ok so from my own experiences playing 40k at 3 different clubs in england and of youtube battle rep videos and visits to GW there seems to be an overwhelming majority of olayers who use some kind of space marine army.

Currently space marines have the most codexes and box sets etc in GW.

What could games workshop do to try and get more people to play other armies to diversify the armies that are used?

Would a new army be beneficial? or should existing armies just be updated so that they have more models? Could it be something as simple as changing the armies in the starter box to not include space marines?

Stop making stupid unbalanced rules so people dont start associating armies into waac categories and thus cause people to avoid it.

New armies arent needed. though id like to see a merc dex. to contain any race or army.

Really? at my place there's more nid players than space marine players.

Only army we see little of are the battlenuns and imperial guard actually.

I think a proper inquisitorial army should be released. We have inquisitorial henchemen in 3 codexes (SOB, GKs and inquisitor codex) yet there are a complete lack of models to buy to make the army eg warrior acolytes with bolters/stormbolters. Death cult assassins with different power weapons, Inquisitors with weapons that they can be upgraded with.

I am making an inquisitor army and converting METAL imperial guards with lasguns so that they have stormbolters instead is a nightmare.

Maybe making it so the other codexes have good internal balance. Right now, most the other races are "do this one thing and you win because all the rest of our units are useless!"

Space marines are the only codex without a useless unit. Not saying some aren't better than others, but just saying all space marines have a pretty defined role and are fairly costed for what they can do.

Look at Eldar. There are tons of worthless units, and some that scream "I am totally broken." You're not going to see a whole lot of people fielding Wailing Banshees that actually care about winning, for example, while you'll see people bring little tiny squads of Dire Avengers just so they can bring even more Wave Serpents. Kind of silly. Definitely out of whack.

Having armies that are cool looking and functional without relying on cheese is a good way to increase the player base. I have several friends who collect various Xenos armies and they rarely play with half their models simply because those units aren't any good. You don't see anyone employing more than a handful of Wyches anymore and that's just for their haywire grenades. You don't see people fielding Harlequins. You rarely see people fielding Orks (the entire race) anymore.

At my FLGS, we had an outcoming of DE. But overall, maybe only like 2 people play C:SM factions. Most of the SM armies are factions that have their own codex. Most of of SM armies are DA.

Our least played armies are Sisters, IG, and BA.

 SRSFACE wrote:
Maybe making it so the other codexes have good internal balance. Right now, most the other races are "do this one thing and you win because all the rest of our units are useless!"

Space marines are the only codex without a useless unit. Not saying some aren't better than others, but just saying all space marines have a pretty defined role and are fairly costed for what they can do.

Assault Marines. Chaplains. Scout Bikers. Sicarius. Shrike. Grimaldus. The Emperor's Champion. Terminator Captains. Techmarines. Tactical Terminators. Assault Centurions. Chronus. That's an awful lot of units that are more or less useless, and that's not getting into the units that are situational and/or require you to build an army around them.

We have one CSM player, one SM/IG player, one GK player, two Ork players, one Necron player, one incoming Eldar player and one Tyranid player.

That's not too much SM imho.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

 SRSFACE wrote:
Maybe making it so the other codexes have good internal balance. Right now, most the other races are "do this one thing and you win because all the rest of our units are useless!"

Space marines are the only codex without a useless unit. Not saying some aren't better than others, but just saying all space marines have a pretty defined role and are fairly costed for what they can do.

Assault Marines. Chaplains. Scout Bikers. Sicarius. Shrike. Grimaldus. The Emperor's Champion. Terminator Captains. Techmarines. Tactical Terminators. Assault Centurions. Chronus. That's an awful lot of units that are more or less useless, and that's not getting into the units that are situational and/or require you to build an army around them.

But the spce marine codex is so balanced you can choose how you want to play eg if you want to be a shooting space marine army or a close combat army or a mixture or both, if you want to be a fast army eg with bikes or jet packs and loads of transports or a slow powerful army eg terminators. Other armies can't do that eg tryanids are for the majority a combat army, tau are a shooting army, orks are for the most part a combat army, imperial guard re a shooting army etc etc


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 BrotherHaraldus wrote:
We have one CSM player, one SM/IG player, one GK player, two Ork players, one Necron player, one incoming Eldar player and one Tyranid player.

That's not too much SM imho.

Different clubs will have different players, on the whole it is about 50% of players who are SM.

champagne_socialist wrote:

[snip]
But the spce marine codex is so balanced you can choose how you want to play eg if you want to be a shooting space marine army or a close combat army or a mixture or both, if you want to be a fast army eg with bikes or jet packs and loads of transports or a slow powerful army eg terminators. Other armies can't do that eg tryanids are for the majority a combat army, tau are a shooting army, orks are for the most part a combat army, imperial guard re a shooting army etc etc
[snip]

Other armies can choose between shooty, assaulty, transport-heavy, armour-heavy, etc. But that doesn't necessarily make an army balanced. Using the Space Marines codex for a Close Combat-oriented army is borderline suicidal (their units are either really bad at it, overcosted, or both)--and even the traditional 'assaulty' marine codices are struggling with CC. Terminators are also pretty bad for any marine army that can't take them as troops (and even then they're usually not the best choice, too). Marines can be ok with standard shooting, but Tau, Eldar, Necrons, and Imperial Guard are going to blow them away (and they'll do this to assaulty lists, too). Biker marines spamming grav guns are competitive and Drop Pod lists can really screw with some opponents (but they'll flounder against others). So out of all the possible builds only two are actually good: bikers are great, and pods are, generally, pretty good if you build the list right. This does not make the codex balanced at all.

And most xenos books have just as many possible builds, many of which are better than the Marine builds. Eldar have Serpent Spam and Jetbikes and can also put together a pretty scary Monster Mash army. Then there are Wraithguard armies, which aren't top-tier but I'd say they're better than most marine builds. Necrons have a ton of builds which are all varying degrees of great. They can do a scary gunline (mech or foot), Flying Croissant Swarm of Death, a really scary assault build (Destroyer Lords and Wraiths anyone?), and can even put together a mean horde list. Imperial Guard can roll with huge blobs of guys or a bunch of mechvets; aerial cavalry or tank spam, and the book is jam-packed with a ton of options.

I've played most armies at one point or another, and not only do most non-marine books contain just as many possible builds as marine codices, but I'd say that the amount of good builds in *most* xenos books is greater than the amount in marine books.

...In short, I don't think army strength/viability is the problem with this whole '50% of players are MEQ players' thing. I think that people just like marines. GW also seems to lean towards encouraging marine kit sales, too, so that probably helps.

Likan Wolfsheim wrote:

champagne_socialist wrote:

[snip]
But the spce marine codex is so balanced you can choose how you want to play eg if you want to be a shooting space marine army or a close combat army or a mixture or both, if you want to be a fast army eg with bikes or jet packs and loads of transports or a slow powerful army eg terminators. Other armies can't do that eg tryanids are for the majority a combat army, tau are a shooting army, orks are for the most part a combat army, imperial guard re a shooting army etc etc
[snip]

Other armies can choose between shooty, assaulty, transport-heavy, armour-heavy, etc. But that doesn't necessarily make an army balanced. Using the Space Marines codex for a Close Combat-oriented army is borderline suicidal (their units are either really bad at it, overcosted, or both)--and even the traditional 'assaulty' marine codices are struggling with CC. Terminators are also pretty bad for any marine army that can't take them as troops (and even then they're usually not the best choice, too). Marines can be ok with standard shooting, but Tau, Eldar, Necrons, and Imperial Guard are going to blow them away (and they'll do this to assaulty lists, too). Biker marines spamming grav guns are competitive and Drop Pod lists can really screw with some opponents (but they'll flounder against others). So out of all the possible builds only two are actually good: bikers are great, and pods are, generally, pretty good if you build the list right. This does not make the codex balanced at all.

And most xenos books have just as many possible builds, many of which are better than the Marine builds. Eldar have Serpent Spam and Jetbikes and can also put together a pretty scary Monster Mash army. Then there are Wraithguard armies, which aren't top-tier but I'd say they're better than most marine builds. Necrons have a ton of builds which are all varying degrees of great. They can do a scary gunline (mech or foot), Flying Croissant Swarm of Death, a really scary assault build (Destroyer Lords and Wraiths anyone?), and can even put together a mean horde list. Imperial Guard can roll with huge blobs of guys or a bunch of mechvets; aerial cavalry or tank spam, and the book is jam-packed with a ton of options.

I've played most armies at one point or another, and not only do most non-marine books contain just as many possible builds as marine codices, but I'd say that the amount of good builds in *most* xenos books is greater than the amount in marine books.

...In short, I don't think army strength/viability is the problem with this whole '50% of players are MEQ players' thing. I think that people just like marines. GW also seems to lean towards encouraging marine kit sales, too, so that probably helps.

i used to play a very shooty ravenwing army that worked great. point is i can choose a sm codex i want to fulfil my role eg ravenwing for shooty, ba for combat eg death company even vanila are good at shooting with bs4 ap5 weapons. if i spam troop choices and have heavy bolters/lascannons ion the squads along with devestator squads and storm ravens and drop pods with special weapons that looks like a strong army that will outshoot most shooty armies or run them close.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

Assault Marines. Chaplains. Scout Bikers. Sicarius. Shrike. Grimaldus. The Emperor's Champion. Terminator Captains. Techmarines. Tactical Terminators. Assault Centurions. Chronus. That's an awful lot of units that are more or less useless, and that's not getting into the units that are situational and/or require you to build an army around them.

Matter of opinion. I am not saying Assault Marines are great, but useless? Not really. Anything in 3+ armor with that kind of mobility can run around and tie up an awful lot of guys in combat rather easily. No one really brings squads of dudes to sit in their own half of the board with big enough weapons to reliably take out marines in close combat in my experiences.

Named characters are really bad a lot of the time across all codexes, so that's not unique to Space Marines.

Terminators in general aren't that great this edition but it's not because terminators are bad so much as there are just too many damn Ap2 weaponry floating around in every last codex, on the cheap, in large numbers.

Assault Centurions also club the hell out of anything they get in combat with. Codex Marines are about the only codex that can handle Very Bulky models with Slow and Purposful AND still manage to get them into combat with their assault vehicles.

My point being all of those guys serve their primary functions. Mandrakes right now? Can't win at the things they are supposed to win at. Kind of pathetic. That's what I mean. And they are the coolest looking DE unit too, so it's really sad.

To answer the OP, GW could roll all the current loyalist Marine codices into one book. Then make the Chaos codex worthy of being a solid legion and renegade book. GK are mostly fine, but I feel like the role in their book should be reversed; I'd like it as an Inquisition dex first and foremost.

Then GW would have to expand the options for the Xenos and other Imperial factions. Things like Chapter Tactics but for craftworlds and Ork clans would help make the Xenos feel a little more special in terms of fluff/customization options.

champagne_socialist wrote:

i used to play a very shooty ravenwing army that worked great. point is i can choose a sm codex i want to fulfil my role eg ravenwing for shooty, ba for combat eg death company even vanila are good at shooting with bs4 ap5 weapons. if i spam troop choices and have heavy bolters/lascannons ion the squads along with devestator squads and storm ravens and drop pods with special weapons that looks like a strong army that will outshoot most shooty armies or run them close.

The standard marine gets BS4; S4; AP5; 24"; Rapid Fire. This...is not all that good. Other armies' troops get:

-BS4; S4; AP5; 18" Assault 2; Bladestorm (pseudo-rending) (Eldar: Dire Avengers)
-BS4; 4+ Poison; AP5; 24" Rapid Fire (Dark Eldar: Kabalite Warriors)
-BS4; S4; AP5; 24" Rapid Fire; Gauss (auto-glance on a 6) (Necrons: Necron Warriors)
-BS3; S5; AP5; 30" Rapid Fire (Tau: Fire Warriors)

And then Imperial Guard get tons of cheap lasguns (I've never seen boltguns, even when massed, out-shoot guardsmen. Even the Dakka Banner struggles to match IG dakka). Tactical Marines just aren't going to match the pure anti-infantry damage output of other types of shooty troops with their boltguns. And they're more expensive than all these troops. They can augment themselves with heavy/special weapons--often to give them the ability to engage vehicles and/or MCs better, which the non-MEQ troops don't do as well (save for Necrons, who do pretty well against vehicles). Unfortunately the boltguns aren't as efficient against vehicles/MCs and the Plasma/Melta guns aren't as efficient against non-MEQ/TEQ troops. So, ironically, most kitted-out tactical squads are most efficient at fighting normal marines. Spamming marine troops is not a good source of killing power, ranged or otherwise.

And I could get any build I wanted with the Necron codex alone. Shooty? Tons of warriors, barges, and assorted dakka. Assaulty? Scarabs, Wraiths, Destroyer Lords. Mechanised? There's plenty of vehicles. Fast? Bikes, Scarabs, Wraiths, and two types of fliers--one of which is very easy to spam. And that only takes one codex.

Marines have versatility, yes, but the other books do most builds better I'm afraid. If army strength was what makes people MEQ players then there would be more xenos armies now. People just like marines. So there will be marines.

