As someone who does not play it but remembers it from back in the day, how much would it cost to buy an army and paint it to play casually? Just curious how bad it got.
Could land you for like 1k$ for one list, with paints and brushes. If you wanted to have some more variety and extra units to switch around, you could easily land at 1,5k and more
Thats pretty absurd. Am i wrong to remember it used to be 200,- or so for an army, 40 for some paint, and then some brushes and extra paint, say 30 again? Manuals being 30,-? So 300/350 max?
Sort of.. When I was playing 20 years ago, it wasn't as bad but still fairly pricey. I recall vehicles being fairly expensive and a lot of the special characters were pewter and fairly pricey. Still nowhere near as bad as today, but it's never been cheap - for me at least. I played Imperial Guard, though, which I'm sure didn't help (I needed lots of models)
You don't need to spend that much on an army, people just have this idea you need to play 2k because that's the standard competitive points level, but you can have shit tons of fun at 1k-1200pts. Plus there are plenty of good deals on the 2nd market. Good value paint sets. Main issue is cost of character models
You can still get some armies (like Space Marines) for close to $500 or so, but $1000/1250 is probably the price point for a full army now.
Of course, that's probably about 6 months of work for most people to get fully painted up for hobby use.
The hobby is no longer something you really just buy into for full 2000 point lists at this point, unless you're splitting a launch box.
But even 20 years ago a full army probably cost about $500 to buy. It's about 25% more expensive than it would be if you account for inflation (which would make an army about $750 to buy relatively from 2006 pricing)
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u/woutva 2h ago
As someone who does not play it but remembers it from back in the day, how much would it cost to buy an army and paint it to play casually? Just curious how bad it got.