Building a Warhammer 40k army has long been on my bucket list and this year I starting building in earnest with the goal of starting a Casual Crusade, a narrative ongoing campaign containing a few dozen people lasting for 5 months.
In order to be ready to go I'm going to need 1000 points of Ork units assembled and ready for the table by the first week of June. To put this in perspective a group on 10 boyz infantry is 85 points, a gaint truck covered in guns is 165, and a MASSIVE walker robot is about 300. I have a lot of build to do and, well, Games Workshops pricing is brutal.
If this project has any chance of success we're going to need a plan and way around these prices.
I love the Games Workshop models and consider them some of the highest quality wargaming miniatures being produced. I'm often willing to bite the bullet and go for official models and feel like I should have some official minis leading every unit. Let's call that a goal.
Because I am playing in a narrative format at a non-official store and playing the race that lose to cobble things together while high on mushrooms there are options open and ready to be taken advantage of.
First, kitbashing toys has always been a ton of fun. To that end I decided to start work on a group of Grot Tanks. These travel in groups of 4 or 8 and the official models are $70/4. This is not an acceptable price for minitanks for me so I got building and produced these:
Tank Corpz: Spellez Zeorz, shot troopers of the Grot revolution.
Backgammon pieces for extra wheels, dollar store toy headlights, and Warhammer 40k Ork bits.
I'm very happy with how they came together but thats only because I know how improved they are going to look when primed and painted. Right now they are a clutter of different colors, patterns, and materials that look like a scrap heap in the wrong kind of way but, with a single coat of primer, that all changes.
I look forward to demonstrating this over coming weeks.
The primary place that I refuse to spend money is for Games Workshops HQ characters needed to lead your army. These can often be $30-60 each and often are single units. There is no way that I can look at this where I am not getting ripped off so I refuse to buy these.
These are the cheap ones. $100 for 3 minis? No ma'am!
I spent a ton of time on etsy looking for interesting and charismatic miniatures to fill the roles I needed: a weird magic ork and a ork mechanic or builder of some sort. There were a ton of options and the ones I came up with and their prices are shown here.
Better. Closer. Warmer.
While looking around I found a variety of different custom miniature lines and, as I'm hoping to keep my army looking fairly uniform, I'm trying to stick to as few lines as possible. There are so many talented artists out there doing amazing work deciding what to pull the trigger on was a real chore. My HQ units are coming from the Dark Gods line but nearly everything else is coming from an amazing line called the "Orkaz" from the studio Station Forge.
These are the orks that are saving my family from financial ruin and for them they deserve a standing ovation.
So far the giant order has been endlessly tinkered with, priced over a variety of stores all printing the same lines, have had their shipping prices examined, and I pulled the trigger and everything I should need to play as much casual Warhammer as I'm interested in. I'll still have to buy interesting standout units (if I cant just kitbash them) but, thats not a problem.
What we are avoiding here is losing my shirt on the infantry and commanders while also producing an army with as few repeated miniatures and poses as I can.
For example, notice the price here for THREE Ork Mega Nobz:
vs the Station Forge Orkaz
All and all my etsy order came out to roughly $220. When stacked next to the official Games Workshop miniatures I've been building this wiull fill out the 1000 points I need once built.
3 for $70 vs 10 for $20 is simply a no-brainer. I've purchased the Ork Mega Knob box and it's a very fun build and, if it cost $40 I'd buy them all day long, at $70 my hand is forced.
I really look forward to sharing my army with you all as it comes together over the coming weeks. My Etsy order is currently on it's way to me and I'm like a kid on Christmas morning. Thanks for sharing this adventure with me and for your time.
Stay safe friends.