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G'day, I'm trying to inspire my mate into taking up 40k, does anyone know who has the largest collection of 40k models in the world, or can link me to an image of it?

Thanks all!

I'm betting Games Workshop has...

There was a Polish fella in a WD with an entire chapter of Marines. In the article, it was mentioned that he had other armies as well.

He's probably a contender.

Yeah, this would be more of a research project than something anyone is going to know.

I met a fellow in SF who died a couple years ago who had at least 5k points of every major army (CSMs, Orks, Tau, Eldar, Tyranids, Eldar, Dark Eldar, multiple marine chapters). He had a room in his house set aside for them and more packed away in the garage. Introduced by a friend who used to live near them, his armies went to his sons.

I'm going to go with GW on this one, because they make them and have huge armies, as well as in the Apocalypse Rulebook V2, they have an entire Ultramarines Chapter, and a lot more.

Whoever bought the full chapter bundle is a sure contender.

I saw a youtube video a couple of years ago of a guy that had 10 000 points of every army in Warhammer Fantasy and 40k (Including Dogs of War for Fantasy) But even though I have searched I ahve not been able to find the video again.. It was a large and impressive warhammer collection..

I have an 18,000 point Imperial Guard Armored Regiment available for use in my sig.

It's a toss up between this man and his 70,000 points of Eldar http://wcwdb.blogspot.ae/ and the Prince of Brunei, who once had his own personal Games Workshop store in his palace.

Asmodai Asmodean wrote:
It's a toss up between this man and his 70,000 points of Eldar http://wcwdb.blogspot.ae/ and the Prince of Brunei, who once had his own personal Games Workshop store in his palace.

Damn that's badass!

Yeah that's pretty badass! Okay cheers, I was trying to remember a guy in America who was selling his ig army and it was basically a whole room of tanks.

There are quite a few users on here with 20,000+ pts of 40k. My own collection is very small in comparison at around 6k spread over 3 armies.

Look in peoples sigs, you'll be sure to find a few galleries/blogs with shots of their collections.

1. Go to FLGS on a 40K game night.
2. Announce to no one in particular "I have over 10,000 points of Space Marines".
3. Sit back and watch as some 30-ish Neckbeard who still lives with his parents not only disputes your claim, but goes on to describe his 30,000 points of Blood Angels and how he has been playing since Rogue Trader days... And yet you will have never seen him either play 40K or that army.
4. From here, you have several options. Continue the conversation, or just end it. Either way, I guarantee you will waste 1+ hour of your life talking to this guy. Have fun!

Pretty sure my friend is a contender, he's full time Navy and has no vices except for 40k so he drops hundreds of dollars pretty regularly. I know he has several bane blades at least one of everything for Eldar, CSM, Tau, and Guard, Space Wolves, Dark Angels and somewhere in the realm of 600 or so Space Marines not including special characters.

Then he has a walk in closet of unopened boxes again about one of everything for the before mentioned armies.

Also the entire citadel modeling paint line every color, tool, and brush.

Might not be the biggest in the world but he certainly makes me green with envy haha

Asmodai Asmodean wrote:
It's a toss up between this man and his 70,000 points of Eldar http://wcwdb.blogspot.ae/ and the Prince of Brunei, who once had his own personal Games Workshop store in his palace.

AA, you just gave me a new man to hate in life. Yes, I have jealousy rage issues.

Feth you, awesome Eldar army man!!

Asmodai Asmodean wrote:
and the Prince of Brunei, who once had his own personal Games Workshop store in his palace.

Wait, what? Is that for real 0_o

Well, now we know why GW hasn't collapsed yet due to high prices. They got princes buying their stuff

 Farseer Faenyin wrote:

Asmodai Asmodean wrote:
It's a toss up between this man and his 70,000 points of Eldar http://wcwdb.blogspot.ae/ and the Prince of Brunei, who once had his own personal Games Workshop store in his palace.

AA, you just gave me a new man to hate in life. Yes, I have jealousy rage issues.

Feth you, awesome Eldar army man!!

It did take over 17 years and a lot of bargain hunting to arrive at nearly 70k. There are supposedly larger Eldar armies out there (80k), however no one has ever seen photos or would produce them when asked... So it could simply be a case of "Pics or it didn't happen". While all the models are nice (including the rare ones), it's the extra bits like custom dice, dice pouches, commissioned Apoc tables, a WIP leather bound grimoir of Craftworld history etc that sets it apart. Thanks for the admiration

Reading this thread I went through a quick tally using battlescribe and without upgrades my BA are over 10k, GK over 4k, Sisters north of 3k, Necrons close to 4k, Deathwing close to 3k and Orks close to 3k. If I included stuff in boxes that is going to be sold or traded, that's probably another 4k+. And I think my collection is pretty standard.....

