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I've been wondering about this for a while now. Is Warhammer Fantasy generally disliked in the US or are the players just disinterested in joining internet communities to talk about their favorite game? Dakka FB side gets one new post per week and I haven't found any other forums where Americans regularly post. The English Warhammer Forum has a few people from all over posting, but I know for a fact that countries like France, Germany, Denmark, Finland, Italy, Poland etc. have large communities and message boards in their own languages. I would only assume that the Americans would have atleast a couple forums of their own too, but like I said I have failed to find any in addition to Dakka, and FB isn't discussed here.

It's a little strange because a lot of the posters here have tried to convince me that the US has more gamers than Europe does, despite EU having a 60% larger population.

I think it just lacks a critical mass on this board. If we had more posters, we'd have more back and forth and thus more reasons to post. It's hard to get that cycle going though.

Posted By Therion- on 04/16/2007 5:06 PM
The English Warhammer Forum has a few people from all over posting, but I know for a fact that countries like France, Germany, Denmark, Finland, Italy, Poland etc. have large communities and message boards in their own languages. I would only assume that the Americans would have atleast a couple forums of their own too, but like I said I have failed to find any in addition to Dakka, and FB isn't discussed here.

Why make a "US Specific" site when there is one that is perfectly fine for use in English? The Warhammer Forum has a lot of US players posting there. And before that, most of the big US players would post on the WPS forums.

I can see why there'd be different boards for the countries you listed since the native languages there are different. But since the English language is mostly the same, why bother having a US only board I wonder?

When I was big into Fantasy, I'd just pop over to the WPS forums for any Fantasy related discussion I would be craving. I mostly came to Dakka for the 40k, General Discussions, and News and Rumors.

Not sure. I havent played WHFB since 5th edition with my undead army.

But I do see alot of WHFB players everywhere I go. There seemed to be a small but healthy community for the last 7 years in the whole state of Montana, numbering around a minimum of 40 players.

Just in the city of Minneapolis (where I am now), its even bigger by atleast 3 times.

But I dont see any of theWHFB players posting in forums. I do know many of them lurk though.

In short, while I have no idea why the WHFB sections arent more populated by fervent discussions, I do know that it isnt as popular in the states as 40K is.

Maybe going to TMP and setting up a thread asking everyone to participate in a Frapper thread might give a better idea of the amount of wargamers (who have access to the internet) are in specific areas... Just a thought.

Dakka isn't a US only board, but it's still based in the US and run by Americans. It's only natural that when a gaming community is active and healthy national message boards come up. I'm questioning the state of FB in the US.

In Illinois, at least, they tend to congregate on a regional board (www.iwfb.org). Couldn't say about out here - the group I play with, while they do occasionally play FB, tends more to alternate between 40K and WM, with occasional forays into Bloodbowl.

Might also be less to say? Apparently the WHFB rules work a lot better than 40k.

A lot of people that I know who play WHFB don't do it 'competitively' meaning they don't go to tournaments. The turn out here in the south to Fantasy tournaments is normally half of what it is for 40k.

With that said, I think there are probably just as many players they just stay at home in their basements to do it.

From what I've seen over the years, most WHFB players in the US don't really post a lot on forums. Most of the discussion happens on the local level at the stores or on the local game forums. As for your curiousity about how many players are in the US. There's about 80ish active players around the Bay Area CA, judging from these results:

http://www.leadership2.org/qcr_2007_results.htm

There are several big tournaments for WHFB throughout the year in the US, most of the info for these things are spread via word of mouth at local stores and game groups. E.g. SAWS, HIllbilly Invitational, Quake City Rumble, Adepticon, Alamo GT, etc. I haven't been active in WHFB for quite some years now, so I'm not really up to date on what the big tournaments are, but there might be someone on here reading that could provide that info.

There are a lot of tournament regulars that you'll see repeating on these lists, and I'd say you could safely say that for each regular tournament goer you'll find about three - four other players that don't go to the tournaments.

These are all just personal observation though.  I don't really have any hard numbers, and I think it'd be almost impossible to find out exact figures in a country as large as the US.

