Goatboy’s Warhammer 40K: Building a Cost Effective Army
Goatboy here and my question today is where do you think the sweet spot is to spend on an army?
I know this hobby isn’t cheap (but which hobbies truly are) so my question is – where is the sweet spot for you? I do a lot of work for multiple groups (art, writing, etc) so building an army isn’t as hard as others so costs get a bit wonky for me. Thus I ask the question – where do you draw the line at jumping into the plastic pile?
I won’t even think about Forge World either for this conversation, as while there are a few powerful things it isn’t something the normal player can just hop over to a store or go find online easy enough. But I will think about trolling Facebook or eBay to try and find deals to help supplement your crazy army. I think most of the time, at least personally for me, if the army is reaching towards a $500.o0 dollar limit I have to question whether I can make it more cost-efficient.
Why $500
Why is this $500 dollar range important? Well, it is where I think a lot of sorta big purchase land at. If you want to get the newest video game system you usually need to shell out 500+ to get started. Do you want to grab the best graphics card for your PC as well – that goes above 500 bucks too. What about getting all the best cards from a Magic set? Yearly that can easily hit over 500 dollars to keep you in the game. So this has me thinking that be willing to jump into a new army – it needs to start to look at living and breathing in the $500 dollar range.
Now I could be wrong – it could be a ton more and I am not thinking about books at this point. I am just thinking of building a list from start to finish, nothing extra, and just trying to limit my purchases to the “best” things. So which army do you think still fits into this realm of purchasing?
Space Marines Make it Easy
We can always point to Marines even though they are not the best. There are a ton of people selling them online so finding New-on-Sprue options isn’t hard as well as a ton of starter sets you can choose from. It really is dependent on if you want to go full Primaris or not. I think you do as we all know the Firstborn Marines are going to go away as we get closer and closer to a new Marine book/edition. Do you think you could easily build a Marine list at under $500? A combat patrol or two, maybe a starter set and you should have a playable list.
Grey Knights Work It!
I think Grey Knights are probably next if you can find them. There isn’t a whole lot of “choices” you need from Grey Knights and the only stuck models you get in a Combat Patrol would be the Terminators but with some conversion and weapon swaps you can easily create the characters you need. Plus – it is really only 2 boxes you should purchase so it gets super easy to find the deals, build out your models and get something to play with. The best thing with Grey Knights is you can utilize a ton of the other Marines to get a unique force with a few box sets. Getting the extra Back Packs means you can create some unique-looking Interceptors. I almost built all of mine out of Primaris bodies as I do have some Assault Intercessors laying around. Throw all those bits into a box and come out with some unique looking “psychic” bad a$$es.
Drukhari Can Make It Work
The armies that suffer the most from this cost ceiling are really those Xenos lists. The cheapest Xenos right now would probably be Dark Eldar as their Combat Patrol is good, they had a ton of combat patrol like things that are decent, and most of your single box purchases get you the unit size you need to be effective. The biggest cost is of course the Cronos but you don’t have to play that way and can move to a more MSU-style raider force that works just as well. Still, it falls into Xenos being this weird big army full of things to purchase.
So Many Orks!
Don’t get me started on how rough it is to do an Ork army right now. I am sitting on a plethora of boxes after doing an art trade with some events. I want to build it next but have to wait to finish off some other work. I think this huge price difference is one of the things that make the game a bit weird right now as the best armies start to cost the most and the easiest army to collect is not really the best right now. Does GW need to fix this to try and get some diversity into the game or at least have people try something different?
I don’t know – it is something to think about and one of the reasons I hope we see more good “army” deals this Xmas. Especially with a push towards some of the Xenos options instead of just more Marines. Please don’t give us another Tau box deal as it would be a lot more interesting to see a “Squighog” box to try and get someone a nice Orky Xmas.
What do you consider your target army cost?
