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Interested in starting 30k, but I'm afraid I'd have to sell a kidney to get started. Do you have any ideas of a cost effective way to get into 30k?

Betrayal at Calth with some 40k plastic vehicles.

The Betrayal at Calth will give you:

- A Captain in Terminator Armour and a Dark Apostle;

- A Contemptor Dreadnought, armed with a choice of multi-melta or kheres assault cannon;

- Five Cataphractii Terminators, with weapon options including combi bolters, power fists, lightning claws, chain fists, power swords, heavy flamers and grenade harnesses;

- Thirty Legion Tactical Space Marines in MK4 armour, with a huge selection of weapons and custom features, including bolters, missile launchers, heavy bolters, chainswords, power swords, power fists, plasma pistols, lightning claw blades, combi flamer, melta and plasma guns, a melta bomb and a set of combat blades! These miniatures also include ammo packs, holstered bolt pistols and a selection of frag and krak grenades.

Two BaC sets, plus 40k bits for say chain sword and bolt pistol arms, and some jump packs gives you a beefy list.

Yeah, betrayal at Calth, as everyone here has mentioned, china-cast (am I allowed to talk about that on the forum?), and the 40k models that still work for 30k, like most of the tanks, most guardsman infantry, knights, dreadnoughts, attack bikes, land speeders, rhinos, drop pods, and shoot, mk vii power armor was technically in use at the end of the heresy, so you're not a total dick for using that.

Calth is a good base point, however I should point out that if you pace yourself, theoretically the costs can be mitigated quite a bit.

My 2000 point Ad Mech list cost $50 less than my 1850 point Eldar tournament list. It really isn't that expensive, especially since you're in UK so you can avoid expensive shipping and dealing with fluctuating exchange rates. If you can afford 40k, you can afford 30k. You might have to build your army up a little slower but that's about it.

Best idea?
Plan out your army and budget. NO IMPULSE BUYS. that is what will kill you.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
Best idea?
Plan out your army and budget. NO IMPULSE BUYS. that is what will kill you.

Basically this.

Although, it's also a good idea to invest in Betrayal at Calth, if only just one set initially to get you started (two will probably be more ideal given the size of most 30k armies), check ebay if you're looking for JUST the miniatures and not the entire boxed set.

I have just started a Thousand Sons Legion and have done the following.

Betrayal at Calth set (this gives around 1400pts)
Extra dread from eBay £15
Extra squad from eBay £20
FW Support weapons to kit out squad above

On top of this I have also purchased the TS heads and torsos but that's a personal choice. Going forward I will get a second calth box to increase the squads to 20 men and terminators to 10 and finish the dread Talon.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
Best idea?
Plan out your army and budget. NO IMPULSE BUYS. that is what will kill you.

Yup. So many gamers seem to forget that you can budget your purchases and that you don't need to buy 3,000 points of miniatures in one go.

Get a Betrayal at Calth set - it's great value and a perfect start. Then set a budget of some sort - $80/month, $100/month, whatever - and do your absolute best to keep to it.Not enough money in your monthly budget to afford that huge tank? "Save up" and dedicate two months' budget to it.

Here is how I did my Night Lords:

Betrayal at Calth on ebay for $128

3 sets of Night Lords Heads - $46

That gives you:

5 Terminators
30 troops (Terror Squads for me)
1 Dreadnought
Praetor and Centurion (possibly some bits to customize these out)

So for $174 you easily have 1000 points and can build from there.

Our group is starting at 1000 points for an easy buy into the hobby.

I did also buy Raptors and Volkite Chargers as well.

This will give you plenty to paint and put together. The good thing about 30K is that most armies don't have more then 30-50 models total due to the high point cost of things.

Buy a Sicaran Tank (everyone uses them anyways) and maybe a fast attack or a specialist unit for your Legion and you are already at 1500.

Good luck.

If you haven't gotten the point yet... Battle of Calth.

