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I am looking into making an army as a Christmas present for a friend of mine that's just getting into 40K. So far his three biggest gripes about 40K are:

1: pain to carry all the stuff back and forth

2: Too expensive

3: Metal models are heavy and too easy to break and repair.


So, I plan on solving all these problems for him. The armies he is interested in are Marines, Chaos Marines, and Necron

Help me design the Cheapest, smallest, most non-breakable 40K army between 1500 and 2000 points that is still fun and effective.

So far the best I can come up with is buying two AoBL boxes, trading off the Orks with a local ork player, then using my marine bits for heavy weapons on the troops and dreadnoughts. How could I proceed from there?

Basically, you've already got this thing figured.

AoBR is by far the least money you'll ever pay for an army. If you want to stay away from metal miniatures, I'd basically stick with just a couple sets of that. Maybe throw in a landraider or predator (though I'd rather just buy another AoBR set, for the price). Of course I assume you'll probably buy him the Space Marines Codex as well, though probably not the rulebook. If you're good friends with someone who plays Orks, offer to have him buy an AoBR set or two and trade him all of the Orks in the set for all of the Space Marines in the set.

If you've got the extra bits for needed heavy weapons, then I think you're all set. You might want to buy him some paints too, unless you want to be painting all of his figures for him (depends on the person as to whether or not they would appreciate that). That's about all I can think of.

Well, if I did go with a thi8rd AoBR box it would almost certainly shoe-horn him into having a Master of the Forge (three Dreadnoughts and 15 terminators is too many elites). A land Raider is too large. I was thinking of something like a Vindicator.

Necrons used to win the "cheapest possible army" trophy (so long as you don't mind converting Warriors into Immortals), but yeah - AoBR is as good as it gets. Necrons are also a bit flimsier (thin limbs) than marines.

"Effective" gets problematic, though - you will need something beyond AoBR marines to reach that point, be it Drop Pods, a Land Raider of some flavor, or something.

Deathwing/DA comes to mind. Lots of termies is always cool and small.

I say podding marines as much as it sickens me.
Chaos marines based around Berserkers are also pretty easy to do. Especially once that plastic Daemon Prince comes out.

Plastic Nobs will make ork nob armies easier.

Necrons. Get the army box from the GW site. Cheap, easy to build. Buy a little foam and use the box as a carrying case.

Deathwing!!

You could get a couple of Land Raiders, a couple of Dreads, and a few squads of Termies into a single Sabol Army Transport with no problems.

BYE

Two years ago I went Deathwing after ODing on painting IG. 30 models (plus two dreads, both of which I already had), all the old metals purchased on ebay for pennies on the dollar or acquired through trades. Easy paint scheme, looks dramatic, and easy to take out/put away, especially if you're deep striking!

Just buy lots of AoBR, and play DA / Deathwing.

Each AoBR SM set is

100 pts for Commander
125 pts for Dread
200 pts of Termies
175 pts of SMs
= 600+ pts

Buy 2 boxes of AoBR, and just trade Orks for SM. You can afford to trade 2 sets Orks for 1 set SM, and you will have ~1800 pts of DA. If you can trade 1:1, that's potentially 2400 pts of DA.

I'm partial to the idea of Chaos Space Marines, but reusing mini's from boxes of AoBR. Use the captains as Sorcerers/Lords, tack marines either as plague marines/regular noise marines/vanilla CSM (since all of the aforementioned have bolters), do a little creative painting/modding and the termies can be either CSM termies or Oblits, and you've got the core of a decent force.

You can do it easily with the tac marines from, say 3 boxes, and if bought outright have plenty of swag to sell off. Then just embellish with vehicles as you desire. A very decent army can probably be had for less then $200 (US), all plastic and small form factor.

3 aobr 1 big gun tank pred vind a gw fig case and a squad box for hev wepons paint and suplies. the codex keep the orks for you
edit to add codex

DEathwing. 3 Land raiders. 15 Terminators 2 Character Models maybe. your good to go. pretty much 1.5k right there