I’ve always been a Lego collector and I’ve used assembling the sets as a sort of decompression ritual many times. I’ve realized I get the same effect from painting 1-2 minis in a sitting. An Intercessors 10 pack is like $60, that’s $6 per figure, or another $12 per sitting. That’s SO MUCH CHEAPER than Lego in terms of dollars per minute of decompressing _AND_ I can eventually get into the game too

Poorhammer recently did an episode on the cost of different armies. It was a great episode, but I like that you focused on the cost of actual lists and not just the points per cost average for the whole model line. Cause an army isn’t just one of everything. Armies that spam characters or other high cost kits will be deceptively expensive, and armies with cheap kits that are competitive might not be as pricey as they seem overall.

Illuminor is one of THE most painful kits to put together, while building it it feels like it wants to explode+like it is not meant to be put together by anyone with large hands

Wow, it is *really cheap* there Sadly in Chile 🇨🇱 prices are a lot more high: For an army of: - 1 Biologis - 1 Lieutenant with Combi Weapon - 6 Aggressors - 1 Eliminator Squad - 12 Inceptors - 5 Infiltrators - 1 Squad of Scouts with Sniper Rifles - 1 Squad of Scouts - 1 Ballistus Dreadnought - 1 Gladiator Lancer - 1 Land Raider Redeemer - 1 Redemptor Dreadnought - 1 Callidus Assassin In total 1970 points for CLP 860,000. That would be around USD 982 😢

Coming to Warhammer from Magic gave me a really skewed sense of cost. I traded a Tabernacle for the entire Stormcast Eternal model range

I love budget Warhammer videos. Even if I have the models already, it's just very entertaining for some reason. I really like videos that talk about how you can save money through conversions, or just being clever with the sprue. To be honest I just like listening to you talk about Warhammer. You're a very affable character and very passionate about the hobby.

Warhammer is expensive. But I do think the price is slightly overblown by the community at large. A deck in Modern can run you about 800 dollars. A Magic deck is largely purely a game piece unless you're a collector, which in my experience most magic players dont actually care about collecting as much as lets say Pokemon players do (I know I dont, most magic collectibles are reserved list cards and im not spending 800 dollars for a dual land). A model isnt just a game piece, it was a hobby piece and I think that adds a ton of value. Its like buying a model toy plane EXCEPT it just happens to have a game attached to it.And I know people will run defense for magic and say you can play cheaper formats like pauper, edh, or even run proxies. But you can do the same thing in Warhammer, or even play even play cheaper copycat games like OPR (my preferred game) because its minature agnostic and you buy cheaper miniatures not from GW.

Generally 700-800 in America. My wife is buying used painted models off of Facebook Marketplace, and paying 2/3 of what they would regularly pay. It’s funny how armies that are built and painted are worth less than the plastic pieces on sprues

also worth noting: most of these list include functional pieces for kill team (skirmish level 40k). so they're absolutely the best way to try the hobby. buy the kill team portion of the army, do the hobby thing and try kill team. THEN start thinking about expanding and buying an army for regular 40k.

What is a true blessing is you have a LGS that has a used section for 40k and takes 40k and MTG trade ins. I got most of my DG for the cheap cheap because of it

I think the fact that you can customize your army to your preferred paint scheme also gives it an edge as far as value compared to Magic. I could play the exact same army and just by painting it pre-heredy colors it will look wildly different than the same army run by someone else. Plus kitbashing is so much fun!

This was great. I'd love more of these.

If you want a look at the extremes of pricing, I would recommend looking at adeptus mechanicus or genestealer courts on one end, and custodes on the other end - a LOT of models in admech are around/under a point per dollar

