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Okay the main reason I got into warhammer 40K is becouse its the one wargame I dont have to worry about finding people to play adgainst. It is a lot of fun to!
The first minture wargame I got into was ShockForce it was really fun ,but sadly the company who made it went out of bussiness for some reason.
Then I got into Mage Knight loads of fun but went down the toliet when the got bought out bye a BaseBall Card Company.
Then I got into StarsMinis loads of fun some people play ,but its hard to find players for that game know.
So what do you all thinks makes 40k stand the test of time when tones of other miniture wargames have come and gone?

There really isnt another comparison out there, this size of game, this depth of story. You can take it to extremes of nerddom and fluff your heart out with story arced weekend long apoc games or have fun in a competitive enviornment that is quite brutal.

In one word, Content.

Its waht drew me in as a kid, and its what keeps people coming back for more.

can anyone really say how many models and configurations there are?

i remember hearing about a disaster at the GW headquarters once, where a forklift knocked over the shelves in their warehouse, and all of the bits had to be scrapped because there was so many they could not separate them.

Demogerg wrote:In one word, Content.

Its waht drew me in as a kid, and its what keeps people coming back for more.

can anyone really say how many models and configurations there are?

i remember hearing about a disaster at the GW headquarters once, where a forklift knocked over the shelves in their warehouse, and all of the bits had to be scrapped because there was so many they could not separate them.

They weren't scrapped, they sold them by the pound in random grab bags.

Simple answer? They found a niche in the Wargames market and exploited it for all it was worth!

Extreme risks were taken (international chain of their own shops) which paid off. IF it wasn't for GW, then PP, Rackham etc might never have come to be, and I'm pretty sure the founders of such companies would confess to that.

Pre-GW, the Wargames Market was dominated by Historical Games, and whilst it's an exaggeration to say GW founded the Sci-Fi and Fantasy market, they certainly reinvented it, and very successfully so!

So yeah, first fish in the pond, biggest fish in the pond, natural advantage.

I thought it was how the music label was perfectly aligned with the miniature side of the business. W/O Bolt Thrower, GW would have been nothing!

Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:Simple answer? They found a niche in the Wargames market and exploited it for all it was worth!

Extreme risks were taken (international chain of their own shops) which paid off. IF it wasn't for GW, then PP, Rackham etc might never have come to be, and I'm pretty sure the founders of such companies would confess to that.

Pre-GW, the Wargames Market was dominated by Historical Games, and whilst it's an exaggeration to say GW founded the Sci-Fi and Fantasy market, they certainly reinvented it, and very successfully so!

So yeah, first fish in the pond, biggest fish in the pond, natural advantage.

I think this pretty much sums it up.

Like the miniatures version of Magic.

Not the greatest designed game out there, but it was the first and now it's the biggest and it's not going away.

A loyal fan base.

No seriously I really think it's the fans of the systems who in general are loyal to the brand; no matter how much they gripe.

Oh, and it's their chain of shops which really do the trick. I first got into Fantasy Gaming via Heroquest. Now, quite aside from that being a quasi-GW game, it wasn't until a friend of mine showed me a White Dwarf he'd randomly bought in the local Newsagents which showed me a world beyond that single game, and not only that, but where I lived at the time (Edinburgh) had a shop solely dedicated to those games.

So at the tender age of 8, I badgered my Parents to take me up the shop so I could see the pretty models.

And it was that High Street presence which sealed it. I had easy access to the games and models, and passionate people employed to tell me all about them and teach me how to play. No other Wargames company before or since has done this, mainly due to the extreme expensive involved in running such stores, and of course the risk of the company folding should the stores fail.

Simply put, GW get far more new blood through their doots in a very literal way. It tends to be us hoary old Vets who play the other games. It's almost a vicious circle type thing. GW built up the market, GW dominated the market. Indies filled in gaps where there were no GW stores. Indies offered a network of High Street outlets for other Games companies to sell through. BUT, since GW is the biggest and best established, it has the most gamers. Now, given the choice of spending (figures out my arse, please excuse!) £/$75 on a game you'll play maybe once a month, or £/$150 on a game you'll play once a week, which is the better investment?

And the odd thing is, the better the competition gets, the better GW can get. How? Money. If there is a fantastic sculptor working for GW, you'll need to offer them more money to come and work for you. Fairly possible for other companies, but still a risk. But, if PP had a genius Sculptor who put Jes Goodwin to shame, GW can offer far more cash to them than PP could, simply because of their size.

Now, had a company like PP come along 10 years earlier, we might have two big players in the Fantasy/SciFi market. But it was the original to second generation of GW Gamers branching out which founded PP etc. Look at Mike McVey. Brilliant painter, left GW to work (possibly found? Anyone know?) for PP. Even so, GW still owns most of the talent to be found. This means the company is better placed to maintain a certain level of quality. Look at the Warmachine range. Some really lovely models, and some real stinkers. Starship Troopers was a good example of this. The good models were utterly fantastic, blow your socks off good, but the stinkers sucked majorly (anyone for Skinnies? No, thought not! )

Right, enough rambling.

Yeah without Bolt Thrower none of this would of been possible!

I found 40k through Adaptus Titanicus and then it was all down hill from there. I really think in the beginning unlike historical 40k and Warhammer allowed you to tailor your experience to what you wanted. The guidelines were loose enough and you were not tied to dogmatic interpretations of history.

whocares wrote:

Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:Simple answer? They found a niche in the Wargames market and exploited it for all it was worth!

Extreme risks were taken (international chain of their own shops) which paid off. IF it wasn't for GW, then PP, Rackham etc might never have come to be, and I'm pretty sure the founders of such companies would confess to that.

Pre-GW, the Wargames Market was dominated by Historical Games, and whilst it's an exaggeration to say GW founded the Sci-Fi and Fantasy market, they certainly reinvented it, and very successfully so!

So yeah, first fish in the pond, biggest fish in the pond, natural advantage.

I think this pretty much sums it up.

Like the miniatures version of Magic.

Not the greatest designed game out there, but it was the first and now it's the biggest and it's not going away.

I'll second that. Legacy and inertia. It's hard to evolve into something large and populous when the world is filled with dinosaurs!

2 words: Jes Goodwin

As the key designer and sculptor behind an extremely visual game, Jes is what brought most people into 40k. The rules don't matter, because it takes time to figure out whether they work "right". But minis? You can figure that out instantly.


The other stuff of GW being more retailer friendly and pushing hard for early expansion helped, but not nearly as much as lines of cool stuff. And once it got established, it's all gravy afterwards.

Agree to all. (Miss MK as well, GeekyWarrior)

MDG and DD have summed it up pretty darn well, I think.