Likan Wolfsheim wrote:

champagne_socialist wrote:

i used to play a very shooty ravenwing army that worked great. point is i can choose a sm codex i want to fulfil my role eg ravenwing for shooty, ba for combat eg death company even vanila are good at shooting with bs4 ap5 weapons. if i spam troop choices and have heavy bolters/lascannons ion the squads along with devestator squads and storm ravens and drop pods with special weapons that looks like a strong army that will outshoot most shooty armies or run them close.

The standard marine gets BS4; S4; AP5; 24"; Rapid Fire. This...is not all that good. Other armies' troops get:

-BS4; S4; AP5; 18" Assault 2; Bladestorm (pseudo-rending) (Eldar: Dire Avengers)
-BS4; 4+ Poison; AP5; 24" Rapid Fire (Dark Eldar: Kabalite Warriors)
-BS4; S4; AP5; 24" Rapid Fire; Gauss (auto-glance on a 6) (Necrons: Necron Warriors)
-BS3; S5; AP5; 30" Rapid Fire (Tau: Fire Warriors)

And then Imperial Guard get tons of cheap lasguns (I've never seen boltguns, even when massed, out-shoot guardsmen. Even the Dakka Banner struggles to match IG dakka). Tactical Marines just aren't going to match the pure anti-infantry damage output of other types of shooty troops with their boltguns. And they're more expensive than all these troops. They can augment themselves with heavy/special weapons--often to give them the ability to engage vehicles and/or MCs better, which the non-MEQ troops don't do as well (save for Necrons, who do pretty well against vehicles). Unfortunately the boltguns aren't as efficient against vehicles/MCs and the Plasma/Melta guns aren't as efficient against non-MEQ/TEQ troops. So, ironically, most kitted-out tactical squads are most efficient at fighting normal marines. Spamming marine troops is not a good source of killing power, ranged or otherwise.

And I could get any build I wanted with the Necron codex alone. Shooty? Tons of warriors, barges, and assorted dakka. Assaulty? Scarabs, Wraiths, Destroyer Lords. Mechanised? There's plenty of vehicles. Fast? Bikes, Scarabs, Wraiths, and two types of fliers--one of which is very easy to spam. And that only takes one codex.

Marines have versatility, yes, but the other books do most builds better I'm afraid. If army strength was what makes people MEQ players then there would be more xenos armies now. People just like marines. So there will be marines.

I disagree and I don't understand why you are using just marine troops with bolters as the basis of your argument. each tactical squad can have a heavy weapon. Also do not forget that marines have a 3+ armour which compared to most other races is a lot better so more marines will survive to fire back etc.

As I said marines cn use drop pods on the first turn and just drop tactical squads right in front of other squads and just rapid fire them to the ground. Then you have the shooting ability of bikes and land speeders and tanks and flyers and devestator squads and snipers from scouts.


-BS3; S5; AP5; 30" Rapid Fire (Tau: Fire Warriors)

You seem to be just comparing guns when deciding which shooty army is the best. Space marines have BS4, armour 3+ and toughness 4 and a leadership of 8 (9 if veteran sergeant is in squd).

Tau have lower BS, a lower save and a lower toughness and I believe a lower leadership.

I was using just bolters because in one of your posts you seemed to stress that BS4 bolters are 'good'. They're average, at best. Also, other armies get just as many (if not much more) special/heavy weapon shots--they're just usually on much better platforms.

Bikers are damn good. I believe I mentioned that in my first post on this thread. And I said drop pods are generally good. I'm not trying to argue against those points. Most non-MEQ armies have at least that many really good builds, too. My main issue is that you made it sound like marines have more viable/competitive builds than non-MEQ books. Which they don't. There aren't really more ways to play Marines than there are to play Necrons, or Dark Eldar, Eldar, or even IG. That's the point I'm arguing against.

T4 and 3+ armour are nice in a vacuum. But You're paying more for that defence then you are for offence (and you pay even more to get better offence from special/heavy weapons). And in 6th edition damage > defence when it comes to getting the most for your points, generally. There is a ton of AP3 out there and a lot of it either ignores cover outright or has access to cover-ignoring shenanigans (I'm looking at you, Markerlights).

I play marine armies--SW, C:SM, GK...hell, I have over five-thousand points of DA! I love my power-armoured blokes, but I also play or have played pretty much all the other armies, too. Marines pay too much for the 3+ save which 6th has marginalised.

I just recently gave in to the times and updated my Eldar to 6th edition and I was blown away by how much better the vast majority of that codex is to the recent Space Marine codex.

By focusing less marketing on the Space Marine side.

Not enough Xenos in 40k already?

Oh.. Ok...

Give them Riptides! And let them eat cake!

 Melissia wrote:
By focusing less marketing on the Space Marine side.

This. Combine the marine armies into a single codex and stop using marines as the focus of 95% of the fluff. Marines are popular because they're the first thing every new player sees, and the first models they get in the starter set. Give a better balance of time to the other armies and space marines will no longer dominate.

The current starter box has 2 power armor armies in it. A couple of new players picking one up are going to naturally expand out into more power armor thanks to the overlap. On top of that, It's not very cheap to army hop at this point. Back when I started in 3rd swapping to say, Eldar or Tau was much easier on the wallet, though the Ally system helps alleviate this a little bit by making it easier to gradually shift.

Really though with the current balance, all of the power armor armies right now are poor to mediocre. Players looking to be competitive in a tournament environment will eventually gravitate towards Eldar/Dark Eldar, Tau, Demons, or Necrons (Orks are probably still mid-tier, and Tyranids looks to be a huge failure so far. IG is up in a month or so, we'll have to see what happens there).

Likan Wolfsheim wrote:
I was using just bolters because in one of your posts you seemed to stress that BS4 bolters are 'good'. They're average, at best. Also, other armies get just as many (if not much more) special/heavy weapon shots--they're just usually on much better platforms.

Bikers are damn good. I believe I mentioned that in my first post on this thread. And I said drop pods are generally good. I'm not trying to argue against those points. Most non-MEQ armies have at least that many really good builds, too. My main issue is that you made it sound like marines have more viable/competitive builds than non-MEQ books. Which they don't. There aren't really more ways to play Marines than there are to play Necrons, or Dark Eldar, Eldar, or even IG. That's the point I'm arguing against.

T4 and 3+ armour are nice in a vacuum. But You're paying more for that defence then you are for offence (and you pay even more to get better offence from special/heavy weapons). And in 6th edition damage > defence when it comes to getting the most for your points, generally. There is a ton of AP3 out there and a lot of it either ignores cover outright or has access to cover-ignoring shenanigans (I'm looking at you, Markerlights).

I play marine armies--SW, C:SM, GK...hell, I have over five-thousand points of DA! I love my power-armoured blokes, but I also play or have played pretty much all the other armies, too. Marines pay too much for the 3+ save which 6th has marginalised.

I just recently gave in to the times and updated my Eldar to 6th edition and I was blown away by how much better the vast majority of that codex is to the recent Space Marine codex.

we are gooing around in circles and repeating the same things, i dont want to spend a week debating the same ting over and over. I believe space marines can be built very good as a shooty army, you don't so fair enough, end of discussion. Don't need to argue til the cows come home.

 Melissia wrote:
By focusing less marketing on the Space Marine side.

Yep.

There's never been a boxed set that didn't come with a Space Marine force. That's obviously going to push people toward Space Marines.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 Melissia wrote:
By focusing less marketing on the Space Marine side.

Yep.

There's never been a boxed set that didn't come with a Space Marine force. That's obviously going to push people toward Space Marines.

Well, Marines are sorta the 'core' of 40K (Even GW staff explicitly said they think so. Check latest WD). They'd undoubtedly be most popular anyway, which is why it makes sense to have them in the starter box, and they are without doubt the most 'defining' part of the universe.

I strongly suspect these very facts are why a few people are so vocal in their disapproval of them.

 BrotherHaraldus wrote:

Well, Marines are sorta the 'core' of 40K (Even GW staff explicitly said they think so. Check latest WD)

Space Marines and Genestealers, that's what 40k always centers on and boils down to for me.

Bringing it back to the Space Hulks and "Alien" versus superhuman story.

 Blacksails wrote:
Then GW would have to expand the options for the Xenos and other Imperial factions. Things like Chapter Tactics but for craftworlds and Ork clans would help make the Xenos feel a little more special in terms of fluff/customization options.

Exactly. What the other armies need is variety. With Space Marines, you have Red Scorpions, Imperial Fists, Ultramarines, Dark Angels, Minotaurs, etc., and they all have special rules, models, and extensive fluff written for them to appeal to a wide variety of players.

With Eldar, for example, you just have...Eldar. Whether it's Ulthwe, Saim-Hann, Alaitoc, etc., they're still all the same: same models, same rules; the differences are only in the colors and names.

One of the most brilliant design decisions GW ever made was the Space Marine shoulder pad. Slap a different emblem on that pad, and suddenly it's a visually different model from all the others. What is the equivalent of that for the other armies?

What?! Really?! Right now xenos are kings. I'd like to see the PA be a little bit more viable and definitely would like to see IG numbers get back up soon.

 Lobukia wrote:
What?! Really?! Right now xenos are kings. I'd like to see the PA be a little bit more viable and definitely would like to see IG numbers get back up soon.

I don't think anyone's talking about the power levels of the armies.

Its a discussion on the prevalence and focus on the marines vice the other races. Why do the marines have so many codices/supplements/other stuff while Xenos have very little in the way of extra options?

 BrotherHaraldus wrote:
Well, Marines are sorta the 'core' of 40K

Due to marketing only.

 Melissia wrote:

 BrotherHaraldus wrote:
Well, Marines are sorta the 'core' of 40K

Due to marketing only.

That's not really fair to say. It could be argued that the marketing is perpetuating that popularity, to the detriment of the other factions, but you can't say with any degree of certainty that 40K would be just as big as it is currently even without the draw of Space Marines.

My own experience in the last year or so tells me that Marine armies are on the decline right now anyways. Do we really need a plan to make them even less prevalent?

champagne_socialist wrote:
What could games workshop do to try and get more people to play other armies to diversify the armies that are used?

Would a new army be beneficial? or should existing armies just be updated so that they have more models? Could it be something as simple as changing the armies in the starter box to not include space marines?

Difficult, modern 40k fluff is very centered around mankind and the Horus Heresy making the Space Marines the stars of the setting. Giving Xeno races more of their own face would help imo. At the moment the Eldar and Tau are reflections of the future and past of IoM. The Newcrons and Orks are mostly space versions of fantasy races that seem just to exist for no particular reason. In addition making some ranges visually more attractive could help.

While not as as successful, WFB is more decentralized and I think 40k could benefit from more fluff outside of human-chaos dynamic. Tyranids are the one really alien race (they come from another galaxy and have no ties to the Old Ones/War of the Heavens) but we know so little about the hive mind and their origins. Would be interesting to make contact with a species/race from another galaxy that already fought/lost to them.

As for new armies, a space dinosaur force along the lines of the Lizardmen/Old Ones could help tie events together.

Weird, I haven't seen loyalist Space Marines in months...

One thing GW could do is drop prices on non-Marine kits ;P

 Peregrine wrote:

 Melissia wrote:
By focusing less marketing on the Space Marine side.

This. Combine the marine armies into a single codex and stop using marines as the focus of 95% of the fluff. Marines are popular because they're the first thing every new player sees, and the first models they get in the starter set. Give a better balance of time to the other armies and space marines will no longer dominate.

Arguably, it's because people LIKE what they see. Sure, greater exposure helps, but it wouldn't matter if people didn't actually like what was being pushed.

 Tannhauser42 wrote:
One of the most brilliant design decisions GW ever made was the Space Marine shoulder pad. Slap a different emblem on that pad, and suddenly it's a visually different model from all the others. What is the equivalent of that for the other armies?

Just because I can: the Chaos Space Marine shoulderpad?

More marketing for the other factions would go a long way I imagine.

 Tannhauser42 wrote:
One of the most brilliant design decisions GW ever made was the Space Marine shoulder pad. Slap a different emblem on that pad, and suddenly it's a visually different model from all the others. What is the equivalent of that for the other armies?

Huh? That's no different to painting any model from any other army differently to set it apart.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 Tannhauser42 wrote:
One of the most brilliant design decisions GW ever made was the Space Marine shoulder pad. Slap a different emblem on that pad, and suddenly it's a visually different model from all the others. What is the equivalent of that for the other armies?

Huh? That's no different to painting any model from any other army differently to set it apart.

no it's not.... the actual model looks different rather than just the paint.

The sheer modular convertability of any Marine model is one thing I love about them and that no other faction can match. (Only IG can come close.) For example, my squad of Chosen used parts from CSM, tacticals, possessed, raptors, and various bits and bobs from other places, as well as plasticard to make them a little bigger. Which other army can boast such potential for kitbashing?

The shoulderpads are, of course, included in the above.

As others have said, one way would be just by giving non-Marines more fluff attention.

 BrotherHaraldus wrote:
it makes sense to have them in the starter box

Though I do completely agree that non-Marine factions should get some more attention, I will say that one advantage of them being in the starter set is that they're a good starter army. They're quite easy to learn and play.

Additional starter sets could also be an option, but I don't think that GW would go for that anyway.

 BrotherHaraldus wrote:
Which other army can boast such potential for kitbashing?

Da Orks, reportedly.

