Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

It seems like when people start 40k, they end up with a lot of models from different armies since they couldn't decide on one. I went through it, and I'm curious if it's really a common thing.

Very common thing. And now I'm selling all models from various armies except for the two armies I'm focusing on right now.

Well when i first first started I only got imperial guard. But i got them from every regiment that i could because i wanted to check out all the different guys! And at that time there were only plastic catachans who i hated, so I ended up with a lot of metal valhallans, tallarn, and death korps guys.

And i still have them! Also, no regrets.

Back when I got into it, I totally did this. I wonder if maybe it's less common these days now you mostly buy full units all at once, rather than like 3/10 of a unit in blisters.

Started with Space Wolves.
Second box I picked up was Dark Vengeance
Sold off the Chaos Marines, Dark Angels Terminators and Character, kept the small rulebook and converted the rest to Space Wolves.
Third box was Vanilla Marines, converted them to Blood Claws - I prefer my Space Wolves to be trophy hunters rather than superstitious, making the Blood Claws less adorned than Grey Hunters and a lot less adorned than Wolf Guard works pretty good.

I collected a pretty large Necron army first, then I pretty much went nuts as you can see.

Nope. Started with a single army, took two years before starting a second.

Shortanswer: Yes.

Longer answer: OMG my wallet hurts.

I've always stuck with one army at a time, it's hard enough to stay on target as is.

Yes and no.

I managed to get my hands on whatever vehicles I could. Mostly things like Rhinos (chaos or Loyal), and the majority being IG. I did get an Ork Battlewagon once, but I then tore it apart, gave it a trailer and made it into a Dragon-Wagon of sorts (It has long since been disassembled, Cat shoved it off the table and broke it. I plan to rebuild another Dragon-Wagon but not with the Battle Wagon pieces).

I did get things like Infantry bitz from all over the place, my younger brother would just keep switching armys and I ended up with random bitz left over, like Tau guns and arms, Dark Angels parts, Grey Knight bitz, and many more.

But now I have a massive collection of IG/SM/ Skitarii/ MT/ and Mechanicus. Theres also this one random ork I put under my heat gun. His name is Drippy.

In a way yes, I recently bought the Dark Vengeance set as I am interested in Chaos Space Marines (particularity the Black Legion), but I am not sure how far I want to get into Warhammer 40K. I have played a bunch of 28mm wargames of various already (so I already have fairly defined gaming preferences), but only recently has the background of 40K really captured my interest. However, price and rules hold me back for go too far. Plus, I think I am simply not interested in big games (1000+/more than a couple vehicles, any flyers or heavy/super heavy) of 40K yet.

Even though Dark Vengeance comes with CSM and Dark Angels, my plan is to paint the Dark Angels as the Fallen and include them as CSM equivalent where I can r. So far I can make use of everything except the Company Master. Although, I don't much care for the idea of the Liberian being uses as a Dark Apostle. Or conversely, go I might Vanilla Space Marines as newly traitorous members to the Black Legion as I don't really want to make use of marks, icons or demons. I think I will pick up the new Cypher model when he comes available and let his story dictate which direction my army goes.

Either way, I don't expect my army to do very well as I am only really going to buy the models I want to paint which appears to be some of the worst units (Raptors, Chosen, Warp Talons, Terminators and standard Chaos Marines). Which is fine, I only like the 40K for the background, and I don't mind being a punching bag when I am playing the bad guys and I have a cool looking table to play on.

I collected Eldar and Dark Eldar like a sane person, but my Blood Angels have quite the 'random models' story.

Shield of Baal: Leviathan came out, I bought one, traded the Tyranids for Blood Angels. Built all the Blood Angels. Decided I didn't like them and took them apart to rebuild as Emperor's Children.
Bought Dark Vengeance and made all of them Emperor's Children.
Decided I liked Blood Angels again and re-booted my collection of them by rescuing my Emperor's Children and leaving what I had converted to Chaos a little too thoroughly.
Betrayal at Calth comes out and I finally have a proper Blood Angels army with actual new models.

Oh boy, here we go.

I started with the 3rd ed starter, so got some Space Marines and Dark Eldar. I then saw the Grey Knights in an old WD, can't remember which one, but I had to have them. So naturally, that led me to a Chaos force (what kind of logic is that, you ask? No idea). After the deed, I saw the Necrons and... yeah.

