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As a pure theoretical exercise its just a simple idea. Post a competitive 1500-2000pt army list, with the cost (to keep it simple $US would be preferred) it would be to buy the each unit required to build said army, then a total down the bottom, followed by $/point ratio.

An example army list (may or may not be competitive, only used for demo) taken straight from the GW site

Epistolary Librarian with plasma pistol, force weapon, psychic hood and The Wings of Sanguinius and Unleash Rage psychic powers - 165 points - $15

Tactical Squad - 10 Space Marines with flamer and missile launcher mounted in a Rhino transport - 220 points - $70.25

Tactical Squad - 10 Space Marines with flamer and missile launcher mounted in a Rhino transport - 220 points - $70.25

Assault Squad - 10 Space Marines with jump packs, plasma pistol, hand flamer and Sergeant with power fist and combat shield - 245 points -$66

Death Company - 10 Death Company with bolters, power weapon and thunder hammer mounted in a Rhino transport - 295 points - $99

Furioso Librarian Dreadnought with force weapon, psychic hood and the Blood Lance and Might of Heroes psychic powers mounted in a Drop Pod -210 points - $77.5

Baal Predator with flamestorm cannon and heavy bolter side sponsons - 145 points - $49.50

Totals - 1500pts - $447.5

So this army list is roughly 0.298 $ per point.

The aim is to have a low $/pt ratio while still maintaining some resemblance of competitiveness. In the end just a bit of theoryhammer

Grey knights are expensive $$ wise and points wise so you may spend more per model but your $$ per point will be better as well...

Grey Knights are probably the cheapest army when it comes to $$ - Point ratio.

Deathwing. 1800 Points for 309$

Then Grey Knights 1800 Points ~320 $.

Probably Grey Knights specifically some form of Draigowing is the cheapest army you can build right now.

Necrons have to still be one of the top competitors.

Buy two battleforces. A Command Barge, Immotek and a unit of lychguard.

List
20 warriors
2 ghost arks.
Anrakyr on a command barge.
Immotek
5 deathmarks (or 10 if you cut points elsewhere, made using extra warrior bodies and the deathmark left overs from battleforces)
10 scarabs
10 immortals
2 chrono/destruction courts made from extra warriors and the 10 spare "staff" weapons in the lychguard box.
5 lychguard with shields.

Total points. 2000.
Total $$$ 294.25 from GW's website. or 235.40$ from the warstore.

How competitive is it? While it isn't "optimized" for tournament play the list still contains everything a necron player needs. Immotekh+ 2 solar flares ensures you make it where you need unharmed by enemy long range. 2 units of warriors to sit on objectives with ghost arks and courts capable of keeping them alive and destroying vehicles.

Immotekh can either go with the lychguard or with the special immortals that have furious charge. Granting them Relentless lets them take gauss instead of tesla and rapid fire before charging. Scarabs are a threat your opponent will have a hard time dealing with during nightfight.

And then Anrakyr does his usual flying around in a barge with his warscythe. Overall the list will perform quite well in any shop.

Grey Knights, but Draigowing is actually an awful army build and just a sort of fun gimmick.

Buy two greater daemons, one being kairos and one a bloodthirster, plus three daemon princes and then two blisters of nurglings. Throw in all the upgrades you like and have a monster mash. Maybe a couple boxes of flamers to even it out. I don't have my codex, so I can't give exact costs, but it should be close to 1500pts for a little over $200. Maybe $250 tops off of GW (not including flamers). After adding two boxes of them, it's closer to $280/$300.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Actually, cheaper option would be a box of bloodletters converted to plaguebearers (looks better than GW PBs if done right, and easy) so you can have two scoring units that are good at holding objectives in cover. So that would be closer to $230 for a 1500pt army. Beat it!!

Brother SRM wrote:Grey Knights, but Draigowing is actually an awful army build and just a sort of fun gimmick.

I dunno, seems to work pretty fine for me :3

from looking at the cron box you could make a rather nasty force with a little converting eg:

a lord
4 cryptechs
20 immortals
a stalker
some scarab swarms ( you should be able to stretch it pretty far if your opponent doesn't mind 2 scarabs per base. you can always say the rest are under ground)
and maybe some wraiths if you really want to streatch it (using the battle barge crew and some guitar strings and plasticard)

all for around £70, thats not too bad....

Red Comet wrote:Probably Grey Knights specifically some form of Draigowing is the cheapest army you can build right now.

Draigowing isn't competitive, though. It's a noob slayer list to be sure, but one of the weaker builds in a competitive tournament setting.

I agree. I had one friend run Draigo-wing, the other ran a well balanced dark eldar list (non-competitive, using mix of all units). Guess which army got its butt kicked? A hint, it wasn't the pointy-eared sodomists.

