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Now do you see why I keep saying I want that Manta update? Hahah. I might even be convinced to buy two! Nah screw that FW is too expensive to have two. Two mantas is too rich for my blood. I wish the Dark Eldar got some really cool and big models that could act as set pieces for their side. Necrtons feel lie they have too little visual variety for a big army. IoM has a vast array of choice and big models, but I overall prefer the DE and Necrons visual wise. What a conundrum I'm in.

Edit
One way I considered keeping the DE fresh model wise is to have the primary component of the army, but then have smaller gangs here and there. So I might paint up 9 reavers in the main scheme, and then 3 more in another scheme and 3 more in another to represent it's a bunch of different gangs all working together.

When the 40k battle dioramah is done I'm going to do an age of sigmar one Kharadron Overlords vs Skaven or possibly Cthulhu Elves. Or even beastclaw Raiders. Not sure yet.

 Elbows wrote:
I'll be honest...it's rather a silly project, because you'll never get to actually use it all.

The full SM Chapter doesn't work because Tac SM are all identical. Distinguishing all of the Companies or Tactical Squads is just buying more of the same models that you'll never field. Heck, even a full Battle Company is overkill for the game, but at least, you'll have a chance at fielding most of it.

Imperial Guard has a similar problem, but the Platoon structure (and lower points cost per model) makes it easy to collect (and field) a hundred or more Guardsmen.

OTOH, Eldar, with all of their specialists? It's much too easy to get carried away Pokemonning the Codex, especially with the fluff encouraging Black Guardians, Aspect Hosts, Ghost Warriors, Jetbike-heavy, Ranger/Pathfinders, Harlequins and so forth...

It would be an insane about of money to get an Imperial Guard regiment, not to mention time and such.

A regiment is like 3000 men.

 Wyzilla wrote:
It is quite literally impossible to make a full craftworld army. Nobody can afford to buy millions of Eldar Guardians.

Bigger issue would actually be time in terms of somebody being able to do. GW could do that without being too expensive IF they don't have their machines running on 24/7 running time. Plastic is practically free so as long as this don't mean slowing down production of sprues for sale(which would cost them money) they could have machine print out guardian sprues at downtime.

Problem is who has time to assemble and paint those millions of guardians?-) Human time also costs money so short of GW guys doing it on their free time out of "I want to see them" that would be too expensive for the company. Plastic itself they could justify as marketing expenses since that's peanuts compared to the assemble/painting time cost.

OF course even for PR that's pretty silly project

I can't give you points, but I have 2,720 litres of toy soldiers (including packaging and foam)

Necrons: 2 monoliths, 200 warriors, 200 immortals, 10 destroyers, 5 heavy destroyers (troops all metal)

Orks: 300 boyz, and the rest of the usual gubbinz

Tyranids: 200 hormagaunts, 200 termagants, 200 gargoyles, 200 genestealers, 100 warriors, 15 carnifexes, etc....

Ultramarines: about 7000 points last I looked

Grey Knights: None

 LordofHats wrote:
Well I mean, a standard chapter is what, 100 terminators, 440 Tactical marines, 180 Devastator Marines, and 180 Assault Marines, + say 100 scouts I guess? So...

20 x 60 is 1200

44 x 50 is 2200

36 x 55 is 1980

36 x 49 is 1764

20 x 30 is 600

so $7,744 (not counting tax) assuming you're starting from scratch just for your infantry. Drop pods and rhinos and land raiders for every squad would add $4,475 (again no tax), and say you go with only two land raiders cause they're rare and I doubt any chapter is gonna have 20 of them, and that's $178 for a total of $12,397 and you could probably save anywhere from 25% to 15% buying from not GW. Check my math of course I'm pretty bad at it, I curious how much it would actually cost myself now XD

Of course this doesn't account for dreadnoughts or independent characters (chaplains, librarians and the like).

My suggestion is your chapter is on its last leg and struggling to survive

Thinking about it the Tau are often described as a "semi-elite" army. While Eldar and Space Marines would fall into the elite category. I wonder what a full hunter cadre would be in fluff that matches the full chapter?

If an IG Regiment is on the high side and space marines the very low then I would put the Tau around anywhere from 1000-1500 soldiers in a Hunter Cadre. The bulk would be troops of course. So I'll try throw some ballpark numbers out there.