I've got about 2k points of Dark Angels. With one BoC box, and a two extra tac squads from ebay I've built this.

2 20 man tac squads.
1 5 man heavy bolter squad
1 5 man plasma gun squad
5 cataphractii
1 Chaplain

That's what I actively use from Calth stuff. I've supplemented with.

Artificiar Armor Praetor
Master of Signal
40K land raider
2 rogue trader rhino's

All of that was from bits/40k stuff I had laying around. The only Forge World purchases I've made have been.

Plasma Rifle Deredeo
2 Apothecaries

If you can work with wood and/or that plasticard stuff, and have a bit of conversion skills, you can make tanks on the cheap.

I'm in the same boat but I want to start mechanicum so, unfortunately, the BaC set doesn't do much for me. I'm hoping those new bits for skitarii that they showed off a few months back will link the 40k and 30k, then maybe it won't be such leap and I can use my existing admech as a starter.

 Dramagod2 wrote:
I'm in the same boat but I want to start mechanicum so, unfortunately, the BaC set doesn't do much for me. I'm hoping those new bits for skitarii that they showed off a few months back will link the 40k and 30k, then maybe it won't be such leap and I can use my existing admech as a starter.

as the general Idea of the thread points out: pace yourself and the burden is better spread out (so a bit more affordable overall) Funnily enough though, mechanicum is one of the cheapest 30k armies to start.

Paint your regular 40k Space Marines in Emperor's Children colors, and you now have a 30k army that can also be played as Hawk Lords chapter in 40k.

SJ

As everyone has said, BaC is the best start.

You might wanna go with Forge World for a big centrepiece tank, but for most of your other tanks, the plastic versions are fine. You don't need anything to be Deimos pattern. Also, regular 40k character models work fine as their armour is already very ornate, and 40k Landspeeders, Dreadnoughts and Terminators all exist in the Heresy list.

And, if you're up for a bit of paint stripping and repair, all the old 90s MK1 rhino vehicles work great in heresy armies, and tend to be a bit cheaper on eBay than a new kit...

It's worth noting that Word Bearers are a great army for conversion opportunities. I''m bashing up units from BaC, Dark Vengeance, and CSM, SM, Chaos Daemons, with Tyranids, Necron, and fantasy bits here and there. @OP if you're looking for budgethammer/kitbash tips for a Word Bearers army, I have a couple you may or may not like that I could PM you.

As a matter of fact, here's some poor hammer I'm working in at the moment:

Unit in front is meant to be Ashen Circle, and unit of in rear is meant to be a Destroyer Squad. Both made from Raptors. Two dudes in front of the dread are conversions for Zardu Layak and Kor Phaeton, and the DV dread will one day be a Mara Ghal.

along the same lines as word bearers, night lords can also get away with using a decent number of CSM units.

-Vindicators are great in 30k with AC and PotMS. You just need to convert the sensor on the 40k plastic kit into a pair of twin-linked bolters, plus anything you would want for a pintel mounted weapon. If you want to use the las-array version I don't feel this would be to hard to convert.

-The 30k Preds with their 4 shot autocannons are ok, but the Predator Executioner is AMAZING. a 3 shot plasma cannon that doesn't "gets hot" This isn't too hard to convert from the BAAL predator turret. I threw up some WIP images of how I did the converstion from the Leeman Russ Executioner cannon.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/gallery/images-52617-51063_Executioner%20Predator%20Converstion.html

-The only pred variant that you can't convert from plastics is the converstion beamer pred. But I've seen this converted useing a plastic Baal pred and the converstion beamer arm from FW's contemptor dreads.

-You could also convert 30k bikes from de-chaos-ed Bikers. Once you dremal off all the chaos markings from the rider's legs and the bike your left with a old pattren bike and MK6 Corvus pattren legs. Useing MK6 bits from 40k plastics, and parts from the new plastic MK4's you could convert appropriate bikers.

