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Is it possible to build a 1500 point 40k force for around £120? I've been thinking about getting back into 40k for years now, but this time I'll take the plunge. I'm happy to go any race, but I want to make the pennies stretch. Ebay is obviously an option, but you can't always be sure what you'll get. Now, I've been pricing up models from the GW website and using army lists in my back issue of WD. My research reveals the following:

An Ork battleforce gets you 400 points for around £60. This is pretty poor, but you can pick up assault on black reach stuff cheaply on ebay.

Daemons seem to be the best value so far as their battleforce gets you around 800 points for the same price. SMs are the only force I won't go, as they are too universal (pardon the pun)

Anyway, I haven't a lot of experience of other armies, so how do necrons, dark eldar etc look when it comes getting value for money? Races like DE and eldar seem to need a lot of transports which are bloody expensive!

Thanks

I think the best "points per buck" army is going to be Grey Knights.

I know you said no Marines, but have you considered Terminator only lists?

Deathwing? Grey Knights? A Spacewolf army led by Logan with all terminator Wolf Guard?

Terminator boxes from online retailers are usually 21 squid... ish...

I can't tell you much about the price/competitiveness ratio, but they are certainly, comparatively, cheap to build.

This whole 'Draigowing' business seems to be cheap and semi-effective.

And doesn't this belong in the 40k subforum?

What About....for £150 + post...(i know its not £120 but i think its decent value.)

Falcon
Wraithlord
Vyper x 2
War Walker x2 (1 of these is still sealed in box so you can take to GW and exchange)
Harlequins x5
Warlock
Guardians x23
2 Weapon Platforms
Fire Dragons x5
Howling Banshees x5
Striking Scorpions x6
Swooping Hawks x6
Dark Reapers x5
Warp Spiders x5
Dire Avengers x 20 (2 boxes worth still on sprue)
Wave Serpent
Fire Prism (Painted.)
Prince Yriel
Autarch
Bonesinger

It all depends on what you would want. You already stated that you don't want to do SM, which is a pity, since they would give you the best value for your money, so many marines have been cast that a basic bolter marine is hardly worth anything (second hand at least). Do you just don't want to do C:SM or anything in PA? Otherwise I'd go with d-usa on this one. You'd only need a few boxes and a Draigo, hardly any transport and a few AoBR Dreads that you McGyver some Autocannons onto.

If you know your way around eBay and its ilk (and the swapshop over here of course) £120 goes a long way and could potentially get you any army up to 1500 if you're willing to wait and not too picky about the contents of the army. I have hunted Ork bargains over the course of a few months for in total about that amount and have gotten about 3000 points, including a few quite uncommon models.

Anyway, if it's new and easy you want (which is valid, just not the cheapest) the cheapest would be getting 2 AoBR's and trading away the marines. That should give you a fairly sizable Ork army that wouldn't even be that bad (and orks are very forgiving when it comes to turning boyz into Lootas and other cost-saving methods, just don't use them as an excuse for lazy modelling, they'll stomp ya).
Daemons and Tyranids could work as well, since they don't need any vehicles.
Necrons would only work if you do them like this.
Eldar, Dark Eldar, Tau and IG I wouldn't try.
If you tried SoB you'd be a brave man.

But, and this is the most important bit, let me tell you that you shouldn't be picking an army for this reason. Go with what you think are the coolest models, has the best fluff, the most cheese, whatever floats your boat. A 1000 point army that you like will always give you more enjoyment than 1500 points of an army that you have no feelings for.

Ork is the way to go. You can scratch build all the vehicles and AoBR orks are a dime a dozen.

Draigo-wing... added bonus of you can carry around your entire army in a lunchbox with enough space left to store snacks

Daemons are a very low-count army too.

They have 250+ point HQ's, before upgrades

That said those HQ's are expensive to buy new, but ebay can be a good source, as can the Swap Shop

Orks are easy to get and cheap to buy, but you need a hell of a lot of them to make 1500+ points. Being able to take vehicle kit from any other faction and orkify it is so worth it though

Space marines or orks, that is hard to find out

Ebay is the way to go. Not only do you have a lot of choices, you also get buyer protection, and earn ebay bucks for all your purchases.

