Hi everyone, I'm planning on getting back into Infinity with the new edition and was wondering if there are more efficient ways to buy into the army than just buying all of the singles, 3- and 4-packs. I'm totally fine with ebaying off extras if it saves me some cash when buying another faction's kits. Also open to some model customization / kit bashing if it is worth the time investment. Thanks!
Druze are hard because they don't really have a starter box. The fastest way is to pick up the Druze and brawler boxes. Everything else comes pretty much in blisters. You can always proxy too. If a for instance you like pan-o, you can pick up a starter box and proxy fusiliers as brawlers, kamau as druze, etc.
The addition of bounty hunters as wildcard troopers also allows for a lot of easy convertion work. In my mind it is one of the biggest draws of playing a merc faction.
My impression of mercenary forces are they are intended to allow you to mix and match different lines as you see fit. Conversions are an excellent idea to help your fusiliers/ghulam/zhanshi look like rugged brawler mercenaries. Unfortunately that means there isn't packaged starter boxes as much. Getting the druze box and then picking up either the brawlers or some appropriate line infantry SWC box is a good second step, and then adding remotes and characters - valerya, saito are my go tos. Then you will need to figure what to use as hunzakuts - you could use the hunzakut model itself or grab a couple of different skirmishers to give it that mixed look.
The Direfoes box with Arslan is also excelent. You get Arslan and a civilian. and the Knauf model is easily used a either a Druze Sniper model og convertion base to a bountyhunter.
I'd start with this: Druze Box Brawler Box Hunzakut Saito Dronbot Remotes This will get you close to 300 points, with interesting tools, plenty of specialists, and a lot of big guns. If you make a clipper, 9 of those models will be linkable giving you some redundancy. To kick it over 300 it's just going to depend on your preferences, maybe the Bulleteers, a Peacemaker, a second Hunzakut, Bashi, or a second box of Dronbots. Authorized Bounty Hunters are damn good, and a great excuse to use minis from any other army, depending on how you want your ABH to feel. So if you see any models you like with SMGs, combi, boarding shotguns, pick it up. The spitfire, red fury and sniper aren't bad either, they just start eating into your SWC. Some great options for ABH include: Kaplan Tactical Services (sniper, spitfire, combi, and you can roll an Adhesive Launcher on booty, or just call it an Akrylat Kannone) Agents of the Human Sphere Irmandihno BSG Ariadna Spec Ops Pavel McMannus (as a sniper) Strelok (either BSG or the SMG) Namurr Spitfire Odalisque Spitfire Basically, Ariadna and Haqqislam are full of great choices, haha.
Wow, didn't mean to /thread with that post, hopefully that's a helpful list to go and pick up. After writing this, I've definitely been eyeballing that Kaplan box... I have tons of models to use as ABH, but I've always loved those minis, and this is a pretty perfect use, lol.
I also love the idea of using Kaplans as ABH proxies, since that is the only reason to use this lovely miniatures most of the time (at least when playing mostly DBS). But fluffwise it seems to be some kind of heresy. :D Good list in general!