1 Imperial Guard Battalion
1 extra box of Guardsmen
1 Leman Russ

265 US

you get what you need for an army. Maybe not a very competative army but a decent army for starting a new one

For cheapest competitive, I definitely would not suggest IG. You have to drop a lot of dollars to make a competitive list out of them.

I mean here is pretty much the potentially competitive (let's be honest here) armies out there:

Blood Angels (Jumpers and Mech)
Dark Angels (Wing-style only)
Grey Knights (Mech only)
Imperial Guard (Mech only)
Necrons (Mech only)
Space Marines (Almost anything but foot unless it’s bikers)
Space Wolves (Anything including foot)
Tau (Suits and Mech)

But since most people are unskilled (including most of us here at dakka, let's narrow it down to an even more realistic list):

Mech Blood Angels.
Mech Grey Knights (henchmen mostly).
Mech Imperial Guard.
Mech Necrons.
Mech Space Marines.
Mech Space Wolves.


Kinda sad, isn't it? I don't see 40k lasting much longer as being the premier "competitve" minis game. GW is on a downward slope with crappy rules design, crappy business policy, and crappy treatment of the player base. Fantasy is already dead as a competitive system (which is sad because I started gaming with fantasy), 40k is slowly dying as a competitve system.

All we need now is for Privateer Press to pull their heads out of there behinds and balance their game (unbalancing every aspect of the game and calling it "balanced" is not a good thing) and for Battlefront (Flames of War) to figure out how to run competitive events as they already have a great business model and great interaction with the player base.

Out of those the marine variant are probably cheapest (we'll see what happens when the price of Night Scythes come out)

Trondheim wrote:1 Imperial Guard Battalion
1 extra box of Guardsmen
1 Leman Russ

265 US

you get what you need for an army. Maybe not a very competative army but a decent army for starting a new one

Unless that's a foot veteran list (hah!) then that's still illegal. Also, "affordable" and "Imperial Guard" should never be in the same sentence together.

Brother SRM wrote:Unless that's a foot veteran list (hah!) then that's still illegal. Also, "affordable" and "Imperial Guard" should never be in the same sentence together.

A yup. Foot, Mech, or Hybrid you're going to probably be dropping around 500-600 USD (if not more) for a competitve army

Cheapest competitive army is one off ebay from some guy who just got his girlfriend pregnant.

Nungunz wrote:But since most people are unskilled (including most of us here at dakka, let's narrow it down to an even more realistic list):

Mech Blood Angels.
Mech Grey Knights (henchmen mostly).
Mech Imperial Guard.
Mech Necrons.
Mech Space Marines.
Mech Space Wolves.

So, do you just read, believe, and repost stelek's blog, or what?

Kevlar wrote:Cheapest competitive army is one off ebay from some guy who just got his girlfriend pregnant.

This.

Also, Assault on Black Reach Ork boys with slugga/choppas are fairly cheap to buy on ebay.

Not the most competitive build but I priced a BA DoA 2000 pt army list at $484.50 GW retail price.
Would cost me about $100 less if bought from discounters.

Kevlar wrote:Cheapest competitive army is one off ebay from some guy who just got his girlfriend pregnant.

Pretty sure this, right here, won the thread. I don't think any one of us can compete with this

Brother SRM wrote:Unless that's a foot veteran list (hah!) then that's still illegal. Also, "affordable" and "Imperial Guard" should never be in the same sentence together.

Pretty much this. I'm convinced that Imperial Guard, despite being very good, is probably the most expensive army to be good with (I discount Sisters, because, I did say "good", after all). Here's what I run-its a nice list, but its super expensive at retail prices.

Command Squad - 25
Marbo - 15
40 man blob - 116
w/ commissar - 13.25
w/ 3 heavy weapon teams - 38.75
4 veteran squads - 116
5 Chimeras - 175
Manticore - 49.50
2 Leman Russes - 99
2 Vendettas - 132

= 2000 point army, $779.50 (and that doesn't even count how much of a pain in the ass it is to find all those melta guns or do a Vendetta conversion)

Now, granted I got some amazing deals on Ebay and only spent about $500 or so, I still could've probably done two smaller armies by now for that.

Still, gotta love the Guard!

Draigowing is about 40$ more expensive than the necron list I posted above. Basing it on the usual Draigowing list of 2 units of 10 terminators/paladins and 2x psyfle dreads and of course draigo and a librarian.

IcedAnimals wrote:Draigowing is about 40$ more expensive than the necron list I posted above. Basing it on the usual Draigowing list of 2 units of 10 terminators/paladins and 2x psyfle dreads and of course draigo and a librarian.

yes Draigowing is a few dollars more expensive, but it is way more competitive than the Necron list.