200 Kroot

50 Kroot Hounds

30 Krootox

1 Kroot Shaper

100 Vespids

804 Firewarriors (12 man squads)

100 Pathfinders

52 Sniper Drone Teams (base 4 man squad)

7 Cadre Fireblades to lead the soldiers

110 Devilfish (I put some spares since you wan't backups in case they get destroyed over prolonged combat)

66 Hammerheads (some of these would be command tanks)

33 Piranha

27 Skyray

1 Longstrike style tank commander

2 Sub-Commanders

1 Commander

1-3 Ethereal's

150 Crisis Suits (amount of officers depends on how they are organized.

60 Stealth Suits

30 Ghostkeels

54 Riptides (18 Squad leaders)

18 Stormsurges

12 Razorshark

6 Sunshark

Not sure how much drones this is, but a lot haha. Someone can probably also calculate how much Manta's would be needed. For the firewarriors and pathfinders alone it would be 31 Manta's which could also hold between 20 suits to 4 tanks or 8 smallers vehicles. At a ballpark to carry all of this I would say.... 41 Manta's. Some would likely not be carrying fire warriors but modified to fit in other things. That's probably half of all the Manta's GW has made lol.

For a Tau "Battle Company" since the term doesn't exist but really should since it would be a logistical nightmare to call everything hunter cadres. You probably want about... 2-3 Manta's full up. Mostly because of the vehicles and suits taking up so much space.

I can only imagine the pain a fully modeled 3000 man IG regiment would be. Pain my friendo absolute pain.

Edit
I did the math quick and in Canadian dollars for the full Tau Huner Cadre I've pulled up it would be 133,465 CAD. That includes Manta's which bring the cost up a huge margin. Still even without the Manta's its crazy.

Actually, the Tau Hunter Cadre isn't equivalent to a Regiment or Chapter.

A Tau Hunter Cadre is more equivalent to an Imperial Guard Company, and I can likewise assume that a Company of Guardsmen is equivalent to a Company of Space Marines. The Tau equivalent of a Regiment or Chapter is actually called a Contingent, consisting of three to six Cadres. Then, if you want to get bigger, three to six Contingents forms a Commune (albeit as a temporary formation). All Fire Caste forces in an area are known as a Command, and command of all Tau forces (Air, Earth, Water and Fire Castes) is a Coalition.

So, if you wanted to make a match for a regiment in Tau, you'd need 3-6 Hunter Cadres, and due to the Formation in the Tau book (Mont'ka?), and the Apocalypse book, we know how big a Hunter Cadre is (2 Fire Warriors, 3 XV8 Crisis Suits, XV88 Broadsides, a Hammerhead, Sky Ray, 2 Kroot Carnivore Squads, and a Piranha Team) or (A Battlesuit Commander and an optional Fireblade and Bodyguard, 3-6 teams of Fire Warriors or Kroot, 1-3 squads of Crisis suits, Stealth suits, Riptides, or Ghostkeels, 1-3 squads of Pathfinders, Drones, Piranhas, or Vespids, and 1-3 squads of Broadsides, Hammerheads, Stormsurges, or Sniper Drones.). Alongside the smaller auxiliary formations, 3-6 of these would be a Contingent, the Regiment equivalent.

Well, considering I have, as best as I figure it, around 70 total SM, probably about 100 if I get them all assembled and painted. So I already have about a battle company of infantry (Tac/Dev/Aslt + Termies and HQs)

My Chapter, Imperii Dei, just survived a massive Tyranid onslaught, I am still writing the fluff for them, but basically they and another chapter weather the storm together, resulting in MASSIVE casualties, so they merge into one chapter. Most vehicles are destroyed and most non-marine members are dead (scouts and what not)

My FLGS started working on a full ultramarines chapter, as we had about 4 people playing them when the project started. Here's the chapter at it's biggest collective point we have a picture for, but I know we got to about 70% complete.



When it comes to building a company or chapter, there are a number of ways to make it significantly cheaper.

The horus heresy boxes are your friends. The Prospero box is the cheapest way to get tacticals in any form. Lets assume you're getting a 20% discount either in store or online- FLGS owners will offer that kind of discount when you're buying in bulk. We'll take that now $120 box and sell the characters, custodes, sisters and terminators. Individually you can probably get around 70-80 bucks for those, so we've got 30 tacticals for 40-50 dollars or so. The terminators and dreadnoughts usually sell for about 60 bucks total, so we've got calth tacticals for $60.

