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Okay, soooo, I currently have a space marine army. 1000 points so far. Starting to get a little bored of painting space marines as I painted the entire 1000 point army in a week - I was off of work as I had surgery done, and painting seemed like a good thing to concentrate on and keep my mind off the pain. Now I'm lookng for something else to work on the side and slowly build up in between the marines. I was just wondering what some of the cheapest armies would be as far as my wallet goes.

Also, I've been checking out IG (I know, I've heard they can be expensive....) and I was reading the codex. Might sound dumb, but I don't get the whole "platoon" thing.... Many times throughout the codex I was reading (I believe it was the 4th edition one) it mentions both platoons and squads.... What exactly is a platoon and what is a squad? And how is each used? Sorry, hopefully that question makes any sense....

Thanks a lot!

A platoon is a single troops choice. It is composed of multiple independent units called squads. A squad acts just like a marine squad on the board, it's just bought as part of a platoon along with some other squads. So you buy an infantry platoon as one of your troops choices. It has a platoon command squads, two infantry squads, and whatever else you like from the list of things at the top of page 96. They all roll for reserves together, but aside from that the squads all deploy and act as separate units. The infantry squads are a little like combat squads - they're separate units bought as part of the same FOC slot, though guard infantry squads are more strictly defined.

So basically a "platoon" is a collection of infantry units (2-5) and a command squad which count as one troop choice. But the only thing that makes each of them different from singular units in other armies is that all of them come together if you use them as a reserve?

Raxemi is pretty much right.
You know how marines can split off into combat squads? But they're still the same unit? Yeah, that's kinda how a platoon works.

In fact it's entirely possible to have an effective, cohesive balanced(ish) army from just infantry. You can get anti-tank weapon teams dirt cheap and the waves of infantry are pretty much UNKILLABLE.

From just the basic troop choices you can have more than 400models just in platoons. That's pretty sweet. But you'd find yourself buying A LOT of squad boxes. (About 15 for 30 squads. There's also the junior officers...then the command squad. But you WILL have the best horde army eva. 1500pts for 300 men. SWEET.)

It will be a pain to paint them though. (Unless you work like a factory). Perhaps mabye you're more of a vet and tread-head kinda guy?

Haha I'm far from a painting machine Only managed to paint my 1000 point marine army in a week because I had nothing else to do from the surgery. And I still had to almost force myself to stay at it Even though it WAS rewarding. Is it possible to make a somewhat small to medium sized IG army that is still somewhat effective?

You will need the newest codex though, as a lot has changed from the 4th edition codex.

Okay awesome thanks guys. Also, can anyone help me out with what are some of the cheapest armies as far as money goes?

tremulant wrote:Okay awesome thanks guys. Also, can anyone help me out with what are some of the cheapest armies as far as money goes?

Not sure, but it will certainly be a small Elite army, like Grey Knights (3 Landraiders, 2x8 GKs, 4 GKTs, 1 Grand Master).

Grey Knights are mostly metal and/or large models though.... probably not the cheapest. Chaos daemons might be cheaper now that they are in plastics... other than that you are looking at the usual non-horde armies like Eldar, CSM, Tau, Necrons, etc.

Picked up a necron army today Since they're my secondary army, I like the fact that they're easy to paint and have a high point cost. Not too much extra work on the side = awesome. Good stuff Thanks for the help guys!

Deathwing can be pretty cheap, Terminators & Land Raiers are plastics and high point costs

The cheapest armies are really whatever you can find on eBay or used. Anything Mechanized is going to cost more, and anything with multiwound metal models is going to cost more. Good cheap armies:

Chaos with basic CSMs painted as plague marines, with berzerkers in landaiders instead of oblits.

Basic Marines

Old Metal Eldar. Rangers, Wraithlords, Warwalkers and the like are all available for dirt cheap on ebay.