I got this covered! If you can find someone to go halves with on a Spire of Dawn you can get 1k High Elves or Skaven for £50. Half a starter set and add a start collecting box and you can do Khorne Blood Bound or SCE for £88. 2x Nurgle start collecting sets for £100 gives you a decent starting 1k point list too.. Note all this is RRP, so it can be gotten cheaper.
That's what I did bought a Spire of Dawn set sold the Skaven and then bought the Aelves that @BeardyGecko didn't need.
I'm currently working on a beastclaw raiders army and i can truly recommend the icewind assault box. At max you could build 1740 points out of it. It cost 145€ for me
I suppose you could probably make a cheep wood elf treeman army.... (cheep miniature trees + Googly eyes)
I've never been able to find the right size figures, but I've always wanted to slap green army men on 40k bases and call them IG.
I've been using sprues to help convert models (see my Plagueclaw Catapult in my painting blog) but these are going a little too far (although they are well done, I'll admit it). As for the subject being discussed, do I really need to tell you what I'd suggest?
OP asked for a ''cheap army''. I wouldn't classify Fyreslayers as cheap in any way shape or form, sadly!
Depends upon the points size. If we were to talk 1000 points like @Ritual was saying, you could buy 2 SC boxes to give you a Runefather and Runeson on Magmadroth, 2 Runesmiters and 2 units of 10 Vulkites for a 980/1000 point list, where you could either alpha strike the two Magmadroths in Turn 1 to really scare your enemy or alpha strike the two Vulkite units on objectives and allow the fast-moving Magmadroths to catch up quicker and bring the additional pain. If there’s a particular character you want dead, deep striking two Magmadroths and charging them both in would certainly more or less guarantee that that character dies on the first turn. This army lacks anti-magic capabilities but if you deep strike the two Magmadroths you should be able to eat any enemy wizards on Turn 1, although it may be a good idea to give one of your characters the Alchemical Chain just in case any wizards do survive the Magmadroth cavalcade. If just having 2 units of 10 Vulkites sounds squishy, it would be worth giving them shields to give them a 4+ Armour Save and also to deal out even more mortal wounds. You might be outnumbered, but you can turn this around if you use the Magmadroths right!
For a 1k point I guess that's feasible, especially for a fun oriented army, but beyond that is where the army really starts to cost alot, even if you just wanna bump up to 1.5k! SC! boxes help, don't get me wrong, but the ''branching out'' part is where the problem is. (I'm also looking at you Daughters of Khaine )
I do see what you mean - my 1000 point army of choice costs a bit more than this (an SC box, a box of Vulkites and 2 boxes of Hearthguard along with my old Dwarf Runelord so that it reaches £135 rather than £100) but I am attempting to economise as much as possible. If you've seen my painting blog, the Vulkites I've already built have been given a standard from the Quarrellers box to make a standard bearer for a regular Fantasy Slayer unit, but this standard bearer could also double up as a Battlesmith for Fyreslayers in AoS. One of the best things about Fyreslayer characters being essentially Slayers with different weapons, I can convert models from the basic troop sets (and indeed some spare characters from multiple SC boxes) into other characters by giving them different weapons, thereby saving the need to buy individual characters (although the Runemaster is an exception as he is remarkably different from all the others). By the way, do you see any stock in the rumours of second waves for old factions like Fyreslayers, Bonesplitterz and Ironjawz in the recent future? It would be great to see some additional Fyreslayer units with some more variety as well as updated rules, although I think a Moonclan release will be much more likely.
I have honestly no idea where GW is headed. They have many unreleased factions with new models hinted at just waiting to strengthen their IP (Darkoath, Shadow and light Aelves of Tyrion and Malerion), then they have many fragmented factions that could be unified à la Legions of Nagash or Beasts of Chaos (Much of order, Skaven, Greenskins of all sort) and then they have a lot of old Battletome factions that could really benefit from a fresh wave, like those you mentioned. All of this is very exciting and it is very hard to predict what's next for them, especially with how they pulled off Beasts of Chaos out of nowhere. Exciting times! I feel like AoS has never been in a better place than it is right now.
Depends what they are - if they're Vampire Counts or Sigmarines, no thanks - if they're Dwarfs of some sort I'd be more interested... I think it was resurrected some while ago. I wonder who did that...
Alternatively, as a general suggestion that is valid for anyone... 1) Pick 3-4 armies you would like 2) keep an eye on ebay for a 2nd hand army at a reasonable price 3) profit
may i then suggest warlord games landsknect for empire/freeguild. see below: https://store.nws-online.net/pslastar.html
That may be a cheap army with better-looking infantry than GW’s State Troops, but I don’t think GW would allow it in their events as it would consist of non-GW minis and also Freeguild is pretty weak in AoS at this point.
1. Freeguild very good if you combo correctly. Not as awesome as others, but still not an auto loss. 2. I don't play at GW stores, therefith this doesn't matter