Really I think IG, SM (CSM most of all), and orks have the most diversity. Anyways I'd add orks to your list sense they loot vehicles and kinda are goofy. I have a friend making an army that thinks the emperor is the greatest war boss. Grots dress like guardsman and orks wear SM scavenged armor

Orks do have a lot of kitbashing potential, but not the amount Marines do. The majority of infantry models the Astartes have available, across all the six codices, can be kitbashed. The Orks even have trouble matching Boy and Nob parts without it looking goofy.

Its not really the orks as much as the sheer diversity of their vehicles. SM don't really have diverse vehicles (not counting CSM). IG of course can pretty much represent a million different things so going to not focus on that or CSM. SM vehicles are rather same. The models, whilst always looking rather similar can have these minor changes to make them distinct. Orks, infantry wise seem to not work as well on the infantry side but in terms of vehicles, they hit the park. Any vehicle, orkify it.

List of armies my regulars have:

Blood Angels
Chaos Space Marines (me - Do you count CSM as a SM army?)
Eldar x2
Dark Eldar (me again)
Tau
Orks
Necrons
Imperial Guard (me AGAIN)
Chaos Daemons (... guess who again)

I won't deny the possibility that there are a lot of SM players out there though.

I think there are a few key factors which make SM so attractive:

1. They are relatively easy to start playing. They have a good range of plastic models, the cost for a basic army is fairly low, they aren't too difficult to build or paint and they are easy to transport. Only Necrons and Tau really manage to compete with them on that basis.

2. They are flexible and relatively forgiving to play. Marines can handle themselves in almost any situation. They are tough, good shots, fairly mobile and never really have to worry about morale. I think that only Necrons offer all of those, although Eldar and Tau aren't too bad.

3. They are the 'good guys'. Imperial Guard are human and easy to sympathise with, but they aren't elite heroes. Tau and Eldar are relatively nice and also 'better' than most other races in some way, but they are aliens.

Overall, I'd say that GW are going in the right direction with the Tau. They have powerful rules, their model range is good and getting better (although still full of annoying flying bases and far too many easily-broken antennae), their background is fun and their play-style isn't terribly complex, but still offers plenty of tactical flexibility.

Eldar had similar potential, but their model range needs a lot more plastic kits. Necrons are probably the best 'villain' army at the moment, but are never going to appeal to people who want to play heroes. Tyranids could potentially be similar to necrons, but they really need a codex which makes mid-sized plastic kits like warriors, genestealers and raveners the core of the army; termagants are just too much trouble to paint in the numbers they need to work.

Perfect Organism wrote:
I think there are a few key factors which make SM so attractive:

1. They are relatively easy to start playing. They have a good range of plastic models, the cost for a basic army is fairly low, they aren't too difficult to build or paint and they are easy to transport. Only Necrons and Tau really manage to compete with them on that basis.

2. They are flexible and relatively forgiving to play. Marines can handle themselves in almost any situation. They are tough, good shots, fairly mobile and never really have to worry about morale. I think that only Necrons offer all of those, although Eldar and Tau aren't too bad.

3. They are the 'good guys'. Imperial Guard are human and easy to sympathise with, but they aren't elite heroes. Tau and Eldar are relatively nice and also 'better' than most other races in some way, but they are aliens.

Overall, I'd say that GW are going in the right direction with the Tau. They have powerful rules, their model range is good and getting better (although still full of annoying flying bases and far too many easily-broken antennae), their background is fun and their play-style isn't terribly complex, but still offers plenty of tactical flexibility.

Eldar had similar potential, but their model range needs a lot more plastic kits. Necrons are probably the best 'villain' army at the moment, but are never going to appeal to people who want to play heroes. Tyranids could potentially be similar to necrons, but they really need a codex which makes mid-sized plastic kits like warriors, genestealers and raveners the core of the army; termagants are just too much trouble to paint in the numbers they need to work.

This seems spot-on. Exalted!

 Orblivion wrote:
That's not really fair to say. It could be argued that the marketing is perpetuating that popularity, to the detriment of the other factions, but you can't say with any degree of certainty that 40K would be just as big as it is currently even without the draw of Space Marines.

Don't confuse "Marketing" with "Advertising". Advertising is just one facet of marketing.

Furthermore, when your marketing material leads people to think that some of your products don't even exist, yes, a LOT can be blamed on marketing.

 Orblivion wrote:
My own experience in the last year or so tells me that Marine armies are on the decline right now anyways. Do we really need a plan to make them even less prevalent?

Yes.

Even by the admission of he authors, Space Marines are a very tiny aspect of the lore which has very little impact on the galaxy as a whole. The lore could use some expansion in things not Space Marine related.

 BrotherHaraldus wrote:
The sheer modular convertability of any Marine model is one thing I love about them and that no other faction can match. (Only IG can come close.) For example, my squad of Chosen used parts from CSM, tacticals, possessed, raptors, and various bits and bobs from other places, as well as plasticard to make them a little bigger. Which other army can boast such potential for kitbashing?

Orks not only boast that much, it boasts MORE.

Orks are by far the most convertible, moddable, modular, and customizable army in the game as far as modeling goes. No army can even get close to what Orks can do in terms of modeling. Space Marines don't even BEGIN to approach Orky kustomization and kitbashing. Space Marines cream their pants at the idea of having even half the level of kitbashing possible for Orks.

No, where Orks suffer is their rules, which don't reflect their massive variety in modeling and lore.

 Melissia wrote:
Orks not only boast that much, it boasts MORE.

Orks are by far the most convertible, moddable, modular, and customizable army in the game as far as modeling goes. No army can even get close to what Orks can do in terms of modeling. Space Marines don't even BEGIN to approach Orky kustomization and kitbashing. Space Marines cream their pants at the idea of having even half the level of kitbashing possible for Orks.

No, where Orks suffer is their rules, which don't reflect their massive variety in modeling and lore.

I thought it was obvious that I was discussing infantry.

Are you seriously implying Orks can get close to Marine level of kitbashing potential for infantry? You can't even swap out Nob and Boy parts without it looking goofy, unless you start using GS in which case it's not really just kitbashing any more (Which was what I was specifically referring to.)

Ork vehicles are there no need to even mention since you can take literally any other vehicle in the game and slap on Ork-looking bits on it. Uh, Gz. Orks take that win. Here, have a pat on the back. Happy now?

And I'd doubt that Marines 'cram their pants' at it, they may not have as ramshackle things but they can do nice stuff as well.

Even by the admission of he authors, Space Marines are a very tiny aspect of the lore which has very little impact on the galaxy as a whole. The lore could use some expansion in things not Space Marine related.

From the latest WD, they are apparently the 'core' of the setting. Don't shoot me, I didn't say it. But your own, personal and entirely subjective interpretation of the fluff should not be something to throw around as an argument for an attention shift.

By all means, argue that attention should be shifted to other races and factions than Marines and the Imperium who gets most of the love, because you want to read more about Tyranids or Orks or whatever.

'Tiny aspect of the lore which has little impact'? Strange, what I have read contradicts this interpretation... But then, it's your interpretation, go ahead and keep it.

Just don't shove it into the face of others as if it was some kind of common or default stance.

Note! Not looking for a fight! Meant no offense with any of the above.

 BrotherHaraldus wrote:
Are you seriously implying Orks can get close to Marine level of kitbashing potential for infantry? You can't even swap out Nob and Boy parts without it looking goofy, unless you start using GS in which case it's not really just kitbashing any more (Which was what I was specifically referring to.)

You can't swap Power Armour Marine bits with Terminator bits either.

Ork Boyz can be made into Kommandos or Tankbustas using only the bits found in the boyz box. They can trade parts with Bikers, Lootas, Burnas and Stormboyz. That's seven units with interchangeable parts.

Marines get two types of veteran, tactical marines, assault marines, devastators, command squads and bikers, right? That's seven different unit types with interchangeable parts too.

Give Tau ignore cover and Eldar transports with absurd defensive and offensive capabilities.

Oh wait...

Perfect Organism wrote:

 BrotherHaraldus wrote:
Are you seriously implying Orks can get close to Marine level of kitbashing potential for infantry? You can't even swap out Nob and Boy parts without it looking goofy, unless you start using GS in which case it's not really just kitbashing any more (Which was what I was specifically referring to.)

You can't swap Power Armour Marine bits with Terminator bits either.

Ork Boyz can be made into Kommandos or Tankbustas using only the bits found in the boyz box. They can trade parts with Bikers, Lootas, Burnas and Stormboyz. That's seven units with interchangeable parts.

Marines get two types of veteran, tactical marines, assault marines, devastators, command squads and bikers, right? That's seven different unit types with interchangeable parts too.

Add Blood Angels, Chaos Marines, Dark Angels, Grey Knights, Space Wolves...

 BrotherHaraldus wrote:
Are you seriously implying Orks can get close to Marine level of kitbashing potential for infantry?

Yes.

Anything you can do for Space Marines, you can do for Ork infantry, and more besides.

 BrotherHaraldus wrote:
From the latest WD, they are apparently the 'core' of the setting

Oh, so the latest WD said there are more than just a mere million of them, and that it's NOT the case that most battles take place without even a whiff of Space Marines, and that it's NOT true that most sentient beings in 40k will never see one in their lives?

Oh it didn't?

Then they are not the core of the setting, they remain, as I said, a very tiny part of it.

 Melissia wrote:

 BrotherHaraldus wrote:
From the latest WD, they are apparently the 'core' of the setting

Oh, so the latest WD said there are more than just a mere million of them, and that it's NOT the case that most battles take place without even a whiff of Space Marines, and that it's NOT true that most sentient beings in 40k will never see one in their lives?

Oh it didn't?

Then they are not the core of the setting, they remain, as I said, a very tiny part of it.

You're mistaking "core of the setting" for "core part within the setting". The Jedi are far more rare even than Astartes, and yet they are the core of Star Wars.

 Orblivion wrote:
You're mistaking "core of the setting" for "core part within the setting". The Jedi are far more rare even than Astartes, and yet they are the core of Star Wars.

You're mistaking "marketing focus" for "core of the setting".

In Battletech, sure 'Mechs are rare, but almost every single battle has a 'Mech participating in it. Everyone knows about 'Mechs and most people have seen at least one through their local garrison, save for the absolute poorest of worlds. Thus, it is fair to say that 'Mechs are indeed a core element of Battletech. That they're also the most marketed aspect has no relevance here.

In 40k, Space Marines are rare, most battles don't have any Space Marine presence, and most people (assuming they know of them at all, which is not guaranteed) see them as myths and legends at best. As such, they're far less of a core element. They're simply the most marketed element.

 BrotherHaraldus wrote:
From the latest WD, they are apparently the 'core' of the setting.

That doesn't necessarily conflict with the quotes that Melissia referenced. That they're "the core" could just refer to how much fluff attention they get, whilst those other quotes are just referring to how, in-universe, they're a relatively small factor.

 BrotherHaraldus wrote:
Are you seriously implying Orks can get close to Marine level of kitbashing potential for infantry? You can't even swap out Nob and Boy parts without it looking goofy, unless you start using GS in which case it's not really just kitbashing any more (Which was what I was specifically referring to.)

I think that the advantage that Orks have over loyalist Marines is that their characterisation is just so ramshackle and undisciplined. You could get away with slapping a lot onto an Ork model that might otherwise look out of place on the average loyalist Marine.

 Melissia wrote:

 Orblivion wrote:
You're mistaking "core of the setting" for "core part within the setting". The Jedi are far more rare even than Astartes, and yet they are the core of Star Wars.

You're mistaking "marketing focus" for "core of the setting".

In Battletech, sure 'Mechs are rare, but almost every single battle has a 'Mech participating in it. Everyone knows about 'Mechs and most people have seen at least one through their local garrison, save for the absolute poorest of worlds. Thus, it is fair to say that 'Mechs are indeed a core element of Battletech. That they're also the most marketed aspect has no relevance here.

In 40k, Space Marines are rare, most battles don't have any Space Marine presence, and most people (assuming they know of them at all, which is not guaranteed) see them as myths and legends at best. As such, they're far less of a core element. They're simply the most marketed element.

Eh, this is a chicken or the egg scenario. You believe they are only "core" because of the marketing, I believe they are marketed so much because they are intended to be the core of the setting. Agree to disagree.

Sure why not.

 BrotherHaraldus wrote:

Perfect Organism wrote:

 BrotherHaraldus wrote:
Are you seriously implying Orks can get close to Marine level of kitbashing potential for infantry? You can't even swap out Nob and Boy parts without it looking goofy, unless you start using GS in which case it's not really just kitbashing any more (Which was what I was specifically referring to.)

You can't swap Power Armour Marine bits with Terminator bits either.

Ork Boyz can be made into Kommandos or Tankbustas using only the bits found in the boyz box. They can trade parts with Bikers, Lootas, Burnas and Stormboyz. That's seven units with interchangeable parts.

Marines get two types of veteran, tactical marines, assault marines, devastators, command squads and bikers, right? That's seven different unit types with interchangeable parts too.

Add Blood Angels, Chaos Marines, Dark Angels, Grey Knights, Space Wolves...

Isn't the fantasy orc range interchangeable with 40k orks? That adds a lot of options.

