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So... the new Tau Codex is about to hit, and I'm seeing a lot of Tau armies on eBay / various trade forums at reasonable prices. It feels like some people have decided to give up.

This brought to mind the 6th edition Ork Codex. After it came out, I was able to purchase a ridiculous number of Orks from people who felt like it wasn't worth it waiting for a new Codex.

Have you ever been at the point where you felt it was time to give up on an army? Where it wasn't worth the shelf space and now you just had to sell it?

Would love to understand why this happens a little better. I know some people do it for financial reasons, or because they just don't play the game anymore. I'm more interested in hearing from active players about their reasons. It just seems so strange to put all that work into something and decide it's no longer useful.

I've never felt like that. Mainly because I don't care if I win, lose, or am slaughtered. I just play to have a fun time.

 Vallhund wrote:
I've never felt like that. Mainly because I don't care if I win, lose, or am slaughtered. I just play to have a fun time.

agreed. Also the Tau codex is good. The Tau community is a bunch of whiners.

 Lance845 wrote:

 Vallhund wrote:
I've never felt like that. Mainly because I don't care if I win, lose, or am slaughtered. I just play to have a fun time.

agreed. Also the Tau codex is good. The Tau community is a bunch of whiners.

some people just won't stick with an army unless it's the "top of the game easy mode codex" frankly I don't get why those people play 40k. it's a LOT of money to invest for an army that could be obselete by time you finish building it

I sold a small Space Marine army years ago because i bought them with a bunch of Tyranids. And since everybody plays SM i didn't what to play them.

They may also have been waiting for the codex to drop to sell as they may get a better price as the codex should have made more units viable than the index.

I'm one of those long haul hobby types XD

Played mainly chaos and orks since second ed and i weathered all the bad years of chaos being meh.

If you hang on long enough you'll notice a pattern of change with stuff being bottom of the stack for a few years then higher so meh.

Just head back to 6th eldar were never used and everyone played grey knights... total flip now.

If i 'had' to get rid of one with a heavy heart it'd be my orks because i'm getting old and lazy, moving 175 boyz is tough on the back XD

I've gotten rid of some armies:
-Had imperial guard. I got better painting skills and a new army project. Did not want to repaint them so I sold of my guard to found my new army.
-Had chaos, but I was not happy with their colour scheme. Sold
-Had eldar. The finecast models melted/deformed from sunlight. Sold them out of frustration.

-I've kept my current marine army for about 8 years, and expand it sometimes. Not gonna sell those.
-My ork army is one year old. Not selling now, but maybe some day to found a new army. I'm happy with how they look though.

Rules have never influenced my choice to sell or keep an army.

 Lance845 wrote:
The Tau community is a bunch of whiners.

A little unfair, I think. Most Tau players I've encountered are happy enough with their army; they gripe about rules, sure, but so do we all. Much of the actual whining emanates from the maladjusted anime enthusiasts and thwarted munchkins who bought into the "Tau are OP" fantasy; these tend to be web-based whingers.

Even still, I've always wanted to start collecting Tau. Maybe now's a good time.

 BBAP wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:
The Tau community is a bunch of whiners.

A little unfair, I think. Most Tau players I've encountered are happy enough with their army; they gripe about rules, sure, but so do we all. Much of the actual whining emanates from the maladjusted anime enthusiasts and thwarted munchkins who bought into the "Tau are OP" fantasy; these tend to be web-based whingers.

Even still, I've always wanted to start collecting Tau. Maybe now's a good time.

I'm just saying I play 3 armies. Nids, Necrons (in the past) and Tau. At least in web circles I get general vibes from each group.

Nids, even when getting gak on with the worst dex ever, grin and bare it and make the most with what they have. Even through 7th ed it was almost self deprecating humor that went with the bad, that couples with happy enthusiasm when they get anything good.

Necrons seem to be generally happy with what they get too. When they complain about their armies issues its very practical and mathmatical issues. RP don't scale with the size of the game. Deployment issues with "transports", a complete lack of special weapons to cope with enemy vehicles.

Tau are never satisfied. They could have an army of awesome weapons and options (and they do!) but their complaints are still bull gak like missing the old ML system (even though the new one boosts more units for less ML) or wanting an even higher BS on units even though with ML support pretty much everything is 3+ rerolling 1s. There are viable complaints. But they are mostly really minor and they aren't really complaining about those things.

 Lance845 wrote:
Tau are never satisfied. They could have an army of awesome weapons and options (and they do!) but their complaints are still bull gak

Yeah, that's the anime fans and thwarted munchkins I was talking about. They're obnoxious to be sure, but they're generally limited to online outlets, and even there they tend to be a highly vocal minority more than anything else. It's always the same half dozen folk heaping the same old crap onto the same old threads.

