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People always say Knights and Custodes are the cheapest to build up to a 2K point army. I think if you look at the numbers you will disagree.

Custodes:
5 boxes of Vertus Praetors at $60 each is $300
2 Boxes of Custodian Guard at $60 each is $120
A total of $420
That gets you a pretty decent army:


Imperial Knights
The cheapest way to go is probably 2 of the Imperial Knight Renegades boxes. $195 each for $390
Then you need to add 2 Armigers for another $75
A total of $465

Here is your army:


If you want to go the Castellan route it is even more expensive.
Knight Renegades box. $195
Castellan $170
2 boxes of Armigers $75 * 2 = $150
Total of $515
That is pretty pricey almost any army can get you to 2K points for that much money.

Here is your army:



Now let's consider a Blood angel's + Dark Angels army.
The Golden Host box is $121. It gets you 15 Sanguanary Guard and a Sanguinar
One more box Sanguinary Guard is $33
Hellblasters are super cheap on ebay (dark Imperium). You can get 15 of them for $60
3 boxes of bolter scouts for $25 each is $75.
Now you need HQ's. My recommendation is $45 for the BA Vanguard Vets box + $15 for the easy to build intercessors or Reivers box.
You can use those two boxes to convert up two BA Hammer Captains, a DA librarian, and a DA ancient.

That brings the total to $349
Here is your army:


Tyranids might be the lowest bang for your buck. Many of their models, especially their newer sculpts are quite expensive.

 mrhappyface wrote:
Buy 3 Imperial Knight: Renegades sets for £90 each, sell the terrain off for £20 each and the extra Knight off for £50.

That's £160 for a full Imperial Knight list with all the options for weapons.

Isn't that bit more than 90£ though? Also where one would buy them? Firestorm games doesn't stock them nor does GW UK...

It's a shame we're at a point where army composition is near enough unbound, allowing elite builds in every faction, but given the horde meta such builds are as weak as they've ever been

I'd love to do a super elite ork list with only meganobz, walkers and characters in mega armour, but I'm deterred by how bad it would be

If you know you enjoy playing 40k and will be in the hobby for a while, then the cheapest army is the one you truly want to collect and play, even if it’s Genestealer Cults or Guard.

The reason it’s the cheapest is because you won’t have the expense of selling your budget army (at a loss) to buy the army you truly want to play. I am very much speaking from experience.

If money is an issue get to 500p fast and either play KT or 500p games and build up in 250p increments. You’ll also have a much easier time maintaining a fully painted force

When it comes to Custodes, you can supplement their numbers by converting spare AoS Stormcast eternals. There are more than enough weapons in the Custodian Guard box set to do this. I usually give the Stormcast the sword-shield options so they can hide behind the shield. I've used them without people noticing. You can get some stormcast starter guys for under $2 per figure (still on sprue) if you look around.

Also, Telemons can be had on ebay (with weapons) for as little as $40 from "some" sellers.

Well, I'd be cautious to play a Custodes or IK (or mixed) army.
These are absolutely small elite army and need a skilled player to field them successfully.
Today, board control is one of the big issues in matched play and small armies fail to fulfill this requirement.

If you want to play on the cheap Ebay stores are your best bet.
My last purchase of a 2k or so army was Tau. I got all new in box or still on sprue (2k+ army) for around $500-$600AU including delivery etc (was a few months ago now).
Included: 2x Start collecting boxes, 4x Broadsides, 3x Commander boxes, 2x Pathfinder boxes, 1x Fire warrior box, 2x Fireblades, 1 set of vespids, 1 pirannha. I didn't buy this all in one hit took me around a month to get all the good deals but was all on sprue or new so I didnt have to strip anything etc.

Ebay good sites (for delivery to Australia, the States probably has way more options/better deals):
aa-wargames (auction site, can get really great deals. Over time I think I bought 50% of my SoB from them for piss all and I had over 10k before I sold alot. Also got all my broadsides from them on sprue cheap as chips)
toygiftemporium (good deals, express shipping as well (5-7 days max from Britain to Australia. Though the shipping cost is high still works out cheaper than GW in total in Aus.)
thetrolltrader (got some great deals, cant remember for Tau what I got but I do remember getting a Corvus black star in box for half the retail cost)
bitzgalaxy (always has been awesome for bits and also has occasionally had full boxes for a good deal cheaper)

These are just a few I have used

Why has no one mentioned Death Guard?

