The tabletop for Warhammer 40,000 is known as a sinfully expensive hobby. Those wanting to get started rarely come away with less than several hundred Euros for a small army. Many fans try to save money and do many things themselves… like entire models and in exaggerated dimensions.
Recently, Games Workshop introduced new models for Warhammer 40,000: Space Marines in Saturnine armor, which are even larger than their modern brothers. As great as the original models look, there is a catch: they are very expensive.
Individual models of special heroes cost 30 Euros and more, while smaller armies exceed 100. On top of that, there are paints, rule books, brushes, and tools if you want to build and paint everything. Medium-sized collections can add up to thousands of Euros in value.
These prices make the community creative. Time and again, frugal fans or those with little money show how they can still pursue their hobby and print figures (“proxies”) – which is, of course, not allowed for tournaments. Others build things themselves:
This is what the player created: On Reddit, the user SoBakk15 shows his self-built Dreadnought. He says he took a year to complete it:
- During this time, he put hard work into the project but also procrastinated.
- Over a pure working time of more than 6 months, he spent 12 hours weekly on the model.
- The Dreadnought is made of cardboard, ice cream sticks, wooden skewers, paper, hot glue, and toothpicks.
- Each piece was built individually, without templates.
- His Dreadnought ends up standing at about 23 cm tall (9 inch) and is thus significantly larger than “normal” models of Warhammer 40,000.
Accordingly, the enthusiasm for this absurd cardboard project, which took a lot of time but apparently not much money, is great.
For comparison: This is what original figures look like, here Angron, one of the daemon Primarchs:
“Dude, how? This is better than my 3D-printed minis”
SoBakk15 posted his project both in the Warhammer subreddit and in r/poorhammer – there fans show their Warhammer creations with significantly lower monetary effort.
In the comments, many users express their amazement at the level of detail of the Dreadnought. The model is said to be more detailed than much of what comes officially from Games Workshop and better than what others achieve with their modern 3D printers.
The symmetry of the model and the clean cuts are very satisfying. If the Dreadnought were painted, one couldn’t see a difference from an official model, says another comment. One user even considers the model to be “the best miniature I’ve ever seen.”
Dreadnoughts hold a special place in the community, as they are Space Marines that continue to serve even after their death. One user jokes accordingly: “Even in death, I still recycle!” From the story aspect alone, they are cool, and as part of an army, they serve as a strong unit capable of taking out many enemies on their own.
If you want to dive into the world of Warhammer without having to sell your right leg and don’t have the skills to build a Dreadnought out of cardboard, fortunately, there are also plenty of video games with which you can immerse yourself: The 7 best games to get into the world of Warhammer
