I think the box is the way it is because it is merely aimed at getting the old fans into the new plastics, because at this point it may be cheaper for GW to make the stuff in plastic instead of resin …

Every HH enthusiast appears to be someone who already was into the lore and probably owns any of the previous releases.
Adding terrain of any kind would have raised the price tag even higher.

@phaidknott in the lore the spacemarines have squads with dozens of missile launchers … so to make the game fit the lore they’d have to sell it like this. The only positive thing is that you can pick which style of squad you want as you can pick a box of variant armour.

Having said that … I do hope they’ve streamlined the rules to the point that games of that size are playable, but then rules have never been GW’s best feature.

@bubbles15 has a point … the wargame hobby isn’t the most expensive one on the planet, but it isn’t the cheapest one either.
It only looks cheap, because once you’ve gotten into one rule set the entry level for the next one often appears to be ‘the rulebook’. However when you start from scratch you do need to add in the cost of a decent set of paints, brushes, glue etc. as well as whatever a full army costs within any given system. That 200 Euro mark is easy to hit for most wargame systems when you think of them from an actual newbie point of view …
I’d even argue that wargaming is deceptively cheap as the spending is often done in bits instead of one big lump of cash.

I don’t even need to look at ‘exotic’ hobbies to get to a 200 Euro minimum for cost of entry either.

The ‘next gen’ videogame consoles are 250+ Euro … and still a ton of people would line up to buy them, despite the fact that you’d need at least 50-100 Euro for a single game to play. And that’s assuming you’ve got a tv to use it on.

Fact is that if you want this (or any other) hobby to be cheap you’re going to have to work for it. As such it’s always time vs resources. Instant gratification only ever exists if you’re willing to spend above and beyond what is ‘normal’ for a hobby.

@hobbyhub if a ‘standard’ game is 3000 points … and this box is ‘only’ 2000 that is quite a big gap. It kind of makes me wonder what else you’re going to need in addition to this ‘starter’. A few squads of heavy weapons would be my guess … which suggests at least one box of space marines and one of the 4 special weapon boxes ?