It's actually impossible to build a competitive Drukhari army from GW directly right now. Fully half of the range is finecast, including units that show up in almost every single competitive list (Mandrakes and Beast Master + Beasts). None of the Finecast units have been purchasable from GW for OVER A YEAR AND A HALF with no indication of when or if they will ever return to the web store. They did a single made-to-order run of these units for a single week earlier this year, but that's it. Even when these finecast kits were purchasable, they were absurdly expensive. A Court of the Archon (currently limited to one each of a Sslyth, Medusae, Lhamean, and Ur-Ghul) would cost you roughly $30 USD per model. In 9th, you could run up to four of each model in the unit, which was pretty optimal if you wanted to use them as a foot-slogging mass of wounds to hold points and fight decently. That would have cost you nearly $400 USD for approximately 250 or so points worth of models. The Beast Master + Beast Pack unit, which is one of Drukhari's most efficient and effective single units at the moment, consist of 7 finecast models that comprise the unit. Each model in the unit used to sell for $30-50 USD direct from GW. Again, you haven't been able to buy these models from GW for nearly 18 full months now, but if you could buy them at those same prices you would pay $280 USD for 105 points worth of models. For plastic kits, every list runs two to three units of 5 Scourges. The problem is they all equip every Scourge with a Dark Lance, but a box of 5 Scourges only comes with a single Dark Lance. If you want to field 15 Scourges with Dark Lances, you want to be WYSIWYG, and you want to buy direct from GW, you have to buy 15 boxes of Scourges for $35 USD each, so $525 USD total. This is only 330 points of units. Some lists have started running 6 Talos. Each Talos kit is $60 USD. They are 90 points each. For anyone looking to get into 40k, I absolutely do not recommend choosing Drukhari as your army until they get a major overhaul and GW starts to release some new plastic kits for the currently unobtainable half of our faction units. It's one of the hardest armies in the game to collect even though we have arguably one of the best combat patrol boxes ever made. I love the spiky elves, but they simply aren't worth the hassle or the expense.

One can save alot of money for Imperial Guard/ Astra Militarum if they get infantry models from Wargames atlantic (Deathfield range) with their various scifi infantry sets, you get between 20 and 30 highly detailed plastic models for a lower price as 1 GW Infantry squad.

Adding to this... a 40k army will last you 20+ years, a magic deck will last until the next season.

As someone with 70k+ Magic cards and over 100 decks for various formats, Warhammer is a way better value. Rules may change but you can still enjoy the armies you make and just build on them for fun with friends or play and get smoked in a GT but still have fun. I just think the overall community is better with miniatures.

My 8500 point Necron army I don't want to know how much that cost me over the years. My 2000 point Grey Knights army, which is entirely 3d printed, is probably $150 bucks. Flayed Ones are sold in kits of 5. 5 tiny models. GW charges $55. A full squad in 9th edition was 20. $220 for a full squad. Then 10th came out and reduced the max amount in a unit to 10. This is why I got a 3d printer.

I am glad you are back making Warhammer content.

Like you said, those comp lists are spamming particular units, but realistically if you're getting into Warhammer, I consider the 3 points that are mentioned time and time again. a) Buy what looks cool. It'll enhance your enjoyment of the hobby, even if it isn't the main thing you enjoy. b) Start with a good core. Look at what comes up in a lot of lists and start there - a solid character, some infantry, some transports and a heavy-hitting tank. That'll probably get you to 1000 points that you can build from. c) Granularity is key and models are eternal. Like you said, don't buy an army all at once because it's a one way ticket to burnout town, and by the time you've got all the models ready to play the meta will have moved, so getting a little bit at a time based on the above and branching out is the best way to muster a force that'll likely be able to hold its own competitively in the future. A fun thought exercise though - I'm also surprised by how similar the price point is to card-based hobbies that may or may not rotate even more quickly than wargames.

Keep in mind that those 600 pound competetive lists are just a single 2000 points army. People making those lists usually have tripple+ the amout of models, so they can build anything.

Your thoughts on kill team/recommendations for players trying to get into warhammer (starting will kill team) would be great! I found your channel from following you on mtg.

