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Ok So with a limited buget and time Ive realised I first of all need to sit down and write a list instead of buying models all hodge podge like...

So with that Id like an army that is...

A small amount of miniatures
Competitve and fun
that isnt too expensive on the wallet

What would you guys reccomend?

Space Marines meet all your criteria.

HOWEVER. Buy what you think looks the best because you'll like it the most and actually enjoy it.

I would recommend chaos. They are my favorite - they have all the advantages of marines, being relatively few in number and very fun to play, in addition to a wider variety in the appearance of the units, and a lot of interesting fluff and cool models.

Marines, Chaos Marines, and Necrons (to a lesser extent on the competitive aspect) would probably best fit your criteria.

I would compare the battleforces and start from there. Some of the battleforces have considerable savings, like 50% off retail (Tau, Space Wolves, don't know about the Space Marine or Chaos one). But, if you won't play everything in the battleforce getting it for cheap doesn't help much.

First and most important, what army do you like? Dedication is important.

After that, marines are the classic answer. (Relatively) small numbers of elite troops, almost entirely in plastic, fairly easy to paint and to play. Chaos is similar, but spikier.

Necrons fit a couple of your criteria, but aren't very fun to play. Tau are a bit more interesting, but also have higher model counts.

If you want to play an army of clones that are ironically the most common army played across the world (in 40k), in which the only variety you truly get in creating the army is want color you want your clone's bulky mass-produced suits to be, than go with space marines! You also might notice that the Imperiums "finest" seem to be a archetype of heroic, genetically enhanced soldiers that you might be familiar with/sick of playing as in such other popular science fiction franchises as "Halo" or "Starcraft".

I would suggest some of GWs more creative armies (not that they were the first to come up with any of these alien archetypes, but at least made an effort in putting an interesting spin on) such as:

-Tau (Think of a Spiritual Splice between the Soviet Union and a Japanese Gundam Wing Force)
-Orks (Brutally cunning/Cunningly Brutal, Green Space Barbarians with an affinity for comedy during their violent bloodshed and creating some disturbingly strange technology/tactics.)
-Tyranids (Think of an army of "Aliens" from "Alien"; very scary, very stealthy and very fast, using primarily their claws/maws as weapons... and they are all about absorbing stuff. It's just their thing.)
-Eldar (A near extinct race of ancient "space elves" that have to used to be top dawg, but much like mike tyson, blew their fame and fortune and are now on the road to redemption, using their advanced/ancient technology to strategically take down their numberically superior foes)
-Dark Eldar (Like the eldar, but they have some mommy-daddy issues to sort out with the therapist. Oh, and they like torturing/having sex with their victims. Yum.)

And all of these have the option of low model count using elite forces (Battlesuits for tau, Deffwing/Nob Bikers for Orks, Nidzilla/Genestealers for Nids, Any of the Eldar Aspect Warriors, etc). If anything, these armies' actual elite troops far exceed the generalist abilities of just about any space marines. Unfortunately, there is really no such thing as an "inexpensive" army in 40k, some are expensive, some are really expensive, and some are "fork-in-heart-spraying-arterial-blood" expensive, but you can make the choice in just about any army.

Sorry If I've offended any of you beakie players, I've just never been much of a bandwagon boy.

In all seriousness though, look around on the forums, read up on fluff, see painted/completed armies and decide for yourself. If you come on to a generalist 40k forum such as this and pose the question, you're going to get a lot of people saying space marines, because a lot of people play space marines. Maybe they did the same thing when they first started? You gotta figure it out on your own dawg.

Small amount of models, inexpensive, fun, and competitive is kinda hard to get all at once.

hmm, titan? lol, 1 "model" 1 army..... competitive... maby if they let you use it...

SmoovKriminal: bandwagons? try TRUKKS!!!!

Buy whatever army inspires you.

This is a more important factor than anything else.

Battlwagons over bandwagons my friend. It's not my fault that orks have gotten a recent (their only one in about 10 years) surge of popularity, although that happens with just about every codex. The difference between these other armies and space marines is that space marines roughly get an update a few times before most armies get one. Orks will likely fade into the background once again as soon as tyranid, guard and space marines get their new books.

Hell, the last 1-2 editions, they had almost as many codeces for space marine chapters as there were the entire rest of the selection for 40k armies, and you could usually count the differences between them on one hand (two tops.)

nooooooo orks will never fade!!!!!!!!!!!

Well, not fade, but they might hit the back-burner for a bit. Up until they just recently got their codex upgrade, they were actually ALMOST (about a year younger) as old (models and rules-wise) as dark eldar, and look how hopeless their situation has seemed...

hmmm, you ovbiously live in another world.... orks have been constantly popular despite the "surge" from a new codex, excluding that the sails of orks at my local GWs has been steady.... now DE on the other hand.... THATS what i call neglected... they still have there 3rd ed codex.... and i cant think of ANY updates since...

Perhaps in your FLGS that is the case, but before the past year or two I've rarely seen any orks at GW or otherwise due to their old models/rules.

Hell, there are probably some towns and GWs where there are zero space marine players and 100 dark eldar players. That doesn't mean anything as far as the vast majority is concerned.

Personally, I would lean towards Marines at first. If you take the Black Reach models and add a second Tactical Squad and a Predator, you'll reach 1000 points exactly. You need the rules/templates/etc. from Black Reach anyway. This gets a decent starter army for very, very little.

After you've played with that and learned the game you can move on to whatever else interests you. You'll also have a second army handy for when you want to teach people the game to create new opponents to play with.

Space Marines.

1) Co-buy one or two boxes of AoBR with an Ork player, easy to way to pump up your SM army. Buy another box of tacts, assault, some HW perhaps, and throw in some vehicles and you are good to go with minimum cash.

2) SM armies are not always the top armies, but it is hard to build a "bad" one. And with some good units you can make them very strong.

3) Fun. Well, fun is subjective. I enjoy my SM army (not my main army). However, some people hate marines or are bored by them.

IRPurple wrote:hmmm, you ovbiously live in another world.... orks have been constantly popular despite the "surge" from a new codex, excluding that the sails of orks at my local GWs has been steady.... now DE on the other hand.... THATS what i call neglected... they still have there 3rd ed codex.... and i cant think of ANY updates since...

Must be a local thing.

I've seen maybe one other ork player before the new codex. Now I've seen dozens.

They were not popular at all for most of 4th edition.

i have little experience with the 4th ed.... but thats cos i didnt venture in much and when i did venture in they had announced the new rules and i got told to not bothere and wait till the new book came out... and i still havent had a game since.... lazy people!!!(my friends) anyway!

i remember there being lots in the 3rd ed though.... but it was "popular" at at that point here.... (a little phase of people, like pokémon!) so there were thousands of kiddies(i was 1 of them!)......

Again, Marines.

They're the starter army for a reason.

I recommend either necrons, dark eldar, or squats

I hear the Squats are getting a new codex after IG. Might be Zoats though.