How To Get A New Warmachine Army (Without Really Trying)

Admitedly, I've been pretty out-of-the-loop regarding wargaming for the past year or so.  Talking with lars4life on the way to Adpeticon, he was telling me about the new All-In-One Army Boxes from Privateer Press, and they sounded like a pretty amazing deal.  I resolved to see if the PP booth had any when we got to the con.

The Privateer booth only had Khador (have it already) and Skorne (not interested).  My main interest would be Protectorate of Menoth or Cryx, neither of which was out yet.

When we got our swag bags, there was a Warmachine battlegroup included, and mine was Protectorate of Menoth:

(Fun fact: the first Adepticon I ever went to, I received a Menoth battlegroup - I gave it to lars4life so he could have a second force to run Pressganger demos.  The next year, I got a Protectorate battlegroup again, and traded it for Khador.  Okay, so it's really not that fun of a fact.  Deal with it).

I really like the fluff for Protectorate, and actually left Adepticon with a little bit of my spending money still in my pocket, so I resolved to hang on to it and keep an eye out for the Army Box.  Lo and behold, the next time I visited my FLGS, what was sitting on the "new arrivals" shelf:

The Army box is a tremendous deal at full MSRP, and my local shop sells Warmachine for 20% off everyday, so I got all this for a little over a hundred bucks:

...which is a steal.  I started doing some research about what to get next, and one of the models that kept coming up in the forums was Gorman di Wulfe, Rogue Alchemist - well, lars4life & I took a painting class at Adepticon taught by PP's Matt DiPietro, and he gave us a model to practice on - that model?  None other than Gorman di Wulfe:

So, thanks to a free Battlegroup, a free Merc model, and a great FLGS, I wound up with a brand-spankin'-new 48 point Warmachine army for just over $100:

That's an insane deal - I've bought crusty, covered-with-three-layers-of-paint models from Craigslist that weren't much cheaper.  Next is to get it painted and on the table...