Seeing a point/pound video for 10e would be amazing. I plan on playing Death Guard and Tau casually so knowing what I'm getting myself into cost wise might keep me in Combat Patrol for a little while for one of those armies until I decide which to bump up.

even though i already an army (5k points in eldar, yeah i got mental issues) i always find myself watching budget videos, they make me feel like im beginning the hobby all over again and it gives me the beautiful feeling of nostalgia. i actually didnt know who the eldar were when i first started the army, one day i was at my local store looking at the miniatures and i saw one that looked pretty cool to me (autarch). that miniature i chose was my very first miniature and the start of my true love for Warhammer 40k

When it comes to cost, the monthly budget I had for Magic (nothing competitive, just kitchen table with friends) diverted quite nicely to Warhammer. Making an order of cards from the newest set (buy singles) changed to buying a new model to add to the Leviathan box. It was actually your video, can't remember exactly which one, where you mentioned you could buy into an entirely new hobby (Leviathan) for the price of a booster box of whatever MtG had come out with that was what finally made me pull the trigger. Not sure if its a viable video idea, but I'm curious why some models don't seem to be restocked, despite being quite popular. If I wanted to buy a Tyranid Maleceptor out of the box right now, I've yet to see a store, GW or otherwise, with one in stock. I know the model is popular right now, what with it being a staple of every monster list, but at 100$ a pop, it seems like GW could just print money if they made more. Is it simply that they don't have enough factory power to have certain ranges available for reprint at a time, or is it to create FOMO so whenever they come back in stock they're snapped up instantly?

It's wild when you hear people say Warhammer is expensive then show off their massive pile of shame. Has the same vibe as people with Steam libraries full of unplayed games that they bought in sales. The easy dopamine hit of buying more stuff instead of using the stuff you have really hits people with poor impulse control I guess

You make a really good point near the end of the video; the cost of the army is partly borne by the entertainment gained by building and painting the army. Tons of people don't even play the game very much, just building and painting. If a squad of 10 marines takes 15hours to build and paint, your cost per hour of entertainment is quite low. Compare that to going out to a movie or going to a sports event and it looks a lot better. And the cost of a tournament army never ends, because the meta always changes. A few rules/points changes might send top players out to spend hundreds on different units to stay at the top of the game. Chasing the meta is the truly expensive part of 40k.

imperial guard: did he call our name?

The secondary supplies costs aren't factored in here though. For a card game you need to buy sleeves for 10 or so. Warhammer you need clippers, glue, paint, brushes, etc. And if you're going for a full 2k list probably best to buy an airbrush too while you're at it. If you play at home with friends and want fancy looking terrain that can start to get unreasonable.

Typically I might spend 200 dollars or so creating a MTG Commander Deck and might play it as little as a single time.... Or none and even then most cards in the deck will likely never hit the table. Since I only have to think about tossing them in sleeves and don't assemble or paint them there's no real draw to each card.... I might love the rules on a card BUT they're just rules on fancy cardboard and nothing more, I've interacted with each card equally when it comes down to it. Comparing that to 40k where I'll have spent time working on them, making them mine, getting "value" out of them as far as I'm concerned. so by that metric 40K or any miniatures game is a great value. :)

This is wild. Why are they so insanely priced?! I understand there is the cost of designing the models and developing the rules and mechanics to go with them, but the manufacturing costs must be fractions of a cent. This just feels like extortion.

People say Heresy is too expensive, but the only 40k army that can put a reasonable 2000 points on the board more cheaply than a legion army built around the Age of Darkness box is Custodes, and you can also play Custodes in Heresy.

The list you give for Mani Cheema's CSM list is missing 1 unit of Legionaires, which means you need another box since they come in 10s, and third Dark Commune.

vince out here makin me use a conversion calculator lol great stuff tho, as someone whos still new to the game of warhammer (and got most of their necrons 2nd hand and pre done), this was a super helpful video. have you thought about doing any Darktide content for this channel? just a thought, i know you have your hands full with your baby plus the other channel.

