There are lots of Warhammer buying guides on YouTube. These videos will go over all the avenues a consumer has access to and weigh up the pros and cons. I never really got the point of buying guides if I'm being honest.
It's not that hard to Google Warhammer and weigh up the prices, you see. But I started to rethink this recently as I noticed a weird pattern as a content creator. Often when I told people how much I paid for my armies on YouTube or Discord, a lot of people just flat out wouldn't believe me.
And then I realized I've become unconscious to my weirdly frugal spending habits. And I didn't even realize how far out of my way I was going to save on Warhammer. I never spend more than 50% of Games Workshop prices on models.
And I often spend far less than that. And I've never really struggled to put together fun or balanced or even competitive armies. Let me show you some of my hits.
I have over 3,000 points of Chaos Demons. I've never actually played a game of this army. I've just picked up deals when I find them in preparation for summoning coming back to the game.
Don't ask me how that's going. I spent roughly £350 on this lot. If I was to buy this army right now at Games Workshop, which I can't even do, by the way, because so much of this list is unavailable, it would cost me roughly £1,289.
That's nearly a fat grand saved. I've brought so many knights over the years that I have no idea how many I've had or how much I spent on them, but I don't think I've ever spent over £50 on a single night model. Lastly, and most recently, I brought the most expensive army in the game, Admeck.
As in, I purchased basically the entire army, like free of everything. As of writing this, so much of Admeck is missing from the Games Workshop website. I can't really calculate how much the exact cost is, but I purchased the army for £400, which at the time pre- price hike, I calculated to be an 80% discount.
So, this would have been well over £2,000 off of the Games Workshop website. Now, I'm not sharing all this to flex how recklessly I spend. God knows YouTube ad revenue isn't what it used to be.
I'm sharing this because you too can be buying Warhammer at these prices. Now, I get this intro kind of sounds like I'm selling you a course, but this is just me ungateing my discounts and relishing in the ad revenue it brings. Now, I'll let you know right now up front, I purchase almost all my models from eBay.
But there is a bit of nuance and strategy to it that I'll share. But first, I want to touch on when you should purchase from other places. If you play regularly at your local game stores and get on with the people there, you should buy bits from there every now and again.
It helps keep the communities going that enable this hobby in the first place. That said, people will often tell you that it's your moral obligation to purchase from your local game store, and it's really not. I don't.
I have two local game stores near me. One I really like, but they don't actually sell any models. And the other screamed at my girlfriend and permanently banned her for eating McDonald's chips outside of their store.
They said she had to purchase their Mankey Frozen chips and a £340 Monster or get banned. You don't need to support stores that are run by freaks. If you just can't play and afford to, it's not a big deal not to buy from your local game store.
But if you can and you like the place, spend a little there. A lot of people default to third party retailers like Element Games or Magic Madhouse, and these stores are fine. A flat 10 to 20% discount is fine and for most people, totally good enough.
But there are a few caveats to the Shagrop method of buying cheap models that can make these stores more appealing. Firstly, my method is surprisingly timeconuming. If you don't want to spend multiple hours digging for deals, then these stores are probably your best bet.
Additionally, my method doesn't work that well for brand new releases. My gorgeous Knight Defender was the only exception to my £50 Night roll as I pre-ordered it for £98 from a third party retailer because I wanted to get my hand on it ASAP where it lived in its box for 6 months only getting built and painted yesterday as of making this and I'll be doing the exact same thing for that brand new sexy night and I couldn't be more excited. Some local game stores can actually do pre-orders so check in with them first, but I don't think it's too common.
Neither of mine do it. Now it's finally time for the Shagrot method. And fair warning here, whilst this is a phenomenal way to get cheap Warhammer, it's also a little bit lame.
eBay is a fantastic way to get cheap Warhammer, but if you just type in specific models you want, you're probably not going to find anything crazy. It's still good to check, but don't expect the nuts. You can still find specific models, but it takes a little more work.
For example, let's say I want to expand my beloved Empress children with some heavy armor. I want some pink chaos knights. If I look for Chaos Warog, almost all the results are about 25 to30.
They come in sets of two for £60 at Games Workshop. So, this is little to no discount. But if I start searching a little more generically, like just Chaos Knights or Chaos Knights Army or Job Lot or Bundle, I get some more interesting results.
This bundle of Chaos Knights has caught my eye. Once I find an interesting listing, I'll pull up the Games Workshop website on another monitor or on my phone. I'll put all of the individual models from this listing into a basket.
If there's a discount box, like a combat patrol, and the listing contains all the individual components, then I'll add them as the combat patrol for a more accurate price. Chaos Knights don't have a discount box, so I put them all separately. This listing is £210, and from Games Workshop, it would be £360.
That's a discount of £150. Then I'll go to Google and work out what percentage of a discount this is. This one's about a 40% discount from retail.
So, this is a pretty significant chunk more than a third party retailer. Realistically, this is a good enough discount, but I personally set myself the rule that I never purchase anything more than 50% of retail. This particular listing is open to offers.
So, I would work out what 50% of Games Workshop price would be. In this case, it's 180, and I'd send that as an offer. In general, I recommend you don't lowball too hard.
It's pretty lame. It's something that I do late night in bed on my phone, and I'm not proud of it. Most of the time, you'll just get rejected, and when it does work, it's a bit of a rush at first, but then mostly just shame.
I brought a Hecaton Land Fortress for £20. on this way and it lives in a box unpainted and unplayed. And whenever I see it, I just feel guilty.
