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Of the non-IoM armies, which single faction (no soup/no forge world) is the most affordable while still being decently competitive?

I'd say T'au tbh. T'au are very good, have a large plastic line, aren't hordes, and are probably one of the top monodexes (From my experience.)

A 2000pts Harlequin Army ist pretty cheap. They are a pain to paint and tricky to play tho.

Death Guard. Quite forgiving to play, rather cheap because of Starterboxes, no Failcast. As hard to paint as you choose.

To be honest, all three of these armies did come to mind. What kind of play styles are available to these armies (meaning gunline, assault etc.)

Sir Heckington wrote:I'd say T'au tbh. T'au are very good, have a large plastic line, aren't hordes, and are probably one of the top monodexes (From my experience.)

I know T'au does gunline well, but is that all they can do? Can they run effective mechanized lists?

Morkphoiz wrote:A 2000pts Harlequin Army ist pretty cheap. They are a pain to paint and tricky to play tho.

I considered Harlequins. I love their look and find them interesting. However, from all I've heard about them, they may be a bit too similar tactically to the Militarum Tempestus army I am building currently.

Sgt. Cortez wrote:Death Guard. Quite forgiving to play, rather cheap because of Starterboxes, no Failcast. As hard to paint as you choose.

I've always kind of enjoyed the Nurgle jokes. I figured Death Guard would be up in the list considering the availability of starter boxes like you said. I know their gimmick is durability, but what play styles are available for the army?

I would second Death Guard and throw in Renegade Knights as another option - although people will hate you.

Define "affordable". Is there a price range you have in mind?

In my opinion, Orks, Drukhari, and Tyranids can do the best mono-codex builds, but without knowing a price range, I can't define what "affordable" means to you.

I will second Drukhari.

Cheap squads, Failcrap on some minis though, and a fine assed codex 'into the bargain' (DE fans will get that latter reference to a sorely missed character)

I don't really think such a thing exists as an army that is Affordable and Competitive. Sure, it might exist for short window of time, but once you decide on playing competitive you also decide to chase the plastic dragon. And you are never going to catch that dragon.

Metas shift and evolve that you are always going to have to spend money to be competitive. I am almost certain knight heavy lists will not be featured in top spots of the 2020 competitive tournaments as GW evolves the game into the next OP unit.

 NoiseMarine with Tinnitus wrote:
I will second Drukhari.

Cheap squads, Failcrap on some minis though, and a fine assed codex 'into the bargain' (DE fans will get that latter reference to a sorely missed character)

uh, a competitive drukhari army is nooooooooot affordable though. You'll need like 10 venoms, 3 ravagers, 5 troops boxes....they're nearly guard level expensive.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Saturmorn Carvilli wrote:
I don't really think such a thing exists as an army that is Affordable and Competitive. Sure, it might exist for short window of time, but once you decide on playing competitive you also decide to chase the plastic dragon. And you are never going to catch that dragon.

Metas shift and evolve that you are always going to have to spend money to be competitive. I am almost certain knight heavy lists will not be featured in top spots of the 2020 competitive tournaments as GW evolves the game into the next OP unit.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

You will always and forever have to be re-buying your army to stay competitive. Even if the same faction ends up still good. Guy with 2 WKs and 45 scatterbikes still had to completely rebuy his army for 8th even if the eldar remained competitive.

I would say Death Guard. You have Starter set, Conquest and DI. Not bad and resiliant.

Deathguard for the sheer availability of the plastic sets. Through the conquest magazine (if you're in Europe), DI and the other starters, you can find plenty on eBay for cheap.

Orks. The Answer to _ all _ ‘what army do I get’ queries is Orks. Because they are the One True Faction.

YMMV. T&CA. NFR. OEtUKCO. NSFW.

I would agree with the Death Guard option. I was pleasantly surprised how (relatively) cheap it is to put together a DG army, primarily becuase of the boxed set stuff being sold on ebay.

Just to throw a wrench here, while Death Guard is certainly affordable they don't seem to be very competitive. At least not with the stuff that's also affordable. There has been some tournament success here and there with spam lists or gimmick lists (of which the largest offenders have been fixed with Rule of 3 preventing that ridiculous 8 crawler list last year) but Death Guard as a mono faction IMHO is upper middle tier in a best-case scenario where you can play to the mission properly (see that list that had some success recently with a lot of Blightlord Terminators), and lower midtier to midtier most of the time depending on what you regularly face.

Death Guard is my main 40k army and I'm looking at switching away from them due to that fact. I just can't make an army that feels right and also plays well. Plague Marines, while probably one of the best Marine types currently, are still Marines and still largely overpriced for what they do. The vehicles are solid but also very limited in what you can do, meaning you'll often struggle against heavy armor frequently. ForgeWorld is often the desired way to deal with things (Leviathan Dreadnoughts, in particular, are amazingly nasty with Death Guard) but OP said no Forge World.

I'd say T'au or maybe AdMech now with the fixes if you consider Knights as part of them (since while I think they still need to be in a separate detachment now, the base knights are in the AdMech Codex) without having to resort to a soup list. Not sure if that counts as "affordable" though.