As far as Daemons go you can find these cheap. I sold a GUO , and a LOC this week for 15 dollars, and 22 dollars respectively.

If yoy are patient you can wait until one seller lists multiple units that you want and combine shipping. This will save you even more.

While I don't play anymore, I still like writing lists and Theroyhammer. Necrons don't seem to be terribly unreasonable when put together as a whole, though it may require sinking some serious points into an Overlord. I think a 1500 point list will still likely be 15 to 20 pounds over your price range.

I agree with Orks. The AoBR ork stuff on ebay is incredibly cheap and you can do horde orks simple.


that and deamons are a good value.

Necrons would be a distant 3rd.

This belongs in 40k discussion, not here in General discussion.

The trick is you excluded the cheapest army on the block because of its univesality. That is the exact advantage of marines army is the ability to switch between rulebooks and, voila, new army.

That said, at 1500 points...... good luck your budget will not get you there. If you are buying at 10-20% discount, then it will work, but you will probably need around GBP.150

I think necrons might actually be the way to go, the now OOP starter kits could be floating around at a discount, the trick will be to use the parts liberally from the larger kits to upgrade/convert everything to the more points-expensive counterpart.

You could also strike lucky; hunt on ebay and your local bargain/used ads and you could pick up a 2000 point army for your budget cap.

What area of the UK are you in?
Theres plenty of 3rd party retailers who sell reduced, or you can convert a whole ton of stuff up.
I mean, I've got enough DE infantry to do a 1500-2000 footsloggin coven that cost me around £85, Then I spent probably 60 or there abouts on vehicles, but I mean thats for a good 2-3000 points.

Bu ultimately, 120 is a bit tight. I generally allow a budget of around £150-200 an army, inc codex and that should get the 'ideal' of around 2-3k.

I've always said in this game, if you can get an army for £10 for a 100 points you've done unbelievably well... My old Necron army I bought at 10% off retail, maybe two price hikes ago (think it was about £16.20 for a box of warriors - So £18 retail) and it was a Destroyer Lord, Nightbringer, 3 boxes of Warriors, 3 Wraiths and 2 heavy destoryers... I regret those wraiths aswell! But either way, that was very cheap.

My friend has just completed a relatively competative Tau list on less, and he's having lots of fun with it. Two Tau battleforces, a box of stealth suits another box of fire warriors a kroot shaper and an Ethereal.

From a 20% off store, you're looking at less than £150 for that.

Basically, you spend alot of money on transports, their low points cost means they're a great addition to any force (razorbacks for example) but are around £20 a pop.

Draigowing is your best option, followed by Deathwing. I got lucky and picked up Space Hulk, which provided the core of my DW army. Add another Hulk Termie set I traded for about $50, and I had myself an army! My DW army at retail would cost about $330 USD.

As peole have said before me i think Orks are the best bang for buck as you can get the AoBR Orks and convert them to make other units too.
You can also Orkify any vehicle particularly the scrap ones that are on ebay for not much money.

Ork foot slogging greentide. STAY AWAY FROM THE BATTLEFORCE

You can get Aobr boyz easily for $1 a pop, (often you can find bulk ones for closer to .50) get 3 maxed out squad for a total of 90.

Add in a 2 KFF big meks @ ~$18 a pop

Add in 2 boxes of Killa Kans @ ~$36 per box

That equates out to 72+36+90=$198 USD or 126 GBP

98 Models strong... Find a local ork player and bum a couple PK Nobs off em and your set.

630 pts for 90x basic boyz
150 pts for 2x KFF bigmeks (Add additional goodies as desired)
300 pts for 6x Killa Kanz
+as many nobz as your can find.

