Every army, priced and dated
The Cheapest Warhammer 40k Army to Start
Every 40k army ranked by what its cheapest start actually costs right now — the lowest price we hold for each army's cheapest box, across every shop we track. Not RRP, not last year's guess.
The cheapest way in today is Orks, at $58.65 for Warhammer 40,000: Introductory Set. But the cheapest box is not the cheapest army to own: grown to a full 2,000-point force at the per-point rate its kits actually go for, Thousand Sons comes out lowest at about $560.00.
| # | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Orks | Warhammer 40,000: Introductory Set | $58.65 | — | $0.57 | ~$1140.00 across 27 kits |
| 2 | Adepta Sororitas | Armageddon Battalion: Adepta Sororitas | $121.55 | — | $0.54 | ~$1080.00 across 30 kits |
| 3 | Adeptus Custodes | Combat Patrol: Adeptus Custodes | $121.55 | $0.16 | $0.40 | ~$800.00 across 8 kits |
| 4 | Adeptus Mechanicus | Combat Patrol: Adeptus Mechanicus | $121.55 | $0.44 | $0.58 | ~$1160.00 across 18 kits |
| 5 | Aeldari | Combat Patrol: Aeldari | $121.55 | $0.28 | $0.44 | ~$880.00 across 45 kits |
| 6 | Astra Militarum | Combat Patrol: Astra Militarum | $121.55 | $0.43 | $0.58 | ~$1160.00 across 41 kits |
| 7 | Black Templars | Combat Patrol: Black Templars | $121.55 | $0.25 | $0.48 | ~$960.00 across 62 kits |
| 8 | Chaos Space Marines | Combat Patrol: Chaos Space Marines | $121.55 | $0.29 | $0.46 | ~$920.00 across 44 kits |
| 9 | Dark Angels | Combat Patrol: Dark Angels | $121.55 | $0.26 | $0.47 | ~$940.00 across 65 kits |
| 10 | Drukhari | Combat Patrol: Drukhari | $121.55 | $0.43 | $0.48 | ~$960.00 across 21 kits |
| 11 | Emperor's Children | Combat Patrol: Emperor's Children | $121.55 | $0.26 | $0.39 | ~$780.00 across 7 kits |
| 12 | Imperial Agents | Combat Patrol: Imperial Agents | $121.55 | $0.34 | $0.49 | ~$980.00 across 13 kits |
| 13 | Leagues of Votann | Combat Patrol: Leagues of Votann | $121.55 | $0.33 | $0.58 | ~$1160.00 across 17 kits |
| 14 | Space Wolves | Combat Patrol: Space Wolves | $121.55 | $0.24 | $0.47 | ~$940.00 across 69 kits |
| 15 | T'au Empire | Combat Patrol: T'au Empire | $121.55 | $0.38 | $0.65 | ~$1300.00 across 30 kits |
| 16 | Thousand Sons | Combat Patrol: Thousand Sons | $121.55 | $0.25 | $0.28 | ~$560.00 across 5 kits |
| 17 | Tyranids | Combat Patrol: Tyranid Assault Brood | $121.55 | $0.30 | $0.54 | ~$1080.00 across 26 kits |
| 18 | World Eaters | Combat Patrol: World Eaters | $121.55 | $0.25 | $0.43 | ~$860.00 across 7 kits |
| 19 | Genestealer Cults | Combat Patrol: Genestealer Cults | $128.78 | $0.34 | $0.52 | ~$1040.00 across 19 kits |
| 20 | Deathwatch | Armageddon Battalion: Deathwatch | $144.50 | — | $0.48 | ~$960.00 across 58 kits |
| 21 | Grey Knights | Combat Patrol: Grey Knights | $144.50 | $0.22 | $0.29 | ~$580.00 across 5 kits |
| 22 | Necrons | Combat Patrol: Necrons | $144.50 | $0.34 | $0.45 | ~$900.00 across 29 kits |
| 23 | Ultramarines | Getting Started with Space Marines: Warhammer 40,000 - 11th Edition - English | $144.50 | — | $0.47 | ~$940.00 across 59 kits |
| 24 | Blood Angels | Combat Patrol: Blood Angels | $150.45 | $0.28 | $0.47 | ~$940.00 across 64 kits |
| 25 | Death Guard | Combat Patrol: Death Guard | $190.00 | $0.38 | $0.41 | ~$820.00 across 18 kits |
| 26 | Iron Hands | Combat Patrol: Iron Hands | $200.00 | $0.45 | $0.49 | ~$980.00 across 56 kits |
| 27 | Chaos Daemons | No starting box we can price today | — | — | $0.47 | ~$940.00 across 26 kits |
| 28 | Chaos Knights | No starting box we can price today | — | — | — | — |
| 29 | Imperial Fists | No starting box we can price today | — | — | $0.48 | ~$960.00 across 56 kits |