 Morachi wrote:

 Farseer Faenyin wrote:

Asmodai Asmodean wrote:
It's a toss up between this man and his 70,000 points of Eldar http://wcwdb.blogspot.ae/ and the Prince of Brunei, who once had his own personal Games Workshop store in his palace.

AA, you just gave me a new man to hate in life. Yes, I have jealousy rage issues.

Feth you, awesome Eldar army man!!

It did take over 17 years and a lot of bargain hunting to arrive at nearly 70k. There are supposedly larger Eldar armies out there (80k), however no one has ever seen photos or would produce them when asked... So it could simply be a case of "Pics or it didn't happen". While all the models are nice (including the rare ones), it's the extra bits like custom dice, dice pouches, commissioned Apoc tables, a WIP leather bound grimoir of Craftworld history etc that sets it apart. Thanks for the admiration

The guy doesnt have 70K points of eldar it says on the front page he only has 11K of 70K.

 Gitsmasher wrote:

 Morachi wrote:

 Farseer Faenyin wrote:

Asmodai Asmodean wrote:
It's a toss up between this man and his 70,000 points of Eldar http://wcwdb.blogspot.ae/ and the Prince of Brunei, who once had his own personal Games Workshop store in his palace.

AA, you just gave me a new man to hate in life. Yes, I have jealousy rage issues.

Feth you, awesome Eldar army man!!

It did take over 17 years and a lot of bargain hunting to arrive at nearly 70k. There are supposedly larger Eldar armies out there (80k), however no one has ever seen photos or would produce them when asked... So it could simply be a case of "Pics or it didn't happen". While all the models are nice (including the rare ones), it's the extra bits like custom dice, dice pouches, commissioned Apoc tables, a WIP leather bound grimoir of Craftworld history etc that sets it apart. Thanks for the admiration

The guy doesnt have 70K points of eldar it says on the front page he only has 11K of 70K.

I think he is the guy with the 70 000 points of Eldar I imagine that the 11k is what is currently painted possibly? Not sure though

 chiefbigredman wrote:

 Gitsmasher wrote:

 Morachi wrote:

 Farseer Faenyin wrote:

Asmodai Asmodean wrote:
It's a toss up between this man and his 70,000 points of Eldar http://wcwdb.blogspot.ae/ and the Prince of Brunei, who once had his own personal Games Workshop store in his palace.

AA, you just gave me a new man to hate in life. Yes, I have jealousy rage issues.

Feth you, awesome Eldar army man!!

It did take over 17 years and a lot of bargain hunting to arrive at nearly 70k. There are supposedly larger Eldar armies out there (80k), however no one has ever seen photos or would produce them when asked... So it could simply be a case of "Pics or it didn't happen". While all the models are nice (including the rare ones), it's the extra bits like custom dice, dice pouches, commissioned Apoc tables, a WIP leather bound grimoir of Craftworld history etc that sets it apart. Thanks for the admiration

The guy doesnt have 70K points of eldar it says on the front page he only has 11K of 70K.

I think he is the guy with the 70 000 points of Eldar I imagine that the 11k is what is currently painted possibly? Not sure though

Correct. The tally is there to show how much of the 70k is back from the commissioned artists fully painted. I do have over 70k, however that includes spares (I keep a few of the older style on hand should some go missing - saves hunting them down again. Thanks for bringing that up though, may have to fix that so there isn't any confusion.

EDIT: Annnnnd done. Changed it from "Craftworld Completed" to "Painting Progress". Hopefully that clears up any confusion. Sorry about that *tips hat*

Correct. The tally is there to show how much of the 70k is back from the commissioned artists fully painted. I do have over 70k, however that includes spares (I keep a few of the older style on hand should some go missing - saves hunting them down again. Thanks for bringing that up though, may have to fix that so there isn't any confusion.

EDIT: Annnnnd done. Changed it from "Craftworld Completed" to "Painting Progress". Hopefully that clears up any confusion. Sorry about that *tips hat*

What is the rough estimate of how much that cost you to get 70 000 not with painting? You don't have to say if you don't want since it is probably a lot and there are a lot of hard to find models :p 17 years of collecting is a long time tho!

Do you have a pic of the whole army yet?

 Morachi wrote:

 Farseer Faenyin wrote:

Asmodai Asmodean wrote:
It's a toss up between this man and his 70,000 points of Eldar http://wcwdb.blogspot.ae/ and the Prince of Brunei, who once had his own personal Games Workshop store in his palace.

AA, you just gave me a new man to hate in life. Yes, I have jealousy rage issues.

Feth you, awesome Eldar army man!!