Two boxes of DI = $160
Daemon Prince = $41 (actually the Daemon Prince of Nurgle is cheaper, but failcast and direct order only)
2x ETB Plague Marines = $30
3x Blight Crawler = $75
2x PBC = $130
Total = $436
(prices ins USD to make them comparable to tag8833's post above.
None of those models or boxes are direkt order only, so you can ~20% discount for all of them at third party sellers.

In total, you could get the entire army in mint condition sprues for about $350 and you could sell or trade your excess LOC, Blight Bringer and Plague Caster.

As for the army, you'll end up with:


It won't be winning tournaments, but it's definitely a solid army to play and win pick-up games.

tag8833 wrote:
People always say Knights and Custodes are the cheapest to build up to a 2K point army. I think if you look at the numbers you will disagree.

Custodes:
5 boxes of Vertus Praetors at $60 each is $300
2 Boxes of Custodian Guard at $60 each is $120
A total of $420
That gets you a pretty decent army:

Spoiler:

Custodes Battallion
Shield Captain on Bike
Shield Captain on Bike

Custodian Guard
Custodian Guard
Custodian Guard

Custodes Outrider
Shield Captain on Bike

5 Vertus Praetors
3 Vertus Praetors
3 Vertus Praetors

Imperial Knights
The cheapest way to go is probably 2 of the Imperial Knight Renegades boxes. $195 each for $390
Then you need to add 2 Armigers for another $75
A total of $465

Here is your army:

Spoiler:

Super Heavy Detachment:
Crusader
Crusader
Armiger

Super Heavy Detachment:
Gallant
Gallant
Armiger

If you want to go the Castellan route it is even more expensive.
Knight Renegades box. $195
Castellan $170
2 boxes of Armigers $75 * 2 = $150
Total of $515
That is pretty pricey almost any army can get you to 2K points for that much money.

Here is your army:

Spoiler:

Super Heavy Detachment:
Helverin
Helverin
Casteillan

Super Heavy Detachment:
Crusader
Errant (or Gallant)
Armiger

Now let's consider a Blood angel's + Dark Angels army.
The Golden Host box is $121. It gets you 15 Sanguanary Guard and a Sanguinar
One more box Sanguinary Guard is $33
Hellblasters are super cheap on ebay (dark Imperium). You can get 15 of them for $60
3 boxes of bolter scouts for $25 each is $75.
Now you need HQ's. My recommendation is $45 for the BA Vanguard Vets box + $15 for the easy to build intercessors or Reivers box.
You can use those two boxes to convert up two BA Hammer Captains, a DA librarian, and a DA ancient.

That brings the total to $349
Here is your army:

Spoiler:

Ba Battallion
Captain (JP, TH, SS)
Captain (JP, TH, SS)

Scouts
Scouts
Scouts

BA Vanguard
Sanguinar

5 Sanguinary Guard
5 Sanguinary Guard
10 Sanguinary Guard

DA Spearhead
Libby (JP)

Chapter Ancient

5 Hellblasters
5 Hellblasters
5 Hellblasters

Tyranids might be the lowest bang for your buck. Many of their models, especially their newer sculpts are quite expensive.

I feel like you could drive your price down on Custodes by not going so hard on Bikes, and still compete with that Marine list.

Marines are a good shout too though, thanks to all the secondary market of stuff from DI!

yeah,custodes have units other then Bikes.

In fact I'd advise against going so heavy in on bikes, at least until the sept FAQ hits.

 Galas wrote:
Ebay, 3rd party sites, people selling boxes in forums like these.

If you want' cheap avoid buying at retail.

I bought 400€ of New in box miniatures from a Uk user in dakkadakka for 120€.