| 30 | Imperial Knights | No starting box we can price today | — | — | $0.33 | ~$660.00 across 3 kits |
| 31 | Raven Guard | No starting box we can price today | — | — | $0.48 | ~$960.00 across 56 kits |
| 32 | Salamanders | No starting box we can price today | — | — | $0.49 | ~$980.00 across 56 kits |
| 33 | Space Marines | No starting box we can price today | — | — | $0.49 | ~$980.00 across 54 kits |
| 34 | White Scars | No starting box we can price today | — | — | $0.49 | ~$980.00 across 56 kits |
8 of 34 armies have no starting box we can price today — they are listed at the bottom rather than left out, because an army missing from a ranking looks like an army that does not exist.
Which army gives you the most for your money?
Entry price and value are different questions, and the per-point columns answer different ones — which is why they rank the armies differently.
Start $ / point prices the box itself: what one point of what is inside it costs. The spread is far wider than the shelf prices suggest — Adeptus Custodes gives you a point for $0.16 against $0.45 for Iron Hands, 2.8× as much for the same points on the table, from boxes priced within pennies of each other. Points come from Munitorum Field Manual v1.5 (2026-10-07), and the column is blank for the 4 armies whose cheapest box we have not sourced points for — we leave it empty rather than estimate it.
2,000pt army asks the longer question, and it is the one worth reading: not what the first box costs, but what the army costs at the rate every kit of it we can price and point actually goes for. A cheap Combat Patrol can front an expensive range, and the two genuinely disagree. Each cell says what it was measured over, because a mean over sixty-five kits and a mean over four are not the same claim — and below 3 kits we do not scale one at all.
How this ranking works
"Start" here means the army's cheapest currently-priced box — usually its Combat Patrol. We compare the latest price at every shop we track and rank on the lowest, and the buy button beside each price goes to the shop quoting it. Rows we cannot price today carry no button rather than a link to somewhere we have not checked.
The last column scales to a standard 2,000-point game, the size most people are actually building towards. It carries a tilde because it is an estimate — but an estimate computed from points we sourced and prices we checked on the date below, at the per-point rate of every kit of that army we can measure. Every other figure you will read for this was arrived at by guessing, and was stale the day Games Workshop last changed the points. Armies do not scale perfectly evenly: characters and centrepiece models cost differently per point from the rank and file, so treat the ordering as sound and the exact number as a good approximation of a moving target.
33 of 34 armies have enough measurable kits to estimate that way. The rest show nothing rather than a weaker number in the same column: multiplying a mean taken over one kit by 2,000 produces a confident four-figure number out of a single data point, which is worse than a blank. Space Marine chapters are measured together with the Space Marines range, because that is where the kits a chapter player buys are filed.
Next steps: every Combat Patrol ranked by value · how much a Warhammer army costs · the easiest armies to paint
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Prices were last checked 25 Sep and can change — the retailer's own page always has the final say. Affiliate links — how we make money.