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I've decided i want to start an army for the converability, but still have it play well and not get owned, any ideas.

Would prefer the vehicles to be at a minimum.

Space wolves are converty, and quite strong. 13th company spacewolves are even convertier, and it's also fluffy to not have vehicles for them, because they've been in the warp so long. Dark Eldar are strong too, and you can do pretty much whatever you want with their conversions, as long as it's evil and disgusting.

From a conversion POV you are probably best off sticking with some variant of Marines, since they have by far the biggest range of interchangeable parts. In a similar vein you probably want to avoid the older codices, since they have the most dated models and tend to be falling behind on the competitive front as well. It mostly depends on how you are converting things really, if you are good with greenstuff then you have more options.

If you add in the competitive requirement + limited number of vehicles you are looking at a fairly large list actually; Blood Angels (Jumpers based), Chaos Marines (marginally competitive), Dark Angels (Deathwing or Ravenwing give you plenty of room for highly customised elite units), Dark Eldar (big range but nothing compatible from outside it), Grey Knights (another potentially very elite army), Orks, nilla Marines, Guard (infantry heavy), Space Wolves and Nids (marginally competitive).

Orks no doubt the whole nature of orks being scavengers lends itself to making models using anything and everything that takes your fancy, and to my understanding they are still considered a competitive army, with little requirement for tanks if you don't want them.

Orks.... because they loot everything. And they are always a popular army of GW so they dont get ***ed over too often.

Chaos... they are about to get their turn, you can chaosfy lots of stuff!

Tyranid... infestation?

IG Footsloggers/Air Cav? Huge modelling opportunities for the Infantry Platoons.

I rule of thumb if you wnat to convert and not just kitt bash is that you want to convert as few models as posible.

It so happens that one of the better elite armies, grey knights, can be played withouth vehicles.

I would personaly sugest making samurais in oni masks.

If that is not thempting, using fantasy monsters as greater deamons and daemon princes in 40k codex daemons would also be good.

Orks for sure. You can do EVERYTHING with them, and thats why I love them!

My conversion stuff:

i would say for conversions your best bet would be Orks or Chaos.

I say Orks as well.... you can simply run a Kan Wall and walk across the table....

There is a wonderful looted Tau Piranha on here somewhere that is an amazing convert/\,

Other part of orks is that you can even get vehicles cheaply. Tonka truck for 5.50? orkify that bad boy.

Old broken rhino on e-bay for 9 bucks? looted wagon! Just throw on some bits

Any inquisition stuff; everything needs to be converted unless you want to spend around 15 bucks for two metal DCAs.

Daemons! Pick another army, twist, corrupt, desecrate and possess their models.... and claim worlds for the Ruinous Powers!

Air Cav guard or any drop marines give lots of parts to work with.
One box of grey knights and a box of tactical marines will in fact give you 14 grey knights. Winning!

I think grey knights is best if you like the low model count, I'm trying to convert/scratchbuild an admech army with them, but it's a bit more complex than I would like because you need some assault vehicles, like stormraven or land raider. Draigowing (grey knight paladins with draigo) is the easiest army to make however, just buy like 20 or so terminators, some psycannons, convert everything to your satisfaction, and you're set.

Orks are the most forgiving, and fun, conversion wise and certainly the easiest to scratchbuild anything (there are a few amazing threads here with tutorials). But very high model count. It is easy to build the trucks and looted tanks and stuff, and get the black reach set parts, but it is still a lot of stuff.

If you want to go space marines, go chaos. Convert up some obliterators and a demon prince, any way you like. It's also easy to do nurgle conversions and fun to do Khorne conversions. You'll need some cult troops too but nothing is stopping you from having 6 obliterators and two demon princes as the bulk of a small force. Plus all the marine parts are interchangeable, and we will have new a codex soon! So it's not quite a good army now compared to ultra-competitive, I mean the oblit/demon prince combo is decent, but with a new codex coming out who knows what will happen. Then again they might nerf those units and make something else awesome....

Chaos demons are not a good army, I would wait to see what they do with the codexes before you do that. But a greater demon in the CSM codex is decent.

ORKS! ORKS! ORKS!

Seriously though, they are fun. Like a bunch of the others said, you have some spare vehicle bits? looted wagon. Buy a crappily built tank for cheap? Looted wagon. Old cheap dreadnought? Killa Kan, or Deff Dread! Something that looks like a bike? Slap on an Ork and it's a bike. Bits sitting around? Glue them together, stick them on an Ork, and you have lootas!
It's almost like completley legal proxying. And who am I to say that those six lasguns you have glued together aren't a big shoota?
You also get lots of extra bits in Ork sets, and most of the parts are completley interchangeable.