Perfect Organism wrote:

 BrotherHaraldus wrote:

Perfect Organism wrote:

 BrotherHaraldus wrote:
Are you seriously implying Orks can get close to Marine level of kitbashing potential for infantry? You can't even swap out Nob and Boy parts without it looking goofy, unless you start using GS in which case it's not really just kitbashing any more (Which was what I was specifically referring to.)

You can't swap Power Armour Marine bits with Terminator bits either.

Ork Boyz can be made into Kommandos or Tankbustas using only the bits found in the boyz box. They can trade parts with Bikers, Lootas, Burnas and Stormboyz. That's seven units with interchangeable parts.

Marines get two types of veteran, tactical marines, assault marines, devastators, command squads and bikers, right? That's seven different unit types with interchangeable parts too.

Add Blood Angels, Chaos Marines, Dark Angels, Grey Knights, Space Wolves...

Isn't the fantasy orc range interchangeable with 40k orks? That adds a lot of options.

A significant number but not sufficient to reach that of the Marines.

champagne_socialist wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 Tannhauser42 wrote:
One of the most brilliant design decisions GW ever made was the Space Marine shoulder pad. Slap a different emblem on that pad, and suddenly it's a visually different model from all the others. What is the equivalent of that for the other armies?

Huh? That's no different to painting any model from any other army differently to set it apart.

no it's not.... the actual model looks different rather than just the paint.

Really? A model with an upside down omega symbol on the shoulder pad looks much the same to me as a model with a skull on the shoulder pad. I would say Tyranids with a different paint scheme can look as much if not more unique than Space Marines with a shoulder pad swap.

Things like Space Wolves look different because they have a lot of other adornments on them... though even they look much the same, a dude in armour who is very protective of his shins and shoulders.

I think it's a stretch to say "the actual model looks different".

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

champagne_socialist wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 Tannhauser42 wrote:
One of the most brilliant design decisions GW ever made was the Space Marine shoulder pad. Slap a different emblem on that pad, and suddenly it's a visually different model from all the others. What is the equivalent of that for the other armies?

Huh? That's no different to painting any model from any other army differently to set it apart.

no it's not.... the actual model looks different rather than just the paint.

Really? A model with an upside down omega symbol on the shoulder pad looks much the same to me as a model with a skull on the shoulder pad. I would say Tyranids with a different paint scheme can look as much if not more unique than Space Marines with a shoulder pad swap.

Things like Space Wolves look different because they have a lot of other adornments on them... though even they look much the same, a dude in armour who is very protective of his shins and shoulders.

I think it's a stretch to say "the actual model looks different".

of course the models look different. Look at space wolves who have models that ride wolves, or blood angels who have models (sangunary guard) who have cool wings on their jump packsor dark angels who have a jetbikeand some cool landspeeders.

also i can personalise my space marines how I want with different shoulder pads representing different codexs, different helmets, different markings on the guns eg space wolves, different markings on the back packs.

The actual models look different.

I think it's reasonable that the Imperium of Man is the core of the Warhammer 40k universe, because we will naturally identify with the "human" characters in the universe moreso than the less humanoid races. Space Marines, as the elite fighting force of the Imperium, naturally get a significant amount of the glory. Their constant inclusion in the starter sets only reinforces that.

champagne_socialist wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

champagne_socialist wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 Tannhauser42 wrote:
One of the most brilliant design decisions GW ever made was the Space Marine shoulder pad. Slap a different emblem on that pad, and suddenly it's a visually different model from all the others. What is the equivalent of that for the other armies?

Huh? That's no different to painting any model from any other army differently to set it apart.

no it's not.... the actual model looks different rather than just the paint.

Really? A model with an upside down omega symbol on the shoulder pad looks much the same to me as a model with a skull on the shoulder pad. I would say Tyranids with a different paint scheme can look as much if not more unique than Space Marines with a shoulder pad swap.

Things like Space Wolves look different because they have a lot of other adornments on them... though even they look much the same, a dude in armour who is very protective of his shins and shoulders.

I think it's a stretch to say "the actual model looks different".

of course the models look different. Look at space wolves who have models that ride wolves, or blood angels who have models (sangunary guard) who have cool wings on their jump packsor dark angels who have a jetbikeand some cool landspeeders.

also i can personalise my space marines how I want with different shoulder pads representing different codexs, different helmets, different markings on the guns eg space wolves, different markings on the back packs.

The actual models look different.

Honestly the models don't look THAT different. BT have a few unique models, DA a few, BA a couple, SW is the closest to being removed enough but then again they are riding fething wolves xD. They aren't all that radiantly different from one another in the end. For the most part, keep in mind that SM are this: Ravenguard, Salamanders, Imperial Fists, Ultramarines, White Scars, BT, BA, DA, SW, etc. For the most part, the marines look the same. A few patches here and there and some minor iconography but everything, in the end is still samey. SW drop pods don't really look much different than Ultramarine drop pods, Salamander land raiders don't look much different than a SW land raider. Yes, they all have their differences and the armies listed above have some extra ways to make themself more personable, but I would never claim they are necessarily the most customizable as much of their variations are the stroke of your paint brush or sticking on some stickers (or cobbling together BT, BA, SM, and etc bits to make something to call your own ). Really though, orks, guardsman, and CSM probably win out on what armies can claim the most diversity.

CSM is SM bits + Chaos bits, tanks can be clean and neat, ramshackled, pirates, renegades, tyrant lords, daemonic entities. The models can look like their armor is from several different marks and they can have claws growing out anywhere. Cultists also are there so every standard guardsman and more can be shoved right on in. Want extra diversity for your CSM army? Grab some Bretonian bits and Warriors of Chaos, you don't even need to look online to add extras.

IG, do I need to explain this one? Want to make an army of mutant beastmen? Go at it. Make a band of pirates? Have fun. A rebelling PDF force, yay! Guardsman are far more diverse in terms of troop choices being capable of drawing from practically any game with human sized models (sense most of them have humans in them ). The tanks offer not as much diversity (arguably SM win out here just because of the capability of adding murals onto vehicles being rather fluffy) but IG have more vehicles and can still make some custom models for it. Maybe you don't want to surf online for them though and want only GW models because you play there, well have no fear! Cultists? Okay guardsman. Slicing tau and making your own Gue'vesa guardsman? Have a blast! Go on over to the fantasy side, grab beastmen, bretonnians, and the Empire models and start building to your dream's content. Heck, make a skaven army and make them an odd mutant race! Oh and ogres can be great options to make your Ogryns look cooler.

Finally you have orks, yes the ork troopers will look much the same, then again Iron Hands and Ravenguard look much the same and it might simply be because SM has 6 different codices or something it probably is , but even then you can kit out some crazy awesome ramshackle guns and ccw as well as armor. The terrain? Oh only Chaos has as many choices.... orks can grab pretty much anything and try to orkify it. And vehicles? Claim all the vehicles ALL THE VEHICLES! So orks have their units, the orks from fantasy, and finally can nab every single vehicle (though probably not fluffy to have a daemon vehicle. CSM yes daemon daemon no) from both 40k and fantasy and make it a chariot pushed by squigs if you so desire!


Anyways, as somebody above mentioned, I think the reason why SM has become so big really is two things. One, what's striking? To many, SM is rather surprising (you wouldn't believe how many people seem to think the Master Chief is an original idea with SPARTANS . Haven't even read Starship Trooper or watched it I suppose) and serves that natural tendency. They are, so to speak, the good guys of 40k. Along with that, they aren't hard to play. Perhaps difficult to master (currently), but they are a relatively forgiving army. Your mistakes aren't really punished as much. Being out of cover, for a beginner, isn't as you are doomed. Your guys have 3+ saves and, whilst not so great when you get more experienced and play more challenging games, will be tanking many shots. They are elite, the few, the proud that fight 1 to 4 in some cases. Not too many models to build, not too many models to paint, not that difficult to paint either. There's very little flesh... simply put, they are easy to paint, easy to build, forgiving, and the "good guys" of the setting whilst also rather elite.

Then there is the other part, they sell well so they get advertise more thus continuing a cycle of them being bigger. They are GW's poster boys and thus always will get preferential treatment. They will have a giant statue of them in the shop, many if not most of the pictures adorning the walls will have a SM of some sort, the books will be loaded with SM, they also get the greatest treatment in terms of codices with the most special rules to really make lists different, as represented by chapter tactics, every starter box has SM, SM have 5 or 6 codices and cover up a large portion of the wall space, they'll hand away free SM models to beginners, and are apparently advertised to beginners to play.

 StarTrotter wrote:

champagne_socialist wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

champagne_socialist wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 Tannhauser42 wrote:
One of the most brilliant design decisions GW ever made was the Space Marine shoulder pad. Slap a different emblem on that pad, and suddenly it's a visually different model from all the others. What is the equivalent of that for the other armies?

Huh? That's no different to painting any model from any other army differently to set it apart.

no it's not.... the actual model looks different rather than just the paint.

Really? A model with an upside down omega symbol on the shoulder pad looks much the same to me as a model with a skull on the shoulder pad. I would say Tyranids with a different paint scheme can look as much if not more unique than Space Marines with a shoulder pad swap.

Things like Space Wolves look different because they have a lot of other adornments on them... though even they look much the same, a dude in armour who is very protective of his shins and shoulders.

I think it's a stretch to say "the actual model looks different".

of course the models look different. Look at space wolves who have models that ride wolves, or blood angels who have models (sangunary guard) who have cool wings on their jump packsor dark angels who have a jetbikeand some cool landspeeders.

also i can personalise my space marines how I want with different shoulder pads representing different codexs, different helmets, different markings on the guns eg space wolves, different markings on the back packs.

The actual models look different.

Honestly the models don't look THAT different. BT have a few unique models, DA a few, BA a couple, SW is the closest to being removed enough but then again they are riding fething wolves xD. They aren't all that radiantly different from one another in the end. For the most part, keep in mind that SM are this: Ravenguard, Salamanders, Imperial Fists, Ultramarines, White Scars, BT, BA, DA, SW, etc. For the most part, the marines look the same. A few patches here and there and some minor iconography but everything, in the end is still samey. SW drop pods don't really look much different than Ultramarine drop pods, Salamander land raiders don't look much different than a SW land raider. Yes, they all have their differences and the armies listed above have some extra ways to make themself more personable, but I would never claim they are necessarily the most customizable as much of their variations are the stroke of your paint brush or sticking on some stickers (or cobbling together BT, BA, SM, and etc bits to make something to call your own ). Really though, orks, guardsman, and CSM probably win out on what armies can claim the most diversity.

CSM is SM bits + Chaos bits, tanks can be clean and neat, ramshackled, pirates, renegades, tyrant lords, daemonic entities. The models can look like their armor is from several different marks and they can have claws growing out anywhere. Cultists also are there so every standard guardsman and more can be shoved right on in. Want extra diversity for your CSM army? Grab some Bretonian bits and Warriors of Chaos, you don't even need to look online to add extras.

IG, do I need to explain this one? Want to make an army of mutant beastmen? Go at it. Make a band of pirates? Have fun. A rebelling PDF force, yay! Guardsman are far more diverse in terms of troop choices being capable of drawing from practically any game with human sized models (sense most of them have humans in them ). The tanks offer not as much diversity (arguably SM win out here just because of the capability of adding murals onto vehicles being rather fluffy) but IG have more vehicles and can still make some custom models for it. Maybe you don't want to surf online for them though and want only GW models because you play there, well have no fear! Cultists? Okay guardsman. Slicing tau and making your own Gue'vesa guardsman? Have a blast! Go on over to the fantasy side, grab beastmen, bretonnians, and the Empire models and start building to your dream's content. Heck, make a skaven army and make them an odd mutant race! Oh and ogres can be great options to make your Ogryns look cooler.

Finally you have orks, yes the ork troopers will look much the same, then again Iron Hands and Ravenguard look much the same and it might simply be because SM has 6 different codices or something it probably is , but even then you can kit out some crazy awesome ramshackle guns and ccw as well as armor. The terrain? Oh only Chaos has as many choices.... orks can grab pretty much anything and try to orkify it. And vehicles? Claim all the vehicles ALL THE VEHICLES! So orks have their units, the orks from fantasy, and finally can nab every single vehicle (though probably not fluffy to have a daemon vehicle. CSM yes daemon daemon no) from both 40k and fantasy and make it a chariot pushed by squigs if you so desire!


Anyways, as somebody above mentioned, I think the reason why SM has become so big really is two things. One, what's striking? To many, SM is rather surprising (you wouldn't believe how many people seem to think the Master Chief is an original idea with SPARTANS . Haven't even read Starship Trooper or watched it I suppose) and serves that natural tendency. They are, so to speak, the good guys of 40k. Along with that, they aren't hard to play. Perhaps difficult to master (currently), but they are a relatively forgiving army. Your mistakes aren't really punished as much. Being out of cover, for a beginner, isn't as you are doomed. Your guys have 3+ saves and, whilst not so great when you get more experienced and play more challenging games, will be tanking many shots. They are elite, the few, the proud that fight 1 to 4 in some cases. Not too many models to build, not too many models to paint, not that difficult to paint either. There's very little flesh... simply put, they are easy to paint, easy to build, forgiving, and the "good guys" of the setting whilst also rather elite.

