What could be a " minimum buy in" for new players?

[Velvetelvis]

If I want to introduce new players to the game what's the minimum they would need to play a real game?

Does the core set have enough to make a full deck for one of the 2 included factions? 

Or are we looking at a core and at least one expansion?

[BaldoBeardo]

Depends on your definition of "real" game.

Technically they can just buy an expansion pack and they'd have a deck and minis but would need someone with a board etc.

The core set includes enough cards for two decks.

 

[Daveman]

The core set gives you enough to play with 2 players.  Besides the map boards, dice and tokens there are miniatures for the two included factions, a full set of faction-specific cards for each, and two copies each of several neutral cards that any faction can use.  It has two packaged pre-made decks, plus a handful of additional faction-specific and neutral cards to let players dabble a little with deck building.

So there's more than enough for 2 players to start with.  The expansions each include miniatures for a new faction, faction-specific cards for it, plus several new neutral cards.  The catch with this is that unlike the core set, the expansions only include one of each neutral card, so two players would have to share them in some way.  So people who exist in a two-player environment are inconvenienced a little, as are players who might not be interested in a particular expansion faction but still want the neutral cards.  Many have expressed a hope that GW might release the neutral cards as a separate purchase at some point.

[Velvetelvis]

Ok I got it thankyou.

I think I had in mind that the core de is weren't enough cards to fill a complete deck. Sort of like how L5R core sets require buying 3 of them to get a complete actual deck for an event or something.

[Daveman]

No it's not like that at all.  When deck building the first rule in this game is that there are no duplicates allowed, so multiple copies of a card aren't needed.

The core set gives you 2 copies of a handful of neutral cards that are just generically useful so the two of you have what you need to play.   It's just a problem if/when you do get an expansion set with some nice neutral cards but there's only one of each and you have to sort out who gets to use what.