purchase — golden, winged, hand-sculpted with that 'genetically blessed angel-knight' character GW reserves for its prestige kits. They're the models that turn heads on a shelf and on the table.

Why best-for-beginners? Because every turn you do something. You advance, you charge, you fight — no agonizing 'do I sit back and shoot?' decision tree. The army's whole identity is the Red Thirst: get into melee and hit harder than you have any right to. That straightforwardness means even sub-optimal choices tend to work out, which is exactly what a new player needs while the muscle memory forms.

Insider angle: Blood Angels paint up fast despite the gold. A Mephiston Red base over a black undercoat, a Wraithbone-and-Contrast trick on the gold details, and a wash to tie it together gets you a battle-ready army in a weekend. And when you outgrow the box, the obvious next buy is a unit of jump-pack Death Company — the most iconic Blood Angels squad in the game, and a clean ten-power upgrade to your list.

Not even slightly — and Necrons quietly teach you more actual 40K than the flashier factions. This is the box for the chess player, the person who likes knowing they'll still be standing on turn five while their opponent runs out of gas.

The patrol gives you 18 models: a Necron Overlord, ten Necron Warriors, three Skorpekh Destroyers (with a Plasmacyte handler), a Canoptek Doomstalker walker, and three Canoptek Scarab Swarms. Don't sleep on those Scarabs — they're cheap, expendable screening units, and learning to use throwaway pieces to protect your valuable ones is a fundamental skill most beginners pick up two armies too late. The Warriors are your unkillable anvil (their Reanimation Protocols literally stand models back up), the Skorpekh are your hammer, and the Doomstalker is your ranged-anchor backfield gun.

The honest catch: Necrons have the lowest raw dollar savings of the major patrols — around $35 off versus buying separately, against $60-plus for the others. You're paying for resilience and that gorgeous tomb-world aesthetic, not for the discount.

And the aesthetic is a real beginner cheat code. Metallic green glow effects, weathered necrodermis, spooky undying skeletons — Necrons are arguably the single easiest army to make look pro with minimal skill. A Leadbelcher spray, an Agrax wash, and a dab of green Contrast in the recesses, and people will assume you've been painting for years. Patience on the table, instant gratification on the brush.

Tyranids are the 'give me one of everything' faction, and the current box — properly called the Tyranid Assault Brood — leans into that beautifully. You get 18 plastic miniatures: ten Genestealers (fast, clawed swarming infantry), three Tyrant Guard (bodyguard bricks that can alternatively build as Hive Guard), a Biovore (a weird artillery-bug that lobs spore mines), three Spore Mines, and the centerpiece — the Parasite of Mortrex, a flying synapse character that's genuinely one of the coolest models GW has put in a starter box this edition.

What makes this a great teacher is that no two games play the same. You've got fast melee, slow tanky melee, indirect-fire artillery, and a flying character all in one box, so you're forced to think about roles from game one — which unit does what, and when. That's a more sophisticated lesson than 'everyone charge,' and it pays off forever.

Two honest cautions. First, Genestealers hit hard but die easy early on, before you've internalized how to position and screen them — expect to lose a few squads while you learn (good news: they're cheap to replace, so you're learning risk-management on a budget). Second, the Assault Brood is melee-heavy and short on ranged punch, so a gunline opponent can keep you at arm's length until you master your charges. The upside? Genestealers are an absolute joy to paint — big flat carapace plates that drink up Contrast paint, so a horde looks cohesive fast.

I'll say the quiet part loud: Orks might be the most forgiving first army in the game, and they're the other faction GW just put on the cover of 11th Edition. The Beast Snagga box is the highest model count of the lot — 25 models — built around a Beastboss, twenty Beast Snagga Boyz, and four Squighog Boyz riding actual war-squigs (tiny armored dino-toads) with a Bomb Squig along for the ride.

Here's the beginner magic. Orks have a built-in mechanic — Waaagh! and 'Get Stuck In' — that rewards the exact thing new players do instinctively: charge forward and roll a fistful of dice. The army wants you to be reckless. There's no fragile finesse to fumble, no perfect-positioning puzzle that punishes a rookie. Your plan is 'go forward,' your contingency is 'hit it harder,' and the dice deliver enough chaotic swings that even a loss is a great story.

The catch: they're heavily melee, so a dedicated shooting army will punish you, and at the very top competitive level Orks ebb and flow with the meta. None of that matters for your first fifty games.

Two more reasons I love them for newcomers. The Ork community is famously the friendliest, most welcoming corner of the hobby — Ork players will adopt you. And the kits are the funnest to build and paint: stuff a Boy's belt with extra dakka, paint the squigs neon, and lean into the rule that 'red wunz go fasta.' There's no wrong way to make an Ork.

This is where most newcomers freeze, so let me give you the realistic timeline and the one technique that changes everything. Assembly of a Combat Patrol runs roughly 3-6 hours; modern GW plastic is push-fit-friendly and the instructions are excellent, so don't overthink it. Painting is where the hours actually live — budget 15-40 hours for a clean tabletop ('battle-ready') standard, more if you chase display quality. Most people, me included, build over two or three evenings and play their first game with bare grey plastic, which is completely normal and welcome at any friendly table.

Now the cheat code: Contrast paints over a Wraithbone or Grey Seer primer. One thinned coat of a Contrast color pools in the recesses and wicks off the raised edges, doing your shading and highlighting in a single pass. A whole squad can go from primer to battle-ready in an afternoon. This is genuinely how experienced hobbyists knock out hordes — it's not a beginner shortcut, it's the method for big model counts (looking at you, 25-Ork box and Genestealer swarm).

For paints, the Citadel Colour: Battle Ready set is the sane all-in-one starting point rather than buying 30 pots à la carte. And do not try to win a Golden Demon on model one — your first mini is your worst mini, and that's the deal for everyone. Slap paint on, base it, get it on the table, and let your tenth model be the pretty one. The hobby rewards starting, not perfecting.

These are two different games wearing the same grimdark coat, and picking the right one saves you real money. Combat Patrol is small-scale full 40K — you command a whole little army, learn the actual rules that scale up to 1,000 and 2,000-point games, and the box is your list. It's the path if you want the 'general commanding a force' fantasy and a clean runway into the big game.

Kill Team is the intimate skirmish cousin: you control a single squad of individual specialist operatives on a dense terrain board, with deep tactical, hide-and-seek, narrative-campaign gameplay. It does not translate directly to 40K deployment or army tactics — it's its own excellent system. Pick it if you're tight on space, tight on time, or you love single-model heroics and story-driven play.

A pricing catch worth flagging: the full Kill Team Starter Set is $112 at MSRP (the 14-model Angels-of-Death-vs-Plague-Marines box), not the lower number you'll sometimes see floating around. But here's the genuinely-underground tip — GW released a stripped-down Kill Team Beginner Set for about $50, the cheapest door into 40K plastic in years. Fewer models and terrain, but the parts people actually care about. If money is the deciding factor, that $50 box, not a $170 Combat Patrol, is your true cheapest start.

Money-saver for any of these: never pay GW full MSRP. Independent and online retailers routinely run 10-15% off Combat Patrols and bundle starter sets — a five-minute search before you check out is the easiest discount in the hobby.