Fast forward a few years and I had my grubby hands on Assault on Black Reach. More SMs and a new Ork army. But why stop there? The Eldar have such great pieces of fluff, and after the Necrons, it's only natural... And of course you can't just play an Eldar army without some Dark Eldar. When the line was revamped, I fell in love with the aesthetic.

After a break, I came back when the Necrons had their new incarnation. I thoroughly enjoyed the new models, although I was sad to see the Pariahs go. Anyway, what better cure for sadness than a new IG/Inq army? So that happened. That is, until the Deathwatch Overkill box was released! I've always been intrigued by Tyranids and their Lovecraftian themes.

But I always came back to the Necrons, and it's the only army I'm playing at the moment. I'm sitting on heaps of models collected in the past 15 years, because, well, you never know...

I only have one army right now, SOB. Not even a full army but that's ok. I tend to go for things aesthetically pleasing, so am fond of the SOB, Korn and Slaanesh armies. I really dislike Tzeench and especially Nurgle...I think it's just the way the models look. I don't play anymore as of right now, now I just collect models to paint.

If I were to start playing again I would likely go with Chaos of some sort...maybe Korn as it sounds like Slaanesh may be irrelevant soon? Not sure...

 Frstwlf wrote:

But I always came back to the Necrons, and it's the only army I'm playing at the moment. I'm sitting on heaps of models collected in the past 15 years, because, well, you never know...

I'm still peeved about what they did to Crypteks. I collected/converted so many Crypteks, color coded them according to their Harbinger type...now there's no use for any of them.

I didn't with 40k, but that's because I started very intentionally and as a long time WFB player I knew what I was getting myself into. Had 40k been my first game though, yes I most likely would have as I did when I started playing WFB. Within 3 months of starting WFB I had units from empire, orcs, vampire counts, high elves, and a scattering of skaven. Only the empire and orcs actually turned into full, playable collections, alas.

Very interesting question and I find myself instantly answering yes.

Whilst I may not be 'new' to WH (4 years now tabletop at least), I have a lot of armies and was just considering selling ones I don't work with in order to focus on the ones I do.

Armies by size -
IG (3k ish, Fortress Defence Force)
Orks (1.85k, Mechanized w/ Squiggoths)
Night Lords (1.85k Terror Assault)
Necron (1.5k Teleporters/Melee) *PLAN TO SELL
Dark Mech (1.5k Bolton Themed)
Tyranids (1k Spore Mine Spam)
Dark Eldar (0.75k Terror Bomb)
Chaos Daemons (0.5k Nurglings + GUO)
Inquisiton (0.5K Land Raider Addon)
Harlequins (0.2K Troupe)
Arbites (0.2K Patrol)

Okay I probably should sell some more. I like Kill Team so I might cut them down to that sort of points level and focus on models I love.

The first models I got for 40k were the Paint Set (which had 5 Dark Angels marines with boltguns) and the Dark Angels Battleforce (the old one with 6 bikes, an attack bike and the old hard-to-put-together land speeder). Shortly after that I picked up the Tau battleforce because I thought that Tau models were really cool looking (they are! ). Not too much later I picked up the Dark Vengeance set and decided to keep all the models, bringing my army count to 3. I really haven't diverged much from those three since then other than small side projects (like the Deathwatch: Overkill marines and my budding force of Space Wolves). The DV Chaos models became the nucleus of my Khorne Daemonkin army, although I've moved away from those specific models since I started playing that codex. I still consider Dark Angels to be my primary army even though I feel like my Tau are somewhat stronger on the tabletop.

Long story short: I started three armies right off the bat, and I have absolutely no regrets at all! Each army plays very differently, and they are all different modelwise for some great variety on the painting side.

Yeah definitely did that a lot not just when I started but throughout the years I've been involved in the hobby. Now that I'm back in it after a good two year hiatus, I've settled on one main army for 40k and one main army for AoS, though I am slowly starting up a secondary small army for 40k simply based on a fluff story I wrote and conversions I've wanted to do! Still have some remnants of old armies I've played at some point though I'm currently trying to sell most of that stuff and anything I can't really use for my main armies!

