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Hello Dakka!

I've been feeling my way into a very poor neighbourhood school, and the younger boys love my W40K books and all the painted minis. I've even brought some models and a few pieces of terrain to show them the rudiments of the game, and I have a lot of interest drawn up. The kids and I want to organize a club, but the whole province has been undergoing big budget cuts in education, so I would have to do this on my own money.

I'm looking for help to find the cheapest Space Marines, Orks, Tau, Necrons... anything. I figure IG can use boxes of 28mm germans of americans from any company as stand-ins and bits from my box. I know I could spend hours on eBay, Bartertown, bitz sites and Swaps, but if you know about any good deals, can you please let me know. I'd not bother with vehicles, to keep the games simple and balanced.

I'll be buying them all simple paintbrushes and I'll create a common pool of paint pots for them, I'll give terrain classes and that shouldn't be too expensive, but I figured if they can get 50¢ for a mini, they can, but not much more. If you have spare miniatures that can be parted with for a nominal fee, hit me as well, I'll see what I can do.

This sound like a great and noble idea. I may have some minis I could scrounge up as long as you don't mind if they have been built.

Nope. I don't mind it as long as they are salvageable at all. I'd even buy brake fluid to strip thick paint if I had to.

this is lovely! i will look for what i can dig out.

If our want to run nids there are quite a few bit sellers who sell the parts individually but you get a few more minis for buying this way. I know you can do it with gants, not sure about bigger stuff/MC. I get most of my stuff from eBay, I'll send you a few links. Also maybe asking around the painting area to get a few well painted minis for kids to have as a centerpiece for their army. Wish you the best I luck

 Mathieu Raymond wrote:
Hello Dakka!

I've been feeling my way into a very poor neighbourhood school, and the younger boys love my W40K books and all the painted minis. I've even brought some models and a few pieces of terrain to show them the rudiments of the game, and I have a lot of interest drawn up. The kids and I want to organize a club, but the whole province has been undergoing big budget cuts in education, so I would have to do this on my own money.

I'm looking for help to find the cheapest Space Marines, Orks, Tau, Necrons... anything. I figure IG can use boxes of 28mm germans of americans from any company as stand-ins and bits from my box. I know I could spend hours on eBay, Bartertown, bitz sites and Swaps, but if you know about any good deals, can you please let me know. I'd not bother with vehicles, to keep the games simple and balanced.

I'll be buying them all simple paintbrushes and I'll create a common pool of paint pots for them, I'll give terrain classes and that shouldn't be too expensive, but I figured if they can get 50¢ for a mini, they can, but not much more. If you have spare miniatures that can be parted with for a nominal fee, hit me as well, I'll see what I can do.

WGF has fairly cheap Germans and Americans for IG (30 for $20), and EM4 has some of the cheapest dwarfs, orcs (50 for about $12) and Space Marines (5 for about $4) around. The Bag o' Zombies and Bag o' Skeletons are an extremely cheap method for making undead. Troll and Toad have the old Judge Dredd plastic gangers for a ridiculously cheap price (see the thread titled "Is This Legit??").

I have a bunch of the old hard plastic warzone minis from Prince August that I wouldn't mind parting with. I've used some of them, but still probably have about 20 or 40 on sprue. I also have some WGF Romans that you can sci-fi up with spare WWII weapons. Just give me a PM if you are interested.

A GW game is alot to learn and preparing an army is a huge undertaking for kids in an after school program. Smaller scale games with easier rules could be just the way to get them playing quickly.

Have you considered running "In The Emperor's Name" instead of 40k. It's the same 40k units and fluff (all 40k factions are prestated and ready to go), but in a warband size game with much faster mechanics. Also, it's free.
http://thegamesshed.wordpress.com/2011/07/02/in-the-emperors-name/

For fantasy, Song of Blades and Heroes is another fast playing ruleset that kids can play. I've run it at conventions and had kids as young as 8 enjoying it. Also, since it's generic, any figures a kid may have lying around from an older sibling or parent can be brought in and used.

For paints, craft paints are the way to go. They're cheap and work well. Delta Ceramcoat has very nice properties that are almost as nice as some miniature paints. For primer, you can spray ahead of time, or use gesso. Gesso is pretty forgiving as it shrinks so there isn't as much risk of obscuring detail.

Best of luck with the project. Helping your local schoolchildren can be one of the most fulfilling ways to contribute to your community, so hats off to you!

Thanks everyone. I'm off to the second job, but I will PM bobtheinquisitor soon about some minis. I still play cultists with those... they would work well indeed.

I had not heard of the 40K warbands game... but we were running it at about 10 to 20 minis a piece, so it could really help.

