What's the best meat grinder army!?

[The King in Yellow]

I'm talking upkeep for the units, not hp or Regen but price wise, I want number superiority in the thousands

[Betty]

TK with skellie army build, skaven with slaves.

[TVMAN]

The Greenskins are the original meat grinder army. They have cheap units, get free armies, and they're all about enveloping tactics.

[RadCon One]

Originally posted by Storm:

I'm talking upkeep for the units, not hp or Regen but price wise, I want number superiority in the thousands

skarsnik with a lot of goblins. goblins units have a lot of combatants in them and are cheap to recruit and upkeep even before skarsnik's buffs

[Sin]

Originally posted by Storm:

I'm talking upkeep for the units, not hp or Regen but price wise, I want number superiority in the thousands

If upkeep is one of your metrics: TK hands down. Why? They have non. The only limiting factors for their units are buildings (each military building allows you to recruit X of the unit it features, skeleton spears and swords are infinit) and their lords. You need to tech for additional armys. You can not confederate, you can not just build a new one. On the other hand: You get 8 ? armys out of your tech tree (in addition to your LL) so ... yeah ..that's 9 armys without upkeep. go nuts.
(oh and you can spawn even more armys if you grind for jars, 10k gold and ..I forgot howmany jars give you a new army aswell)

Numbers in a single army:
Skaven. Clanrats and Slaves. Enjoy.

Less numbers .. .. ? .. .. profit:
Gobo stacks. Dirt cheap and numerous - I would go for skven.

1 giant meatgrinder into "why do I even build military buildings anymore?" :
Vampire Counts or Van Carsteins - 60 Zombies lead by 3 level 1 necromancers (WITHOUT leadership buffs). Throw them at an enemy doomstack(which has to have at least 2k units in it ! ) or city (same thing, at least 2k units - avoid dwarfs. ) and enjoy your endgame units.
I personally love to throw the triple zombie stack against the walls of altdorf. Usually playing it myself just to see the unending hord shatter against the mighty walls.
(if it isn't clear why you would want to do this: if both sides field 2k units and the losses are > 40% your fight will creat a graveyard which will allow you to recruit higher tier units via the undead special recruitment (raise dead). I think terrorgheists become available at something like 4500 casulties - the more you get the more frequent endgame units become. (it cycles through the vampire count unit roster each turn). Several Battles within the same zone get pooled together, so if you throw 2 stacks against the walls and your third stack is defeated within the area of altdorf (and only altdorf - not the surrounding settlements) , the third stack will also count for the other 2.

TL - DR:
Tombkings for free units - slow start but once you get your tech tree going enjoy free armys forever.

Skaven - they are numbers incarnate - just don't expect them to stay in a prolonged fight without comitting to rear charges and other enemy shattering manuvers.

[Gamefever]

Skarsnik of the Night Goblins fits the bill,
Very cheap upkeep on all units that are goblin by about 40% across the whole faction.
The Lords get some very nice skills to bump up the effectiveness it just takes time cause you have to level up your Night Goblin Warbosses.
You will easily have 10 to 20 armies when other Races are fielding about 7 to 10.
Thats not even considering the Waagh mechanics, which would double your number of armies.
Night Goblins dont look real attractive at first but before long these things get scary good.
You can easily field Reinforcement armies composed entirely of Goblin Wolf Riders, Squig Riders, and Goblin Wolf Chariots which is great cause these all move extremely fast, a very big plus for reinforcement armies indeed.
Arachnid Spider which you start with one, is extremely powerful top tier monster unit.

Tomb Kings...
Well they technically count but they dont have any meat on the bone.
As far as I know there is a limit on how many armies TK's can actually put on the board.

[Aenarion]

Skeletons? Get that elite filth out of here. It's all about the Peasants, Slaves, Goblins, and Zombies.