Then there is the other part, they sell well so they get advertise more thus continuing a cycle of them being bigger. They are GW's poster boys and thus always will get preferential treatment. They will have a giant statue of them in the shop, many if not most of the pictures adorning the walls will have a SM of some sort, the books will be loaded with SM, they also get the greatest treatment in terms of codices with the most special rules to really make lists different, as represented by chapter tactics, every starter box has SM, SM have 5 or 6 codices and cover up a large portion of the wall space, they'll hand away free SM models to beginners, and are apparently advertised to beginners to play.

My old dark angel army all had robes. My new BA army is a sanguinary guard army all with special wings, I have a friend who has a lot of space wolves models riding wolves, I used to collect ravenwing where all the models are on cool bikes led by a jetbike.

The point is that the poster said that the difference in space marines is basically just a different paint job and he is wrong as highlighted by all the different codexes who have models only available for that codex.

Oh I don't disagree that to some extent SM armies can be different. But not really all. Blood Angels - Dark Angels - Imperial Fists - Iron Hands - Raven Guard
Salamanders - Space Wolves - Ultramarines - White Scars

These are the chapters. For the most part though, there isn't much that makes them look different. Salamanders, Ultramarines, White Scars, Raven Guard, Iron Hands, Imperial Fists all look the same, this is a majority of the first founding SM armies. The only successor chapter that truly has a unique model (discounting FW that has all of the HH and the sorts) is the BT. Even then, BA models don't look so dramatically different nor BT. The only ones that diverge to a large degree are SW. Along with that, also this is 6th edition, SM didn't get all of this to begin with. Its been a gradual rise from their old roots. The unique DA planes weren't there just a few years ago and it is a continual attempt to make the marines feel different (whilst throwing renegade marines, traitors, slaves of every dark god, and everything else into one codex with only a small force of cultists to really be the main fighting force of chaos. Then again are we so surprised? SM have about 5-6 books when the vaster IG has one, Eldar which are still probably more numerous than Marines have one (oh and diverse), etc)

Gotta say I'm in the minority being a Marine player in my FLGS. And I dont even play normal marines, I play GK lol. Think there are about 2 regular guys that play loyalist marines. Rest are Tau/Daemons/Necros/Chaos/Orks

To be honest, out of my group of friends only 2 of us own SM. One owns DA but he has long sense stopped playing them in favor of DE and IG. The other is me, owning CSM, SM, SW, BA, and GK. Granted, the 3 latter armies are really just dad enjoying painting models and letting me use them (I still haven't played them), SM being more of a I already have models from the AoBR starter kit and deciding to build a DS army for fun, and CSM which is the only real SM army I have actually played (and is one of the 3 main armies for me) if you count CSM as SM.

Space Marines are definitely the minority around here. Necrons/Tau/Eldar are the most popular.

You're kidding me, right? At my GW the rough percentage of armies i see are 80% Tau and Eldar, 10% SM and the last 10% is taken up by chaos, nids, necrons and orcs.

 Imperator_Class wrote:
You're kidding me, right? At my GW the rough percentage of armies i see are 80% Tau and Eldar, 10% SM and the last 10% is taken up by chaos, nids, necrons and orcs.

I'm fairly certain the only reason I'm seeing any power armor at my LGS is due to the Dark Vengeance set, plus 40k vets trying to return to the game.

 Imperator_Class wrote:
You're kidding me, right? At my GW the rough percentage of armies i see are 80% Tau and Eldar, 10% SM and the last 10% is taken up by chaos, nids, necrons and orcs.

so we should judge all gw sales around the world on your local gw store? perhaps look at the fact SM re their best selling army to see they are the most popular.

champagne_socialist wrote:

 Imperator_Class wrote:
You're kidding me, right? At my GW the rough percentage of armies i see are 80% Tau and Eldar, 10% SM and the last 10% is taken up by chaos, nids, necrons and orcs.

so we should judge all gw sales around the world on your local gw store? perhaps look at the fact SM re their best selling army to see they are the most popular.

Considering you opened the thread with your own anecdotes it's generally a good idea to consider others

Does the statement regarding "Marines are the best sellers" have any recent documentation to confirm that it's still the case?

nobody wrote:

champagne_socialist wrote:

 Imperator_Class wrote:
You're kidding me, right? At my GW the rough percentage of armies i see are 80% Tau and Eldar, 10% SM and the last 10% is taken up by chaos, nids, necrons and orcs.

so we should judge all gw sales around the world on your local gw store? perhaps look at the fact SM re their best selling army to see they are the most popular.

Considering you opened the thread with your own anecdotes it's generally a good idea to consider others

Does the statement regarding "Marines are the best sellers" have any recent documentation to confirm that it's still the case?

obviously they are the best sellers and I challenge you to disprove that statement.....

Space Marines are the entire reason 40k even exists. They are the the flagship army in every GW promotion, and are the main driver of sales in 40k if you've read any financial statements from GW. Its boggling my mind that this even needs to be "proven" at this point in 40k's lifespan.

champagne_socialist wrote:

nobody wrote:

champagne_socialist wrote:

 Imperator_Class wrote:
You're kidding me, right? At my GW the rough percentage of armies i see are 80% Tau and Eldar, 10% SM and the last 10% is taken up by chaos, nids, necrons and orcs.

so we should judge all gw sales around the world on your local gw store? perhaps look at the fact SM re their best selling army to see they are the most popular.

Considering you opened the thread with your own anecdotes it's generally a good idea to consider others

Does the statement regarding "Marines are the best sellers" have any recent documentation to confirm that it's still the case?

obviously they are the best sellers and I challenge you to disprove that statement.....

You: "I am making a statement of fact!"

Me: "Can you prove this statement of fact?"

You: "I cannot provide documentation, so you must prove me wrong!"

Portent on Warseer posted a link to a reddit chat with an ex-GW sales rep (he posted this and this for verification) which included some interesting titbits of information:
It's true that space marines make up roughly 12% of sales, and all of the other races make up roughly 2% each, but that's lumping Ultramarines, Dark Angels, Blood Angels, etc. all in one big bunch.

40k and Fantasy actually split right down the middle in terms of actual sales. Popularity, as you say, may tend towards 40k in your area, but overall, both are really equally popular, according to the actual sales figures.

... according to this, SM are only 12% of the sales volume, compared to 2% each for all other armies, but this does lump all SM variants into one pile (so its vanilla SM, BA, DA, SW, GK, etc.).

This data was posted a year ago.

Original source:
http://www.lounge.belloflostsouls.net/showthread.php?19777-Space-Marines-make-up-12-of-GW-sales-amp-some-other-information

Looks like the post was from almost two years ago actually (the forum post was feb 2012, so I'm guessing the reddit info was from just before it).

Doesn't take into account the new releases since then but still interesting, thank you!

Seems to be fairly even around here. Though most folks have 2 or more armies so I guess that does tend to balance things out a bit

Oh, Christ, it is 2014, isn't it? Damn, I'm getting old.

So, yeah, 2 year old data. Not sure GW is ever public with the sales figures for their products on a per-army basis, though it's noted there that WFB and 40K are equally popular as games (at the time).

In my experience new players often start with some type of SM army, only to move on to a different army later. Their SM army forgotten and collecting dust.
Well over half of the players in my regular gaming group (myself included) have followed this pattern.
We have been gaming together now for almost 16 years and the last time any of us used SM was back in 4th edition.
The best way to increase non-SM armies as I see it, would be for GW to stop alienating veteran players.

nobody wrote:

champagne_socialist wrote:

nobody wrote:

champagne_socialist wrote:

 Imperator_Class wrote:
You're kidding me, right? At my GW the rough percentage of armies i see are 80% Tau and Eldar, 10% SM and the last 10% is taken up by chaos, nids, necrons and orcs.

so we should judge all gw sales around the world on your local gw store? perhaps look at the fact SM re their best selling army to see they are the most popular.

Considering you opened the thread with your own anecdotes it's generally a good idea to consider others

Does the statement regarding "Marines are the best sellers" have any recent documentation to confirm that it's still the case?

obviously they are the best sellers and I challenge you to disprove that statement.....

You: "I am making a statement of fact!"

Me: "Can you prove this statement of fact?"

You: "I cannot provide documentation, so you must prove me wrong!"

I don't need to prove my statements with facts unless you are disagreeing with my statement. If you are disagreeing with my statement that means you think SM are not the best sellers for GW. If you think SM are not the best sellers can you prove that statement that you are making?

champagne_socialist wrote:

nobody wrote:

champagne_socialist wrote:

nobody wrote:

champagne_socialist wrote:

 Imperator_Class wrote:
You're kidding me, right? At my GW the rough percentage of armies i see are 80% Tau and Eldar, 10% SM and the last 10% is taken up by chaos, nids, necrons and orcs.

so we should judge all gw sales around the world on your local gw store? perhaps look at the fact SM re their best selling army to see they are the most popular.

Considering you opened the thread with your own anecdotes it's generally a good idea to consider others

Does the statement regarding "Marines are the best sellers" have any recent documentation to confirm that it's still the case?

obviously they are the best sellers and I challenge you to disprove that statement.....

You: "I am making a statement of fact!"

Me: "Can you prove this statement of fact?"

You: "I cannot provide documentation, so you must prove me wrong!"

I don't need to prove my statements with facts unless you are disagreeing with my statement. If you are disagreeing with my statement that means you think SM are not the best sellers for GW. If you think SM are not the best sellers can you prove that statement that you are making?

You're making the statement. The onus is on you to prove it.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

champagne_socialist wrote:

nobody wrote:

champagne_socialist wrote:

nobody wrote:

champagne_socialist wrote:

 Imperator_Class wrote:
You're kidding me, right? At my GW the rough percentage of armies i see are 80% Tau and Eldar, 10% SM and the last 10% is taken up by chaos, nids, necrons and orcs.

so we should judge all gw sales around the world on your local gw store? perhaps look at the fact SM re their best selling army to see they are the most popular.

Considering you opened the thread with your own anecdotes it's generally a good idea to consider others

Does the statement regarding "Marines are the best sellers" have any recent documentation to confirm that it's still the case?

obviously they are the best sellers and I challenge you to disprove that statement.....

You: "I am making a statement of fact!"

Me: "Can you prove this statement of fact?"

You: "I cannot provide documentation, so you must prove me wrong!"

I don't need to prove my statements with facts unless you are disagreeing with my statement. If you are disagreeing with my statement that means you think SM are not the best sellers for GW. If you think SM are not the best sellers can you prove that statement that you are making?

You're making the statement. The onus is on you to prove it.

Of course but I only need to prove it if you disagree with the statement I made, I don't need to prove a statement that you agree with. Therefore if you disagree that means you are saying SM are not the best sellers and thus you are making a statement of yourself. So why don't you prove the statement you are making which is SM are not the best sellers?

champagne_socialist wrote:

nobody wrote:

champagne_socialist wrote:

nobody wrote:

champagne_socialist wrote:

 Imperator_Class wrote:
You're kidding me, right? At my GW the rough percentage of armies i see are 80% Tau and Eldar, 10% SM and the last 10% is taken up by chaos, nids, necrons and orcs.

so we should judge all gw sales around the world on your local gw store? perhaps look at the fact SM re their best selling army to see they are the most popular.

Considering you opened the thread with your own anecdotes it's generally a good idea to consider others

Does the statement regarding "Marines are the best sellers" have any recent documentation to confirm that it's still the case?

obviously they are the best sellers and I challenge you to disprove that statement.....

You: "I am making a statement of fact!"

Me: "Can you prove this statement of fact?"

You: "I cannot provide documentation, so you must prove me wrong!"

I don't need to prove my statements with facts unless you are disagreeing with my statement. If you are disagreeing with my statement that means you think SM are not the best sellers for GW. If you think SM are not the best sellers can you prove that statement that you are making?

"I don't need to back up my statements, but if you disagree you need to back up yours"

Your statement was that it was obvious, but when I asked for confirmation *I* need proof that your "obvious" statement isn't true?

nobody wrote:

champagne_socialist wrote:

nobody wrote:

champagne_socialist wrote:

nobody wrote:

champagne_socialist wrote:

 Imperator_Class wrote:
You're kidding me, right? At my GW the rough percentage of armies i see are 80% Tau and Eldar, 10% SM and the last 10% is taken up by chaos, nids, necrons and orcs.

so we should judge all gw sales around the world on your local gw store? perhaps look at the fact SM re their best selling army to see they are the most popular.

Considering you opened the thread with your own anecdotes it's generally a good idea to consider others

Does the statement regarding "Marines are the best sellers" have any recent documentation to confirm that it's still the case?

obviously they are the best sellers and I challenge you to disprove that statement.....

You: "I am making a statement of fact!"

Me: "Can you prove this statement of fact?"

You: "I cannot provide documentation, so you must prove me wrong!"

I don't need to prove my statements with facts unless you are disagreeing with my statement. If you are disagreeing with my statement that means you think SM are not the best sellers for GW. If you think SM are not the best sellers can you prove that statement that you are making?

"I don't need to back up my statements, but if you disagree you need to back up yours"

Your statement was that it was obvious, but when I asked for confirmation *I* need proof that your "obvious" statement isn't true?

why do i need to back up a statement you agree with? and if you disagree with the statement that means you are making a statement of your own which is SM are not the best sellers. So why don't you practice what you prech and back up your statement with facts that SM are not the best sellers?

