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It's all about options, for me. I started with Space Wolves, but once the new Necrons hit... BAM!

Allies doesn't help, and I just bought a 2k+ Sisters of Battle Army.

Tau is the last "want" for me, but that won't be until I get my Skaven off the ground (yea, Fanstasy too) and my Infinity army.

I fully admit that I may have a problem!

But really, I am sticking to armies that can ally with each other. Set up rules of engagement, come up with cheaper conversions or buy used whenever. My SoB was 60% off...! For an all metal army, that's fantastic. So look for steals if you have the itch to grow.

 Ailaros wrote:
In part it's a personality thing.

Otherwise, for me, I've been playing guard all these years and am still going strong because there is STILL new stuff to find out and try. Still new combinations and new ways of thinking about things.

A single codex comes with a lot of depth to it. If you put in the work, rather than skimming off the obvious stuff from a bunch of codices, you can find some real gems.

I feel like IG is one of the few codecis that can do this well. Space Marines follow, but most folks will trend toward one "style" from other books. Or that style just doesn't work; (DE raiders + wyches... ) I have wanted to start IG several times, but it would have to be DKoK. I told myself long ago that if I start the one army probably more expensive than a SoB army, I better have EVERYTHING I own assembled and painted.

So I should be ready for DKoK by 2015.

I find it extremely hard as well. I love my orks but i have a really hard time wiht the "Ooo shinie" problem. My budget helps me with that though. I want to be able to field a fully what you see is waht you get or army. Once thats done I'm going full eldar.

I play guard, but I'm also one of those poor lost fluff bunnies who has every man in his army different and all the characters named (and about 10 pages of background fluff typed out that I gladly offer to opponents to read while I spend half an hour deploying 140 modles.... ) and that in a way is my motivation.....to finish my army to fit the fluff I have for it.

For instance I have that each company has 3 platoons of infantry (a support platoon with heavy weapons teams and minimal infantry squads and 2 assault platoons with the full 50 man blob of death) and currently I have a full assault platoon and a support platoon that is about finished, and then to fit my fluff I'll have to begin a second assault platoon. The fact that I can have over 50 men in one troops choice keeps me busy, and the differences between platoons can give me a reason to paint guys differently so I don't get bored.

And like how the OP builds orks because they like to make conversions and such, I enjoy personalizing everyman, which makes my army anything but repetitive, where as my one friend has necrons, nids and space marines because he gets tired of painting all the same things (and only the marines really have room for customization).

also, being a guard player, I want to use my shadowsword at some point, so I need to have an apocalypse sized army.....that is a motivation all its own haha

Simple answer... I can't.

I chop and change armies quite a lot as I test them and find that they don't fit my play style.

I've so far kept my Deathwing since the end of 5th and they are doing well.

For my next army... Tau... I don't care as much for play style as I just like the models.

One is never enough for me. I have at least a kill team army of every single army besides Tau i don't like them (kroot are cool though). But besides Tau I have every single army because for each one there is something I like, or a cool color scheme I want to try out. So I have about 4000pts of ig, 3000pts of black templars, 1500pts of dark angels, 2000pts of eldar, 4000pts of chaos, 2000pts of Orks, 1500pts of Tyranids, 1500pts of old Lost and the Damned, a killteam of necrons, killteam of SOBs, killteam of Dark Eldar, and a killteam of everything else but tau. It is very hard for me to stick for one army too long, but I imagine if someone is limited on cash and only really likes one army, it would be pretty easy for them to stick to it.

Yeah, I know exactly what the OP means.
I've got an Apocalypse IG army, about 4K with a Shadowsword, and when they Grey Knights came out, I thought it would be neat to have a small army of them to compliment my guardsmen. Now I have 2K of Grey Knights, a bit of an overkill, I think.
Then the new Chaos Space Marines came out, and I got my old Chaos army out of their boxes, and started building it up again. Then the new Daemons codex came, and since I already own a lot of daemons... well, I am really tempted to stop working on my CSM and do my Daemons.

Oh well, as long as we're having fun, right?

It's pretty hard as I allmost want to try everything out at least ones, so I make 750 to 1000 point armies of them. But my main armies go plus 1500 pts. so now I have Skaven, WoC, Eldar, Orks, SM DA, CSM, IG Vostroyans. Thank the Emperor I managed to paint them all.

Thanks again for all the answers, made me think and ofc feel better about my heavy plastic crack addiction. But really I tried almost every drug known to man and nowadays am sober 90% of the time today and not addicted to any of those (maybe a slight booze habit but most of the time it's about 2-3 beers equivalent every few days) but crazy cosmic army men took me by storm. It is just every trope you love in sf ripped off, grimdarked and made fighting each other in turn based matches, unresistable for me.

 Ailaros wrote:
In part it's a personality thing.

Otherwise, for me, I've been playing guard all these years and am still going strong because there is STILL new stuff to find out and try. Still new combinations and new ways of thinking about things.

A single codex comes with a lot of depth to it. If you put in the work, rather than skimming off the obvious stuff from a bunch of codices, you can find some real gems.

I'm not skimming through obvious choices. I started my Nurgle bikes in 5th when they were 30+ points a piece, I field Carnifexes every game with nids, I'm planning double converted Maulerfiend. I don't think any of my armies will be very competitive, they're ussualy good and work but that's it. I consider current Tyranid codex great and am fiddling with it non stop just as you describe with guard, for example this is one of my projects (I already started a converting but my time is sparse lately):

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/504871.page

In answer to the OP, I can't either. See sig.

 Vineheart01 wrote:
The allure of building whatever i want and calling it whatever i want as orks keeps me going. Now that im at the point where i can play w/o proxies (99% of the time anyway) im kitbashing/scratchbuilding everything so my army stands out even more than most since its all "new" models.
I already have a bikerboss and a Deffdredd that catches peoples eyes, i must have an army that does the same!

This. Whenever I think of starting a new army, I generally lean towards making it into 'looted whatevers' and running it with my Orks.

Case in point, the Looted Necrons I'm working on. "Destroya Boss" and "Looted 'eavy Destroyas", along with "Ork Tin 'eads" standing in for Necron Warriors.

I found some space marines in a bitz box the other day... might just chop off the arms and heads and make them "Mehrine Boyz" aka 'ard boyz, though I always chuck in homebrewed unit listings for every unit I make like this

I have an Ork Meganob built out of marine parts and predator hatch afair.

How do I keep to one army?

Well, I don't, and I see no reason why your should feel obliged to either.
There is nothing that indicates that having one army is inherently superior to having several.