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So Im new to models but I love 40k and am slowly building up my skills on my ad mech army, but practice makes perfect and GW models are pricey so is there any other series that you guys recommend a little lighter on the wallet. Dosnt have to be Sc-fi, Im not super into High fantasy, not a biig fan of the atypical knights and elves.

Wrath of Kings, very light on the wallet, as is Malifaux.

Reaper Miniatures, Chronoscope Bones minis. The Bones minis are cheap and perfect for practice/experimentation. Chronoscope is Reaper's non-sword and sorcery non-15mm mecha line. link: https://www.reapermini.com/OnlineStore/Chronoscope%20bone

Skip Malifaux for painting practice, even grunt types cost $15-20 for 3 and are less forgiving than the GW for assembly. Malifaux has great sculpts and rules but long term is as expensive but more varied than a GW army.

Please note I LOVE Malifaux and the headaches painting and assembly have given me but I don't want you to get an unpleasant surprise.

Yeah if you're just after some cheap minis to practice on a grab bag of reaper bones never goes astray.

+1 re: malifaux being very enjoyable but unforgiving (in a lot of aspects) and re: reaper probably being the best line to practice on, given a ton of variety and very light price point

I really like the card mechanic of Malifaux, and the styling is really cool and odd-ball.

Guild Ball might be an idea if you want something sports, and is taking off massively. http://steamforged.com/guildball/

The Batman Miniatures game is pretty awesome as well, small scale (you can play with just a few miniatures, and the sculpts are the absolute proverbial dogs cajones)

Finally, if you wanted something even more quirky/oddball there is a nice little range from a company called Tor Gaming, who make a game called Relics.
And you get stuff like these guys

Wow Relics looks pretty cool!

If you like old-school figs, check out:
Em4, Moonraker Miniatures and Folorn Hope Games.
3 distributors of Old miniature lines (some overlap) that are well sculpted and dirt cheap, being metal figs for the cost of reaper Bones (which are also great). Fantasy, Sci-fi and Post-apoc.

Check out the "West Wind" section (and other sections) of Old Glory Miniatures. Cheap minis in a WIDE variety of topics and genres. The West Wind stuff tends to be a bit higher quality and a bit less dated than some of their other offerings.

Then buy Song of Blades and Heroes (an $8 PDF) and you will have a game that can handle any fantasy miniature you have. As well as it's great streamlined rules, I like SBH because whenever I find an interesting bargain fantasy figure (I buy most of my figs 2nd hand or at deep discounts) that I like, I can buy it knowing that I have a game I can use it in. It helps of course that I have friends who also like SBH.

I haven't played the Batman game, although I have made an order for some of the models for it. However, I have played its offshoot-the Marvel game. Which is great. And not super expensive. I've dropped like $200 and have ALL the mutants. With some duplicates. But assembly...there are fiddly bits.

 Eilif wrote:
If you like old-school figs, check out:
Em4, Moonraker Miniatures and Folorn Hope Games.
3 distributors of Old miniature lines (some overlap) that are well sculpted and dirt cheap, being metal figs for the cost of reaper Bones (which are also great). Fantasy, Sci-fi and Post-apoc.

Check out the "West Wind" section (and other sections) of Old Glory Miniatures. Cheap minis in a WIDE variety of topics and genres. The West Wind stuff tends to be a bit higher quality and a bit less dated than some of their other offerings.

Then buy Song of Blades and Heroes (an $8 PDF) and you will have a game that can handle any fantasy miniature you have. As well as it's great streamlined rules, I like SBH because whenever I find an interesting bargain fantasy figure (I buy most of my figs 2nd hand or at deep discounts) that I like, I can buy it knowing that I have a game I can use it in. It helps of course that I have friends who also like SBH.

This, except I would recommend getting the Advanced Song of Blades and Heroes book. They even have their own miniature line. The cost is about $4 on average per mini. Currently it mainly consists of Fungi People, Dwarves, and Hobgoblins. But they just finished a Kickstarter for a campaign book that adds Halflings, Choas Dwarves, and a few new creatures to their line of pewter minis.

spect_spidey wrote:

 Eilif wrote:
If you like old-school figs, check out:
Em4, Moonraker Miniatures and Folorn Hope Games.
3 distributors of Old miniature lines (some overlap) that are well sculpted and dirt cheap, being metal figs for the cost of reaper Bones (which are also great). Fantasy, Sci-fi and Post-apoc.

Check out the "West Wind" section (and other sections) of Old Glory Miniatures. Cheap minis in a WIDE variety of topics and genres. The West Wind stuff tends to be a bit higher quality and a bit less dated than some of their other offerings.

Then buy Song of Blades and Heroes (an $8 PDF) and you will have a game that can handle any fantasy miniature you have. As well as it's great streamlined rules, I like SBH because whenever I find an interesting bargain fantasy figure (I buy most of my figs 2nd hand or at deep discounts) that I like, I can buy it knowing that I have a game I can use it in. It helps of course that I have friends who also like SBH.

This, except I would recommend getting the Advanced Song of Blades and Heroes book. They even have their own miniature line. The cost is about $4 on average per mini. Currently it mainly consists of Fungi People, Dwarves, and Hobgoblins. But they just finished a Kickstarter for a campaign book that adds Halflings, Choas Dwarves, and a few new creatures to their line of pewter minis.

That's a good point. I really like the bare-bones simplicity of the original SBH, but ASBH does add some very nice mechanics and if you're used to GW games even ASBH will seem quite streamlined. Our club has played a TON of SBH in the past 6 years, but it's likely we'll be playing more ASBH as time goes on.

I've not been overly impressed with the SBH minis, but they do have some original takes on classic ideas, particularly the Fungi which is a pretty unique line. For me the beauty of SBH/ASBH is that they are designed to play with whatever minis you already have or whatever minis catch your fancy regardless of what game they might be intended for.

Yeah, for rules I would also pick-up Dragon Rampant. You can do a lot of things with that ruleset and it is cheap.