One last note here. This example was a bit pricey because the bundle I was looking at was for knights. But you can find bundles of this many units of a normal army for anywhere between 50 and £100.
You don't need to be spending hundreds just to save money. Doing this is a fantastic way to save money, but it's also a shortcut to overspending. See how quickly I went from looking for a single Warog to considering half a night army.
You need to be a bit vigilant when it comes to considering how much you actually want to spend on Warhammer. But this method still works for single units. Let's say I really do just want a couple of Warogs.
Looking at this same listing again, I would pull up another eBay tab and look what these units are selling for. I'd look at the lowest priced listing as well as recently sold listings, which you can access here. Keep in mind that the models being painted or unpainted does affect the value of the models.
Unpainted is worth slightly more than average to poorly painted models, but well painted models can fetch for a lot more. Looking at other unpainted models, I can see that Warogs regularly sell for30 to35 and the big nights often sell for 80 to£100. If I brought this lot and then sold both big nights for a price that leaves £80 after shipping and fees, and two Warogs for a price that leaves £20 after fees, then this lot would sell for £210, the full amount I paid, and I'd still be left with two Warogs, essentially a free squad of Warogs.
This is not by any means a foolproof system. I used to do this a lot. I got like 12 killer cans doing this and probably made a negligible amount of profit on the side.
But Warhol models can take weeks or months to sell. It's very tedious work buying all the boxes and bubble wrap and shipping stuff across the country. You can also miscalculate how much models are worth and end up not making the full amount back, which does suck, but even in this situation, if I end up £20 short, that's still £40 saved on some Warogs.
Just because you're buying these models cheap doesn't mean you shouldn't take care of it, which is why you should be considering today's sponsor, Tabletop Stronghold. I'm sure by now you're more than aware that the Magcase 2. 0 is the premier way to transport your army.
But what I think not many sponsors talk about is the Magcase sizing options. This bad boy comes in three different sizes. I have the medium-sized one, which is able to carry my full 2,000 point knight army, the most notoriously difficult army to transport in the game without needing to cut them in half like most knight transport options.
I have just built my first Sarraus Knight, which I didn't realize was absolutely colossal. So, you might need the larger case if you're running like five Imperial Knights, including Saras Knights. But most difficult to transport armies won't have any issues, such as Nekrons featuring the Silent King or Thousand Sons featuring Magnus.
In fact, to test the limits of the medium-sized mag case, I built the most difficult to transport list I could think of, a 2,000 points Emperor's Children list featuring Fulgrim, Shellaxi, and the Serastas Night Lancer. And thanks to the Mad Cases modular trays, this list is ready to get wiped turn one at my next tournament. Head on over to tabletopstronghold.
com and use code grt25 to get 25% off your mag case as well as free shipping to most of the world. Thank you very much to tabletop stronghold for sponsoring this channel. Now, I've got some very important tips for this method that I'm going to rattle off now.
The good deals get snagged up very quickly. When I'm on the prow for new models, I check every couple of hours. It can genuinely be addicting.
I don't really scroll Instagram or Tik Tok anymore. I kind of just doom scroll eBay. But if you want the good good deals, you need to check often.
and it will eat up your time if you're prone to addictive behavior like me. You can do this on Facebook Marketplace and you will find even crazier deals, but there is zero buyer protection, so there will always be scammers lying in wait. The usual advice for this is to not buy models from any listing that doesn't have their name and date written on paper.
But with AI, this is just too easy to fake. Now, the best way to protect yourself on Facebook is to never purchase from someone who insists you have to use PayPal friends or family. If you buy secondhand models, bits will break in transport.
It's inevitable. Unless the packaging is ridiculously bad, like an orc stomper sent in just a plastic bag, which actually happened to me. Don't make a complaint or leave bad feedback for the seller.
Just glue it back together. These models are super spindly. If you buy models prepainted and plan to repaint them, I personally find that vehicles for the most part can be painted over without much issue.
I painted over the entire admech army I brought, including the foot troops, and I don't think it really affected the paint at all. A lot of units are weirdly cheap on eBay. Genesteeler Cole Aberance are super easy to find for £15 new on sprew when they retail for 30.
This is because they were included in the combat patrol magazine. This is a weekly magazine that sells models at a huge discount and this is like the real best way to get cheap models, but they are unfortunately scouts to [ __ ] I recommend following Ospec's tactics on YouTube as he posts notifications on his YouTube community when these magazines go up for sale, but you legit have a couple of hours max to get in before fat, greasy scalpers buy all up. I'm also not really sure if this magazine exists outside of the UK.
I know a lot of people show interest in 3D printed models as a cheaper alternative, but I find they're only massively cheaper if you buy the printer and make them yourself. 3D printed models on eBay are weirdly pricey. Often only a 10 to 40% discount on Games Workshop prices.
And at that point, I'd rather just fish for the proper models. If you want to expand your army but can't really afford buying big lots to resell or just don't want to go for all the effort, try filtering by auctions and ending soonest to see what deals can be picked up. Once again, you need to be vigilant here if you're prone to impulse spending.
I've faltered to that red 1 minute left many a time. Even if you don't want to do any prowling or weird techniques, eBay is probably your best bet for cheapest models regardless. That's pretty much it.
Warhammer is a very expensive hobby, and there's no shame if these prices are too much for you. I hope this guide will enable some of you to build your dream armies. Now, if you excuse me, I have 3,000 points of admech left to paint.
Thank you very much for watching. Cheers.