WIth a bit of converting these guys can also be assault marines, using the pistol/chainsword arms from the sergeants and jump packs available from the GW webstore. You have heavy bolters and missile launchers for devestators, but alternative weapons can be found on bits sites. Alternatively 2 devestator squad boxes make 24 heavy weapons, so those two boxes should be enough to equip multiple companies of heavy weapons.

Mk7 heads and shoulder pads are the cheapest things on bits sites. Just replacing the heads and shoulder pads on 30k marines goes a long way toward modernizing the heresy units.

Here's the Ultramarines from Codex: Space Marines:



(Excuse the photography.)

Okay, So I have built my chapter layout. Now nothing is final, but this will be the blueprint I am going to be working on. Dedicated transports are not listed with their associated unit, but are listed in vehicle armory section. This list is based on a Codex Chapter.

Stats:
Approx 900 total Full Battle Brothers
Approx 35,000 pts
Total Cost in USD - TBD

Chapter Command Elements:

1x Chapter Master
- Honor Guard
10x Captains
- Each with a Command Squad, except 1st Company who has a Super Veteran Terminator Command Squad
11x Chaplains
- 1x Reclusiarch, 10x Chaplains
5x Librarians
- 1x Chief Librarian, 2x Epistolaries, 2x Codiciers

++++++ 1st Company ++++++

Approximately 100 Brothers - All with Terminator Honors

2x Venerable Dreadnoughts
2x Vanguard Veteran Squads (1x with Jump Packs, both with 10x Men)
2x Sternguard Squads (10x Men)
2x Terminator Assault Squad (10x Men each)
4x Terminator Squads (10x Men each)

++++++ 2nd Through 5th Companies ++++++

Battle Companies, Approximately 100 Brothers Each, identical makeup.

2x Dreadnoughts
6x Tactical Squads
2x Assault Squads
2x Devastator Squads (1x Anti Tank and 1x Anti Personnel)

++++++ 6th and 7th Company ++++++

Reserve Companies - Tactical Marines - Approximately 100 Brothers

10x Tactical Squads

++++++ 8th Company ++++++

Assault Company - Captain, command squad, all troops with jump packs - Approximately 100 Brothers

10x Assault Squads

++++++ 9th Company ++++++

Devastator Company - Approximately 50 Brothers

5x Anti Tank Devastator Squads
5x Anti Infantry Devastator Squads

++++++ 10th Company ++++++

Initiate Company - Variable amount of Initiates

Variable Number of Scout Squads.

++++++ Vehicle Armory ++++++

15x Drop Pods
20x Rhino
14x Razorbacks
10x Lands Speeders
4x Land Speeder Storms
3x Land Raiders
8x Predators
9x Hunters
9x Stalkers
4x Vindicators
6x Whirlwinds
6x Stormtalon Gunships
3x Stormraven Gunships

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:
Actually, the Tau Hunter Cadre isn't equivalent to a Regiment or Chapter.

A Tau Hunter Cadre is more equivalent to an Imperial Guard Company, and I can likewise assume that a Company of Guardsmen is equivalent to a Company of Space Marines. The Tau equivalent of a Regiment or Chapter is actually called a Contingent, consisting of three to six Cadres. Then, if you want to get bigger, three to six Contingents forms a Commune (albeit as a temporary formation). All Fire Caste forces in an area are known as a Command, and command of all Tau forces (Air, Earth, Water and Fire Castes) is a Coalition.

So, if you wanted to make a match for a regiment in Tau, you'd need 3-6 Hunter Cadres, and due to the Formation in the Tau book (Mont'ka?), and the Apocalypse book, we know how big a Hunter Cadre is (2 Fire Warriors, 3 XV8 Crisis Suits, XV88 Broadsides, a Hammerhead, Sky Ray, 2 Kroot Carnivore Squads, and a Piranha Team) or (A Battlesuit Commander and an optional Fireblade and Bodyguard, 3-6 teams of Fire Warriors or Kroot, 1-3 squads of Crisis suits, Stealth suits, Riptides, or Ghostkeels, 1-3 squads of Pathfinders, Drones, Piranhas, or Vespids, and 1-3 squads of Broadsides, Hammerheads, Stormsurges, or Sniper Drones.). Alongside the smaller auxiliary formations, 3-6 of these would be a Contingent, the Regiment equivalent.