Even at that, the Tau whiners at least complain about the right stuff. My fellow SoB players have spent like 3 editions whining that one of the best close-range mechanised shooting armies in the game can't beat Chaos in a fistfight. That's *real* whining right there.

I don't collect any of those armies or pay that much attention to their discussions, but even so those impressions of their fanbases seem pretty accurate.

Personally I don't think I could sell an army unless I absolutely needed the money and couldn't think of some other way to get it. I buy models mainly for the building and painting, and selling something that I worked hard on for what would be a depressingly low price compared to the amount of work I put into it - I don't think I could do that. I can imagine instant regret.

I suppose that's the mindset behind the people who try to ebay their painted models for well over retail, thinking that they're setting a reasonable price for the work they put into the paintjob. All the while remaining oblivious to the fact that most people who buy painted minis from ebay are going to immediately strip them and would put a higher value on buying unpainted stuff.

Ice_can wrote:
They may also have been waiting for the codex to drop to sell as they may get a better price as the codex should have made more units viable than the index.

I would guess this is a big factor. I was actually planning on selling some Tau stuff after the Codex dropped, but I've pretty much convinced myself to keep it. (I actually just started collecting Tau a few months back, and I won more than I intended on eBay, but now I've decided that I *need* more than twenty crisis suits and over a hundred drones. )

Never sold an army in disgust. Only pout of financial necessity.
Selling off grey knights was easy as i never played them.
Tyranids were just taking up space.
Guard i gave away to a friend as i wasnt attached to them.
Necrons were hard for me to sell. I really like them and id made some cool conversions for them and just loved seeing that silver tide on the table. Financial necessity forced my hand with that sale.

Nothing will make me sell my sisters.


2 things BBAP:

1) When it comes to sisters, i believe the term is "nagging" not "whining" :p

2) What crazy SoB players do you hang with that let sisters get anywhere near a fist fight? My wife doesnt play and even she knows they stay the hell away from that scene.

I think what you're seeing a narrow subset of the doomsayer-mathhammer crowd.

Honestly, if you have the money and finances to ditch $500-2000+ of models because they lost 2.3% effectiveness and you think that's a logical thing, go for it. I'd say you're in the wrong hobby, and playing the wrong game.

All of this boils down to some of my basic rules of 40K though; collect and paint what you love, not what's good. Don't play anything unpainted (so you don't have 3,000 points of grey plastic sitting around, constituting an army), etc. And don't play in tournaments or take them too seriously. In a game of 20+ factions, why run the odds of not having one of the "mathematically" best armies, of which there only ever seem to be 2-4. If this is how you play, you're a friggin' sadist. If you think GW has a vested interest in creating a balanced game were all armies are "tournament" competitive you're simply wrong.

I tend to shy away from telling people they hobby or game wrong...but if your 40K existence is based around super-mega-mathhammer tournament style play...you're going to suffer for it, so I've little sympathy really.

In my time, I've sold a 40K Ork army, a 40K IG army, and a 40K SM army, and a Fantasy Skaven Army, and now I'm selling my Flames of War stuff (see swap shop if interested). None of them were because I had to, mostly just because I wasn't excited about them anymore, and didn't see the point in keeping them around.

 BBAP wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:
The Tau community is a bunch of whiners.

A little unfair, I think. Most Tau players I've encountered are happy enough with their army; they gripe about rules, sure, but so do we all. Much of the actual whining emanates from the maladjusted anime enthusiasts and thwarted munchkins who bought into the "Tau are OP" fantasy; these tend to be web-based whingers.

Even still, I've always wanted to start collecting Tau. Maybe now's a good time.

Riptide Wing was OP, though to be fair a lot of gak was in 7th - like free Transports for SM players.

I'm very glad Tau infantry gets the spotlight again. I started Tau right away but mostly played in 5th where bulk of Troops mattered. I'm sad that Monats didn't come back, but that's no reason to sell off an army.

I've gotten rid of one army in the past, and that was due to an edition change making the army play in a way that I did not find enjoyable anymore.

I'm actually considering selling off my Tau now for the same reason. GW is clearly intent on Tau being a very static force, and that's not something I find enjoyable.

I have sold off several armies over the years. The first army I ever owned, was Tau when I got into the game briefly back in the 3rd ed days, when Tau were brand new. I sold that army off, because the LGS we were playing at closed suddenly and I didn't have a place to play anymore.

My brother talked me into gettting back into the game at the start of 6th ed, I decided to go with Dark Angels because they were in Dark Vengence which had just came out figuring I could get into them quickly and easily. I had traded the chaos half of the box for more dark angels.

Buying used minies of Ebay, I ended up with a metal Vulkan, so I made a small Salamanders force, as an ally detachment, with the intention that I could ally them in to use vanilla things that weren't in the DA codes. Come 8th, I hadn't put them on the table for the longest time, and ended up selling to someone new to the hobby that just happened to be starting Salamanders.... Gave him a good deal too.