Finally, they can be a lot of fun to play, and it's not hard to do well with them, as they have a lot of good units and builds.
Edit: And you don't have to go the vehicle route with them (I do ), horde armies can work very well.

Definitely Orks. Orks is a good army, and almost anything can be converted. It fits into the fluff well!

Orks for vehicles. Nids for non vehicles. Just greenstuff things.

If you are an imperium type of person, nothing will beat inquisition lists. You can pretty much put in any imperium model and then some (including xeno mercenaries and bound daemons). Lots of individuality

Orks and Daemons also have lots of possibilities depending on how creative you are

My top conversion books for heavy conversion/themes:

-Orks (I'm in the process of building an entire looted army where every model has stolen SM stuff and each unit is based on a different chapter they smashed)

-Daemons (I've got an admech force but you could also do beastmen, cultists, combined arms, or just legion specific)

-GK (Like it was previously noted the Henchmen give this one some legs)

-IG (to a lesser extent)

That said you can convert the crap out of SM's if you have a chapter theme idea that sounds good

Hate to join the choir, but orks and chaos are the best for both conversion while still competitive. If you start getting interested in vehicles at some point, guard and DE get unlocked, but that's if you're wanting to work with plasticard.

I guess it depends on your criteria on best (best being mpst competitive, easiest to convert, most bits available, most fluff that supports a conversion, cheapest to convert, etc) and converting skills (can you sculpt, creative ability to reimagine bits, etc).

Really any army has potential to be highly converted with enough creativity, money and skill.

Thanks for all the feedback guys! Never thought i'd get this much!

I'm interested to know more about GK inquisitor lists, whats in them? Whats a good general list to work off? Any ideas for things to convert?

wonder if you could ever have an IG regiment drive around in looted wagons that used to be chimeras?

fluff goes that the regiment killed all the orks and backlooted the weapons in desperate need?

lol Unless someone made an inquisitor list with daemonhosts, jakero etc the biggest conversion would be paint scheme. No where near as much conversion as orkz who can pick up a lead pipe and it magically becomes a gun cause they believe it. lol

I would say Orks. Just buy any vehicle model, slap some gubbinz on it, paint it red, and voila! A right Orky wagon!

Orks and Chaos for sure. Especially Orks. People saying marines are just flat out wrong, in the end, all your conversions are going to come back to basically looking like pretty much any other marine. Sure it might be a marine with robes, or a marine with nipply armor, or a marine with a shield on its shoulder, or a book on its chest or what have you, but its still a friggin marine.

Tyranids can be fun too, though IMO you need to get good at sculpting to make that work.

IG can be really fun too, especially if you use non GW minis/bits and you can sculpt the same exact minor details on a mini over and over and over a 100 times and not get bored.

Space Wolves, although Chaos is pathetically easy to convert. I think I would be a terrible converter if I didn't play chaos.

JohnnoM wrote:Thanks for all the feedback guys! Never thought i'd get this much!

I'm interested to know more about GK inquisitor lists, whats in them? Whats a good general list to work off? Any ideas for things to convert?

To me this type of list has the most potential for good ideas, as you could create a very chaosy Lost and the Damned list, or an Ad mech list, or a Rogue trader cadre or some sort of xeno counts as list. Really the skies the limit. And with all the forge world and seconday market bits makers there's a number of ways to go about it.

What is in them unit wise? Well they start with Coteaz as he unlocks the henchman as troops. Then its really a matter of how you you want the list to function and how much of the Grey knight stuff you want in the list.

winterman wrote:

JohnnoM wrote:Thanks for all the feedback guys! Never thought i'd get this much!

I'm interested to know more about GK inquisitor lists, whats in them? Whats a good general list to work off? Any ideas for things to convert?

To me this type of list has the most potential for good ideas, as you could create a very chaosy Lost and the Damned list, or an Ad mech list, or a Rogue trader cadre or some sort of xeno counts as list. Really the skies the limit. And with all the forge world and seconday market bits makers there's a number of ways to go about it.

What is in them unit wise? Well they start with Coteaz as he unlocks the henchman as troops. Then its really a matter of how you you want the list to function and how much of the Grey knight stuff you want in the list.

Afaik, there's no current legal rules list for L&tD, so it'd only be the kind of thing you could use at a FLGS, casual gaming club, etc.

My vote is 'Nids. Orkz & Chaos are also good choices, and in terms of 'good army' they probably rank way above the 'Nids right now.