I know which user you're on about, i remember posting in the same buy/sell thread, i did the same and ended up with about 300 quids worth of new in box models for less than 100.

The moral of this story is- there is no shortage of people in this hobby with more money than sense. Go to the "biggest waste of money" thread and you'll realise that any army can be had cheap- you just have to wait until some mug drops the cash on an army that isnt an auto win, realises before its all built and sells on ebay/dakka for a quarter of the cost.

Also, the boxsets GW bring out periodically such as Forgebane and Tooth and Claw are perfect- as they come at such a huge discount. I bought 3 boxes of tooth and claw- sold a considerable amount of the conetents (at well below 25% off rrp plus chucked a bunch of little extras in from the bits box of doom to compliment each purchasers army, so don't label me as some heartless reseller) in order to pay the cost of the boxsets and make a little bit of hobby money (made like 30 quid total profit with a few bits n bobs still to sell). The models i kept equate to WELL over 200 pounds RRP and basically finish off both my primars and GSC armies, so it does go to show that if you are on a budget- there are ways of building a lot of different armies at an absolute minimal cost.

BrianDavion wrote:
yeah,custodes have units other then Bikes.

In fact I'd advise against going so heavy in on bikes, at least until the sept FAQ hits.

Well yeah, the OP suggested they weren't going for a tournament winning list. 3 Shield Captain bikes is probably strong enough for this purpose!

Mostly Primaris based Space Marine army is pretty cheap to do. The Marine half of the Dark Imperium box is ever 800 points, and if one gets that twice all models are usable maybe besides some of the duplicate characters. Then just add couple of more units an you're done. (I think you could do the same with the Death Guard half if you prefer that.)

It works best if you get someone to share the box. Getting two boxes and swapping the models gets two people decent starting armies and the rulebooks. But if that can't be arranged, these models can be found pretty cheaply on Ebay.

Marines are not the best at the moment, but it is an army you can be sure will receive constant attention and will be well supported (the Primaris variant at least.)

Marines are not the best at the moment, but it is an army you can be sure will receive constant attention and will be well supported (the Primaris variant at least.)

Seconded.
Primaris lack reliable anti-tank atm. But I guess this will change in the near future.

Though I still fail to see why you shouldn't just field predators alongside primaris marines...

 Jidmah wrote:
Though I still fail to see why you shouldn't just field predators alongside primaris marines...

Well, you obviously can do that. It is just the minimarine infantry which looks weird next to the Primaris.

 Jidmah wrote:
Though I still fail to see why you shouldn't just field predators alongside primaris marines...

I agree with you. Predators are by no means the best tank in the game (I'd call them 'fair', which doesn't really cut it for tournaments) but they fill a needed niche in Primaris armies currently.

I have absolutely no problem fielding them alongside Primaris, but strict purists sometimes seem to. *Shrug*

BrianDavion wrote:
yeah,custodes have units other then Bikes.

True, they have that banner to protect the bikes on the first turn.
Box of 10 custodes even leaves the one model over for that purpose...

Process wrote:

 Galas wrote:
Ebay, 3rd party sites, people selling boxes in forums like these.

If you want' cheap avoid buying at retail.

I bought 400€ of New in box miniatures from a Uk user in dakkadakka for 120€.

I know which user you're on about, i remember posting in the same buy/sell thread, i did the same and ended up with about 300 quids worth of new in box models for less than 100.

The moral of this story is- there is no shortage of people in this hobby with more money than sense. Go to the "biggest waste of money" thread and you'll realise that any army can be had cheap- you just have to wait until some mug drops the cash on an army that isnt an auto win, realises before its all built and sells on ebay/dakka for a quarter of the cost.

Also, the boxsets GW bring out periodically such as Forgebane and Tooth and Claw are perfect- as they come at such a huge discount. I bought 3 boxes of tooth and claw- sold a considerable amount of the conetents (at well below 25% off rrp plus chucked a bunch of little extras in from the bits box of doom to compliment each purchasers army, so don't label me as some heartless reseller) in order to pay the cost of the boxsets and make a little bit of hobby money (made like 30 quid total profit with a few bits n bobs still to sell). The models i kept equate to WELL over 200 pounds RRP and basically finish off both my primars and GSC armies, so it does go to show that if you are on a budget- there are ways of building a lot of different armies at an absolute minimal cost.

