Cheapest (but kind of effective?) 40k army to play?

[mansur123]

What is the cheapest sort of effective 40k army to play? Also please list units,points and costs please! The list is not for me its for my brother who might start but didn't have much money. Thanks guys!

[phayze]

Grey knights have a fairly low model count as an elite army. You could start there.

[blackrainbow]

You could also check out our Tactics> Other Armies and see what people there are posting for points and then see how large the lists are. That will also give you an idea on starting out builds. When you have chosen an army, list build it a few times at various points and post those ideas here or talk about them with some other friends that play or at your Local Game Shop. Maybe play a proxy game with your brother and see how it feels too.

Once you have an idea of what you want to play, go to the Games Workshop site and write down the cost of every unit you'll be interested in. Look at your lowest army build, usually 500 points, and get those first. Build up at about 250 point increments until your at the level you want. Should take a little while, but that gives you time to put everything together and painted.

Also, this IS an expensive hobby, so there is that. Try some auction sites online for units or even whole armies being sold may save you a bit.

[mansur123]

I was thinking buying dark vengeance, trading the dark angels with my friend who bought the kit but doesn't play csm. That would be 2 helbrutes, 40 cultists, 12 chosen, 2 chaos lords, and 2 champions for 125. Subtract the templates and dice (16 and 8) it becomes $101 for a 1000 point chaos space marine army. But I'm not sure how effective it would be?

[mansur123]

You could even subtract the money for the rulebook (from eBay it's 25) so it would be a $75 1000 point army. Butis it good? I don't play csm.

[N.I.B.]

'kind of effective'? That could mean anything, depending on your perspective, and the meta you play in.

As for small model count, go Tyranids!

2 CAD:

4 Dakka Flyrants, Egrubs

Zoanthrope

Mucolid (converted from a Walnut on a nail)
Mucolid
Mucolid
3 Ripper Swarm, deepstrike

2 Dakkafex
2 Dakkafex
2 Dakkafex

2000 points, very effective, only 17 models! As for cheap money-wise, not really. 450-500 dollars? You get what you pay for after all. If you want cheap and good, you should start with skirmish games at 250-500 points and slowly build up your army over the years, buying units with good rules.

[vectron]

@op
I would probably look for a good buy on ebay. Marines are the best selling faction, so they are also the most plentiful on auctions. Their vehicles are also easy to scratch build, if you have the knack for it, they're just metal boxes after all.

Otherwise I'd show him Necrons and see how he likes them. They are my second army, so I can definitely vouch for them. They are a very solid army right now (and the cries of cheese have lessed considerably after Eldar and the new SM codex were released), with many viable builds. Extremely resilient which makes it forgiving for beginners, but it also has tricks up its sleve for experienced players.

The Necrons starter is also very good value, with all units being competitively viable. Buying two starters and an HQ (Zahndrekh or Szeras are good choices), and building Immortals and Ghost arks from the multi-kits, will give him a very solid starting army:

HQ: Zahndrek/Szeras
10x Warriors w. Ghost Ark
10x Warriors w. Ghost Ark
10x Immortals/gauss
6x Scarabs
So, that's 8-900 points of very playable units right there.
EDIT: Would cost about $250 from GW directly, but buy elsewhere that gives discounts.

Some Tomb Blades, two packs of Wraiths and a Spyder, and you have a ~1250 Decurion with Reclamtion Legion + Canoptek Harvest. Judicator Batalion is also awesome with Zahndrekh, but then we're starting to rack up costs pretty fast.

That being said, find an army he likes and start small. Maybe look into playing HoR:Killteam?

You could also look into alternative games like Infinity which have much lower model counts than GWs offerings.

Edit: Also, the CSM from Dark Vengeance aren't very good, I gather. The cultists are useful enough but the hellbrute is pretty meh. I'd stay away from DV at least until a better CSM codex drops.

[mattblowers]

EBay. If cheap is main objective, 40K is the wrong game.

[Moontyranid]

greyknights can be cheap and effective.

[seethe]

I'd follow NIBs nailnut mucolid list if I were your friend

[robomummy]

This was back at 6th edition but I believe it is still viable and can work pretty well. The objective was a low model count army but this works the same.

Not entirely sure if it is still viable as I have not read the new book yet.

Logan Grimnar
3 squads of 5 wolf guard terminators with thunder hammers and storm shields
Bjorn the fell-handed

all told it is a 1500 point list (as of last edition) with 17 models. total cost will be around $250 plus it is a fun little army to play as an elite host facing off against hordes of other armies. if you want you can put them in drop pods for a nasty rearguard attacking force.

[mattblowers]

Jul 3, 2015 8:39:03 GMT N.I.B. said:

Mucolid (converted from a Walnut on a nail)

Spit my coffee out. That's funny right there, I don't care who you are.

Jul 6, 2015 9:23:26 GMT Moontyranid said:

greyknights can be cheap and effective.

This is probably the best answer. Cheap: easy to measure. Effective: not so much. Effective is more about player than it is the army chosen.

[Freeman]

No joke.

Flyrant spam with FW mucolids is pretty cheap. My tourney list is about £200.

[Squire]

You can go pretty cheap with chaos marines. Dark Vengeance stuff plus a pair of terminator squads in land raiders and a winged nurgle daemon prince is quite a lot of points for relatively little money. It'll cost a lot less than my tyranid horde army, that's a fact

The problem is it can be difficult enough for a new player to to figure out an effective list without price restrictions- even harder when you're only interested in cheap units that represent a lot of points on the table.

[slithernaut]

30k Mexhanicum is surprisingly cheap, especially for forgeworld.

6 Thallax,3 Ursarax and the 65 point HQ is 500 points.

I'm toying with using starship trooper exo suits, cougars and grizzlies for thallax and Ursarax respectively.

Ursarax and Grizzly exo suit...

Ursa and Grizzly....

Hmmm....