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So, I am looking to get into the tournament scene and want a highly competitive army. However, for both monetary and logistic reasons, I want to play a low-model count army. I was hoping you fine folks would be able to give me some of the best low-model armies at 1850 and tell me a little about how they play? I'll admit, though I consider myself a competitive player, I have never set out to build an army purely geared towards winning tournaments, so I'm interested to see what's out there!

Thanks in advance!

Draigowing is still pretty competitive. Heres a rough sketch of a list I run:

Draigo
coteaz (divination for paladins)

10 Paladins 4 sycannons 1 Stave Apothocary.
5 Strikes 1 psycannon (deepstrike protection for dreads)
10 warrior acolytes 3 with plasma guns (go to ground somewhere)

3 psyfleman dreads

Aegis defense line with quadgun (4+ cover for dreads, strikes shoot the gun)

I run this list a lot in a competitive environment and it had lots of scoring bodies plus a draigo deathstar with psychic powers that dont suck!

Well, if your going for min-cost min models Draigo-Wing may be your best option:
Draigo.
10 Paladins (7 Halberds, 2 PsyCannon, 1 hammer)
10 Paladins (7 Halberds, 2 PsyCannon, 1 hammer)
5 Paladins (3 Halberds, 1 PsyCannon, 1 hammer)

1750 points, 4 KillPoints, 3 scoring units, 26 models, about 275-300 dollars.

The downside being there are army lists that you typically will see at most events that will wreck this list in 2 turns; Lance heavy Dark Eldar...18-20 Dark Lances per turn will not be fun to go against.

Deathwing and ravenwing are both low model count and the models are cheap due to being in dark vengeance but they aren't too competitive in my meta at least. . The new tau farsight supplement seems like it would be pretty good but i haven't played against it yet and i don't have enough battle suits to play it effectively so i cant really say if its competitive. Daemon flying circus are very powerful and have lowish model counts. Last of all you could run an ork nob biker list which are still really nasty despite the old dex.

The problem your gonna run into is not having enough scoring troops most competitive lists i see feature a large scoring blob (gaurdsmen,zombies,grots) and then the rest of the points go into units that do the killing.

I'm somewhat intrigued by the Demon flying circus lists. What do those typically look like?

They normally have as many fmc as points allow normally 2 lords of change one could be fateweaver instead and then two to three flying daemon princes which most people choose to upgrade to lv 3 psykers. The troops are normally plague bearers since they are just there to hold objectives. Its pretty easy to find daemon princes/lords of change on ebay or other similar sites so the army shouldn't be to expensive.

Usually

LoC
Fateweaver/Bloodthirster/LoC

3 daemon princes

10 plaguebearers

10 plaguebearers

When you hit 2k you basically duplicate the list, but you don't need as many princes because you can take more greater daemons.

If you ally Chaos in this list, you take a Black Mace prince as the other hq.

RavenWing....Google them.

Points: 1850

HQ:
Lord of Change
+ ML 3
+ 2 Greater Rewards
+ Lesser Reward
Keeper of Secrets
+ 2 Greater Rewards
2x Herald of Nurgle
+ Psyker Mastery Level 1
+ Palanquin of Nurgle

Troops:
4x 10 Plaguebearers of Nurgle (they are pretty cheap)

Heavy Support:
3x Daemon prince
+ Daemon of Slaanesh
+ Daemonic flight
+ Warp-forged armor
+ 2 Greater Rewards

5 riptide tau list?

I was going to suggest deathwing, but draigo wing sounds better.

A fun looking GK list I saw recently, with not too many bodies:
2 Termie Inquisitors
20 GKSS
2 Stormravens
3 Dreadknights

This totals (in US sans tax) ~$510 (if you make the two Inq from a Termie box). A bit expensive, because of the Flyers, but only 27 models!

 Elric Greywolf wrote:
A fun looking GK list I saw recently, with not too many bodies:
2 Termie Inquisitors
20 GKSS
2 Stormravens
3 Dreadknights

This totals (in US sans tax) ~$510 (if you make the two Inq from a Termie box). A bit expensive, because of the Flyers, but only 27 models!

multiple stormravens are a bit of a pain to transport IMO.

I play Daemons and i can easilly fit a 3000pts monster mash list into one armytransport bag. Keep in mind that greater daemon models are a vit expensive in cash, but DPs and troop daemons are quite cheap.

I played against a draigowing player last week with my Eldar wave serpent army and crushed him. I wiped everything in his army out except for draigo's squad of paladins. At that point the best he could do was hold one objective while I controlled the rest of the board. Draigo just is not what he used to be.

Ravenwing can give you some cheap bikes, but its not a 'low count' army. You will still be running 30-40 models. To do it right, your going to be needing a LRC and running a bolter banner inside it.

I think that your best bet is the FMC daemon flying circus. You will need 5 daemon models. You will need 20 daemons (plague bearers, etc) and your good to go. Daemons are a very flexabile army, and since they chaos of the warp persists in very unusual ways they will not all look alike. This means you can make your daemons out of whatever you want. Green stuff. Toys from toys R us that have been modded. So long as they are the right size and the right bases the sky is the limit.

SheSpits wrote:
RavenWing....Google them.

I'm sorry but that was an extremely unhelpful comment.
This website is dedicated to this sort of thing. If you have a suggestion for him say it, don't just wave him off like that.

OT: Most if the good suggestions have been said. Maybe Nidzilla or Loganwing would work, but I don't have any experience with that sort of thing so I don't know how competitive they are.
Draigowing or Deathwing are a good bet though.

Nidzilla is a deceptively large army with Tervigons spawning, keep this in mind.

I'd say Draigowing with dreadknights and a stormraven is likely your best bet for a small army that remains competitive.