-You could also convert from normal 30k bikers, but you could have to convert and green stuff the legs to turn them into MK4 legs. Their are tutorials for doing this.

-Land Speeders are in the legion list, and can also be easily converted over by converting the crew with MK4 plastic bits.


Alot of people get caught up on the crazy huge 30k special tanks, but the truth is that alot of the stuff already available in plastic are still solid choices. Build the core of your army from the plastics, and use FW special units and tanks you really want.

For the love of god dont BoC, it really is becoming the clone wars.

A drop pod army might be a relatively cheapish way to go. FW doesn't even make normal drop-pods to my knowledge so you're stuck with GW there anyway. And drop-poods are one of the least expensive SM vehicle to buy.

I'd think if you built an army around the Orbital Assault ROW it might get old since its all drop pods all the time. But one of those legions like Ravenguard that can take drop pods otherwise might be good. Ravenguard might be good for conversions since you can use the Corvus helmets from all the 40k stuff, you're painting in dark colors, etc.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

OgreChubbs wrote:
For the love of god dont BoC, it really is becoming the clone wars.

Seeing alot of it, huh?

 jasper76 wrote:
A drop pod army might be a relatively cheapish way to go. FW doesn't even make normal drop-pods to my knowledge so you're stuck with GW there anyway. And drop-poods are one of the least expensive SM vehicle to buy.

I'd think if you built an army around the Orbital Assault ROW it might get old since its all drop pods all the time. But one of those legions like Ravenguard that can take drop pods otherwise might be good. Ravenguard might be good for conversions since you can use the Corvus helmets from all the 40k stuff, you're painting in dark colors, etc.

The only catch is only the Box-Dreadnoughts can take normal Drop pods in that Rite. IF you want to run a contemptor you must put them in either a Dreadnought Drop Pod or a Dreadclaw.

This means if you want to use your nice new shiny Battle Of Calth Contemptor you need to get one of these two FW models.

 jasper76 wrote:
A drop pod army might be a relatively cheapish way to go. FW doesn't even make normal drop-pods to my knowledge so you're stuck with GW there anyway. And drop-poods are one of the least expensive SM vehicle to buy.

I'd think if you built an army around the Orbital Assault ROW it might get old since its all drop pods all the time. But one of those legions like Ravenguard that can take drop pods otherwise might be good. Ravenguard might be good for conversions since you can use the Corvus helmets from all the 40k stuff, you're painting in dark colors, etc.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

OgreChubbs wrote:
For the love of god dont BoC, it really is becoming the clone wars.

Seeing alot of it, huh?

Sadly yes it is all I see, they killed 30k when they made it BoC vs BoC. 30k use to be those who took their time years to build the perfect colour legion models ect. Now it is "what did you paint your BoC as?

Its a pretty cool set. "Value" by GW standards and a good way to get models on the board. I'm the only one in my group who picked it up, and to be honest havent even put together anything yet besides the terminators and the chaplain. I like the PA marines in there more than anything else.

Betrayal at Calth

Then only buy when EVERYTHING is painted.

Repeat with all new purchases.

As others have said, start with Betrayal at Calth.

Add 3 Apothacaries.

Playing my first game of 30k tomorrow. 1850 pts. Two Knights, 20 tacticals, 20 assault Marines, and a praetor. Cheeeeaaaappppp

 Mr. Grey wrote:

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
Best idea?
Plan out your army and budget. NO IMPULSE BUYS. that is what will kill you.

Yup. So many gamers seem to forget that you can budget your purchases and that you don't need to buy 3,000 points of miniatures in one go.

That being said though, if you're planning to buy a lot of the stuff from Forge World (unique Legion units, Primarchs & other FW models) it can be cheaper to bulk buy it in one go that to make multiple small orders every couple of months.

Never forget that shipping can kill your wallet, too. If you know what you want it's better to try and buy it all in one go (even if it means waiting a few months to have the funds for it) or to combine your order with a friend's (or multiple friends) to save on shipping.