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I spent this afternoon scouring the interwebz for good prices for the 1500ish points of chaos space marines I'm about to buy. adding it all up was a bit of a shocker; about $475 after tax and shipping. granted, most of this is NIB from ebay and various retailers, but still... wow. is this typical for an army this size? I'm lucky enough to have a job that let's me support my hobby habits, however absurd they may be, but I can't imagine how a college student or younger kids manage it. that's a lot of babysitting and lawn mowing

anyway, just a random observation. old news to the 40k vets, I'm sure. oh, and before anyone goes off, this is not a rant on GW's pricing. they can set their prices any way they want. if I think it's too expensive, I'll spend my hobby money elsewhere. simple

You can get better deals if you are willing to shop around on E-bay and buy painted/used models, but it takes time to put together a force cheaply.

Yeah, My advice, build up slowly, a box here a box ther. 50-75$ a month would have you at the army after 6 months or so.

Well, I always view it like this, people have either coffee, alcohol, (whatever else you can think of), or Warhammer. That's the only reason I can afford it, I basically am really stingy with whatever else I buy. Food for example, I try to buy cheaply.

Wouldn't it be funny if this forum became a budget tutorial forum...

don't get me wrong, I realize I could get these models for less if I went used on ebay, bartertown or whatnot. I made a conscious choice to go with NIB stuff because I'm a bit OCD about my models most of the NIB stuff is still coming from ebay at over 20% off GW prices, anyway like I said, the cost isn't really an issue for me but seeing the grand total made me wonder how a lot of other folks afford it. when I built up my SM army last year, I did it a box here and a box there and never really saw the grand total. picking up an entire army in one go was eye opening.

hotsauceman1 wrote:Yeah, My advice, build up slowly, a box here a box there.

This.

40k isn't a traditional consumer product where you buy it, consume it, and then throw away the wrapper. It's more like an appliance or an investment, or a lifestyle choice. 40k minis are a durable good. You build your force up over time. When you do it this way, the cost is pretty well defrayed.

I mean, I've spent many hundred dollars on my guard army, but I've done it over 7 years. $1000 over 7 years comes out to $2.75 per week. Hardly bank-breaking.

Plus, if you buy stuff only as fast as you build and paint it, you get to really get into the hobby stuff better as well, and will play smaller games before larger one. Put another way, building slowly builds good habits and teaches you things in the proper order rather than buying everything up front and splashing into it.

you know, I thought about doing exactly that... starting with 500pts or so and then adding to my list over time. as I sat around playing with different lists, though, it seemed like the models I would want to use in small lists would be fairly different from the larger lists. I'd end up with stuff I bought early on relegated to the side lines. maybe it works better for some armies over others, but buying the entire list at once seemed to make more sense this time. or maybe I just didn't have the patience to do it one box at a time again

$475 is really, really cheap for a hobby, and most models will carry over from edition to edition so it won't be obsolete after a few years.

If you don't want to do it up front, build over time as a previous poster mentioned which will also give you time to do the assembly and painting as you go so you don't have an intimidating amount of models in front of you before you start painting...

varl wrote:it seemed like the models I would want to use in small lists would be fairly different from the larger lists. I'd end up with stuff I bought early on relegated to the side lines.

Do more research. I doubt that this will wind up being true.

For example, with my foot guard, I need a lot of guys with lasguns and meltaguns. At higher points, I have even MORE guys with lasguns and meltaguns. At lower levels, mechvet armies have 2 or 3 mechvet squads. At higher points, they have 3-5 mechvets. Generally, if you're doing it right, something that's in your list at 750 points should very likely still be in your list at 1500.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
Yeah, My advice, build up slowly, a box here a box ther. 50-75$ a month would have you at the army after 6 months or so.

This is the best route to take, and also means you'll actually have time to paint each piece as you buy it. A pile of unpainted plastic on your desk is intimidating and extremely hard to put a dent into, while a box or two a month is manageable.

Teddy183 wrote:
Well, I always view it like this, people have either coffee, alcohol, (whatever else you can think of), or Warhammer. That's the only reason I can afford it, I basically am really stingy with whatever else I buy. Food for example, I try to buy cheaply.

Wouldn't it be funny if this forum became a budget tutorial forum...

I managed to assemble quite a sizeable SM, Eldar and GK army whilst having my coffee and alcohol.
I did it by getting a unit a month or so (or several months as the case may have been) - granted, it does take a bit longer than jumping in with a credit card and doing it naaaaaoooooow! - but patience means you can find a few bargains along the way.

It took 20-odd years, btw. I've been in this tabletop miniatures lark for around 27 years now - and I didn't start until after I'd finished school (couldn't really do 40k at school - it didn't exist yet.)

I havn't bought a whole army at once for a very long time. The last time I did this was waaaaay back when GW stopped making lead mini's and switched to white metal. The sale of lead mini's in-store was brilliant and I picked up 3000pts of Chaos Marines for around £150......That was 2nd Ed points costs mind......

Curiously enough, I've just written up a 3000pt SM list that I intend to buy slowly. I'm limiting myself to £50 a month and won't be buying another sprue until I've finished the last unit or vehicle to a good standard. Bear in mind that I've still got roughly 1000pts of Orks to paint and finish as well.

One problem with painting a box at a time is uniformity.

I wanted to get into Mech IG, but I wanted to make sure the tanks looked the same. The troops could vary a bit, but not the fleet of Chimirae.

25% off last years prices was just too good to pass up

One thing to consider when taking the slow build approach, is to look ahead. If you are building a 500 point list, and just need a 5 man squad of marines, don't buy the 5 man box. Get the full 10 man squad. You get more in the box for the money, and eventually you will need the extra guys.

While the hobby is expensive, it is durable. For the price of dinner and a movie with The Wife, I could get a new squad for my army. A few drinks at a bar will equal the same amount. But the Marines will be around for years, while the drinks will only last till the hangover is gone.

Most of my army was collected after I got my first real job, but was still living like a starving college student. My income doubled, but expenses remained stable. But I still managed to gather a nice army in my high school days. For the most part all your income at that point is disposable, so if you are careful with random expenses, you can dedicate a large portion to it to the game.

What army (if any) do you currently have now? Because, depending on what it is, you could have a much smaller Chaos army and run it as allies.

That's what I'm planning on doing for converted Traitor Guard. Since I don't want to spend $300+ just for transports, I'm going to get smaller teams to run as an auxillary force for my current Chaos army, eventually expanding on them every now and then until it's a sizable force that I can use on their own.

@xSPYXEx: my other army is vanilla SM (salamanders), so that wouldn't work terribly well in my case good idea for the future, though...