Posted By Therion- on 04/16/2007 6:01 PM
It's only natural that when a gaming community is active and healthy national message boards come up. I'm questioning the state of FB in the US.

Well my point was, why create a duplicate site that functions the same as the Warhammer Forum?  There wouldn't be much benefit in that for the end user of those "new" country specific forums. Might as well just go to the Warhammer forum for tactics/lists/etc. and go to your local game store/group forums for organizing events.

While it's true that there doesn't seem to be a 'general WHFB board with a majority of American posters' I do see quite a good number of Americans posting on all the race specific WHFB boards out there like: WH-Empire, Da Warpath, Bugman's etc.

The comment about critical mass was a good one by the way. I only visit Dakka occasionally and spend most of the time on WH-Empire and TWF. This because I haven't played 40K in about 4 years now and all my attention goes out to WHFB. Dakka however, just doesn't have a very active Fantasy section and therefore has less appeal to me nowadays.

Well if you're wondering where I've been for the last year or two, it's been posting about WFB.

But it is much more locally oriented. Part of the issue I see is that there are more 'quality' fantasy players than 40k players. To discuss 40k, I HAD to come to dakka, as there just weren't alot of solid 40k players in my local area. But between my local group (which uses theColonialGT.com forum) and the warmongers, I've got all my bases covered. In fact I find that when I stray outside those two boards, the quality of the conversation goes down very quickly.

And that's not to say there aren't solid players all over the country. It's just to say that all the solid ones I'm likely to see or interested in talking to are already posting on those boards anyway.

So a 'TWF' for the US would do nothing for me.

And, as stated, I can always just go to TWF. They're excellent if you want a rules opinion with no basis in actual rules.

Logic 101.

Thanks for the replies people. I'm starting to understand your community a little better.

Posted By mauleed on 04/17/2007 4:56 AM

 when I stray outside those two boards, the quality of the conversation goes down very quickly.

Same experience, different boards.  I lurk at Druchii.net a lot, but tend to see new posters covering the same old topics over and over.  Little new or interesting has occurred there in some months.

On other boards (which shall remain nameless), the quality of posts in the forums just annoys me right from the start.  Something about posting, "How can I deal with problem X?", and getting fifteen replies that boil down to "Hehe you are stoopd!  1!(!!)1!" really ticks me off. 

It is a bit funny that there isn't a central place, as WH definitely has a lot of rabid players in the US.

If you check out http://indygt.com/, you can see that there are 10+ annual independent GTs around the country. There are nowhere near that number of indy 40k events.

40k seems to have MORE players in total, but WH has more dedicated players, folks willing to put in the time and effort to run or travel to big events.

Posted By Kid_Kyoto on 04/16/2007 8:46 PM
Might also be less to say? Apparently the WHFB rules work a lot better than 40k.

True. More balance means that there's less need to post 'killer' army lists to be tweaked, and fewer rules disputes.

Most of the US fantasy players I know are also older and more tapped into their local network rather than the international field; they play in local tournaments and leagues and each other, and don't need the internet for validation.

I've been trying to get my gaming area (Central Coast, CA) into Fantasy for awhile now. It certainly has a much smaller following than 40k, though the gamers tend to be more hardcore and (dare I say it) smarter.

Ozymandias, King of Kings

The locals around here talk in their local groups, and The Warhammer Forum.

When I want to talk fantasy I go to TWF too.

I play in a large WHFB-only group in my area, but we are all older (30+) players, many of whom just don't haunt the internet all the time like I do.  Most have also pretty much gotten their own armies, and are just supplementing rather than jumping on some new thing, so there's less reason to be closely following the game's development.

Most active fantasy boards I post at are actually faction specific ones. WE or Ogres.

Most 40k center ones are like dakka, which is a community.

Dont know why, but thats how it seems US wise.

One decent forum for warhammer I found is Direwolf yahoo group.

But it's a yahoo group, so incredibly unpleasant to use.

 

Not really. Its very good however.