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I massively reduced the money spent on models with these simple steps:
- don't buy anything new as long as there is anything that's not ready to play
- don't glue the base on anything that's not completely painted because it will get in the way
- hate painting

On the plus side, the percentage of painted models in my collection has sky-rocketed.

Karol wrote:

 wuestenfux wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:

 wuestenfux wrote:
The time where you get a new 2000 pt army for cheap directly from GW or a retailer is more or less over.
You could consider 3 Knights plus 2 Armiger Warglaives. Five models but cheap? No, not really.

depends on how you define cheap. I mean it IS relevative.

I guess you need about 500 bucks for a new army.
300 bucks is a bit too less but it was doable in former years.

Bit mind blowing to be honest. people here with normal salaries do aroundd 450$ a month. And by people I mean adults with real jobs. Even stranger is the fact that this is unoptimised lists, In practice I would say that unless someone can spend 150-200$ per month on models, it is probably better not to start. And big splash of buying all stuff in one go, is probably the best, just after a CA drops in, so the chance of good stuff staying good for longest time is the biggest.

I advise people to do the exact opposite, usually. Start with Kill Team, buying one box of models and using the communal copy of the rules we have. Then slowly build up, painting as you go, with the first goal being a functional list at 1,000pts. Play at that level for as long as you can because 1,000pt games IMO are the best way to learn the mechanics of the game.

I'm disappointed any time someone shows up and drops a ton on 2,000pts of models. Almost inevitably, those people burn out and leave. There are innumerable things that suck about having a newly bought army at 2000pts without having learned the game.

1) You've got a wall of grey plastic staring you down that will take hundreds of hours to paint. So many people just give up in the face of enormous projects like that, myself included.

2) You probably bought secondhand models that were built and optimized for previous editions and are ass now, or you assembled all your models with zero understanding of what's good. Either way, your 500 bucks is now much, much less functional than it could be.

3) Even if you miraculously stumbled into a tournament list (or you googled what's the best army list and built that) you probably don't know how to play it. Contrary to popular internet smart guy wisdom, brand spanking new players generally suck, and most people don't get more than 1 game of practice a week. So while you might suck the first 30 games you play in a new multiplayer video game, that's one night of frustration. if you suck the first 30 games of 40k you play...that's more than half a year of frustration.

4) many, many, MANY people buy the discounted 40k starter box and either start a marine army or a whatever the marines are fighting in the starter box army. Over 50% of new players I see have either a Marine or DG list, and start that army because they already dropped 100 bucks and now they have sunk cost built up in their brains. So, rather than start an army that's actually their favorite, they either A, stick with marines and end up bored as hell of them, or B, they make posts on an internet forum about what is the cheapest army and go with that instead of the army they actually want to play because it's too expensive.

Making a 600$ investment in...whatever, Drukhari say, if that's your favorite thing, over the course of a 6-month to 1-year period, you will ALWAYS be happier than if you make a 400$ investment into space marines all in one go. Always always always I promise you, pinky swear, cross my heart and hope to die.

Dayvuni wrote:
Swarm armies are generally more expensive because (for example) $100 of ork models may only be worth 200 points, but $100 of space marine models might be 400 points simply because the stats are different so you get more points per dollar with one army than another. If this is generally true, the cost to build a 2,000 point army in different based on the race. Has anyone thought about what would be the best army, point-per-dollar, would be to build?

Edit: on GW site, 11 ork boyz is $35 while 10 tactical space marines is $45 and 10 chaos marines are $60

If you want cheap retail then you have to be looking at the start collecting boxes, the bigger boxes they typically do in the run up to Xmas and the special edition big boxes. They all tend to have pretty useful discounts on them even before you look at which retailers might give you further discount over GW. The apocalypse box sets for example had really steep discounts, like the most value-add one was £100 for £170 worth of models purchased separately.

So maybe the question is which big boxes give great value and which have a good balance of playable models.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
How expensive are Custodes again?

$60 for 5 bodies.

