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I was thinking about starting a chaos knights army, but it’s £90 a knight. And they seem to average around 400points so that’s £450 for a 2000pt army.

Am I mad or is that way more than you would pay for any other 2000pt army. I think each of the armies in indomitus were about 1000pt and that was £110.

And I’m pretty sure the chaos start collecting box is about 1000pts for £55

Goonhammer recently posted an article on Mega-gargants that featured a sample army list of 4 of them. They're roughly $200 each, so that's $800usd tied up in 4 miniatures.

That is cheaper, comparing to an avarge army.
My dudes are an elite army.
And the army post new codex is going to look something like this 1 NDK GM, 1 brother captin, 1 Draigo. 4 units of strikes, 3 units of purfires, 2-3 regular NDKS. That is around 500$ with no paints, no books, no dice etc. A less elite army, which isn't marines, can cost a lot more.

It varies WILDLY from army to army, especially depending on your desired list. Some armies are just inherently cheaper.

My Tyranid Warrior 2K army would cost. . . Well over $1000 US. Maybe closer to 1500? I'm a little afraid to run the numbers.

Well you are correct in assessing that GW prices can be a bit steep. But realistically Knights are a relatively cheap army to collect, especially compared to horde armies or armies with horrendous $ to point ratio kits (Admech/some Ork kits).
For comparison, I'm more familiar with Euro pricing, but Knights give an almost 4 to 1 return on points compared to euros spend. Compare that to Mek guns which are almost 1 on 1, although those are an extreme example.
Generally speaking armies in a box like Indomitus or those with great rebuyable SC/Combat Patrols can be cheaper to collect than most. I was fortunate enough to start collecting DG when Dark Imperium was still around as well as a few amazing EtB kits. Nowadays that army would be quite a bit more expensive to collect.

Steep sure but I tend to spend 20-30 gbp at a time so don’t notice it or buy the value boxes. Thinking about spending £90 per unit really hits home the cost

That also assumes you can't find deals/ways to get it cheaper.

Depending on army compositions things can fluctuate a lot. Also how much you can get in discount boxes. Generally you can get around 3-4 points per $US. The basic SM combat patrol is $140 for about 615 points ( 4.39 $/point) and generally the get started type bundles are good savings. An intercessor box is around 3.3 $/P. This assumes full retail.

I’d ballpark a decent 2k list at about $500.

If a knight is really about 400 points, they are not good bang for your buck, as at $157 each, that would put them at 2.5 $/P, which is low.

You can pay about 400 for a 2k list of Custodes, I think that is still the gold standard for cheap armies.

the cost of armies varies considerably from army to army, GENERALLY speaking the more elite the army the cheaper as you need less stuff.

Marines tend to be cheaper as they get so many discount boxes, but barring those discount boxes they're no cheaper

Standard Sisters 2ks can range anywhere from 600 to 1500 dollars. The battle Sanctum is one of the worst points per dollar models in the game at 110$ for an 80pt model.

Don't buy it all at once.

Start with a small force, work up to a larger force over time, as you can afford it.

I'v built a 3+ company space marine army, plus half a Primaris company, starting with Rogue Trader.

And, as others have noted above, buy second-hand where you can. You can usually buy built + painted for less than the cost of a brand-new kit. Even getting a new, unbuilt kit at discount is a good deal.

mrFickle wrote:
Steep sure but I tend to spend 20-30 gbp at a time so don’t notice it or buy the value boxes. Thinking about spending £90 per unit really hits home the cost

They're about £70 a pop on Dark Sphere...

I find myself always that new army tends to cost ~400e more or less. Albeit this is with AOS. Haven't checked 40k army prices yet as haven't started any in a while.

But regardless of faction it always tends to be about same for AOS. Big differences are lumineth and mega gargants(which have added inconvenience that you can't do it in small bites. It's basically 100-150e per kit you need...similar to knights).

Rest unless I go for very weird list it's not much cheaper or expensive. Hard to get cheaper without 2nd hand, some lists with more unusual forces gets more expensive.

