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Why does it seem like 80% of people play one of these two armies?

When I went to 'ard boyz, out of like 22 people there, I think there were about 16 marine players.

I just went to another tournament this last weekend and out of around 32 people, I think about 5 weren't playing marines or IG.

I just wonder why so many people gravitate towards these armies. I realize the fluff for some people makes them go towards these armies, however there must be other factors.

Are SM/CSM and IG this prevelant in everyones areas or do I live in a place that is a statistical anomoly?

50% of all 40K players have a MEQ army. This is a well-proven statistic generated though countless people pulling the same figure out of their... *ahem* Guard, being the other human army, are also popular; being the newest army, they also have all the trend-chasers at the moment. They are also two of the few armies that are actually up-to-date, which puts them well ahead of everyone else on the popularity scale.

I think aside from Marines being the army that pretty much everyone and their mother starts 40k with, they're also a very strong codex that lends itself well to competitive play.

Same goes for IG, they're a very, very strong codex.

Not to mention the whole "good guy factor". And tanks. Who doesn't love being able to field 5-6 tanks per game as pretty much a minimum?

When I walk into my LGS or GW and I see everyone playing SM or IG, it's pretty much for the "good guy" factor. When I walk into a tournament and see the same thing, I know its because they have strong codexes.

Need new rules *and* models:
Necrons
Tyranids
Dark Eldar
Witch Hunters

Need some rule love:
Tau
Chaos Space Marines
Daemonhunters

That seems to be half the bloody line. And since they're really not very strong at a competitive level, taking them to a competition is wasted effort.

I guess I don't buy the, "they are more powerful" argument. Eldar (both kinds) and Tau are both slightly better than SM and IG yet you see very very few of either army.

Maybe I just haven't been to enough tournaments in different places.

Bunker wrote:I think aside from Marines being the army that pretty much everyone and their mother starts 40k with, they're also a very strong codex that lends itself well to competitive play.

Same goes for IG, they're a very, very strong codex.

Not to mention the whole "good guy factor". And tanks. Who doesn't love being able to field 5-6 tanks per game as pretty much a minimum?

When I walk into my LGS or GW and I see everyone playing SM or IG, it's pretty much for the "good guy" factor. When I walk into a tournament and see the same thing, I know its because they have strong codexes.

I wouldn't neccessarily call them a "good-guy" army, since you can use their codexes to create traitors too. Its nice to be able to create your own little niche in the 40k universe (i.e. My IG army is actually the planetary defense force for the planet "x"). Same goes for space marines... you can pretty much make them after whatever you want to, and don't have to restrict yourself to certain color palettes (i.e. orks are green, necrons metallic, etc). Of course, this is purely from the modeling and painting standpoint- I imagine the ideas mentioned above are sufficient reasons to start one of these for competitive reasons. Oh, and lets not forget that SM are in the starter set, making your basic troop choices cheaper and easier to come by than usual.

Timmah wrote:I guess I don't buy the, "they are more powerful" argument. Eldar (both kinds) and Tau are both slightly better than SM and IG yet you see very very few of either army.

Maybe I just haven't been to enough tournaments in different places.

that's a highly arguable statement.

As for popularlity, Space Marines are by far the most common armies. Nearly every veteran has a marine army in addition to any other armies, and a lot of new players start with them.

As for IG, I think we're seeing them being played after years of the IG simply not being very good.

Space Marines look cool and are quite cheap because you don't need that many models and nearly everything is available in plastic. I think that combined with the support from GW explains why they're so ubiquitous. IG isn't that cheap, but they also look cool and are "it" at the moment, as was mentioned above, IG has all the trendchasers. Both armies also give loads of conversion opportunities, probably only being surpassed by Orks.

I think that quite a part of the popularity issue could be solved by GW. I think if every race had an up-to-date codex, nice plastic models and if the pricing was better balanced across the races (e.g. 10 guardsmen not costing as much as 10 marines, but less so that horde armies become worthwile and you get the same impact on the game from the same money) there would be a lot more variety. Granted, the Marines and IG would perhaps still have the advantage of being human and being the good guys and having tanks, but overall it would even out.

I think many people forget the one major thing IG have going for them. Above all other armies in 40K.

That we as players can actually relate to them. Far more so than we can relate to any other 'race' in 40K. Thats worth a heck of allot not to mention that over a century of history can influence a guard army, directly or indirectly. It's the only army where GW's own fluff isn't almost the only source of inspiration.

I loved guard because I grew watching movies about WW2 and Vietnam.

It's several factors. First, humans can relate to humans, both in form and ideals, so they gravitate towards them. Second, with spacies you are dealing with the macho hero type. Young males are conditioned pretty well by society to gravitate towards this archetype. They want to be them, and they want to be around them and be lead by them. Spacies are a natural choice for a great deal of people because of this.

GW saw that years ago and has been catering to it ever since. That leads us into the rules area. They have always been more popular so they have generated more sales. More sales equals more updates and more updates equals a more likely chance of power creep. Also, the most popular becomes the default, and the default (like ryu in street fighter) is the simple go to army for new players.

Learning a new style is hard and in this game, very expensive, so people tend to stick with marines.

That's my simple theory.

As far as the space marines go, I've found that just about everyone who I have ever met who has two or more armies, has space majeens as one of them.

They're cheap and easy to build and paint, they have also have a really comfortable learning curve with a lot of options for higher end play.

Well space marines is a great army to start with , they leave room to make mistakes and still win games , also they look bad ass and are just cool , you can also have a small force that dosnt cost a lot of money .

Guard is the new book so thats why you see them right now , once space wolves and nids hit you will see a change .

I feel if they would just update the codexs for the other racers it would take care of this but GW's main target are the people that jump in for a few months than jump out so , pushing marines is what they do for the quick gain .

And let's not forget, it's the sales of the Space Marines that pretty much allow some of these fringe armies to even exist.

Polonius wrote:As for popularlity, Space Marines are by far the most common armies. Nearly every veteran has a marine army in addition to any other armies, and a lot of new players start with them.

As for IG, I think we're seeing them being played after years of the IG simply not being very good.

Over the past weekend, I had an hour to kill and popped by the LA Bunker. Out of 10 armies being played, 4 of them were Tau. It was pretty wierd seeing that much Tau out there.

Anyhow, a veteran player will have a goodly-sized SM army just from the boxed sets...

HQ
1 Hero (BfM)
1 Captain (AoBR)

Elites
1 Dread (AoBR)
5 Terminators (AoBR)

Troops
10 SM (3E)
10 SM (BfM)
10 SM (AoBR)

Fast
1 Landspeeder (3E)

That's a pretty decent-sized SM army right there.


But IG weren't terrible in 4E. You just had to play Drop Guard, much as you pretty much have to pay more $$ to play Mech Guard today.

Those are a couple of good points. Unless you're a very focused player, it's almost hard not to have some marines floating around. The starter boxes alone get you part of the way there.

Ig were very one dimensional in fourth, and even then didn't have the ability to really claim objectives. Fifth edition just devastated them with kill points.