It did take over 17 years and a lot of bargain hunting to arrive at nearly 70k. There are supposedly larger Eldar armies out there (80k), however no one has ever seen photos or would produce them when asked... So it could simply be a case of "Pics or it didn't happen". While all the models are nice (including the rare ones), it's the extra bits like custom dice, dice pouches, commissioned Apoc tables, a WIP leather bound grimoir of Craftworld history etc that sets it apart. Thanks for the admiration

I really appreciate your dedication to all things eldar, and the effort you go to hunting down all the esoteric limited edition Eldar models!

Not as of yet, alot of it is still on sprue or in boxes (I can get a photo of the wall of boxes haha). I've been taking photos of the squads as they're being completed. I plan that when the full army is done that the 8x6 foot table i'm having commissioned will be the display for them - which will then be photographed professionally for a Grimoir that i'm working on for the Craftworld history. It's a mammoth project, but its slowly getting there I had planed on doing a Xmas shoot for the blog with what has been painted so far, then I screwed my knee in an "Extreme Gardening" accident while ripping out pumpkin vines. That and the Jetbikes are still with my mate Luke from TSoM, i'd forgotten I was going to leave them there until I have the concept Phoenix Bomber back which will be the decider if they do all the Warmachines (I gave them a small armour piece to see what they can do with it).

As for the price of such things, i've done well to have the foot based models (non HQ) build/painted/shipped for very cheap via PaintedFigs.com, and had the HQ and more finicky models done locally (the Warlocks and Farseers for example). To give you a hint, the Warmachines alone are going to cost 7k.

The main reason I don't have a full photo of the army is I wanted to keep everything broken down for ease of transport (moving around a completely built army is kind of hard). Plus it saves HEAPS on shipping when you're sending them off - less risk of double breakage too.

EDIT: Thanks Asmodai, I have had a LOT of help over the years by very generous folk ranging from all manner of countries (US/Canada/Russia/UK and locally). I've made friends with some very well connected people that have even rarer pieces than I do - at least they know where to offload them when the time comes (and to very appreciative hands I might add). I'm hoping it will be not just the largest Warhost one day, but also consists of the rarest models out there.

2nd EDIT: Bugger it, misread the cost question... you said without painting costs. Well, very little actually. I spent ALOT of time on Bartertown back in the late 90s. To give you an idea, metal Wraithguard were $25AUD here for a very long time and I was buying them from the US at $4-5 each in bulk lots. You'd be amazed at what you can get cheaply when the exchange rate picks up and buying in bulk. I also have a very good mate over in the US who supplies me on the new kits which works out about 60% off the AU RRP (that's including shipping). Of course, there are also those who leave the hobby and just want to dust their hands of it. My most memorable buy was a mint condition Armorcast Phantom from a Canadian lad who, one he found out how large my army was, offered it to me at the RRP he bought it for - $180USD. This was in a time where it wasn't unexpected to find them going for $500USD on eBay. The Phantom has all the extra pieces/heads/weapons etc available (inc a Harlequin head - which just screams "pimpin'", seriously just missing a cane and feathered hat).

No Offence, but I just do not count unassebled models towards a collection. If its still in bits or on the sprue, they are just lumps of plastic.

I will note that if the models are assembled they should count. Seeing as how GW makes you buy the paint seperately from the models, I would count unpainted models.

As to whether you painted, a friend painted, or you paid some stranger to paint your collection, hey, its all good.

None taken. I have all the models, but made the decision not to put them all together (those that needed it) for mobilities sake. That and metal tends to come apart easily unless pinned - and I have a substantial amount of metal here.

I'm still looking for a cost effective way to store them in foam at present, there are a couple of options, but Battlefoam is not one of them due to their high price. Lucky we have laser cut services here in Aus that do a stand up job for a fraction of the price

I don't think I would use the idea of the "largest armies" as an attractor to a new player. Might give them the idea that in order to play they have to buy huge amounts of stuff.

Instead why not find some pictures of some smaller, but really well painted, kitbashed armies.

Rumbleguts wrote:
I don't think I would use the idea of the "largest armies" as an attractor to a new player. Might give them the idea that in order to play they have to buy huge amounts of stuff.

Instead why not find some pictures of some smaller, but really well painted, kitbashed armies.

Agreed, with the price these days, the thought of that outlay could be a turn off - large armies are great for the wow factor, although a little scary for the hip pocket

Give the lad a run down on the various races, have him pick a couple he likes the sound of, then dig up buckets of images of said armies nicely painted up. A few Youtube battle reports of those armies flogging the opponent might also get the interest. No one really wants to get into a game they feel they're on the losing side of

Yeah, that's pretty much what I did in the end. I don't usually look at collections but there are some awesome ones out there! Thanks for all the replies!