Wednesday, October 26, 2011

New Feature: Warhammer Fantasy On The Cheap


Many 40k-people (translation: broke nerds) seem to be put off from starting a Fantasy side project army because they hear about how much you have to buy to get started, since the unit sizes are huge and that means more models.



This criticism is true, to an extent.  However, I’d like this series to be a guide on how to start various armies in Fantasy as cheaply as possible.  What I want to avoid is a “BUY TWO BOXES OF ISLES OF BLOOD AND SPLIT THEM WITH A BUDDY” advice that we hear all too often.  Not everyone wants to play High Elves or Skaven.  So as I plan to cover each army, I’ll be leaving those two out since the path to a solid army is very easy to decipher for those two.  The rest of the armies need a game plan and I intend to draw them up.

To get back to the original criticism that you have to spend a lot on a Fantasy army relative to 40k, this is true of the first 1000-1500 points.  Luckily, expanding a solid 1500 point base to a 2k list is often as easy as adding two models, since Sorcerer Lords are expensive no matter what army you pick to play.  Going from 2k to 3k is an expensive proposition, usually, but since 2k is a perfectly fine points level to play competitively we can stop there.

Lot's of points, not many dollars


So for each army I’ll suggest the first 1,000 points to buy, and then how to expand it as painlessly (but still competitively as possible) to 2,000.  When possible we will take advantage of battalions, but as all GW aficionados are aware, battleforces are only a good deal if you intend to use all the models, and unfortunately, GW often includes some head scratching-ly poor choices.

I’ll close this opening article out with some basics before I get into individual armies next…



You’ll need a rule book.  You can get the Isle of Blood 8E mini rule book on eBay for next to nothing.  Do it.  Read it.  Love it.

Dice, tape measurer, playing area, and terrain you already have.  See: you’re saving money already.

2 comments:

  1. Seems like a good idea for a series of articles. Waiting to see how it's gonna flesh out with some examples.

    One little tip I could give to potential Ogre players is this. Most people will want to have a 6 strong unit of Ironguts. They will have to buy 2 x Irongut boxes for that so they have 2 spare. However they could get the battalion instead (already have 6 Ironguts inside) and if they don't like the Leadbelchers they could convert them into plain Ogres. That's what I am planning to do anyway. Thats 638 points (2 x 5 Ogre units, 1 Ironguts unit + 2 FC for 2 of the units) for 60 pounds, not too bad. Getting the boxes seperately would cost 92 pounds (even though you'd get 4 extra models). So for the core of my army I am going to get 1 Ogre Battalion + 1 Ogres box.

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  2. Me and my friends play Warhammer with just a couple of boxes of core. We play Warbands and it is great fun.

    Its just like warhammer rules, but units have a max size of 10. One champion gets a free upgrade to a Hero (+1 WS,S,T,A,W,L) with a free 25p of magic items.

    Its still really intense as there are lot of small units on the battle.

    Also Fantasy isn't really more expensive than 40k in a lot of examples. Like Greater Daemons are twice as expensive in Fantasy and meching out an army for 40k is expensive. But yeah for the horde armies it is more expensice

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