Of course but I only need to prove it if you disagree with the statement I made, I don't need to prove a statement that you agree with. Therefore if you disagree that means you are saying SM are not the best sellers and thus you are making a statement of yourself. So why don't you prove the statement you are making which is SM are not the best sellers?

Fifty people agreeing that the world is flat does not make the world flat. Just because people agree with your statement does not make it true, so, as with Wikipedia, if you are going to claim something, and someone posts "Citation Needed", then you need to cite your sources.

 Psienesis wrote:

Of course but I only need to prove it if you disagree with the statement I made, I don't need to prove a statement that you agree with. Therefore if you disagree that means you are saying SM are not the best sellers and thus you are making a statement of yourself. So why don't you prove the statement you are making which is SM are not the best sellers?

Fifty people agreeing that the world is flat does not make the world flat. Just because people agree with your statement does not make it true, so, as with Wikipedia, if you are going to claim something, and someone posts "Citation Needed", then you need to cite your sources.

Well the person who said the world was flat doesn't need to prove with facts that the world is flat as he already has 50 believers.

Like I said if you agree with me that SM are the top sellers end of story, if you don't agree then prove why they are not.

Convo is getting rather boring now and is just going around in a loop.

How many individual armies of SM are there as a product line?

Let's count the individual product lines: Vanilla, BA, BT (with the Upgrade Pack), Chaos, DA, GK, and SW.

That's 7 armies. If we assume that these armies sell in equal amounts, and we take the previously-posted sales numbers, we learn that each individual army of Space Marines accounts for 1.7% of GW's 40K sales. That puts them below the average of the Xenos races, actually, and only become the majority of sales if you lump all 7 of these armies into 1 category.

This is "creative math" used to prove a point (that SM are the best-selling faction) and provides them an advantage that no other faction in the game has (that is, the ability to build 2000 different armies out of 7 books). However, if we want to compare an individual group, like Vanilla Space Marines, we see that they are (mathematically) on par with the Xenos factions, noted as all being 2% of sales volume, and all sell more or less equally, at the time the data was published.

Now... prove me wrong.

 Psienesis wrote:
How many individual armies of SM are there as a product line?

Let's count the individual product lines: Vanilla, BA, BT (with the Upgrade Pack), Chaos, DA, GK, and SW.

That's 7 armies. If we assume that these armies sell in equal amounts, and we take the previously-posted sales numbers, we learn that each individual army of Space Marines accounts for 1.7% of GW's 40K sales. That puts them below the average of the Xenos races, actually, and only become the majority of sales if you lump all 7 of these armies into 1 category.

This is "creative math" used to prove a point (that SM are the best-selling faction) and provides them an advantage that no other faction in the game has (that is, the ability to build 2000 different armies out of 7 books). However, if we want to compare an individual group, like Vanilla Space Marines, we see that they are (mathematically) on par with the Xenos factions, noted as all being 2% of sales volume, and all sell more or less equally, at the time the data was published.

Now... prove me wrong.

but you just proved me right by highlighting that SPACE MARINES is the best sellng army. Doesn't matter if it is SW or BA or BT they are all SM. Thank you for proving me right

As pointed out in the linked thread,the other factions were 2% each, not total

I think marines are so popular because they look so cool on the boxes. That's pretty much it. They're really forgiving to play too. You can't really mess up too badly. So new guy in the store, "what army should I play?" Space Marines.
Add to that that when you drop a marine army on the field or see pictures of one, etc. it looks unique. Different colors, different badges, etc. Other armies may play different and may allow more or less customization, but when you first start, those color patterns let you make it YOUR army (different in looks to the others of even the same codex). True or not, I feel this is a major first impression on players who haven't learned they can paint IG, Orks, Chaos, etc. different colors too.
I'd like to see this addressed with more factions in other armies. Ork factions, minor craftworlds, IG from different warzones (less olive drab). This doesn't have to be in rules, this can just simply be better packaging and such.

As for the bickering:
If someone asserts a positive ("SM are the best sellers") The burden of proof is on him. That is UNLESS the other person states ("That's not true") THEN the burden of proof is shifted to a negative claim and the burden of proof is on the second person to prove it's not true.
And having 50 believers in anything means nothing as to facts. It's like adding "FACT:" to the start of things.
"FACT: The Police hit their peak in 1981." Despite people believing this and that I said it was a fact, it is indeed false as Every Breath You Take didn't come out until 1983.

demyztikx wrote:


As for the bickering:
If someone asserts a positive ("SM are the best sellers") The burden of proof is on him. That is UNLESS the other person states ("That's not true") THEN the burden of proof is shifted to a negative claim and the burden of proof is on the second person to prove it's not true.
And having 50 believers in anything means nothing as to facts. It's like adding "FACT:" to the start of things.
"FACT: The Police hit their peak in 1981." Despite people believing this and that I said it was a fact, it is indeed false as Every Breath You Take didn't come out until 1983.

The point was why does someone need to prove their case to people who already believe them? If people already believe SM are the best selling army then why do I need to prove to them with facts? They already believe me so I would be wasting my time.

champagne_socialist wrote:

but you just proved me right by highlighting that SPACE MARINES is the best sellng army. Doesn't matter if it is SW or BA or BT they are all SM. Thank you for proving me right

Well, if lump them all in, let's just lump all the Xenos together.

 Blacksails wrote:

champagne_socialist wrote:

but you just proved me right by highlighting that SPACE MARINES is the best sellng army. Doesn't matter if it is SW or BA or BT they are all SM. Thank you for proving me right

Well, if lump them all in, let's just lump all the Xenos together.

Do what you want.

My point was that SM as a whole are the overwhelming popular choice for players. You proved that fact correct. End of debate

champagne_socialist wrote:

 Psienesis wrote:
How many individual armies of SM are there as a product line?

Let's count the individual product lines: Vanilla, BA, BT (with the Upgrade Pack), Chaos, DA, GK, and SW.

That's 7 armies. If we assume that these armies sell in equal amounts, and we take the previously-posted sales numbers, we learn that each individual army of Space Marines accounts for 1.7% of GW's 40K sales. That puts them below the average of the Xenos races, actually, and only become the majority of sales if you lump all 7 of these armies into 1 category.

This is "creative math" used to prove a point (that SM are the best-selling faction) and provides them an advantage that no other faction in the game has (that is, the ability to build 2000 different armies out of 7 books). However, if we want to compare an individual group, like Vanilla Space Marines, we see that they are (mathematically) on par with the Xenos factions, noted as all being 2% of sales volume, and all sell more or less equally, at the time the data was published.

Now... prove me wrong.

but you just proved me right by highlighting that SPACE MARINES is the best sellng army. Doesn't matter if it is SW or BA or BT they are all SM. Thank you for proving me right

No, what I did was illustrate the fact that there are 3 kinds of lies in the world: Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics.

Statistically speaking, the SM are the top-selling army.

But... that is with them all together, they have 12% of sales.

Then we compare them to "All Armies that are not SM", then they are the lesser faction (assuming 2% each, we have AS, IG, Tau, Eldar, Dark Eldar, Daemon, Necron, Tyranid, Ork) totalling the Non-SM Army sales of 18%.

champagne_socialist wrote:

 Blacksails wrote:

champagne_socialist wrote:

but you just proved me right by highlighting that SPACE MARINES is the best sellng army. Doesn't matter if it is SW or BA or BT they are all SM. Thank you for proving me right

Well, if lump them all in, let's just lump all the Xenos together.

Do what you want.

My point was that SM as a whole are the overwhelming popular choice for players. You proved that fact correct. End of debate

Well if we're lumping, then he didnt prove it as you need to compare total marines to total xenos.

Thats not how debates work. And the guy above me with the numbers proves counter to your point

Yeah, but he said 'End of debate', so he had us there.

I mean, he must be right if he claims to be right.

 WrentheFaceless wrote:

champagne_socialist wrote:

 Blacksails wrote:

champagne_socialist wrote:

but you just proved me right by highlighting that SPACE MARINES is the best sellng army. Doesn't matter if it is SW or BA or BT they are all SM. Thank you for proving me right

Well, if lump them all in, let's just lump all the Xenos together.

Do what you want.

My point was that SM as a whole are the overwhelming popular choice for players. You proved that fact correct. End of debate

Well if we're lumping, then he didnt prove it as you need to compare total marines to total xenos.

Thats not how debates work. Nor have there actually been any numbers posted other than "a couple guys said"

No we don't......


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Blacksails wrote:
Yeah, but he said 'End of debate', so he had us there.

I mean, he must be right if he claims to be right.

Read the first comment in the thread where I say SM as a whole then read the post where the poster proved me correct by highlighting SM as a whole are the most popular end of debate I was proved right.

Nice try tho

champagne_socialist wrote:

 WrentheFaceless wrote:

champagne_socialist wrote:

 Blacksails wrote:

champagne_socialist wrote:

but you just proved me right by highlighting that SPACE MARINES is the best sellng army. Doesn't matter if it is SW or BA or BT they are all SM. Thank you for proving me right

Well, if lump them all in, let's just lump all the Xenos together.

Do what you want.

My point was that SM as a whole are the overwhelming popular choice for players. You proved that fact correct. End of debate

Well if we're lumping, then he didnt prove it as you need to compare total marines to total xenos.

Thats not how debates work. Nor have there actually been any numbers posted other than "a couple guys said"

No we don't......

Oh well if we're just going to be dishonest and compare total of all marine variant sales to individual Xenos then orcs/tyranids sell more cause their model count is higher and fluff says so.

champagne_socialist wrote:

Read the first comment in the thread where I say SM as a whole then read the post where the poster proved me correct by highlighting SM as a whole are the most popular end of debate I was proved right.

Nice try tho

12% is greater than 18%?

 Psienesis wrote:

champagne_socialist wrote:

 Psienesis wrote:
How many individual armies of SM are there as a product line?

Let's count the individual product lines: Vanilla, BA, BT (with the Upgrade Pack), Chaos, DA, GK, and SW.

That's 7 armies. If we assume that these armies sell in equal amounts, and we take the previously-posted sales numbers, we learn that each individual army of Space Marines accounts for 1.7% of GW's 40K sales. That puts them below the average of the Xenos races, actually, and only become the majority of sales if you lump all 7 of these armies into 1 category.

This is "creative math" used to prove a point (that SM are the best-selling faction) and provides them an advantage that no other faction in the game has (that is, the ability to build 2000 different armies out of 7 books). However, if we want to compare an individual group, like Vanilla Space Marines, we see that they are (mathematically) on par with the Xenos factions, noted as all being 2% of sales volume, and all sell more or less equally, at the time the data was published.

Now... prove me wrong.

but you just proved me right by highlighting that SPACE MARINES is the best sellng army. Doesn't matter if it is SW or BA or BT they are all SM. Thank you for proving me right

No, what I did was illustrate the fact that there are 3 kinds of lies in the world: Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics.

Statistically speaking, the SM are the top-selling army.

But... that is with them all together, they have 12% of sales.

Then we compare them to "All Armies that are not SM", then they are the lesser faction (assuming 2% each, we have AS, IG, Tau, Eldar, Dark Eldar, Daemon, Necron, Tyranid, Ork) totalling the Non-SM Army sales of 18%.

Yes with them all together which was my point, my point was not BA are the most popular army or BT or DA etc it was SM. Now you proved me correct by saying all SM are the most popular so there is no more need to debate.

champagne_socialist wrote:

 Psienesis wrote:

champagne_socialist wrote:

 Psienesis wrote:
How many individual armies of SM are there as a product line?

Let's count the individual product lines: Vanilla, BA, BT (with the Upgrade Pack), Chaos, DA, GK, and SW.

That's 7 armies. If we assume that these armies sell in equal amounts, and we take the previously-posted sales numbers, we learn that each individual army of Space Marines accounts for 1.7% of GW's 40K sales. That puts them below the average of the Xenos races, actually, and only become the majority of sales if you lump all 7 of these armies into 1 category.

This is "creative math" used to prove a point (that SM are the best-selling faction) and provides them an advantage that no other faction in the game has (that is, the ability to build 2000 different armies out of 7 books). However, if we want to compare an individual group, like Vanilla Space Marines, we see that they are (mathematically) on par with the Xenos factions, noted as all being 2% of sales volume, and all sell more or less equally, at the time the data was published.

Now... prove me wrong.

but you just proved me right by highlighting that SPACE MARINES is the best sellng army. Doesn't matter if it is SW or BA or BT they are all SM. Thank you for proving me right

No, what I did was illustrate the fact that there are 3 kinds of lies in the world: Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics.

Statistically speaking, the SM are the top-selling army.

But... that is with them all together, they have 12% of sales.

Then we compare them to "All Armies that are not SM", then they are the lesser faction (assuming 2% each, we have AS, IG, Tau, Eldar, Dark Eldar, Daemon, Necron, Tyranid, Ork) totalling the Non-SM Army sales of 18%.

Yes with them all together which was my point, my point was not BA are the most popular army or BT or DA etc it was SM. Now you proved me correct by saying all SM are the most popular so there is no more need to debate.

Are you deliberately ignoring the 18% non-SM being greater than the 12% SM?