From this I would agree on the hugh savings in box sets sometimes get espec if like the armies. For example I bought 3 Death masque box sets when were released (don't bother looking for them are out of production cause were so good a deal, I actually got my wife to buy an extra one in Canada in French (so have 4 tbh) cause was so good at the time). I love to buy from GW if can (if don't support them nothing happens) if going for a major faction maybe some big boxes, but tbh check out ebay first.

fe40k wrote:
Custodes.

Buy regular marines and paint them silver/gold; should be lots of food deals since there’s lots of boxed sets

Edit: yes JetBikes/JetBike captains are op; but they’re more expensive. Just convert bikes of your own

I haven't read the rest of the responses yet, but there's a noticeable difference in the size of the Custodes model compared to a Space Marine or even a Primaris Marine. Custodes models are noticeably larger.

SG


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Snake Tortoise wrote:
It's a shame we're at a point where army composition is near enough unbound

I'm not sure if this is where you're going with this idea, but I really miss formations from 7th.

SG

If you're talking about a tourney meta, I have nothing to add.

In a more casual meta, you can build a relatively tasty 2K Slaanesh Daemon for about $500 (CAD) if you rely heavily on the Start Collecting! boxes.

Definitely Custodes.... the most expensive I would say would be Tyranids

Spartacus wrote:

 Galef wrote:
Putting effort into converting a model is always assumed from me.
All I am saying is that it would take minimal effort to get GK models, paint them gold and red and for them to NOT look like Custodes. You can even glue their storm bolter to their Halberds to create the same weapon

As GK models are roughly half the cost of Custodes, yet the in-game points cost is higher, Bam! Cheap army

I don't think anyone could seriously look me in the eye and say that wouldn't work. They're Citadel models. The Imperial super humans in future armour. They have guns on their spears. They're Custodes.

-

Yeah but as a starting army?

When you first started building miniatures do you think your level of ability would have allowed you to convert an entire army like this to a reasonable standard? Definitely not me...

Its not a terrible idea, just bad advice in this context.

Fair point. I've assembled, converted and painted over 3,000 models at this point, so I tend to forget it's not as easy for folks just getting started.
Still, I feel a GK Strike box assembled as-is (maybe gluing the stormbolter to the halberd shaft instead of on their wrist) painted gold would more than adequately represent Custodes.
Just enough to go from "proxy" to "conversion". And the GK box is about half the cost for 5 models.

The reason I convert so much is that when I got started with 40K I couldn't afford it. I managed to get a Nid army worth over $600 for less than $300 mainly by converting plastic Warriors & Carnifex into the various models that were metal at the time. Lictors, Zoans, Tyrants, etc.
So when someone asks what the cheapest army is, my solution will always involve turning cheaper set A into expensive unit B.

-

I'd actually argue the best value 2k list is a space marine one built around the betrayal at calth box...

Be careful about jumping into custodes or knights as a solo faction just because they're cheap for a whole army relatively. Custodes are hard to play solo faction because they're bad. Their bikers are good as a supplemental unit in some lists.

Knights aren't easy to play well and a pure knight army probably isn't a good first army. An imperial army with a knight would be different.

If you play a pure knight list as a new player against casual gamers you're going to crush them most of the time, because a lot of casual lists simply can't kill a knight army. If you play a pure knight army against a more competitive player but you don't have a good feel for the game, target priority, when to use what strats, what you can beat in melee and what you can't, etc, then you're probably going to get crushed by him.

I would look at which start collecting boxes get you models that you would always use in basically every game.

IG has a good start collecting box but IG are an expensive army to buy because everything is so low in points.

Tau has a very good one price wise. 3 Crisis suits, a FW team, and an ethereal. Crisis suits are bad from a competitive point of view but they're not so bad that you wouldn't want to run them in regular games.

