Hi everyone! This is a question I've had in my mind for a while now. As my Army has grown and changed over the last few months, I've began to think about the end. When is an army complete? Do you still add units to your armies, or do you draw a line somewhere? I have a completion checklist going, and I'm only 12 models or so until I'm satisfied with my army. Then I have to paint it I suppose.... But then what?
I have over 4500 points of Lizardmen models. I am only missing a handful of models to complete a 'full' set. However, when they eventually re-release a Lizardmen rule book, I am sure that I will pick up a few more. Once I have them all painted, I will call them done, until the next book.
The day before our 8th edition book comes out, then I will have to buy more stuff. Ps. 7500+ pts so far.
That's an army! The second problem I have is that all the units I'm missing are metal. Do I wait til they are all released in Finecast, or get metal ones? What is the general opinion of metal? Are some of the metal models really good?
Our metal models a prety good and are fairly easy to assemble, the Slan bing a bit tricky to get his base straight, and the terradons need to be pinnned or the wings will fall off. I am most impressed with the skink characters, those are amazing sculpts, the metal saurus are only average, except for the carnie, This one is great.
Really, it boils down to personal preference. Cost wise, it is about equal. You will be paying the same for them. Myself, I do not really mind the metal or the plastic/finecast. I will say that some of the metal stuff is harder to work with because it really needs to be pinned (Terradons come to mind). However, there are an equal number of trade-offs the other way as well. I can drop my terradons and they will not fall apart easily, can the same be said for the finecast models? I have yet to work with any finecast stuff either. I have worked with the new plastic stuff (Old Blood).
When you die... ...or leave the hobby! I have over 20k but most of it is either older or scratchbuilt models (my Kroak, both EotG, 3 other steggies and 8 of my sallies are scratchbuilt. Fielding Mazdamundi, Kroak and two other slann quickly ramps up points...
I used to just buy whatever I liked the look of, which ended up being most things in the army, and lots of troops so I would end up with 4-5000 points easy, sometimes more. As GW got more and more expensive and cared less and less about customers, I have started buying the odd model that I really like the look of and when starting an army, plan out a list I like and just buy the models I need for it. The list being 2500 points. I think it is good to have a little bit extra so you can change things up sometimes, and with box sizes you often end up with a few models you don't use anyway. I guess I would consider an army complete when I can field 2500 points, anything else after that is just extra bits if the model looks cool or I have an idea/plan for it.
I wouldn't call anything under 2400 complete. And even then I think it's only almost complete. 2500. No less really. 2400-2500 is the standard play size for most games and tournaments. For any army i make anyway. There is no telling when someone will stop collecting and call it a complete army. I like to think mine is almost complete at least. I haven't added up all mine yet. But I know it's a lot. The core is made up of 140+ saurus 100+ skinks. On top of 2 slann, 2 carnosaur, 3 stegadon, and a bunch of other models. 20+ Temple gaurd, 20+ cold ones, 5 sallies, 2 razordons, 5 kroxigor. Bunch of random special characters. I haven't worked it all out yet. Probably never will. I'm sure I'll never table it all in a match. And my % probably wont work out so that it is even possible to do so. I have a lot of core, but 4 lords? I doubt it. And I have just about every special character they make models for. So I'm sure i wont have room in heros either. Maybe, but it's not worth trying. I buy my models second hand. I bought 2 large armies unpainted. It came at a good price, but unfortunately left me without a single chameleon skink or terradon. So saddly, it is not complete till I at least get some chameleon skinks. I'm lacking a whole tactic of the army missing these two options.
It is complete when you have at least the number of units you wanted, for everything you wanted and in the numbers you wanted. My army is still missing a couple things, but I'm patient. I'm only using 5th edition miniatures because I love them a lot, but some stuff is pretty hard to find (damn you skink cold one riders!), so it takes patience. My Dwarfs got to 5500pts without upgrades before I decided I was done... and even now I'm thinking about getting another organ gun.