 WrentheFaceless wrote:

champagne_socialist wrote:

 WrentheFaceless wrote:

champagne_socialist wrote:

 Blacksails wrote:

champagne_socialist wrote:

but you just proved me right by highlighting that SPACE MARINES is the best sellng army. Doesn't matter if it is SW or BA or BT they are all SM. Thank you for proving me right

Well, if lump them all in, let's just lump all the Xenos together.

Do what you want.

My point was that SM as a whole are the overwhelming popular choice for players. You proved that fact correct. End of debate

Well if we're lumping, then he didnt prove it as you need to compare total marines to total xenos.

Thats not how debates work. Nor have there actually been any numbers posted other than "a couple guys said"

No we don't......

Oh well if we're just going to be dishonest and compare total of all marine variant sales to individual Xenos then orcs/tyranids sell more cause their model count is higher and fluff says so.

champagne_socialist wrote:

Read the first comment in the thread where I say SM as a whole then read the post where the poster proved me correct by highlighting SM as a whole are the most popular end of debate I was proved right.

Nice try tho

12% is greater than 18%?

your argument is falling apart by the second. But keep trying though.

Keep in mind those numbers are almost 2 years old, and were off the cuff by a former employee. He also doesn't clarify what he means by Marine books, since there are some armies that could get rolled in there (like Grey Knights)

Since then, the following books came out:
CSM & Black Legion
Eldar & Iyanden
Tau Empire & Farsight Enclaves
Dark Angels
Space Marines

Of these, two were probably the most popular xenos books, and both got incredible power upgrades.

Meanwhile the SM codex was a minor bump in power (which left them as still mediocre), had another codex rolled into it, and both the DA and CSM codices are considered two of the weakest books in 6th.

This is why I'm honestly curious if the statement "Marines sell more than other armies" was still actually true.

nobody wrote:
Keep in mind those numbers are almost 2 years old, and were off the cuff by a former employee. He also doesn't clarify what he means by Marine books, since there are some armies that could get rolled in there (like Grey Knights)

Since then, the following books came out:
CSM & Black Legion
Eldar & Iyanden
Tau Empire & Farsight Enclaves
Dark Angels
Space Marines

Of these, two were probably the most popular xenos books, and both got incredible power upgrades.

Meanwhile the SM codex was a minor bump in power (which left them as still mediocre), had another codex rolled into it, and both the DA and CSM codices are considered two of the weakest books in 6th.

This is why I'm honestly curious if the statement "Marines sell more than other armies" was still actually true.

Just look at the range of SM products available and the fact that most GW stores only stock limited models of each army but always seem to have their focus on SM. They only stock what they can sell.

That's anecdotal, and has no evidence to support it.

 Psienesis wrote:
That's anecdotal, and has no evidence to support it.

Well the only evidence we have supports my view that SM are the most popular and moose sellable army.

Only if you choose to crunch the numbers that way. I already demonstrated how I can make that statement false, using the exact same numbers, just crunched in a slightly different way.

Again, lies, damn lies, and statistics.

On one side, we have All Armies That Are Space Marines (AATASM). They are 12% of total sales.

To keep this competition fair, we compare them to All Armies That Are Not Space Marines (AATANSM). They're 18% of total sales.

Therefore, SM are not the best-selling army.

***

To actually find a fair comparison of numbers, we would not only need current sales data from GW (which we aren't going to get), we are going to need that broken down by army-type (which they don't provide), and we would then need to fairly compare each product line as separate entities, not permit one side to be comprised of 7 different product lines and then compare that to the remaining individual product lines. That is just bad science, really.

I know it's a commonly-repeated thing in the fandom... and for all I know, it might be true... but we don't have any good evidence outside the anecdotal (or that which is shoehorned in to providing the evidence to support the claim, which can as easily be shoehorned to not support it) to prove it.

 Psienesis wrote:
Only if you choose to crunch the numbers that way. I already demonstrated how I can make that statement false, using the exact same numbers, just crunched in a slightly different way.

Again, lies, damn lies, and statistics.

On one side, we have All Armies That Are Space Marines (AATASM). They are 12% of total sales.

To keep this competition fair, we compare them to All Armies That Are Not Space Marines (AATANSM). They're 18% of total sales.

Therefore, SM are not the best-selling army.

***

To actually find a fair comparison of numbers, we would not only need current sales data from GW (which we aren't going to get), we are going to need that broken down by army-type (which they don't provide), and we would then need to fairly compare each product line as separate entities, not permit one side to be comprised of 7 different product lines and then compare that to the remaining individual product lines. That is just bad science, really.

I know it's a commonly-repeated thing in the fandom... and for all I know, it might be true... but we don't have any good evidence outside the anecdotal (or that which is shoehorned in to providing the evidence to support the claim, which can as easily be shoehorned to not support it) to prove it.

No the numbers speak for themselves and that is SM are the most popular. SM on their own nearly outsell all the other armies combined. SM are the most popular. The debate is over the facts speak for themselves. I don't want to spend my whole friday debating with you on this topic so I will just copy and paste the following from now on

SM outsell all other armies by 6-1. SM nearly outsell all other armies when they are combined.

champagne_socialist wrote:

 Psienesis wrote:
Only if you choose to crunch the numbers that way. I already demonstrated how I can make that statement false, using the exact same numbers, just crunched in a slightly different way.

Again, lies, damn lies, and statistics.

On one side, we have All Armies That Are Space Marines (AATASM). They are 12% of total sales.

To keep this competition fair, we compare them to All Armies That Are Not Space Marines (AATANSM). They're 18% of total sales.

Therefore, SM are not the best-selling army.

***

To actually find a fair comparison of numbers, we would not only need current sales data from GW (which we aren't going to get), we are going to need that broken down by army-type (which they don't provide), and we would then need to fairly compare each product line as separate entities, not permit one side to be comprised of 7 different product lines and then compare that to the remaining individual product lines. That is just bad science, really.

I know it's a commonly-repeated thing in the fandom... and for all I know, it might be true... but we don't have any good evidence outside the anecdotal (or that which is shoehorned in to providing the evidence to support the claim, which can as easily be shoehorned to not support it) to prove it.

No the numbers speak for themselves and that is SM are the most popular. SM on their own nearly outsell all the other armies combined. SM are the most popular. The debate is over the facts speak for themselves. I don't want to spend my whole friday debating with you on this topic so I will just copy and paste the following from now on

SM outsell all other armies by 6-1. SM nearly outsell all other armies when they are combined.

Can you read what you're writing? "I won't prove myself right, so I'm just going to spam this over and over."

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

champagne_socialist wrote:

 Psienesis wrote:
Only if you choose to crunch the numbers that way. I already demonstrated how I can make that statement false, using the exact same numbers, just crunched in a slightly different way.

Again, lies, damn lies, and statistics.

On one side, we have All Armies That Are Space Marines (AATASM). They are 12% of total sales.

To keep this competition fair, we compare them to All Armies That Are Not Space Marines (AATANSM). They're 18% of total sales.

Therefore, SM are not the best-selling army.

***

To actually find a fair comparison of numbers, we would not only need current sales data from GW (which we aren't going to get), we are going to need that broken down by army-type (which they don't provide), and we would then need to fairly compare each product line as separate entities, not permit one side to be comprised of 7 different product lines and then compare that to the remaining individual product lines. That is just bad science, really.

I know it's a commonly-repeated thing in the fandom... and for all I know, it might be true... but we don't have any good evidence outside the anecdotal (or that which is shoehorned in to providing the evidence to support the claim, which can as easily be shoehorned to not support it) to prove it.

No the numbers speak for themselves and that is SM are the most popular. SM on their own nearly outsell all the other armies combined. SM are the most popular. The debate is over the facts speak for themselves. I don't want to spend my whole friday debating with you on this topic so I will just copy and paste the following from now on

SM outsell all other armies by 6-1. SM nearly outsell all other armies when they are combined.

Can you read what you're writing? "I won't prove myself right, so I'm just going to spam this over and over."

SM outsell all other armies by 6-1 as proven by the lnk earlier in the thread. I have proven myself right

champagne_socialist wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

champagne_socialist wrote:

 Psienesis wrote:
Only if you choose to crunch the numbers that way. I already demonstrated how I can make that statement false, using the exact same numbers, just crunched in a slightly different way.

Again, lies, damn lies, and statistics.

On one side, we have All Armies That Are Space Marines (AATASM). They are 12% of total sales.

To keep this competition fair, we compare them to All Armies That Are Not Space Marines (AATANSM). They're 18% of total sales.

Therefore, SM are not the best-selling army.

***

To actually find a fair comparison of numbers, we would not only need current sales data from GW (which we aren't going to get), we are going to need that broken down by army-type (which they don't provide), and we would then need to fairly compare each product line as separate entities, not permit one side to be comprised of 7 different product lines and then compare that to the remaining individual product lines. That is just bad science, really.

I know it's a commonly-repeated thing in the fandom... and for all I know, it might be true... but we don't have any good evidence outside the anecdotal (or that which is shoehorned in to providing the evidence to support the claim, which can as easily be shoehorned to not support it) to prove it.

No the numbers speak for themselves and that is SM are the most popular. SM on their own nearly outsell all the other armies combined. SM are the most popular. The debate is over the facts speak for themselves. I don't want to spend my whole friday debating with you on this topic so I will just copy and paste the following from now on

SM outsell all other armies by 6-1. SM nearly outsell all other armies when they are combined.

Can you read what you're writing? "I won't prove myself right, so I'm just going to spam this over and over."

SM outsell all other armies by 6-1 as proven by the lnk earlier in the thread. I have proven myself right

You keep repeating that if that's what you want to believe. It's pretty obvious that we can't explain to you why you're wrong.

The ol 'If I repeat it enough times it must be true"

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

champagne_socialist wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

champagne_socialist wrote:

 Psienesis wrote:
Only if you choose to crunch the numbers that way. I already demonstrated how I can make that statement false, using the exact same numbers, just crunched in a slightly different way.

Again, lies, damn lies, and statistics.

On one side, we have All Armies That Are Space Marines (AATASM). They are 12% of total sales.

To keep this competition fair, we compare them to All Armies That Are Not Space Marines (AATANSM). They're 18% of total sales.

Therefore, SM are not the best-selling army.

***

To actually find a fair comparison of numbers, we would not only need current sales data from GW (which we aren't going to get), we are going to need that broken down by army-type (which they don't provide), and we would then need to fairly compare each product line as separate entities, not permit one side to be comprised of 7 different product lines and then compare that to the remaining individual product lines. That is just bad science, really.

I know it's a commonly-repeated thing in the fandom... and for all I know, it might be true... but we don't have any good evidence outside the anecdotal (or that which is shoehorned in to providing the evidence to support the claim, which can as easily be shoehorned to not support it) to prove it.

No the numbers speak for themselves and that is SM are the most popular. SM on their own nearly outsell all the other armies combined. SM are the most popular. The debate is over the facts speak for themselves. I don't want to spend my whole friday debating with you on this topic so I will just copy and paste the following from now on

SM outsell all other armies by 6-1. SM nearly outsell all other armies when they are combined.

Can you read what you're writing? "I won't prove myself right, so I'm just going to spam this over and over."

SM outsell all other armies by 6-1 as proven by the lnk earlier in the thread. I have proven myself right

You keep repeating that if that's what you want to believe. It's pretty obvious that we can't explain to you why you're wrong.

i am not wrong, I am quoting an external source whioch said that

SM outsell all other armies by 6-1

Can we close this circle jerk already? Three pages of two people arguing over something neither of whom can actually prove with any certainly ...

I haven't seen someone argue so poorly in the longest time.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:
I haven't seen someone argue so poorly in the longest time.

you should probably get out more then

This whole roundabout with double standards and fingers in ears going "lalalala I can't hear you I'm right you're wrong lalalalala!" Is hurting my head. This is a poor response and horrid arguing coming out of champagne_socialist. You're probably going to give me the same copy/paste waste of time, but the fact of the matter is is that you've decided it's alright to snowball multiple factions together under one heading (SM) and left the rest seperate (anything but SM). It really isn't a fair or accurate way of comparing them. If you don't wish to spend your friday arguing here, have an open mind and try to see things in another light. This childish stubbornness will go nowhere. Personally, I don't really care if SM (clustered togetheror not) are the best sellers, this logical fallacy is just bewildering.

I disagree with the sentiment that CSM fall into the category of the SM armies. There are so many differences between the two. Especially the way people view the CSM codex at the moment as being a waste of time.
Unless you collect a Black Legion army with no Princes, Spawns, cultists then I agree to some extent, then they are just SM's with spikey bitz on.

Increase the power level of marines and increase the point cost. Marine players will be happy they get movie marines but the fact they only get to put 20 models on the board makes other armies seem more varied and attractive to most people

Hey I like marines (I play CSM as one of my three mains and am building a SM army) and honestly movie marines would make me quit my army xD)

Entrenched mentalities are dangerous things.

Anyway:

I think they need to increase the number of space marines players. Even if you count all the loyalists together around my area, they are still outnumbered by Xenos armies. I know 6 people who play Tau, 3 who play Eldar, 2 who play Chaos Daemons, 4 with Chaos Space marines, 2 with Necron, 3 with Nids. I know maybe like 9 people who have space marine armies and only TWO of them play Codex Astartes marines. Everyone else is a divergent chapter.

Tau are incredibly popular in our area. We have a lot of anime lovers in our playing circle, and they all seemed to gravitate toward Tau or Nids. It's pretty frustrating to battle a riptide or two without fail week and and week out.