I would wager Custodes would be the cheapest army; they're very good cost-to-points ratio, and you don't have to buy extra HQ's because the HQ's are just models from the normal unit boxes. OTOH, you may wind up wanting forge world stuff because you have a short roster, which will swing things the other way.

Sunny Side Up wrote:
Ask your friends / local game clubs & stores for old sprues.

Build a Necron army.

Spoiler:

It's 100% official GW product as well

This is genius.

the_scotsman 780498 10576657 wrote:

I advise people to do the exact opposite, usually. Start with Kill Team, buying one box of models and using the communal copy of the rules we have. Then slowly build up, painting as you go, with the first goal being a functional list at 1,000pts. Play at that level for as long as you can because 1,000pt games IMO are the best way to learn the mechanics of the game.

I'm disappointed any time someone shows up and drops a ton on 2,000pts of models. Almost inevitably, those people burn out and leave. There are innumerable things that suck about having a newly bought army at 2000pts without having learned the game.

.

yeah that kind of a requires two things. first people playing kill team or the kill team for AoS in that area, and a communal set of books being a thing.

as the other things go.
1) that is only a problem if you want or have to paint the army.
2)my models are almost all metal. only the rhinos and the NDK are plastic. I had no idea what optimisation was, when I started, assumed, wrongly, that nothing can be too bad.
3) Doesn't matter. It is easier to learn with a good army, then learn over time with a bad one, coming to a conclusion after 1-2 years, that there is nothing you can do to fix the army yourself. Closest thing being buying, so many models, you may as well buy a new good army. Plus from personal expiriance speaking, I am neither the best or even a good w40k players, but I was able to go win a game w40k with a pre nerf Inari army, using a set of direction told me before the game, by the army owner.

4)True, I guess. But you have to live in a place where many many people play w40k. When you get one new person per month, the influx of drop outs and used up started boxs is small. To give an example, our area did not have enough chaos player to buy halfs of the new double box, this ment few marine players actualy own the new phobos stuff. And online stuff ain't much better, we have a w40k trade point online, but most of it is people selling their old WFB armies or old marine armies.
The new stuff gets bought up real fast, and is few and far in between.

Making a 600$ investment in...whatever, Drukhari say, if that's your favorite thing, over the course of a 6-month to 1-year period, you will ALWAYS be happier than if you make a 400$ investment into space marines all in one go. Always always always I promise you, pinky swear, cross my heart and hope to die

Well on that I have zero opinion, because of lack of expiriance. My free/hobby budget is 10$ per month. So unless I win a lottery, 100$ investment per month are not going to happen for me, any time soon.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
How expensive are Custodes again?

$60 for 5 bodies.

I would wager Custodes would be the cheapest army; they're very good cost-to-points ratio, and you don't have to buy extra HQ's because the HQ's are just models from the normal unit boxes. OTOH, you may wind up wanting forge world stuff because you have a short roster, which will swing things the other way.

I did the math for a friend starting the game some time ago. For a "real" army Custodes come in at a close second after DG who are cheap as dirt due to all the people cannibalizing the starter sets for primaris, with knights with the now OOP renegade box and armingers from forgebane being third.
They save a lot of money because one box of custodes is usually worth two or three times as many points as an infantry box of most other armies, and they get almost all of their characters from regular boxes, so no single model tax.
Two boxes of regular custodes, two boxes of terminators, one box of bikes and the named character result in a battalion with a shield captain, a vexilia, three squads of 3 custodes and a squad of 5 allarus terminators, plus three dawneagle captain - about 1800 points for just 245€, brand new from GW.
In comparison, when getting speed freaks, two additional buggies (wartrike and scrapjet) and two more boxes of warbikers to make a full squad you pay 265€ for 739 points - using a heavily discounted box set (290€ otherwise).

Without a doubt the answer is either Primaris marines or death guard.

The reason being the sheer availability of their main models for a fraction of the price due to their inclusion in the starter sets.

There's also several copies of the magazine Warhammer Conquest on many online retailers where for not much money you can get models worth far, far more. I live in the UK for example and the last copy saw it include Typhus. a £25 model for £7.99