Thanks to all who replied. Yeah, orks are pretty cheap on ebay, and daemons seem great value for money, as do necrons.
The only thing I'm missing is tanks. Ideally, I wanted to do a general patton style guard force, but tanks are too expensive. To be honest, I've got the money, but I'm reluctant to shell out on plastic soldiers (as much as I like the hobby) As for CSM, the new books round the corner, so I'd probably hold off.

Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:Thanks to all who replied. Yeah, orks are pretty cheap on ebay, and daemons seem great value for money, as do necrons.
The only thing I'm missing is tanks. Ideally, I wanted to do a general patton style guard force, but tanks are too expensive. To be honest, I've got the money, but I'm reluctant to shell out on plastic soldiers (as much as I like the hobby) As for CSM, the new books round the corner, so I'd probably hold off.

Tanks have a hidden cost-paint. If you have an undercoat then an overcoat, you're looking at about 3/4 of a pot for each. So about 1.5 times the cost of a pot of paint plus the cost of the tank itself.

See, you say that but I spray undercoated black 3 Venoms, 6 Raiders and a Razorwing which used maybe1/4 of the can, then used maybe 1/4 of a pot of boltgun metal undercoating them all, then half a pot of asurmen blue wash giving them all a solid coat of that.

Thats 10 vehicles with a fairly large surface area done with roughly 1 pots worth of paint overall.

Space marines save a lot of money. for one, space marines are a pain to fight. they are cheap with $ and points

The Ork battle force only gets you like 250 points.

Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:Thanks to all who replied. Yeah, orks are pretty cheap on ebay, and daemons seem great value for money, as do necrons.
The only thing I'm missing is tanks. Ideally, I wanted to do a general patton style guard force, but tanks are too expensive. To be honest, I've got the money, but I'm reluctant to shell out on plastic soldiers (as much as I like the hobby) As for CSM, the new books round the corner, so I'd probably hold off.

tanks are easy, GW sells 60% of a leman russ tank as a tank upgrade/accessory sprue available for $16 (do NOT know what the conversion rate is, or how much the sprue costs from the UK) All you really need is plasticard to finish the turret (bottom part) cover the sides of the tank and build a drive train (or buy one, but this is a much easier cost to swallow than the whole tank).

I find I've stopped bothering with the sponsons because half the time I can't use them to full effect anyway, and sinking so many points into a single vehicle has made me wince one too many times when it became scrap metal on the tabletop. Converting the primary weapons is actually an incredibly easy job.

FOUND IT!
http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/productDetail.jsp?catId=cat440253a&prodId=prod80003a

GW are doing army bundles this Xmas, the 40k ones are DE and SM, someone on this forum has worked out the rough price for the sets individually.

http://www.claphamwargamers.org.uk/Forum/showthread.php?tid=1274

Also, if you order from Dark Sphere, they do 25% off online or 20% off instore (although if you order online and pick up instore on something that costs more than £100, you get it for the web price, although only really helpful if you live in London or will be going past Waterloo).

http://www.darksphere.co.uk/

I've only just back into the hobby, so no idea what the point costs of the box sets are, maybe someone can help out there and do a rough calculation?

The Dark Eldar one has 20 Wyches, 10 Warriors, 5 Scourges, a Raider, a Ravager and 9 bikes, it's not a bad deal 'esp if starting an army up.

Woulda been nice if they'd included a HQ though, all the other megaforces seem to.

Are BA ok or literally no power armour? As you can do BA jumpers for £120 easily.

Don't do sisters! Hard to find, all metal, expensive, and you need a lot of them.

Now Daemons are not a great army, but they have one thing going for them that no other faction can claim: you can play WHFB with the same army as well. Any thing you buy for one game works for the other.

Honestly "Cheap" and "Not Marines" are all but mutually exclusive. Orks are the exception if you are willing to mod/scratchbuild a bunch of stuff. I once built a 1750 Ork army and used nothing but 1 warboss, 5 nobz, 3 trucks and the rest was made from Boys, and I had a wide variety of different units. This was during 4E using the 3e codex, but I would imagine that it is still easily doable, I don't know, I haven't played anything other than IoM for the better part of a decade.