I got a competitive 2k grey knights army for about 200quid. 2 combat patrol, 1 boarding patrol. Very nice, thank you very much

The prices comes from how valuable they are on the table. It has nothing to do with the amount of plastic, or the sculpting involved. That is literally it. More powerful models = more money. However, horde armies can be a fucking expensive task as well from the sheer volume alone.

just started building an eldar army from 0 - so far i have bought the combat patrol, the corsair voidscarred kill team, a box of shroud runners, and prince yriel. my next planned purchase is gonna be a wave serpent. once i have all that, i should be ready for 1000pt games. it will take a while to build and paint everything, but i'm excited! i've played battletech and necromunda previously so i know i will enjoy the hobby part, i just hope i can keep up and not let the pile of shame get out of control lol

Wait… hol up 😂. I must of been under a rock I had no idea he did Warhammer content too lol

As a guardsman, I’ve not only spent all of my money, but all the money of everybody I know…

Bolt action's an interesting one. There are two competitive modes, crazy no restrictions, spam what you like, and use broken stuff from supplements. Versus sensible single platoon force organisation chart awesome bolt action. The normal single platoon stuff might only cost you as much as a starter army, £50 to a £100. Throw in a heavy auto cannon, a certain tank or artillery piece, you can win tournaments. It's more about the strategy anyway. As a side note bolt action is so much better than 40K as an actual war game, you might question your life choices for a while! It seriously is that fucking good.

More budget Warhammer content please. Slowly working on an aeldari list that somehow manages three different value boxes.

You can do the 30 Plague Marines slightly cheaper by buying 4 boxes of 7 then one box of 'plague marine reinforcements' which is 3 Plague Marines for £27.50. It's a ridiculous price but it beats having 4 left over if you want to buy that list and only that list.

Question boss man, U wouldn't happen to have a link to these armies. So I can see load outs and enhancements Warlord placement . Specifically deathguard

Your local store may offer a slow grow league to help onboard newer players or anyone looking to start a second army.

More interesting to me would be an estimate of how expensive the paint and basing supplies for a 2k army would be

You forgot the rule books cost $100. Can't play the game without rules.

Fun fact about the necron royal court, you could actualy get it for a 10£ in a certain magazine of inquizitor

vince how about one that covers ok lists for orks guard and dark eldar ??

It is funny that people think saying "I started out granting that it is expensive" somehow excuses it. It is WAY more expensive than it should be is the point. Compare it to anything actually comparable and it is about double. Then people will call it a "luxury" as if it is remotely a luxury product. It is literally one of the cheapest plastics not even assembled or painted. Something isn't a luxury just because someone calls it that word because it is so exorbitantly overpriced.

This is like a perverse sort of Billy Mays reverse selling plastic crack to us all.

Is there a more comprehensive breakdown of that Sisters list somewhere?

Warhammer is only expensive if you want to play at both official tournaments or GWs stores. I suffered from whiplash after I got into 3D-printing. Its just bizarre how cheap the hobby gets once you're not paying 25 Euro for an HQ.

A run down of the cheapest armies that are still reletivly compeditive would be great to see. Any more content on the Warhammer 40k hobby would be great. I have fallen out of favour with MTG but I have fallen in love with Warhammer 40k and I'm a big fan of the law and novels. So would be great to hear more about the actual game.

i know someone else in the community has done the math on cheapest armies to buy and its Custodes( non forgeworld) and Grey Knights at the top, then its usually whatever is in the starter box so Nids and then bundle box marines from there i can't recall but do want to see if that has changed considering i got my 2000 Points of Grey Knights for $500 US and have been slowly growing from there to flesh out my options

How much does it cost to paint all the kits once you pick them up?

From AoS: Seraphon Knights were a pain to build (RIP Knights in the latest codex) but one player had great success in the previous match play season with a list with 15 of the buggers.

Historical gaming is so much cheaper. You can buy a decent WW2 army for Chain of Command or Bolt Action for under $100. You can also use it for multiple rule-sets.

It's not good but for custodes 2x Combat Patrol, 2x Allarus Terminator box, 1x Blade Champion can be a 14 unit 1995 point build by using every model.

"Only a bit more expensive than Magic" is like saying only a little worse than the plague.

