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Hi all,
So in September I'm moving from sunny central California to Oberlin Ohio, and I'd like to take a fantasy and a 40k army with me.  The problem is the space needed to house my current mechanized guard army is kinda obscene (11 odd tanks and some infantry thrown in as well), considering that I will be living in a 10'x14' room with another person.  So my question is this: what army can I acquire that is highly storeable yet still fun to collect/play?  I was thinking termie heave marines, but drop pods would take up a LOT of space.  Recommendations?

Dwarfs.

I have my 2000 point Dwarf Army stored in the Battle for Skull Pass box with room to spare. Having everything in plastic means it's easy to transport and dwarves are short and don't have bulky cavalry or monsters.

i agree with Asmodai... or you can take the ever-so-lovable Greenskins!!! i love my gobbos. I originally stored them in small plastic baggies (1 per 20 gobz) and then threw them in a napsack. 300 of them total so it worked quite well.

Also, if you wanna keep your mechanized army, order a Sabol Transport with Foam Tank Storage Trays. You will most definatley fit about 10-12 tanks in there.  I can currently fit about 100 eldar, 2 vypers, 2 wraithlords, 5 Jetbikes, and a Jetbike Autarch with room to spare. And for you i think that there should be room for 4 of those trays and 1 troop tray in the regular case.

I can get roughly 2k of eldar fitting into a sabol platoon case (roughly 1 foot tall, 1 foot wide, and 8 inches deep). Grey Knights, infantry heavy Marines, chaos, necrons, and godzilla nids wouldn't require too much space.

For fantasy, depending on how you set up your lists, chaos, tomb kings and any of the elves also transport fairly compactly, with cavalry and chariots taking up the most room. An additional bonus for those forces is that the painting and conversion work you could do for chaos or the elves would definately keep you busy awhile.


SteveW

One other suggestion- get bed risers. I didn' t start playing with toy soldiers until after college, but I remember being able to fit a lot of things under my bed. I'm sure an army transport case or three would have fit as well.


Stevew

Dwarves or Chaos for Fantasy. Chaos or Marines (hurr!) for 40k. You'll need two sabols for the tank army since my motor pool could only hold 6 (3.5"+ size) total, but Mech Tau would work with 3-5 tanks, lots of different suits, and you'd have plenty of space for the 24 or less infantry you'll use.

Comedy option: Don't bring any at all since you'll need all the space you can get for some beloved booze. You'll need it for the wild college parties.

Ravenwing
Ogres
Death/LysanderWing
Brettonians
Daemon Legion

And you can't get smaller than gobbos

Ozymandias, King of Kings

EDIT: Just noticed you're moving from CA to OH?!?  Why!?!

I'm guessing ether_dude is a musician; Oberlin's a good school for that.

Otherwise, insanity? In-state CA tuition is very cheap, and the CA state schools are great.

Janthkin hit the nail on the head; I'm a composer and Oberlin's well respected in that field. They can also teach you useful stuff too, which might be nice to have around...

As to the armies, I'm fairly set on fantasy-I'm going wood elves w/o treeman (!) but with 17 odd cav models. It seems like the Sabol foam boards would work well with cavalry b/c of the depth of the trays (you can stand the models up and fit a ton on the horizontal).

Ideally, I'd just get a bunch of these trays and have them all fit into one of those red steel toolboxes (~2' x 8" x 12" so the 40k army really has to be tiny. I was thinking nidzilla, but I don't know how big fexes/HTs are and I'd rather not shell out 400 bucks on that type of army.

Thank you all for your recomendations and the 40k army is still undecided!

Also, if you have the need for a bunch of chimeras/russes etc, pm me!

small armies

pure deathwing

pure ravenwing

a mix of deathwing and ravenwing AKA multiwing

 

or even better a grey knight army done deathwing style 20 odd termies with a brother capt some ][ storm troopers for troops(re-use some of your IG minis   ) and some las/missle dreads for fire support,  toss in weapons and wargear and you have a tournament level list with the best termies in the game and a small army.

