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Hey guys as I posted in the introduction section, I just created a profile but I've been lurking for over a year and wanting to get into 40K but never commited till now. I'll get straight to the point: I'm looking for a little guidance with building my first 40K army. I have been wargaming on and off since 2008 playing with FOW Russians but due to having been in highschool I didn't have the time or money to fully flesh out a good list since there are roughly 3x more guys in a Russian 2000 pt force than any other country. But I did well even though I had an undersized force of guys who are essentially cannon fodder. Now that I'm in college I have lots more time (since I'm just going to school and not working 2 jobs like in Highschool) but still not a lot of extra cash. I am really interested in making a Orks, Tau, or Space Wolves, army. I was just wondering which would be easiest/ cheapest to buy and assemble. I really like the gaming mechanics of SW and Orks (plus I like how orks have a lot of "junky" creativity with the orky bitz) but I love how the Tau look and I'm intrigued such a stark contrast of gaming mechanics than I'm used to. I was wondering if SW would take a lot of time to assemble, lets say a 500 pt list to start compared to Tau or Orks? And would Orks be more expensive to assemble a 500 pt list since they have horde type grouping? Right now I am thinking Tau but also was looking at the Assault on Black Reach set to start with. Thoughts? Comments? Oh and I have at least one other guy in college who I could game with (he has SM somewhere at his house), for a large army I was leaning towards Tau but I'm torn because if I bought Black Reach I could play a small game with friends who don't have 40k.....
Thanks
Ben

For cheap units, search on eBay. You can even get guys that are nib for much cheaper then gw

Ok but now when building a Warhammer army shouldn't I plan out what type of army (like out of a codex) before I go purchasing? But thanks for the advice!

Tau are probably the most straight forward in purchasing. The boxes come with everything you need. The orks will run you for money and you'll probably find yourself buying more bits online or looking for trades to get certain bits for the space wolves. Assembly time isn't much to worry about.

If you really don't mind not getting tau you should get the AoBR set and split the cost with a friend then decide what you want later. You can always buy a set of grey hunters and mix and match the legs and bodies and stuff to make the space marines from the AoBR set look like space wolves.

If you're really in for saving money you should wait for tau until end of 2012 when the codex update is expected to be released. Right now tau are tough to play because of their costly units and lack of CC (and by lack of i mean none).

Thanks ceku! See I didn't know anything about a new codex release. But even still if I wanted to get them it would probably be a safe bet that generic units like the fire warriors, drones, kroot and crisis suits would still be a mainstay right? Yes I was contemplating splitting AoBR with a friend and since I'd just be starting with 500 pts. Orks wouldn't run me up too high..... in theory... As for the SM to SW, I just didn't know how hard it was to convert them. With my other wargame you had to lop off limbs and replace them. But then again those guys were only 15mm tall.... Like tiny surgery. Doesn't work to well and not much room for erroe

Orks cost more than other armies because they run so many infantry models with so many vehicles. Most of your Boyz should be mounted in Trukks or Battle Wagons depending on your list. At 500 points the difference won't be huge, but once you get to 1,500 you will notice it.

Aldarionn wrote:Orks cost more than other armies because they run so many infantry models with so many vehicles. Most of your Boyz should be mounted in Trukks or Battle Wagons depending on your list. At 500 points the difference won't be huge, but once you get to 1,500 you will notice it.

Id have to agree with this because youre going to end up buying around three to four battlewagons on top of all the boyz, burna boyz, nobz or MANz to fill those battlewagons. Thats just the core of your army then you have to start looking at all the supporting units to go with it like deffkoptas, rokkit buggies and/or lootas. I dread to imagine how much I have spent for all my orks because I have a solid battlewagon list and right now im working on an ork biker list which was pretty expensive with FW nob bikers/boss. Space Wolves depending on how you build them are also going to end up being pretty expensive if you go for razorback spam. I think with ebay you have a good shot at picking up some cheap stuff if you were to build Tau.

Yes that is quite true. As I grow my forces they would get more costly. In my own little fantasy world I would build a 500 pt force of every army and play with them before deciding on which to grow. But since this reality I may get Orks some day but outside of AoBR I probably should stay away from them since they are a potential money pit apparently. Ok so now its down to SW or Tau unless a ton of cheap ways to get Orks pop up. Thanks for all the feedback guys!

