As others have said, I'd recommend using cardboard counters or some proxies while you have a bash at the training scenarios, then consider the race(s) that you want to go for. If you are near someone with some Epic figures who can help out, all the better.

When buying stuff apart from Games Workshop and Forge World, there are a number of manufacturers that do 6mm figures which will do at a pinch, though I would also keep an eye on Bartertown, Ebay and even the trade section of this (and other) sites. Also, lots of people here will guide you on modeling and conversions if that is your particular thing.

A note of warning though is that GW and some tournament organisers can be a bit touchy if you try to enter tournaments (or even playing on their premises) with non-GW stuff - but that just depends on how far you get hooked on the game.

As L4 is fond of saying; DWWFY (do what works for you)

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"Play up and play the game"

Vitai lampada
Sir Hemry Newbolt

There are no GW tournaments or anything around here for his, so that is of no concern, if people can't handle playing with other figures, I find a new group.
The more I look at the scale and such, the more I want to play something in this avenue, so if I don't care for this game, I'll try another, simple as that.

I wound up contacting the LGS in hopes he can order me the Eldar Warhost, I figure, I'll check em out, try and paint them, if I can get someone to play with, then I'll continue to get more, if not, You'll see em up for trade here.

As a curiosity, can you order Forge World through game stores, or is it a purely online thing?

I believe FW is purely online (or 2nd hand trade of course)

_________________
"Play up and play the game"

Vitai lampada
Sir Hemry Newbolt

Well, my brother is also very interested in playing this scale, so I figure, eventually we'll order him a set of Space Marines, but for Vehicles we did decide to go the Mechwarrior Route, through some are gonna be a bit big, we figure it'll be alright.

For less the $40 after shipping we got the equivalent of:

8x Stands of Terminators (Gnome Battle Armor)


5x Land Speeders (Hoverbike)


8x Land Raiders or Variants(Tokugawa Heavy Tank and Kinnol MBT)



2x Thunderhawks (Skadi VTOL)


6x Rhino (Hasek MCV)


4x Attack Bikes (Monocycles)


And three different mechs to be used as Titans, though we are unsure if they'll be large enough.  I nabbed a Vulture, Marauder, and Night Stalker.

They look pretty good !  And No painting needed !

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Legion 4 "Cry Havoc, and let slip the Dogs of War !" ... "People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf."

Nope, though I was unable to procure them all in a single faction, therefore they may eventually get painted.  Thankfully the army he likes is a simple one to paint (can't recall the faction name, but essentially they are black with bone colored details, not even sure if it is a real faction, but that was how he wanted me to paint his old Marines)  So it should take me no time to paint them whenever we get them, though I have a feeling I will be owning all of it, but that is normal, I happen to like miniatures too much.

Anyways, I am not painting these to my Eldar are entirely finished.  Even the Marines that need painted will simply be primed black until I am done with all my stuff.

And I'll take scale pics of everything when I have them in hand . . . and I find my adapter.

From where do you buy these Mech Warrior figs?

There are a fair few places, like eBay, http://www.trollandtoad.com, http://store.strikezoneonline.com/Singles/MW.html, etc.  Just Google Mechwarrior Singles.

They all look great, though the tank and the flyer thing especially invoke much more of an Imperial Guard feel.

The monowheel looks ace

Yeah, I noticed that as well, however, none of us are into the 40k universe, therefore we really aren't concerned with that.

To me the Tokugawa tank look very Tau actually, the large round edges scream Tau to me.

Basically, I only bought things from one online store, therefore I had to be certain they had the proper quanities to be correct.  I didn't want to have multiple models representing the exact same unit, so had to be rather picky about what I bought, also, I wanted to spend less than $2 per model.  I almost did it, the most expensive thing I got was a Mech at $2.50.  The attack VTOL, was just shy of $2.50 as well, otherwise I pretty much nailed my goal at a very low price.

It does!

It also reminds me heavily of Empire of the Rising Sun in Red Alert 3.

Just goes to show...