Started the game with Orks and within a few months I got Tau so I had two very different factions to alternate with and play games at home. A year later I got Grey Knights and within the past 1.5 years I went from having those 3 armies to having Orks, Tau, Grey Knights (+ Inq), Tempestus Scions, Space Marines, Space Wolves, Deathwatch. The only faction in the lot that I don't play actually play with is the Deathwatch and I only got those from going roughly 40/60 with a friend on a Death Masque box. For me Dawn of War 2 had already started my passion for the Orks so I knew that was the faction for me before buying my first piece of plastic. Tau I took a bit of a gamble on but they where the model line that really drew my attention and without having played DoW2 I would of probably had gone with the Tau on day 1.

Back when I started, there were no armies, just models.
So, I got bits of most things as they were released. The Tyranids (single type) and Zoats were on the same side as the handful of Space Elves and Stunties I had. These were against the Space Marines with dreadnought and biker, with the IG Rough Riders.
etc.

When I got back into the game in '11, I got the SM vs Orks box (AOBR), and then got the Eldar I wanted to pad out. For any Eldar kit I got, I might have bought an SM box to fight against.

With very little exception (explained below), I started with, continued with, and will continue with a pure Tau Empire army, and have no plans whatsoever to ever buy models from/for any other army.

The exception would be bitz for conversion, particularly for conversions of battlesuits and Kroot into rough equivalents of enemy forces (ersatz Terminator Kroot, ersatz Dreadnought battlesuits, ersatz Genestealer Kroot, ersatz Tactical/Scout Marine Kroot, ersatz 30k Primarch battlesuits, etc.).

While there undeniably some beautiful models out there in non-Tau ranges that I enjoy, I can't foresee ever preferring to build and paint them over making a Tauified/Krootified conversion instead.

 jasper76 wrote:
I'm still peeved about what they did to Crypteks. I collected/converted so many Crypteks, color coded them according to their Harbinger type...now there's no use for any of them.

I haven't gone that far with the Crypteks but I understand your frustration. In fact, I feel that way with most 7th ed codexes. They're... light, fluff-wise. Too light IMO. Although I'm not a fan of some of the fluff in the 5th ed codex, at least it felt like a true tome. Now we have pretty pictures instead.

Nah, I stuck with Dark Angels (Dark Vengeance) for a good while before I started another army.

SG

I collected orks for many years, and just bought a couple of other armies boxes, then in the last two years I collected also SW and dark eldar. With the exception of a couple of boxes bought 15 years ago I've only collected miniatures that belonged to the armies that I was playing and I am still doing it.

I first ordered Necrons, but the order was cancelled due to Games Workshop shopping cart policies. So I decided to buy the Black Reach with another friend and decided 100% to play orks.

When I first started Fantasy, I didn't really know any of the rules, lore, or even who and what the different factions were. I ended up with a pretty random assortment of different pieces.

By the time I started with 40k I had a good understanding of the game and was immediately drawn to the Tau. Stuck with Tau for about 7 years or so and jumped on CSM at the start of the 5th edition. Later expanded into Daemons which are my current main army.

When I started it was with RTB001 SM. A box of 30 marines, which was plenty for RT40k.
(especially when it had more special weapon/sgt sprues than it was meant to).

My first "army" for 40k was eldar, though. I stuck with those for the better part of 25 years before leaving the GW-is-molesting-my-wallet-hobby

Well I don't know about "common", but it seems to happen often enough. I know it happened to me. I've only even known about Warhammer and miniature gaming in general since early 2012, and within the next three years, I had nearly everything that's in my signature. A ridiculous amount of armies, and quite a bit for each army. This spanned over 40k, WHFB, and Warmahordes, to an extent. Started with Tyranids, then came the flood. I loved models from every army, every line, and had to have them, but I needed a logical reason to get them (as in they had to have an army to go with them). So my friends got out of it and I bought their armies for cheap. Boom, Necrons, Orks, Tau. Zombie-fan here started looking into Nurgle. Boom, CSM. Found out box sets had unique models? Boom, Dark Vengeance, DV Chaos expansion, Stormclaw, Shield of Baal, Space Hulk, battleforces....then the fantasy bug hit. Lizardmen, Vampires, Chaos Warriors, Skaven...AoS starter...it didn't end. But then family happens and life happens, and eventually you will break the cycle. It just may be staggering when you look back at it though.

Dear god yes. That said, I'm purging years and years and years of extras and consolidating on (basically) two.

One thing friends and I did after college which I wish we'd done a bit more of is some cross consolidation. I traded X to someone for their Y to just make sure any one of us had enough to do something with it later and not just one thing. It helped, but now decades (ha) later it's time to move stuff just too consolidate.