Now is actually a great time to look at picking up tau. The closer they get to a codex redo, everyone will be dumping their armies in lieu of new models etc. Sizable forces can be found quite cheap. Imnerho, orks are the same. While the vehicle remarks above are true, they will stand true in every army. However due to a market flood of AOBR orks, again the mass of your boyz can be found dirt cheap. SW will be your most expensive option, I think. If you want true SW models plan on paying for them...they are new and the current flavor of the month. If you use regular marines painted or played like SW you may get off some bit cheaper but not so much as they are by far the most popular in their myriad of forms

Ork vehicle can actually be quite cheap. What you have to do is get a $5 toy car and slap some jaggedy cardboard on paint it red and you are good.

I recommend Orks out of your listed interests. The AoBR space marines are not optimal for conversion to SW because they come in less pieces, so they would require some surgery. The other strike against SW (I do play them) is that the most effective unit in the codex ends up being extremely expensive. Once you reach 1000 points you will want to have two units of long fangs with missiles because they are so points effective...the problem is that none of the SW boxes come with missile launchers...and while I believe there is one in the Tactical marine box, that's just one, when you need 4 per squad (well, that's the number most people use). Most bits sellers sell the ML for at least $5 online...40 bucks for two squads!

The cheapest way to do Long Fang MLs is to use the Hunter Killer Missiles from vehicle kits...but again, that's 8 vehicles to get two squads together.

Orks CAN get expensive at higher levels, but if you don't mind scratch-building things, you can probably put together Trukks and Battlewagons from Plasticard and other Hobby store supplies for no more than 15-20 bucks each, which is a lot less than any GW vehicles.

And Tau...well, I just don't like them, so I can't recommend anyone start them, but that's just me.

if you don't have a lot of money to drop....i would avoid orks.

Hmmmm ok I can see everyone here has very valid points.

@idrivebigtrucks - Yeah that's kinda what I figured but anywhere like ebay it's like everyone isn't trying to dump their guys because the prices are jacked up. And most are painted (mixed quality of paint jobs but either way in the sellers eyes it adds value), I personally think painting and assembling is half the fun! So I'd end up stripping the minis anyhow... I did notice that because of AoBR, boyz are dirt cheap! That was why I was looking in their general direction a lot! (heard that could be dangerous though if one is a madboy)

@spyguyyoda - I knew that in a lot of starters the minis were almost simplified (less assembly or not as high quality) but I didn't know that about the AoBR marines. So apparently SW is a good 2nd or 3rd army when you have plenty of extra weapons and bitz laying around.

Ok from these further comments Orks are back in the runnings, replacing the Space Wolves! Thanks to everyone who has contributed! You guys have saved me a lot of time and money already!

Relative to the amount you could spend on orks, you could save a lot of money with all the deals on ebay and things. They are also much more popular than tau and more competitive at that (hell, and more fun too!).

Not much to say about tau. There aren't as many fun lists you can play with them and even friendly games require quite a bit of strategy. Speaking as a tau player of course.

You can always buy the tau now of course if you really wanted but don't expect a whole lot out of them until the next codex release.

Well I think it would be fun to be competitive one day so I have made an offer on 2 sets of Tau FW, but if/when that falls through I will commence to buying up some boyz! Now my only other question is, when buying sets do I want to model them exactly the way I have my list figured out? Should I use magnets to swap out weapons since those are subject to change? Should I just make a list, buy the troops, and play with it some before making any extra changes or purchases? Lastly, could you guys post up some basic ideas for army lists? 500 pt Ork or Tau. Thanks so much!
Ben

For the tau you should magnetize the front turret on the tanks to switch between devilfish and hammerhead/sky ray and generally dont glue anything that will swivel for their tanks (engines, railgun mount,hatch, turret at the front). Magnetize all the xv8 weapons (can't emphasize this enough) and thats about it for tau. Anything else is optional.

Orks have some pretty standard rules (such as nob in ork boyz mobs always take powerklaw and bosspole. Never use big choppa etc.) so they wont need to be magnetized. The only thing you may want to magnetize are some options on the battlewagon (never got the model so i wouldn't know but i'd assume theres something to magnetized on that bad boy) and the arms for the killa kanz and deff dread. If you ever get a nob squad then it would probably be smart to magnetize some of those.