I mean, of the 6 you picked, sisters is the only army that has a reputation to be expensive. Most of these are elite armies. And if you want list variety, it quickly does become expensive. The points per dollar on many of their kits are super bad (I'm not a Sisters player btw) Also, a meta army doesn't stay meta. You buy 2000 pts, and by the time it's all built and painted, the meta has shifted. So I'd argue the price of each unit in the range is a more useful metric than the price of a competitive list I also, would love to see the breakdown of Admech. That'd be hilarious. Their only decently priced kit is Kataphrons, most of the range borders 1 point per dollar lol

When it comes to cost... *Cries in Astra Militarum

I cant imagine getting into Warhammer without enjoying the hobby side of it. If your not into the hobby aspect of the game then Warhammer is an incredibly expensive game. But if you break down the time spent putting the army together and painting then its actually not a bad value(assuming you enjoy that aspect). It takes me maybe 4-6 hours to put together a box of standard soldiers. It then takes me probably takes me around another 2 hours on average to paint a standard soldier to the standard of painting I enjoy. If its a special character that will usually take around 8-12 hours. Monsters/vehicles will take me around 20ish hours on average. Take for example my last project I just completed the Chaos Cults from Kill Team. Cost me around 150$ to purchase the models I need for the team(purchases these full price from my lfgs), which is pretty expensive for a Kill Team. This project took me around 40 days to do, while doing on average 2 hours of painting a day. That comes out to 80 hours total for me to paint the army to he standard I enjoy. That comes to about 4$ a day for an activity I find very fun and rewarding. And that does not include the time spent actually playing the game, which is a really great time with some friends or other locals at the game store. Granted I did probably spend around 20-30$ on specific paints I wanted, but the amount of paint I actually used on the models of this project probably adds maybe another dollar, and I have those paints for future projects. Edit: I did recently buy a whole damn Tyranid army without even playing a single game of 40k. But it was a special situation, and I've wanted a Tyranid army since before I bought a single model of Warhammer. Granted, I bought the army because I was(and still am) excited to paint the bugs. I also might have accidentally bought most of a space marine army because I got really into SM after buying the Leviathan box, and my LFGS had an amazing sale going on where I was able to get Scions of Maccrage box for 100$. Those two armies are my big projects for the next year, with painting a Kill Team here and there when I get tired of painting bugs or space dudes.

Its always been expensive as far as I can remember. Its still the best sci fi and table top game I have played.

Then re-calculate the cost from the AU site. Gasp at the total - then convert that to GBP and see the reason a lot of Aussies don't even bother.

I have friends who play Magic and Warhammer. Even at WG pricing it is exponentially cheaper to play Warhammer vs Magic. One guy has 3 armies with probably 10k points of models and he still swears it's cheaper.

I've noticed model kits that are meta spike on the secondary market and are most likely out of stock on GW site.

Do Votann next. I think GW price for my current list is a little over $1k, but I paid closer to $650-700. The bigger problem is that I have to go out and get more models every time they release a new balance dataslate.

centurions are so expensive cause gw pushes the extra taxes onto the consumer! "what extra taxes" you say? the Thiccest Boi tax

I will always love the day in 2019 when I got 20 legionaries, venomcrawler, 2 old metal obliterators and a winged daemon prince for $120 aussiebucks built and unpainted. Now you'd be lucky to see half of that for double the price. And still I'd say CSM are pretty cheap to collect if you buy smart and slow. Half my marines are heresy kits kitbashed, all my termies are cataphractii from the heresy launch box, chosen are the same deal, and possessed with bits from orks, tyranids and AOS. Make friends at your LGS or club, most every good person has bits boxes you can rifle through, and eventually you'll be the guy who gets asked for a bits box borrow.

I think the main problem with building a competitive list akin to magic when a banlist bans your deck is that points and balance updates can make half your army obsolete, like Inceptors have been up and down this year, they were good with the free wargear then they changed it so the plasma guns were point and now they are the best, also I hate the flying sticks they are annoying when it comes to building and painting, Aggressors are another example they were pretty much not used in 9th Ed until 10th Ed came with the Biologus Apothacary, and yeah i could buy all these for my space marines just for them to be hit by a pts nerf. And then as mentioned the time and energy costs but also the other money costs of hobby supplies, clippers, glue and paint, and while not as expensive if your going as simple as possible that's what another 20-30 quid. I think my overall point is that 40k can be deceptively expensive especially if you play competitively, or are insane like me and have far too many armies

At 12 pounds per model I can literally get a McFarlane Space Marine for cheaper.

