Slitherine

I have only played a couple of games and now have an interest in building a Later German Army from Storm of Arrows. is the starter Army listed in the book a competitive mix of troops or should I start from scratch in building the army?

to be honest with late medevials most of the armies can be to an extent morphed from each other, and late medevil germans has one of the best collections of bits to work that with
so i would say it isn;t a bad start. the only thing i would say, is having just done a lot of games with some relative beginners to the rules with swiss vs italian condottori, the swiss were a lot easier to get the hang of. so one dimensional armies while more vulnerable to bad match-ups and usually less powerful, are easier for the beginner.
of course with late medevials you could get a combined arms starter army (such as germans) and build it out to something more focused (like swiss or danish)
of course others with more games under thier belts may have more lerned views

Ben

The Late Medieval German starter list is ok as it goes, but is underpointed at 588 points. This gives you an option of upgrading one DSP BG to armored, or converting all the DSP to OSP. Or you could convert the DSP to PIKe and get 2 BGs of 8. Its a nice start and with the other German lists available in Lost Scrolls you have got plenty of options.