Ah excellent. Thanks. I didn't even realize the different terminology of the scales there. I'll have to go and take a more in depth look at those now. Still sounds like a crazy amount of money and time to spend though haha. I'm assuming for a FSE army the sizes remain the same but would use the dawn blade as the base formation?

 Gamgee wrote:

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:
Actually, the Tau Hunter Cadre isn't equivalent to a Regiment or Chapter.

A Tau Hunter Cadre is more equivalent to an Imperial Guard Company, and I can likewise assume that a Company of Guardsmen is equivalent to a Company of Space Marines. The Tau equivalent of a Regiment or Chapter is actually called a Contingent, consisting of three to six Cadres. Then, if you want to get bigger, three to six Contingents forms a Commune (albeit as a temporary formation). All Fire Caste forces in an area are known as a Command, and command of all Tau forces (Air, Earth, Water and Fire Castes) is a Coalition.

So, if you wanted to make a match for a regiment in Tau, you'd need 3-6 Hunter Cadres, and due to the Formation in the Tau book (Mont'ka?), and the Apocalypse book, we know how big a Hunter Cadre is (2 Fire Warriors, 3 XV8 Crisis Suits, XV88 Broadsides, a Hammerhead, Sky Ray, 2 Kroot Carnivore Squads, and a Piranha Team) or (A Battlesuit Commander and an optional Fireblade and Bodyguard, 3-6 teams of Fire Warriors or Kroot, 1-3 squads of Crisis suits, Stealth suits, Riptides, or Ghostkeels, 1-3 squads of Pathfinders, Drones, Piranhas, or Vespids, and 1-3 squads of Broadsides, Hammerheads, Stormsurges, or Sniper Drones.). Alongside the smaller auxiliary formations, 3-6 of these would be a Contingent, the Regiment equivalent.

Ah excellent. Thanks. I didn't even realize the different terminology of the scales there. I'll have to go and take a more in depth look at those now. Still sounds like a crazy amount of money and time to spend though haha. I'm assuming for a FSE army the sizes remain the same but would use the dawn blade as the base formation?

With FSE, they'd most likely use the Dawn Blade as their Hunter Cadre equivalent.

The Tau one does seem cheaper than the full Chapter or Regiment. If we assume middle ground, of four Hunter Cadres, that wouldn't be too bad. Still very expensive, no less.

This is one of the main reasons I liked Formations. I rarely took the big "Decurion" equivalents for the bonuses they gave me, but for the fluffy composition of units. I will most likely still field my full Battle Company in 8th because of the fluff, not for the power. Hell, I always used 10 man squads where I could, and I didn't make use of the free transports from the Gladius. The big Decurion formations are very good at making these "company"-sized armies.

So for a fluffy Dawn Blade Contingent model wise I'm going to lowball it. All squads are maxed out though same with vehicle squads ect. It's harder to really pin down what a Tau army is since so many of these are very versatile. 549 people in this army. If this was a Tau Empire there would be way more infantry.

Edit
Actually I did something wrong. I should have tripped the amount of troops in each auxiliary formation because for each "core" of the contingent your able to take 10 aux formations ie one of each. Riptide Wings, Ghostkeel Wing, and Ethereal are extra though so I will cap those at one each since they are not technically a part of the formation itself but are ad-ons. 1183 people in the HC. Adding in one more maxed out retaliation or hunter cadre (with maxed aux) would likely bring it up to a typical Contingent in size.

1 "The Eight"
9 Crisis Suit Body Guards

2 Retaliation Cadre

2 Commanders
54 Crisis Suits
6 Broadside Battlesuits
6 Riptides

1 Hunter Cadre

1 Commander
1 Cadre Fireblade
9 Crisis Bodyguard
40 Breachers (4 Devilfish)
24 Strikers
12 Stealth Suits
3 Ghostkeel
20 Pathfinder
12 Drones
3 Hammerhead
3 Stormsurge

I will assume one of each auxiliary formation.