Eldar has a good SC box too if you want wraiths. The main core of my Iyanden army was 2 start collecting boxes, 2 guardian squads, and 2 wave serpents.

Ad Mech is good but the stuff you'll want outside the SC box is very expensive so probably not what you want. The box gets you some skiitari and a dunecrawler which you'll want but the Kastellan robots and Dragoons are really expensive.

A mix of regular marines and primaris marines is a good standard for new players. Find a dark imperium set on ebay and get some scouts and tacticals to start with.

There also have been a lot of marine boxed sets over the years so you can still pick up some of the old sprues on ebay cheap. There was a boxed set that came with 3 dark angels bikers and I bought sets of 3 bikers from that for 15$ on ebay about a year ago.

I'm surprised no one has suggested Knight AND Custodes (sorry if I missed it). 3-4 Knights and 3 Dawneagle Captains could be fun and relatively cheap.
Just get 2 Knight Renegade boxes and the Custodes bike set

That's probably not very good though. Shield Captains need screens to survive. Things they can fly behind and keep from being shot at. Knights don't screen much area, and a few knights will be characters so they're ignored for the character targeting rules. The shield captains would just get blasted early cause there's not enough to screen them.

 GamerGuy wrote:
I'd actually argue the best value 2k list is a space marine one built around the betrayal at calth box...

The one that is no longer for sale (pulled very recently from GW's site forever along with Burning of Prospero as well)?

SG

Process wrote:

 Galas wrote:
Ebay, 3rd party sites, people selling boxes in forums like these.

If you want' cheap avoid buying at retail.

I bought 400€ of New in box miniatures from a Uk user in dakkadakka for 120€.

I know which user you're on about, i remember posting in the same buy/sell thread, i did the same and ended up with about 300 quids worth of new in box models for less than 100.

The moral of this story is- there is no shortage of people in this hobby with more money than sense. Go to the "biggest waste of money" thread and you'll realise that any army can be had cheap- you just have to wait until some mug drops the cash on an army that isnt an auto win, realises before its all built and sells on ebay/dakka for a quarter of the cost.

Also, the boxsets GW bring out periodically such as Forgebane and Tooth and Claw are perfect- as they come at such a huge discount. I bought 3 boxes of tooth and claw- sold a considerable amount of the conetents (at well below 25% off rrp plus chucked a bunch of little extras in from the bits box of doom to compliment each purchasers army, so don't label me as some heartless reseller) in order to pay the cost of the boxsets and make a little bit of hobby money (made like 30 quid total profit with a few bits n bobs still to sell). The models i kept equate to WELL over 200 pounds RRP and basically finish off both my primars and GSC armies, so it does go to show that if you are on a budget- there are ways of building a lot of different armies at an absolute minimal cost.

Exactly. Since I started again this hobby 2 years ago I have built a Dark Angels Force, a Tau force, Adeptus Custodes, Imperial Knights, Tempestus Scions, and Necrons.All of them with fieldable 2k point armies and others with much more (I have like 5.000 points of Tau. I bought 1000€ worth of models built and primed for 200€. A mistake. It was the first thing I bought and it waas too much for me, I have fielded them 3 times in 8th, I play mostly with DA), and do you know how much everything has cost me? +340€. Yeah. I kept a balance, and by selling halves of discounted boxes of GW, and other miniatures that I find in old shops, etc and then looking for the best offers... basically my hobby has paid by himself.
Yeah, I need to go out there and look for boxes, or take the time to put them on ebay and sell them, but I actually enjoy doing that.

 ServiceGames wrote:

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Snake Tortoise wrote:
It's a shame we're at a point where army composition is near enough unbound

I'm not sure if this is where you're going with this idea, but I really miss formations from 7th.

SG

I wasn't, but I can see why formations might be missed. While I'd like to see small, elite armies become viable again (without purely depending on a handful of overpowered units) I think it's positive that troops are in such a good place. It seems a fair deal that a terminator army has far fewer command points than a conventional list with lots of troops, the only problem is the troop heavy list doesn't need those command points to win against the vast majority of elite lists