Armies with efficient start collecting boxes(you want ones with no characters(that can't be built non-character) that you can buy multiples of) or are involved in starter sets can be very cheap if you don't want super hard. More so with launch boxes(kruelboyz get the dominion, swap stormcast for 2nd half, congrats you have tad over 2000 pts for 155e plus rulebook).

Harlequins can get very silly When GW had the "post army list, win the army) I had 2500 pts or so and it capped the limit so over double what I usually pay for new army to start with and just 500 pts or so spares Bikes+transports added up to price fast. Not an army I'm going to start on my own in a hurry...

mrFickle wrote:
I was thinking about starting a chaos knights army, but it’s £90 a knight. And they seem to average around 400points so that’s £450 for a 2000pt army.

Am I mad or is that way more than you would pay for any other 2000pt army. I think each of the armies in indomitus were about 1000pt and that was £110.

And I’m pretty sure the chaos start collecting box is about 1000pts for £55

I make the start collecting out to be 580ish points, but it's a discount box with monopose minis in. The chaos marine unit in the box is a really bad load out in particular. Likewise indomitus was a never before seen level of discount in a special box.

Knights are probably one of the most reasonable armies for a lot of reasons, yes they're expensive per head but they need so few it works out better in the end.

Look at an army like tyranids, your basic gaunts are £20 for 60 points, so a unit of 30 at 180 points is £60 for 1 troops. That's on top of having to paint/store/move 30 guys for 1 unit.

A 3D resin printer is $200-$250 these days. Some STL files for big stompy robots (Some of which are free) and resin and it shouldn't go above $300, and then you can use that printer to enter more armies much cheaper.

And then use those armies for One Page Rules or miniatures-agnostic systems so 40K doesn't get as much engagement.

cheapest possible 40k army is Custodes with all Jetbikes
making it 270€ in original models, or 90€ if you use Mantic Enforcer Jetbikes

Doing all Knights with 3rd party models is 200-250€ vs the original 500-600€

an Astra Militarum army comes around 800-1000€ with GW models

a 2000 point 40k army, without core box or easy to build options costs ~500-1000€ depending on the faction outside the "budget" builds that may not be valid with a new Codex (or are not fun to play)

going with 3rd party models reduces the cost by 50% in most cases

 Mr. Grey wrote:
Goonhammer recently posted an article on Mega-gargants that featured a sample army list of 4 of them. They're roughly $200 each, so that's $800usd tied up in 4 miniatures.

or you take the same sized Kings of War or Conquest Gaints and get it for 200

 CEO Kasen wrote:
A 3D resin printer is $200-$250 these days. Some STL files for big stompy robots (Some of which are free) and resin and it shouldn't go above $300, and then you can use that printer to enter more armies much cheaper.

And then use those armies for One Page Rules or miniatures-agnostic systems so 40K doesn't get as much engagement.

A quick Amazon puts one at £250 here for me, which plus supplies etc you're looking at £300ish? Never mind the time learning how to use and maintain another piece of machinery and software which is a turn off for a lot of people. I feel sometimes "just buy a 3d printer" is banded about as a plug and play type thing which is wrong.

Likewise if you want to attend any GW events or WHW if in the UK, you'd need the legit items or damn near to.

Yeah, the cost is very high if you buy a traditional GW army now. I stick almost exclusively to discounted boxes only these days, no interest in paying the ridiculous amounts they charge for troop boxes.

Ultimately it's what's going to cause GW real issues as older players die off there won't be anyone to replace them.

The price of their mini's present a massive barrier to entry.

When I started you could buy models for £4 like terminators, characters were £7.

You could buy stuff for pocket money, now nothing's under £15.

 Stormonu wrote:
Don't buy it all at once.

Start with a small force, work up to a larger force over time, as you can afford it.

It depends. Here I can buy anything but direct material with a 25% price reduction but I have to pay shipping costs, so it makes sense to buy large lots in order to reduce those costs. In fact in the last decade I buy stuff every 2-3 years basically, always large lots though in order to pay shipping costs only a few times. Of course already having large collections allowed me to do that. For someone that starts I'd suggest getting 1000ish points of stuff all at once and be good with that for a couple of years.

However if you get stuff from the GW site or from a local shop it's a whole different matter as shipping costs are free and in that case buying smaller lots makes much more sense.