Craftworlds Wraithost isn't bad. How do you define competitive? Is it has an equal footing in casual games or low model count with the ability to challenge in a tournament.

The deathguard/renegade knights list that won BAO last year is a good shout. Kudos to Don Hooson. Pretty simple fun comp list
Renegade knight
2 helverins
Nurgle DP
10 Blightlords
Foul Blightspawn
3 PBC's

Can you define affordable and competitive? Then you'd get some very specific responses.

You'll need to define affordable to be honest. What fits one pocket, won't necessarily fit another.

Are you limited by how much you can spend in a month, and are useless at saving (such as I!) - then Knights may not be for you.

At the moment, I don’t have a big defined definition for affordable. Preferably, I’m thinking cheaper than the $500-$600 USD range, as that is about what the Militarum Tempestus army I’m building will come out as.

By competitive, I mean competitive enough that I wouldn’t be able to a Knight, loyal 32 list or a CWE soup list, but I’d like to put up a memorable fight.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
...are useless at saving (such as I!)

Are you talking about me here? I feel ya

To the OP, Deathguard might be good shout for you then. I play DG and I'm loving them but they need work and soup tricks to really challenge the top 3-4 builds but for everything else they can compete on an equal footing and their resilience mean you will rarely get tabled. Also a lot os stock on ebay from the boxed set that you can pick up for less than retail.

Yeah, Tau can do it, mostly because the riptide is surprisingly cost-effective in points per $, as well as crisis suits being not-terrible anymore with the points drop means the start collecting is ok.

Here is a roughly $550/2000 point list:

2 Battalions:
XV8 commander
XV8 commander
Ethereal
Fireblade

6x5 Firewarriors

3x Riptides
2x3 Crisis Suits
3x Farsight Marksmen

Fill in with drones

To Build This you need the following boxes:
3x Start Collecting
3x Riptides
1 Fireblade
1 Pathfiinders

The main trick is to make the marksmen using firewarrior pistols and pathfinder markerlights, at least that is what I did. It gets you good value for your money, and if you want you can still build most of a squad of pathfinders from the box.

Three big knights and a couple of the baby knights are decent and reasonably cheap for a whole army, by gw standards at least.

If you’re wanting Cost Effective, your budget is only part of it.

One can put together most forces for $500. But, how you do it matters. If you’re just buying stuff because it’s got a decent pound-to-points ratio, you may wind up with a force that underperforms, as it doesn’t really exploit army synergy.

My recommendation is to settle on an army, and buy the Codex. Second hand if you’re still undecided, or even borrowed if you’ve got a gaming circle.

From there, work out what it is that drew you to that army, and how you want to field it (Tau for example. Riptides are nice, but are they right for your vision of the army). From there, draw up a spending plan, basing it around getting a 1,000 point army first, so you can get gaming.

Once you’ve got a few games under your belt with the 1k, stop and take stock. Is it working as you hoped? If not, is it back to the drawing board completely, or perhaps a tweak to the existing list, or your initial planned buying order.

That will help you aim your spending. If you can do that, you’re getting the best value for your money. And for heaven’s sake, if you’re on a budget, trawl FB tradings groups for the bits and bobs you want. It can be hit and miss, but you get better prices than FeeBay! They can also be used to swap units if you feel one you’ve bought isn’t working out. They’re also pretty ace for tracking down Bits that you want, without having to buy a full kit.

Overall? Plan, plan, plan, then plan some more. Make initial purchased to form an army, then practice, practice practice, whilst adjusting the plan accordingly. Shop smart. Shop S-Mart.

I say Death Guard. You can get a LOT of models for fairly cheap second hand.

Secondly, I find armies that are missing phases to be quite boring to play. Tau have 0 psychic powers and little to no melee. Death Guard alternatively has access to all phases and are quite decent in all of them as well.

Thirdly, Death Guard is just a dream to paint and convert, so much fun and potential! Plus, it is a LOT easier to sculpt green stuff into flesh and boils than I thought, I learned a ton converting my knights. It is a real education and will teach you some basic skills for the future.

 Apple Peel wrote:

Sgt. Cortez wrote:Death Guard. Quite forgiving to play, rather cheap because of Starterboxes, no Failcast. As hard to paint as you choose.

I've always kind of enjoyed the Nurgle jokes. I figured Death Guard would be up in the list considering the availability of starter boxes like you said. I know their gimmick is durability, but what play styles are available for the army?

You can horde up with loads of Pox Walkers led by Typhus and a few supporting characters behind the screen.

You can go more elite with plenty of Death Guard infantry and Terminators with massed combi-plasma teleporting into your opponent.

You can go heavy on Daemon engines or stick to more traditional Chaos Marine vehicles.

And you can bring Mortarion with a few Deathshroud to soak up hits and start spraying mortal wounds over your enemy like they are going out of fashion.

Resilience is their thing but there is certainly some variety to be had there.

I know you said no IoM factions and no soup, but if you want a really cheap Army that is super competitive than look no farther than the top net list for IoM.

1 Knight, a couple Blood Angels characters/scouts, sprinkle in some guardsmen to flavor and you have a 2k point army that is considered to be one of if not THE top performing lists in the game right now, and honestly you can probably buy the entire list for $500ish