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After a few year hiatus I am considering coming back to 40k

I am looking for a fresh start without breaking the bank. The main predicament here is that I am 14, with a very small amount of income. I'm also not able to get a job currently with school and all (Gotta keep that 4.0!).

I haven't really chosen a new army yet, but I am just looking for some general tips to save some money while starting up a new army, esp. on things like rulebooks and codexes and all.

Thanks all,
atribix

Cant help with books but cheap army is imperial guard. Look for other miniature companies and create your own regiment and cut back costs. Victoria miniatures is great. But any humans can make an imperial guard force.

Can make really cheap but amazing imperial guard armies nowdays.

That is exactly what I was looking for! Imp. Guard has always been a dream of mine to have. Loving the models.
Thanks so much!

All good man, any regiment ideas? the coolest thing about guard is the freedom and variety so i love seeing interesting and different regiments being made. Hope you enjoy it

I'll be honest, I have no clue about the regimenting of them, but I'm thinking something that looks like Cadians with my own twist

Aaaand I'm going to go the other way and say that starting Guard is a bad idea.
Relative price. Think about it. You want to play a blob, so you need 50 guys just to start. that's £100. Tha's before you start bringing in the fun stuff - Russes, Manticores, Vendettas, Stormtroopers, etc - Seriously, as a Guard fanboy, I'm seriously suggesting you don't start with them (or really any other horde based list...)

Best way to start for cheap is marines, or any other elite army, especially if $ is a major concern.

At the very least, Ebay is a good place to go second hand (vital if you're going to do guard), and you should be able to find 6th ED mini rulebooks from DV on Ebay too.

If your only option for gaming is at a local GW, then sadly 3rd party minis are not going to be useful (as, to put it bluntly, they'll just be banned. No non-GW in GW.)

So yeah, I wouldn't recommend IG to a new player, but if you absolutely must, then Ebay is your friend.

Just avoid GW stores lol, then you are free to use your imagination a lot more

Not possible for everyone, which is why I said "If your only option for gaming is at a local GW".

I know, do they actually kick you out for using other brands? because i have always avoided them but i wanna show my army around and compare them etc.

i will suggest CSM over vanilla marines as it is my own preference, though any army can get uber expensive in this game.

I'll say to go with the army you like best, regardless of cost. Pick an army you like the look and/or fluff of, instead of going for a cheaper army you don't like as much. Nothing kills a wargamer's enjoyment of their game faster than looking at their army and going, "Gods, I hate this stuff."

It's a long-term investment. You don't have to go out and buy a whole army right away, it can be built up slowly over years - and is probably better that way, as it gives you more time to paint the models you have.

And it's a lot more expensive to build a cheaper army and then realize how much you'd prefer a different army and switch over to it later.

So I'd say to ignore the people trying to steer you toward Marines just because they're cheaper. Go with the army you like best, and give that decision a lot of thought and research. It's cheaper in the long run to go with the army you like best, and on the plus side, you'll probably end up with some out-of-production miniatures down the line that you can look at and be filled with pleasant memories, and even show off to say, "I was there back then, when this stuff was current."

And a tip about choosing which models to get. Get the codex for your army first, then make an army list out of it, then start getting the models for it. I recommend this because nothing sucks more than building models, then getting the Codex and looking into what you can use them as, only to find out that you've equipped them with either totally useless gear or outright illegal combinations of equipment (I say illegal because it's been well-established, going back to television shows from the 80s, that illegal is a word that can apply to breaking the rules of a game or sport, not just the laws of your community or nation). This is a lesson I learned when I got my first Imperial Guard models and equipped my 20 guys with 4 flamers, 4 vox-casters, 4 pistols/combat blades, and 8 lasguns. Then I got the Codex and I was like, "Aw crap..."

A tip about actually building your models. When you get kits that have variations in possible poses and parts combinations, clip out all the parts first, put them in appropriate containers, sorted by the type of piece they are - so legs in one container, torsos in another, left arms in another, and so forth, but be sure to put pieces that only go with another particular piece (sometimes with two-handed weapons, the pieces only fit together in one way, and the arms and weapon are essentially useless by themselves without heavily modifying the pieces themselves) in their own separate container (of course, put multiple identical sets of pieces together with like sets of pieces, as sometimes you'll end up with two or more of the same piece). This has multiple advantages, which I'll detail below.

-First, it makes you feel less "locked-in" to using a particular piece just because you clipped it out with the thought it would fit well with the model, which helps you build more dynamic-looking models that look less awkward with their pose.
-Second, it makes it so that when you're done building models, all the spare parts are ready to be packed up in bitz boxes (and a singular bitz box for all your pieces is a sure way to never find any piece you want ever again)
-Third, the process of clipping out all the parts can give you some ideas for models you want to build. Your brain sees the pieces and starts to think of things you can do with them, sometimes ideas you didn't originally have in mind but which you might like better. The length of time that clipping out the bitz takes gives you time to evaluate those ideas for models, see which ones you like the best.
-Fourth... I was sure there was a fourth but I can't remember it.

Most of what I've described are mistakes I've made at one time or another, and ended up regretting later.

And a tip about playing the game. At first, you will lose. A lot. But you will improve as you play more. There may be times when you start to feel like another army will serve you better. I've had times like those, and according to my friends who I gamed with, those times coincided with the times when I started to really improve - I guess I started improving to the point where I could see what I was doing wrong, which is only a step behind learning what to do instead.

the cost isn't too prohibitive, even at retail, unless you're planning on buying an entire army up front. You can probably get a box of cadian for about £22 on ebay, unless you have a lot of time on your hands it'll probably take you a couple of weeks to paint them.

If you want to play at gw stores then no 3rd party really, but if you're not bothered then the victoria miniatures are pretty cool. Be careful though, many 3rd party guard-style miniatures are not 'heroic scale' and might seem a bit off alongside other gw figures.