Turbo six on a Budget

Slant Six Bumblebee said
What do you think would be the better option. How well would a turbo engine run without a turbo? If I don’t upgrade the pistons then I will have blow by because I would have the stock cylinder walls. I don’t see a good option here but to save for the whole build all at once.

At high boost levels with a slant you will run into head gasket sealing issues long before you run into piston issues when using stock pistons in a properly sized bore. That assumes that the AF mix and the timing is correct. With the fuel mix or timing out of wack even forged pistons will get hurt.
At medium to low boost levels stock head gaskets will hold up. Some slant folks have got ARP to do special runs of slant head bolts with higher tensile strength to increase the cylinder head clamp load. There is another guy at .org that got a run of multi layer slant head gaskets produced to help with the head gasket issue.
Basically the head gasket is the fuse, you will blow a head gasket long before you loose stock pistons.
And a turbo motor without a turbo will be run like a basic low compression engine with a smallish to medium sized cam.