Not all of us Obies are musicians

Congrats on going to the best, wackiest weirdest college ever! Just make sure the plaque in Tappan Square is dry before you try to have the sexy time on it. And don't mind the smell in Burton; it's always smelled like that.

If OGRE is still around (Oberlin Gamers and Role-Player Enthusiasts) and the gaming store in downtown are still around, you're in for a treat, gaming-wise.

Anyway, on-topic: I stored a mostly infantry eldar army (~1850 points) in a GW hard case VERY easily, and I know people who have used that case (which is quite small) to store 13th company, Deathwing (sniff), Ravenwing, and smaller Fantasy Armies. I keep about 2000 points of Mech SOB (including tanks) in a single-regular sized army transport, which is bigger, but not significantly (also has the advantage of not looking like you've got a pistol case in the dorm).

Having said that, Grey Knights, nidzilla, and even wood elves would fit in an AT if you plan it right. Don't rule out those cases! They're tougher than you think, and fit more trays even than a toolbox.

Last Chancers. Equip them all with mastercrafted plasmaguns and you've got a 22-model army that costs nearly 1,000 points.

You mind posting that list up Stu-Rat?  Against my better judgement I'm intrigued

More on topic, I built an all-infantry marine army during college, with a couple speeders thrown in for the hell of it.  Storage was pretty easy on that one.  Now, in the apartment I share with the girl, my game stuff is relegated to such a small space that I pretty much build armies that can be fit into my Reaper transport (which by the way, is not as nice as the sabol stuff).  For fantasy that's Clan Eshin and Ogres thus far ...

Luck with the elves and college.

- Boss Salvage

Posted By Boss_Salvage on 06/12/2007 5:17 AM

You mind posting that list up Stu-Rat?  Against my better judgement I'm intrigued

Well, it's a little off-topic, but okay.

HQ: Schaeffer and Kage

TROOPS: 10 Last Chancer Specialists with Master-Crafted Plasmaguns.

TROOPS: 10 Last Chancer Specialists with Master-Crafted Plasmaguns.

And that's it.

For 1,500 points, I add in a regular Plasma/Melta HQ, and three small Vets squads with Plasma/Melta.

Small army, all of which infiltrates or deepstrikes, and delivers quite a punch.

It's not very effective but it's a lot of fun to play with. Seeing the average MEQ player wet himself when you tell him you're fielding 38 BS4 Plasmaguns (20 of which practically never overheat) that deepstrike is worth it every time.

I was worried about the legality of the mastercrafting but it seems legal to me and I've never had anyone call me on it, so...

Last Chancers rule. I've got 4 deep-striking demo-charge wielding LCs in my Valhallan army. Suicide squads for the motherland, tovarisch.

I still think nidzilla could work. You'd have roughly 7 MCs, 3 zoanthropes, and genestealers or swarms in the 'standard' build. I can fit 3 MCs and a zoanthrope or two in one 3.5 inch sabol tray, more if I don't glue the fex's body to the legs. If you work it out correctly, you can fit up to 28 models of marine dimensions in the 1 inch trays, and that ought to cover all of your stealer/swarm needs for most battles of less than 2000 points (28 stealers with extended carapace & flesh hooks is 588 points). You could still add in another 1 inch tray and fit it all into one of the platoon cases I and other people have mentioned.

For the elves, you might think of lying them down on their sides instead of standing up, since standard bearers and anyone with their spear pointing up really gets in the way. Actually, I've found that the GW trays are pretty good for cav if you cut out the divider between 2 slots. I think you can fit 12 or 16 cav and 4 infantry in one tray.


stevew

I think the bigest factor in having a small army isn't so much model count as it is storage options. I cut the space my army took up almost in half about a year ago when I started using an army transport instead of the random other case I was using. Just by packing your guys up in a more efficent way you can save a lot of space. Sure that may not help your IG since they tend to be a very bulky army to begin with, but most others can be crammed into relatively small spaces without too much problem.