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Collecting on a budget. What cost saving tips do you guys have? I've got a few questions to start.

Do spray paints save you money when under and base coating? Which are the low and high cost armies? Are some battalion boxes a better deal than others? What about a brigade box?

Where are you playing and what army? Depending on those factors, you might be able to get some pretty decent savings by going the non-gw route. Apart from that, elite armies like Ogres and Warriors of chaos are the cheapest. I think the Ogre box is definitely one of the best deals- two is a decent core for an army, and it's got significant savings. If you can kitbash your characters out of the plastics you're really on to a winner.

Ebay, ebay, ebay. Especially for older ranges.

You can knock off 25% if you're patient and wait for the right deal, sometimes a lot more.

Hardware stores or departments for primer. You can get a can of auto primer which works just as well as the GW primer for roughly $10 cheaper. You could also check out the dollar stores. You never know when you'll come across something you could use for terrain or convert for terrain in there.

If you're looking at skaven or high elves, IoB is a pretty good way to start out, especially if you trade the army you don't want for another set of the army you do want.

True, Island of Blood can be a reasonable deal. Skaven could probably end up being a pricey army though, as they are high model count.
Do you want to play in tournaments or friendly games?

I just go to old buildings and put out a lot of traps and then I have my skaven models. And after a few weeks, they turn into the plague versions!

Check ebay, check craigslist, go to local game stores and GW for bazaars, our GW has one about every 6 months.

Some cheaper options I can think of are:
Island of Blood sets on ebay, can usually get the HE or Skaven part of them for $40-$50, 2-3 of these and a few extras is enough to get you started well.
Same with the above for Battle for Skull Pass sets if you're into Dwarfs or Goblins, though the Dwarf "What you see is what you get" is kind of bad on equipment, most dwarf warriors are equiped with great weapons.
Ogre Kingdoms and Warriors of Chaos Battalions are great. With the OK box and a little conversion for a butcher and Tyrant work you can get an easy 1k. WoC box and a hero/lord or 2 will get you to an easy 1k. If you are into Orcs and Goblins send me a message and I will give you a link to a pretty solid starter army from an online retailer that is inexpensive.

What's the viability of Mantic Games? Their models are much cheaper, and some of them look pretty freaking good. Is it typical to find some mantic figures in a social game? Are they allowed in tournaments? Are they about the right size models?

They won't be allowed in a GW store. You can probably get away with them at an independent store, you'd have to check with them about their Tournaments. Your opponent will probably have to be cool with it, but if they aren't do you really want to play against them?

This seems to be a working set of rules of thumb:

1: If it is cool looking, people don't care.

2: Independent stores don't care much.

3: GW stores only want GW models, but a few others here and there probably won't get you kicked out.

4: Tourneys are tied to the store/sponsor, so a GW store will not want non-GW models, and independent stores probably won't care so long as they are not running a tournament funded by GW.

The Rule of Cool pretty much reigns supreme, and I have played at GW stores with counts as models. But before entering a tournament you should always check to save yourself time and heartache.

For Horde armies you can use fillers (as I've recently learned) by using odds and ends from the scenery on the sprues to bulk out for forces and stretch your buck. For certain creatures, like the Carnosaur, Stegadon, and Rhinoxen, you can probably find a dollar store toy that will have just as much detail, but at a tiny fraction of the cost.

Listen to Wehrkind about "rule of cool"... if you've seen his army in person, you'll know he's got that down

Also... just wanted to echo the chorus of "Ogres!" here. Probably the cheapest army I've found for pretty much any major system atm. And so, so awesome! I'm tempted to start them, but I compromised by gettin a bunch of ironguts for my WoC to use as chaos ogres

Ogres are soft on your wallet.
I've started a Mantic Vampire Counts, and it's significantly cheaper than GW, and I like the look of the models more.

-Matt

Partition to restrict the army list for tournament to 2000 points only.

Mantic & Ebay mate . 90% of my armies are from ebay or bring & buy sales or flea markets as you Yanks call it .


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Mantic & Ebay mate . 90% of my armies are from ebay or bring & buy sales or flea markets as you Yanks call it .

Solitaire. Any good book store will sell you a deck of cards for around $3...

Another +1 for ogres. Their battalion is possibly the best value for money army box GW sells. Assembled with the correct units, it can be a 1000pt army straight out the box.

+3 for ogres.


2 Battalion boxs, with a little converting, will get you 16 bulls(4 from the Leadbeltchers), 8 Ironguts, 4 characters(Tyrant, BSB, Slaughter master, and Butcher) converted out of 4 of the Leadbeltchers, and a whole mess of Gnoblars. i think you can get at least 30 out of each box(24 for the advertized Gnoblars, the rest from the Sprues)


Gnoblars can be further streached by using Filler. get a 40mm base(ogre sized) and stick one of the Gnoblars carrying the big pouch of supplies or the Gnoblars riding piggyback. bam, 4 gnoblars for the price of 1 or 2. you can have little scenes on the filler too. i have a look out gnoblar who looks to be arguing/directing the pack gnoblars.

You can usually get ogre bodies on ebay for 4 for about $17, and I think a battalion had enough bull bitz left over for another 16 if you wanted.

the Bull sprues have plenty of hands, but no extra arms. the IG sprues have a few extra arms though.

IoB looks good, I think i might buy 2 of these and then sell one of the Armies in total on E-bay for £30 then the rule books and dice templates for another £10..

For £60 I would get a large plastic High Elf or Skaven army, the templates dice and rule books.

You could always sell one of the High elf characters for £5 and reduce it to £55. Bargain...definitely cheap way to get alot of mini's

Another good way to do it is just to trade the half that you don't need. HE players need more lothern sea guard and swordmasters, and god knows skaven players need more rats

Buy bits boxes on ebay, if you see a High Elf player selling off his bits box, it is amazing what you can get.

For £15 a few months ago, I got the equivalent of 30 Tac marines, 4 termies, 6 assault marines, countless spares bolters arms, swords, Command sprues. I got spare turrets and pieces of tanks, Heavy weapons and bits and bobs. I managed to make a new Captain, an apothacary and an Emperors Champion. All the pieces were unglued un sprayed, they just wanted rid of them..

I started a skaven army that is in the mail, was able to pick up the IoB set for $45 and found a deal on IoB hand weapon clan rats I got 100 for $65.