My LGS still has 4 each of the Guard and marine battleforces left

It may not look like it but theres a lot of resin on those centurians thats why they're 50 look at two warglaves for around the 45-50 mark there is less resin in making those surprisingly

Transcendant Ctan is still auto take in necrons, and is £105 as you need to buy the tessarract vault to get one. I'd rather buy Centurions :P

My LGS has GW prices😢 but they have a big collection of super discounted used models...

Custodes.... All you need

Just imagine if he accounted for the price hikes for non British.

I'm going to assume you mean "Meat swap" instead of "meet swap" because that's more fun.

I mean...define "army cost" as a concept...we talking about just the miniatures? Or just mini's to fill out the entire datasheet selection in a way that "edition proof's" you? You adding in hobby supplies, codexes?l, dice, terrain/gaming mats, time spent learning to paint? You could argue this hobby costs in the 10's of thousands depending on how far down the rabbit hole you want to go

You forgot 10th edition core rules are free to download. Codex' books will cost you 50CAD a pop but have cool lore and other stuff inside.

Battletech is fun because it's a lot cheaper to bring a playable force

Me spamming guard super heavy to cheap out on points

This may sound like a troll question but can you play the emperor or primarch

They cost more than a 3D printer. 'Nuff said.

Problem with non GW here is that they can't get stuff people need. Venguard/starter boxes you can get , but good luck trying the non basic stuff like dawn riders , votan terminators, dreadnoughts etc.

How am i just finding this channel?

Should have done Admech as well. It's always funny when your army is pay to lose.

Hahah the transient Ctan is crazy price for the official one. So the nightbring is way cheaper

Custodes you can build 2k armies for under $400 USD. Two combat patrols and 2 allarus boxes.

So odd. The csm army costed me 30 quid for the stl templates

Could also mention how much it is to commission an army if someone REALLY doesn't want to paint them. Then we are talking thousands.

Now do Guard and Orks :p

Long story short: leave competitive lists for pro players, spend a couple of hundreds, and you're good to go to play 1000 point games and have fun. I got the tyranid half of leviathan and the battle force for a total of 220€, and that's 1600 points. 2-3 squads/monsters more and I will be at 2000 points.

I don't play, been diving into the lore. But quite sad to hear that my favorite faction so far, the orks, doesn't have a competitive list.

So that’s where I was going wrong… buying an entire Votann army which has taken me over a day to prime with the airbrush let alone start painting the models 😂 Also thunderkyn prices where they’re the best anti tank we have been silly prices. £35 for 3 and most competitive lists have 12-18 of them 🤦‍♂️

Games Workshop sold me a 3D printer.

so you're saying all these armies are cheaper than buying a revised dual land card......

And with the stroke of a pen GW invalidates half your army.

One of the big thing with warhammer is, the army you got and the models are usually not phased out (except fw), new kits doesn't mean older models are not recongized in events you only need to fix the base size. So for this reason alone even if you have say greyknights from 10 years ago metal minis and all they can still be used in a competitive army. MTG and card games however are seasonal, and a competitive deck are only usable for 1 year max, and you will have to start buying more, ofcourse depending on format, but the most popular being standard so decks are constanting updated. The math for opening boosters are around $400+ if you lucky to get 4 copies of all the cards you want in a set x 4 realease a year. just in 1 year you will be spending $1600 dollars on cards and thats if you are lucky. For some armies like custodes or greyknights, $2000 would get you the entire range of models with multiple copies of units at maxed size, for this example both grey knights and custodes had no significant update in the last 10 years, thats $2000ish of hobby plastic lasting you 10 years and u can build any list with it since u will have multiple of the same unit.

As with all things entertainment, you have to look at the hours of entertainment per dollar you’re spending. A $20 ticket for a 2 hour movie is a shit ratio. A $70 box of 20 HH tactical marines at about 2-3 hours per model to paint = about a buck fiddy per hour of entertainment. Not to mention actually playing games.