Dudeface wrote:

A quick Amazon puts one at £250 here for me, which plus supplies etc you're looking at £300ish? Never mind the time learning how to use and maintain another piece of machinery and software which is a turn off for a lot of people. I feel sometimes "just buy a 3d printer" is banded about as a plug and play type thing which is wrong.

Likewise if you want to attend any GW events or WHW if in the UK, you'd need the legit items or damn near to.

3D printing is only worth it compared to GW prices
40-30% of the original army price but months of additional work is worth it for some people who have the time

with the problem that you cannot go to GW events, but this is also the case for 3rd party bits so buying plastic somewhere else is still the better option

yet going into terrain or other games, the price is not the point any more but having additional models that you cannot get otherwise

DON'T BUY YOUR ARMY ALL AT ONCE!

The barrier of sticker shock is NOTHING to the barrier of Unpainted minis/wall of shame for dissuading players!

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
DON'T BUY YOUR ARMY ALL AT ONCE!

The barrier of sticker shock is NOTHING to the barrier of Unpainted minis/wall of shame for dissuading players!

I have models that I bought 20+ years ago still unpainted. I'm still here .

Painting several models all at once is also a much faster way of painting. Doing 1-5 dudes at once takes forever for someone new, it's better to paint 30 models in a single batch.

I bought my 28mm soviets for Chain of Command for like $150, and that's because I really wanted a niche model that is uncommon (a T-35). For $150 more I was able to accessorize out into a whole other two platoons of tanks...

Just to ask, is it really that common for people to just immediately buy into 40k at 2k points?
I literally can't think of any person I've known who has started the hobby like that. Everyone I know started off with an Edition's Starter Box or a Battleforce (the old ones that got replaced by SC Boxes, not the £100 Xmas boxes).

 Gert wrote:
Just to ask, is it really that common for people to just immediately buy into 40k at 2k points?
I literally can't think of any person I've known who has started the hobby like that. Everyone I know started off with an Edition's Starter Box or a Battleforce (the old ones that got replaced by SC Boxes, not the £100 Xmas boxes).

People who are already into the hobby for sure. People who are starting definitely not, many buy just a few kits which require them a lot of work to complete and still cost some good money only to discover that games with just such models, that are worthy of 500ish pints, suck. That's the biggest barrier in my experience, that's why I advise beginners to get 1000ish points at once. Old battleforces had enough models to play properly and were excellent deals for beginners.

hobojebus wrote:
Ultimately it's what's going to cause GW real issues as older players die off there won't be anyone to replace them.

The price of their mini's present a massive barrier to entry.

When I started you could buy models for £4 like terminators, characters were £7.

You could buy stuff for pocket money, now nothing's under £15.

Don’t forget to take inflation into account when you pull out the nostalgia glasses. I remember paying $20 for a box of marines, but in today’s dollars, it would be closer to $45.

I do miss blister packs. It made it easier to slowly build, and were more at a impusle buy or upsale level. The only thing you can walk out of a GW these days without spending “real” money is maybe a paint pot. They did do those blind boxes, which made decent stocking stuffers for Christmas.

 Gert wrote:
Just to ask, is it really that common for people to just immediately buy into 40k at 2k points?
I literally can't think of any person I've known who has started the hobby like that. Everyone I know started off with an Edition's Starter Box or a Battleforce (the old ones that got replaced by SC Boxes, not the £100 Xmas boxes).

I'm currently starting up a small 40k group in my hometown - typically you've got two kinds of new 40k players, the "Boundless Enthusiasm" and the "Cost Averse." The main problem you run into is that the ~20-25% of your player group that REALLY wants to escalate really hard and just buys and buys and buys massively outpaces the more common 'buy a start collecting box and stick with it' player.

What we've kind of settled on for a strategy is to play 1k point games, with the option of 2 players each bringing 500 or 1 playre bringing 1000. 500pts is most combat patrol boxes at this point.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
DON'T BUY YOUR ARMY ALL AT ONCE!

The barrier of sticker shock is NOTHING to the barrier of Unpainted minis/wall of shame for dissuading players!

Agreed!