3 Counterstrike Cadre
30 Pathfinders (3 Devilfish)
90 breachers (9 Devilfish)

3 Rapid Insertion Force
18 Stealth Suits
27 Crisis Suits
9 Riptides

3 Ranged Support
90 Pathfinders
27 Broadside

3 Piranha Firestream
60 Piranha

3 Firebase Support Cadre
18 Broadsides
9 Riptides

3 Skysweep Missile Defense
3 Devilfish
27 Skyray

3 Assigned Air Caste Asset
3 Sunshark

3 Air Superiority Cadre
6 Razorshark

3 Dronenet
144 Drones

3 Allied Advanced Cadre
300 Kroot
72 Vespid

Ethereal Council
3 Etherreal

Riptide Wing
9 Riptides

Ghostkeel Wing
9 Ghostkeel

 Gamgee wrote:
So for a fluffy Dawn Blade Contingent model wise I'm going to lowball it. All squads are maxed out though same with vehicle squads ect. It's harder to really pin down what a Tau army is since so many of these are very versatile. 549 people in this army. If this was a Tau Empire there would be way more infantry.

Edit
Actually I did something wrong. I should have tripped the amount of troops in each auxiliary formation because for each "core" of the contingent your able to take 10 aux formations ie one of each. Riptide Wings, Ghostkeel Wing, and Ethereal are extra though so I will cap those at one each since they are not technically a part of the formation itself but are ad-ons.

1 "The Eight"
9 Crisis Suit Body Guards

2 Retaliation Cadre

2 Commanders
54 Crisis Suits
6 Broadside Battlesuits
6 Riptides

1 Hunter Cadre

1 Commander
1 Cadre Fireblade
9 Crisis Bodyguard
40 Breachers (4 Devilfish)
24 Strikers
12 Stealth Suits
3 Ghostkeel
20 Pathfinder
12 Drones
3 Hammerhead
3 Stormsurge

I will assume one of each auxiliary formation.

3 Counterstrike Cadre
30 Pathfinders (3 Devilfish)
90 breachers (9 Devilfish)

3 Rapid Insertion Force
18 Stealth Suits
27 Crisis Suits
9 Riptides

3 Ranged Support
90 Pathfinders
27 Broadside

3 Piranha Firestream
60 Piranha

3 Firebase Support Cadre
18 Broadsides
9 Riptides

3 Skysweep Missile Defense
3 Devilfish
27 Skyray

3 Assigned Air Caste Asset
3 Sunshark

3 Air Superiority Cadre
6 Razorshark

3 Dronenet
144 Drones

3 Allied Advanced Cadre
300 Kroot
72 Vespid

Ethereal Council
3 Etherreal

Riptide Wing
9 Riptides

Ghostkeel Wing
9 Ghostkeel

And that's just one Hunter Cadre. To get a full Contingent, you'd need 3-6 times that.

I realized my mistake with the auxiliary. For a full sized cadre? Well... for simplicity sake double that one and assume your not bringing in things like sniper drone teams and a few other things here and there from the codex. Just don't double the riptide wing, ghostkeel wing, or ethereal. I assume those are expensive rare formations since they are add-ons to the army itself and not part of the basic formation itself.

You could save some time here and there by toning down on the body guards to just two per commander, but yes for the maxed out fluffy army it's insane. So a Tau Hunter Contingent (Regiment) is anywhere from 1000 (low side) to 2000 guys. A regular Tau army contingent could have far far more models and less suits. This is after all an FSE army.

Edit
I think I could do the smallest of contingents over my lifetime. If i had access to a place I could airbrush no problem at all. Granted I am on Salarian time here so I might have to do a mimimum squad thing. My Tau Commander who defected from the Empire to the FSE had to fight for survival and he and many of his own people didn't make it to the FSE. Most of the civilians on the colony ships were also destroyed in the escape attempts to replacing losses has been slow and hard let alone dealing with the hostile wildlife and natives trying to get the colony world going. Also being a desert planet doesn't help. So I think I could explain why his forces are so much smaller than the rest of the FSE itself.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Is there a dark Eldar or Necron equivalent to these different army sizes?

 chromedog wrote:
I only know of this one.
Celestial Lions (Canberra, Australia).
AFAIK, he's doing the entire chapter, infantry included, and he has in excess of 1000 infantry to go with this stuff.

Spoiler:

In the process of being unpacked. He's been out of country for work for a few years.

He posted the pics of the units on FB the other day

Big army is big

Lol make a Waaaagh! Use a parking lot as the table top.