Starting Out Warhammer: Your Second Army

Sometimes the finish line can sneak up on you, when it comes to your hobbies—you’ve played the same faction for years, slowly amassing the range, whittling down that pile of grey plastic.  Before you know it, unless you’ve selected the very widest of ranges, you can say you’ve got a fairly complete force.  What then?  For a lot of people, that means expanding a table, maybe getting some allies, or perhaps even redoing some of the models you started with, seeing just how far your skills as a hobbyist have grown.  More than anything though, it means a second army; while I’ve played a number of factions in my 1.5 decades of Warhammer, now more than ever does my plunge into World Eaters feel like a second army.  I wanted to talk about why that is, how I’ve approached things, and how you too can have the best experience possible diving ever deeper into the world of Warhammer!

Via Warhammer Community

Let’s start with some background: I’ve been playing since 2010, and have at some point likely touched every non-Eldar faction.  In a dedicated capacity though, I’ve only really played Tyranids, Chaos Space Marines, and Admech—each as horde armies, whether in the form of endless Skitarii or Cultists.  I adore putting bodies on the table, and having more meat to move around is what I’m after in a game of 40k.  That speaks to me, but by that same virtue, before selecting your next big project, ask yourself what fantasy you’re chasing, whether mechanical or aesthetic.  Do you want a different experience than your current army?  Perhaps if you’ve played a super elite faction like Custodes, you can slow-grow a T3 horde army, or vice versa.  Or, if you’ve grown weary from painting trim on models, maybe you’d like to try a wash-only force of Daemons?  Knowing what you’re actually after, before you start searching or buying, is critical.

Via Warhammer Community

With Admech, I found myself gravitating towards specifically the weird offshoot of Electro-Priests, as a staging-reliant glass cannon.  This was fun, but took a ton of mental bandwidth to pilot well, and I wanted more consistent charge access.  I of course had my beloved charging horde army swept out from under me (Beasts of Chaos), so chasing that fantasy was at the top of my list.  Fast-moving horde, and given Admech lack it, some form of resource management or CP generation; I was filling gaps in the army I’ve loved playing throughout 10th edition, and landed upon one less-than-obvious pick: World Eaters.

Now, World Eaters isn’t innately a horde army, and must be hammered like a blade into being so.  The look of Jakhals, as something like a melee version of my Skitarii Rangers, had immediate appeal, and there was even a detachment that’d let me take far more than normal, Cult of Blood.

The problem was that there’s a shocking lack of Cult of Blood resources on the web—the detachment essentially requires 80 Jakhals to even consider playing, so the number of people who could legally field this army at a Warhammer Store was likely in the low dozens.  That brings me to another beautiful thing: Getting out of ones comfort zone.  I trend towards the competitive side of the spectrum for wargames, even as I try to force odd detachments or strategies to the best of my ability; I’m the classic form of a Warhammer hipster, but really, who doesn’t get a rush from being the odd duck out?  For a lot of people, doing something non-obvious is a boon, the difference is mostly down to how much punishment one can endure in the process.  For me, playing around ~50 Electro-Priests the whole of 10th, the answer is ‘a lot’.

Outside of the mechanical though, this army was intended to be a ‘project army’, something that requires planning and learning along the way.  In learning a new faction, it can also be a ton of fun to use new painting or building techniques, to christen that army with a sign of your growth as a hobbyist.

While I’ve done total conversion armies before, such as my Ash Waste Admech, for this force I intended to make the actual hunt for the models a challenge in of itself, using as many OOP (Out of Print) components as possible.  I’ve been playing the game for a while, and have a bit of fondness for older kits, so given I’d need 80 Jakhals anyway…why not base them off of the Splintered Fang Warcry warband?

This would also be an exercise in how far I could push monopose kits, doing my best to give each model a life of its own, in spite of 2-8 copies of it appearing in the army.  Finally, I set out to use plenty of different materials for the builds, enmeshing resin and plastic with nearly every unit, on top of extra metal and sheeting for support.  Look for tutorials, be a little ambitious!  At worst, you’ll have an army to fall back on if things don’t work out as well as you’d hoped.  Moreover, given you can already play plenty of games with what you have, there’s no time crunch either!

Via Reddit

When it comes to a set time limit, it may be such that you’re starting this army for a slow-grow league, or a more fast-paced Escalation League.  These are both programs often run at either Warhammer stories, or your local game store, and can be a fantastic way of engaging with the community and spending time with new players!  Working on your own force alongside those just getting into the game is a profoundly fun experience, and it’s often easiest to learn by teaching others; there’s also more of an earnest feeling of growth for the army, if you’re starting out from a blank slate, rather than just adding another ~500pts to an existing 2-3k of models.  Not to say that’s a bad thing to do, especially if there’s a new release for your first army, but starting from scratch is more fun in my eyes.

That does bring me to one of the last major bits of advice: Have a goal.  For your first army, you probably just wanted to get the necessary models for a game, or paint up that awesome centerpiece which brought you into the fold in the first place!  For this second army, know why you’re doing it, be it inspiration mechanically and/or in the hobby itself.  Don’t be discouraged either!

Lastly, if you are planning to play full games with the army, ideally ensure every piece you work on can be part of the greater whole. It’s rough to start with a set of models you know won’t make it into your 2000pt list, so try theorizing what you might play at 500pts, 1000pts, and then the full force.  That said, oftentimes Combat Patrols are perfect for starting a new force, and have a great mix of Leaders, troops, and bigger units to kickstart a project.  If you’re looking for a place to begin, that’s your best bet.  If you’ve already worked on an army before, there’s a ton of takeaways you likely have from the experience though, and I’d love to hear about that in the comments below!

What’s your new army project for 2026?  Flipside Gaming has everything you’ll need to get started, so certainly check out our entire line of Combat Patrols on the site!  What else do you want to see me cover for new players in 2026?  I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below!