Thanks everyone!

The game looks fun, but I'm a bit daunted by having to translate all of it.

Yes, it is sad to say that by and large poor inner-city means an automatic hatred of the english language, in our case.

It seems there are still a few sets of aobr marines available on eBay, I'll have to see about grabbing those, since they don't come with chapter iconography and are cheaper than the newer DV marines.

Just to let you know about this deal, the War Store is having an After Christmas Sale for 5% off everything. This means that WGF Germans and Americans are now less than 50 cents per mini. Does that help at all?

I will also still send you a list of all the stuff I can send and for how much, just as soon as all this unpleasant spending time with loved ones business is over.

Thanks for pointing it out. But since they charge a minimum of 25$ shipping, Warstore gets expensive rather rapidly.

Make sure you don't spend too much time with loved ones. It's just like cigarettes, danger grows with usage.

Out here in Fredericton we had a guy start a similar programme at the school where he worked. Essentially he went to the local forums/groups, presented the aim/purpose of the club, (ensured that the club models would be held by the club and not sold etc), and simply asked for goodwill offerings.

He wound up with roughly 1250 points of Grey Knights, Space Marines, and Tyranids in various states of assembled or painted.

It's quite possible that you could get some free or discounted minis by contacting online stores and perhaps even GW themselves and explaining your situation. Small businesses may give away a few minis in order to entice you to use their service. Who knows, GW might have a soul and throw some minis your way, it's worth a shot at least.

I asked the GW store in Montreal (only one in the province) and he said he would give me some minis if the kids made purchases first. As a kind of bonus, if you will. I felt the manager missed the point that my kids are really, really poor.

Besides, I'd rather the kids frequent other stores where the staff is nicer, (and the prices are lower too) if they were going to buy minis.

I had no idea shipping to Canada was so expensive. Why do you have to be sooooooo far away from New England?

Squidman, that's a great idea. Mantic is usually very giving with promotional minis. I imagine that WGF and Warlord minis might be willing to send promotional boxes of their WWII minis, too. For the children.

You're in New England? I might have access to a car during the first week of January or so. I could drive there, if it's not crazy far. Otherwise, shipping I am willing to splurge for.

Yes, I will be drafting a letter that highlights my projects and its expected benefits to the kids during the new year, so I can go fund and pledge hunting. A very helpful Dakkanaut has given me a lot to think about.

You guys are amazing.

I don't think that 40k is the very best thing to get them hooked onto. Your intentions are noble and so forth, but the direction isn't the best. Look at the far cheaper alternatives out there. My suggestion is to make it a games club rather than a warhammer club. Things like boxed boardgames that are a complete game that also have a ton of figures to paint (or paint over). Get boardgames & card games (on sale, donated, out of class budget - or start a new program at your school) - Wrath of Ashadalon, Robo Rally, Munchkin, Frag!, Talisman, Zombies!!!, a lot of those also have miniatures, and you can buy a huge bag of Zomies!!!-brand zombies for not much. Star Wars Miniatures, World of Warcraft Miniatures, D&D Miniatures, etc. Pre-paints are fine, and they can always be painted over.

Much cheaper, and therefore potentially affordable for them to continue with as a hobby or get from their families. Boardgames and self-contained games also allow them to learn, play, replay, get as gifts and then share the games with their friends and families as a social activity - much more than some plastic space marines, and with much wider scope.

I agree with everything you've just said. I guess I am still trying to please them, while steering them not to close to plastic addiction.

It's going to have to be on sale or donated, as a matter of fact, and since I am not officially on staff, I don't have access to the school's inexistent budget.

If I could get them into Risk or Axis & Allies, trust me I would. I'll keep cogitating on all of it. Trust me, I am open minded.

 Mathieu Raymond wrote:
You're in New England? I might have access to a car during the first week of January or so. I could drive there, if it's not crazy far. Otherwise, shipping I am willing to splurge for.

No, sorry. I meant that the War Store was in New England. They can ship to me (California) cheaper than shipping to you (driving distance?), which blows my mind.

I recently found a blog called Affordable Tabletop Gaming (http://www.gamingtabletop.com/). The guy that writes it has made a number of armies for 40k using 10mm models, making them much, much cheaper than GW. I think he's using them with the original Rogue Trader ruleset, it might take some house rules to get it to work with ranges etc in the modern game. On the other hand with the price of modern Codexes and rulebooks playing an older ruleset might be a good option. 2nd edition is available completely free and rewritten with full army lists as the Battle Bible (http://www.scribd.com/doc/45857409/Warhammer-40k-Battle-Bible-1-51).