Thanks for specifying them as 'Loyalist Marines' SRSFACE, a whole lot different than traitors.

I may just be slightly peeved as I just changed from BA to a mono Nurgle CSM list.

On a side note you mention two riptides, the last (I mean last :( ) White Dwarf features 3 riptides in its batrep. Sure it was a no troops game, but I doubt it would have been a draw without some interference...

 phayze wrote:
Thanks for specifying them as 'Loyalist Marines' SRSFACE, a whole lot different than traitors.

I may just be slightly peeved as I just changed from BA to a mono Nurgle CSM list.

On a side note you mention two riptides, the last (I mean last :( ) White Dwarf features 3 riptides in its batrep. Sure it was a no troops game, but I doubt it would have been a draw without some interference...

It was rigged, and it was rather blatantly obvious.

BladeSwinga wrote:
This whole roundabout with double standards and fingers in ears going "lalalala I can't hear you I'm right you're wrong lalalalala!" Is hurting my head. This is a poor response and horrid arguing coming out of champagne_socialist. You're probably going to give me the same copy/paste waste of time, but the fact of the matter is is that you've decided it's alright to snowball multiple factions together under one heading (SM) and left the rest seperate (anything but SM). It really isn't a fair or accurate way of comparing them. If you don't wish to spend your friday arguing here, have an open mind and try to see things in another light. This childish stubbornness will go nowhere. Personally, I don't really care if SM (clustered togetheror not) are the best sellers, this logical fallacy is just bewildering.

you keep saying I am wrong when the stats say I am right. The external source posted in this thred showed SM out sell every other army by 6 to 1.

champagne_socialist wrote:

BladeSwinga wrote:
This whole roundabout with double standards and fingers in ears going "lalalala I can't hear you I'm right you're wrong lalalalala!" Is hurting my head. This is a poor response and horrid arguing coming out of champagne_socialist. You're probably going to give me the same copy/paste waste of time, but the fact of the matter is is that you've decided it's alright to snowball multiple factions together under one heading (SM) and left the rest seperate (anything but SM). It really isn't a fair or accurate way of comparing them. If you don't wish to spend your friday arguing here, have an open mind and try to see things in another light. This childish stubbornness will go nowhere. Personally, I don't really care if SM (clustered togetheror not) are the best sellers, this logical fallacy is just bewildering.

you keep saying I am wrong when the stats say I am right. The external source posted in this thred showed SM out sell every other army by 6 to 1.

We are saying you're interpreting the numbers wrong. However, seeing as this will go nowhere, I wash my hands of this.

BladeSwinga wrote:

champagne_socialist wrote:

BladeSwinga wrote:
This whole roundabout with double standards and fingers in ears going "lalalala I can't hear you I'm right you're wrong lalalalala!" Is hurting my head. This is a poor response and horrid arguing coming out of champagne_socialist. You're probably going to give me the same copy/paste waste of time, but the fact of the matter is is that you've decided it's alright to snowball multiple factions together under one heading (SM) and left the rest seperate (anything but SM). It really isn't a fair or accurate way of comparing them. If you don't wish to spend your friday arguing here, have an open mind and try to see things in another light. This childish stubbornness will go nowhere. Personally, I don't really care if SM (clustered togetheror not) are the best sellers, this logical fallacy is just bewildering.

you keep saying I am wrong when the stats say I am right. The external source posted in this thred showed SM out sell every other army by 6 to 1.

We are saying you're interpreting the numbers wrong. However, seeing as this will go nowhere, I wash my hands of this.

im not interpreting anything wrong.

 SRSFACE wrote:
Entrenched mentalities are dangerous things.

Anyway:

I think they need to increase the number of space marines players. Even if you count all the loyalists together around my area, they are still outnumbered by Xenos armies. I know 6 people who play Tau, 3 who play Eldar, 2 who play Chaos Daemons, 4 with Chaos Space marines, 2 with Necron, 3 with Nids. I know maybe like 9 people who have space marine armies and only TWO of them play Codex Astartes marines. Everyone else is a divergent chapter.

Tau are incredibly popular in our area. We have a lot of anime lovers in our playing circle, and they all seemed to gravitate toward Tau or Nids. It's pretty frustrating to battle a riptide or two without fail week and and week out.

That's a pretty good spread of players for armies. I would have to ask though if more people moved to xeno armies recently, like when 6th dropped or the new xenos codex were coming out, or if they had always been playing their xeno armies.

A more diverse change is something I certainly wouldn't want to mess with, as I still remember a few years ago when people would come onto the forums and complain about all the space marine armies being the only things played at their clubs with the Imperium sponsoring some big intergalactic paint ball games for the different chapters.

 phayze wrote:
I disagree with the sentiment that CSM fall into the category of the SM armies.

It'[s in the goddamned name.

They are Chaos Space Marines. Sure they're more whiny and less interesting than regular Space Marines, but they're still Space Marines in name, in lore, and in gameplay.

Be glad there even is any variety. The game began as almost 100% marines in RT and FW went the same way with HH and is making tons of revenue.

At this point, asking GW to take financial risks and marginalizing their one big seller because of some sense of entitlement is foolish. It's like WHFB or LotR players wanting GW to cancel 40K.

Marines are already some of the most disadvantaged factions on the tabletop. There's not much more to be done to boost xenos popularity besides the current Tau and Eldar buffs and bandwagoning we've been seeing.

 Melissia wrote:

 phayze wrote:
I disagree with the sentiment that CSM fall into the category of the SM armies.

It'[s in the goddamned name.

They are Chaos Space Marines. Sure they're more whiny and less interesting than regular Space Marines, but they're still Space Marines in name, in lore, and in gameplay.

Whiny...?

And your post isn't, somehow? (And every other one you have made on the subject to boot)

(btw ur just mad cuz we R betar so mad lal)

 Tyberos the Red Wake wrote:
Be glad there even is any variety. The game began as almost 100% marines in RT and FW went the same way with HH and is making tons of revenue.

At this point, asking GW to take financial risks and marginalizing their one big seller because of some sense of entitlement is foolish. It's like WHFB or LotR players wanting GW to cancel 40K.

Marines are already some of the most disadvantaged factions on the tabletop. There's not much more to be done to boost xenos popularity besides the current Tau and Eldar buffs and bandwagoning we've been seeing.

I think Orks could have been marketed a lot better. We have ha 3 LOTR films and 2 Hobbit films where Orks are a major race in the film, why not capitalise on that exposure and use it to make Orks more popular in 40k?

champagne_socialist wrote:

 Tyberos the Red Wake wrote:
Be glad there even is any variety. The game began as almost 100% marines in RT and FW went the same way with HH and is making tons of revenue.

At this point, asking GW to take financial risks and marginalizing their one big seller because of some sense of entitlement is foolish. It's like WHFB or LotR players wanting GW to cancel 40K.

Marines are already some of the most disadvantaged factions on the tabletop. There's not much more to be done to boost xenos popularity besides the current Tau and Eldar buffs and bandwagoning we've been seeing.

I think Orks could have been marketed a lot better. We have ha 3 LOTR films and 2 Hobbit films where Orks are a major race in the film, why not capitalise on that exposure and use it to make Orks more popular in 40k?

Orks are not everyones cup of tea.
Knights ( in space ) seem easier to sell than orks ( in space ).

But more Ork players would be a good thing. They tend to be not so as other xeno-players.

 BrotherHaraldus wrote:

 Melissia wrote:

 phayze wrote:
I disagree with the sentiment that CSM fall into the category of the SM armies.

It'[s in the goddamned name.

They are Chaos Space Marines. Sure they're more whiny and less interesting than regular Space Marines, but they're still Space Marines in name, in lore, and in gameplay.

Whiny...?

And your post isn't, somehow?

On the contrary. This post is quite matter of fact.

Can you deny that Chaos Space Marines have the phrase Space Marines in their name?

I submit that, assuming literacy on your part, you cannot.

Your desperate desire to claim that you're not playing Space Marines does amuse me, however.

 Melissia wrote:

 BrotherHaraldus wrote:

 Melissia wrote:

 phayze wrote:
I disagree with the sentiment that CSM fall into the category of the SM armies.

It'[s in the goddamned name.

They are Chaos Space Marines. Sure they're more whiny and less interesting than regular Space Marines, but they're still Space Marines in name, in lore, and in gameplay.

Whiny...?

And your post isn't, somehow?

On the contrary. This post is quite matter of fact.

Can you deny that Chaos Space Marines have the phrase Space Marines in their name?

I submit that, assuming literacy on your part, you cannot.

Your desperate desire to claim that you're not Space Marines does amuse me, however.

Re-read my post.

I was not talking about that at all. You are adressing the wrong side of the whole thing. Ofc CSM are a type of (Not to mention a cooler version of) SM. But funny that you immediately jump to accusing me of 'desperate desires'. Assuming that others are like yourself, eh?

Myes, more like the hypocrisy of you whining on CSM for supposedly being whiny.

But you know what? I really CBA to go through the whole process again. So I'll just leave this here, @ your common proclamations of CSM's supposed 'inferiority'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygr5AHufBN4

Neeeext

Honestly I wish CSM would become Warriors of Chaos (xD) or CSM and add on Lost and the Damned (although logically I know they shouldn't because they still haven't updated orks and SoB are still really deserving of a full return).

I get it, GW loves their SM but I never quite got why they didn't really just tossed out the majority of chaos forces (then again I like to imagine mutants, beast men, traitor guardsman, and Hardy unorganized mobs with individuals sacrificing them self to bring forth great daemons to the battlefield). I mean, there are cultists and it doesn't really make sense why they have a WS and BS of 2 but a single unit does not represent the main fighting force of chaos (and IG are AoC and Desperate allies with CSM and CD respectively)

Orks definitely need more spotlight. It feels like whenever they are being featured in the fluff they aren't given the due amount of respect that races like Necrons or Tyranids get.

They should make BL novels with Ork protagonists.

 Tyberos the Red Wake wrote:
They should make BL novels with Ork protagonists.

Depending on how that was written, it could be very hard to read...

But, their antics would certainly leave an impression, if not their brutal way of waging war.

They have a WS and BS of 3 actually.

I think Legions of Chaos would be a more fitting name. Even more so if they consolidated the Daemons and CSM books into a glorious tome.
But GW won't do that, having to buy an extra codex so you can include Daemons or CSM in your force is just another cash cow for them.

To help new people get into the game and increase the chance of a new player sticking to the game they need to release starter boxes for every faction. A set with 2 troop units, an HQ, and a codex + brb combined with only the crunch and an introduction / summary of the faction. One major problem with GWs business model is that forces space marines down your throat when a lot of people find space marines to be uninteresting. The DV box is an incredibly poor set to attract new players because you have 2 armies who's iconic guys are super human in power armor or super human in power armor with spikey bitz.

Another good way to build the franchise is to allow more games like space marine and dawn of war (except no more ultrasmurfs or bloody magpies please). Computer gamers are a great pool of potential new blood expecially the growing amount of gamers who are getting older and may start to outgrow faster paced games.

Well, the best way to get people to play non-SM armies is a two-fold process.

One, the easiest, is to advertise non-SM armies in all the ways that they can.

Two, the super-fething-hard way, the so-hard-it-is-never-ever-going-to-happen is to balance the many Codices internally and externally so that the gap between the weakest army in the game and the strongest army in the game can be reasonably overcome by a reasonably competent player.

This, of course, is never going to happen.

 Psienesis wrote:
Well, the best way to get people to play non-SM armies is a two-fold process.

One, the easiest, is to advertise non-SM armies in all the ways that they can.

Two, the super-fething-hard way, the so-hard-it-is-never-ever-going-to-happen is to balance the many Codices internally and externally so that the gap between the weakest army in the game and the strongest army in the game can be reasonably overcome by a reasonably competent player.

This, of course, is never going to happen.

But...

Xeno armies are the top dogs, with armies like DA, BA and non-drakespam CSM being very close to bottom.

Are you suggesting that buffing SM would reduce their popularity?

No, I'm simply pointing out that the cyclical nature of who and what is the top-army drives sales of books and figures. It is only currently that SM are not a top-tier army, this has not always been the case.

If SM were the top-dog army from RT to 6th ed, those who play SM would only ever need to buy, basically, 1 army and the latest version of maybe 2 books.

Those people who want to win at everything the first time forever will only need to invest a relatively small amount of money into the game.

However, if the army in the top slot changes every edition (or more frequently as more books are released), then those who want to win at everything the first time forever will have to go out and buy new models, books, and figures every few years (or even every few months).

If armies were externally and internally balanced, than really the only choice an army is is an aesthetic one. If you prefer your Marines with or without spikes, or with or without boobs, or with or without pointy ears or big eyes and small mouths, or green skinned with tusks would be the main choice in choosing which army to field.

This, of course, is not something GW is ever going to do. There is much coin to be made in driving those who must win at everything the first time forever to buy new toys every month/year/whatever.

I think besides rules a lot of people like to play spacemarines because they can relate to them. Who wouldn't want to be a badass 10 ft guy? Want wings? Play BA. Like werewolves, metal arms or just about anything else? They have that too. Space marines just capture people's dreams, in the same way nids capture myn. I dream of eating cake Nom Nom Nom