Out of nostalgia I had built myself a second Tau army, but ended up selling them off again. One I needed the money, and two I didn't play them that much, because of the large number of other players in town that play Tau.

Currently, I have a fully painted Deathwatch Army that I'm considering selling, because while I enjoyed painting it, It hasn't seen the tabletop in months. Also my Necrons might be getting sold off depending on how much I like the necron codex.

Deadawake1347 wrote:
I've gotten rid of one army in the past, and that was due to an edition change making the army play in a way that I did not find enjoyable anymore.

I'm actually considering selling off my Tau now for the same reason. GW is clearly intent on Tau being a very static force, and that's not something I find enjoyable.

That is how they were since their inception. 6th/7th edition was the outlier.

I started in fifth and they were still pretty mobile then. I mean, in comparison to everyone else.

I had built a Nice Squat army. Small but good allies.

I then built a starter TS army. We got our butts handed and I saw that only Nurgle and Korne were playable.

I traded my TS army for a Sisters of Battle army from my buddy.

My wife played like 2 games with the SoB and decided 40k was not for her.

Traded my SoB to the same guy for some Dark Eldar. and then Traded my Squats for the other half of his Dark Eldar.

He got all metal and I got all plastic. He definitely made out....but I loved the new paint scheme I came up with.

Now Ive invested in a much larger Squat army with Ramshackle Games/Mantic Games pieces.

What goes around comes around.

Dark eldar, during the codex drought.

Dark angles, brother stopped playing 40k, i hate the imperium. No need to keep the models.

Orks, someone offered to just buy the army. I was happy to dump the army was not happy with my paint job.

Squats... but that is GWs doing and a friend wanted to build an a huge army for when they came back...

I sold my 3rd/4th edition Tau army during 6th edition becuase I hated the Rock'em Sock'em Robot theme the army took. I did keep my Kroot though.

I sold my ork army after reading the update to "Feth you and everybody who bough your army, we don't give a damn about you, thanks for spending money on this worthless piece of paper we didn't even spend 10 minutes on, you stupid idiot".

No wait, I am remembering it wrong, it was actually called "Waaagh! Ghazghkull".

Luckily (?) the guy who bought them never showed up to pick them up. Well, at least I got models to play in 8th before starting Death Guard.

The only times I have sold an army is when they change in such a way over time that they lost whatever spark drew me to the faction to begin with, or in the case of my original guard army having vastly improved in my painting skill and having no desire to strip and repaint that much stuff.

So far the list stands at 3:
Imperial Guard - first 40k army and had a lot of fun with it, but a combination of lack of play and new projects/better skills made it time to move on.
Sisters of Battle - The army over time with the WD codexes and beyond evolved into a faction that just wasn't what I originally enjoyed about them, it felt like the flavor had mostly gone leaving just a bare core that wasn't something I could enjoy in the same way.
Grey Knights - Similar to my SoB. started long before the ward dex, but 7th began the slow slide into removal of flavor that made them bland and uninteresting.

I fear the same might happen to my Inquisition section and my Raven Guard if things continue on the current path.

 techsoldaten wrote:

This brought to mind the 6th edition Ork Codex. After it came out, I was able to purchase a ridiculous number of Orks from people who felt like it wasn't worth it waiting for a new Codex.

*Waves hand*

I've only sold of one 40k-army and that was my orks.
The 6th Ed. codex was so incredibly bland and boring that after a few games I went "yawn" and shelved the army. A few months later I sold it.
The army was mostly unpainted or sprayed however, so it's not like I had spent hours upon hours on the army.

In hindsight I partly regret it, but on the other hand it's now march 2018, and Orks are still boring as f...

WHFB on the other hand is a complete story altogether:
I began in late 5th Ed.
When 8th Ed. was launched I owned Wood Elves, Dark Elves, High Elves, Warriors of Chaos, Empire, Vampire Counts and Ogre Kingdoms.
When Age of Sigmar was launched I owned nothing.

And since Age of Sigmar is still a thing, I have no regrets, just sweet memories.

Well I've never felt like it was time to get ride of one of my armies but my wife was not particularly pleased with all the additional models I had so I was forced Tom sell my 2000+ points of Necrons.

Well, seeing as I still have my Ultramarines, all-metal Necrons and Sisters of Battle from 2nd edition, I think I am firmly in the "forever army" side of things, lol.

 Lance845 wrote:

 Vallhund wrote:
I've never felt like that. Mainly because I don't care if I win, lose, or am slaughtered. I just play to have a fun time.

agreed. Also the Tau codex is good. The Tau community is a bunch of whiners.

Generalisations like this one always hurt my heart... I console myself when people say to me "Nah, you play Tau but you are one of the good ones"