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Jon Garrett wrote:Marines are a simple, potent army. You don't need many models to have a functioning army and the basic models are some of the easiest to paint in the whole range. Plus they're everywhere.

(Emphasis mine)

As someone who's completely unable to paint Marines, I don't understand this at all. Painting Marines is tedium incarnate, prepping them for painting doubly so. Endless cleaning of mould lines across armor plates, then painting dull detail like shoulder pad rims or chest eagles. The worst part is SM backpacks. I hope I don't have to paint one of those for as long as I live.

Without exaggeration, I could paint five or six times more Empire/IG troopers per day than Marines.

nintendoeats wrote:Everyone who read Starship Troopers wants to play Speze marinez. I mean, who didn't want to join the future infantry after reading that? Well, not me cause I'm lazy...But I totally want one of those suits.

I still use some of Marine bitz just because they are so hardcore.

isn't SST more IG like? i mean it is a large amount of human soldiers with spit wad guns.

utulien of the imperium wrote:

nintendoeats wrote:Everyone who read Starship Troopers wants to play Speze marinez. I mean, who didn't want to join the future infantry after reading that? Well, not me cause I'm lazy...But I totally want one of those suits.

I still use some of Marine bitz just because they are so hardcore.

isn't SST more IG like? i mean it is a large amount of human soldiers with spit wad guns.

I take it you've never read SST. If you had, you'd understand.

Agamemnon2 wrote:

utulien of the imperium wrote:

nintendoeats wrote:Everyone who read Starship Troopers wants to play Speze marinez. I mean, who didn't want to join the future infantry after reading that? Well, not me cause I'm lazy...But I totally want one of those suits.

I still use some of Marine bitz just because they are so hardcore.

isn't SST more IG like? i mean it is a large amount of human soldiers with spit wad guns.

I take it you've never read SST. If you had, you'd understand.

I see what you did thar

utulien of the imperium wrote:

nintendoeats wrote:Everyone who read Starship Troopers wants to play Speze marinez. I mean, who didn't want to join the future infantry after reading that? Well, not me cause I'm lazy...But I totally want one of those suits.

I still use some of Marine bitz just because they are so hardcore.

isn't SST more IG like? i mean it is a large amount of human soldiers with spit wad guns.

...I was waiting for someone to say this...

Just to elaborate, the Starship Troopers in the original Heinlein novel actually wear powered armor and have nothing at all to do with the unarmored GIs seen in the atrocious movie (indeed, that film started life as a completely unrelated SF movie that was shoehorned into the SST license).

Agamemnon2 wrote:Just to elaborate, the Starship Troopers in the original Heinlein novel actually wear powered armor and have nothing at all to do with the unarmored GIs seen in the atrocious movie (indeed, that film started life as a completely unrelated SF movie that was shoehorned into the SST license).

Who currently owns the licence? Is it still feasible to make a DECENT movie?

COME ON YOU APES! DO YOU WANT TO LIVE FOREVER?

Orkeosaurus wrote:COME ON YOU APES! DO YOU WANT TO LIVE FOREVER?

I guess I could deal with that.

I think the notion of an army of super soldiers appeals to kids and people getting their first foot into the hobby. Plus painting them is relatively straightforward, and they are relatively easy to use in the game.

Plus they've come in every starter set, which means it's everyone's first army.

The Space marines background is pretty clever. They recruit teenagers and make them in to superhumans (roid monkeys). How old were you when you started 40k; teenager?

They are human(sorta) good guys (but you can get bad ones anyway). And they are for the casual gamer, which is how everyone starts. Low model count hard as nails. Just look at th Bnc board and you will see how attractive all those things make them.

The low model count thing does it fo me. After getting back into 40k I intended to do orks and I have some, but marines somehow have become my finished army.

If you could buy some superhuman alien warrior with cool armour who could do anything in the flavour text and in the rules and were better then marines, They would outsell marines.

Gwar! wrote:

Agamemnon2 wrote:Just to elaborate, the Starship Troopers in the original Heinlein novel actually wear powered armor and have nothing at all to do with the unarmored GIs seen in the atrocious movie (indeed, that film started life as a completely unrelated SF movie that was shoehorned into the SST license).

Who currently owns the licence? Is it still feasible to make a DECENT movie?

If the film was made like the book it would be like a series of public lectures. The film we have is more like a piss-take of the book's themes, with exaggerated elements of fascism laid out to appear somewhat ludicrous. It's more critical of the book's themes than being a platform on which to discuss and argue them. Then the film has a lot more shooting and bugs eating people because that's what the audiance wants. It's really not that bad at all for a film.

I was in the 5th grade when I got my first models. I looked through and saw Chaos Space Marines first. My dad told me to pick a box and I picked out two that I chose between. Iron Warriors and Night Lord.

Spacemarines look the coolest! Think about you knowing nothing about Eldars lore and that they are actually BA and the lore about all the other armies. The guy with the giant claw and the big gun looked the sweetest. I liked night lords because they looked cool with their bat helms. Iron warriors looked sweet because of their Gothic style helms etc. I got the Iron Warriors.

From then on though I played just about every army to like 600 point then got a new one rinse and repeat kidna thing.

Space Marines are kinda like medieval knights or the galaxies police men. Everyone wants to be a superhuman taking down humanities greatest foes! They don't want to be a 7 foot skinny guy with a gun that shoots little disks and is an endangered species.

TBH They sell well because of marketing and their overall appeal, and for the fact that the Smurf codex supports any kinda of army you could dream of. Bike heavy, bunch of tanks, gunline, drop pod etc.. I think the armies that sell the most are:

Space Marines (in all forms)
Orks
Tyranids

I see people all the time posting Ork lists.... Tyranids are picked up by a lot of new players, but then get dropped off when they get more experience (this is just my observation). I wouldn't be surprised if Chaos was up there or Tau but I don't think that it is as likely.

SM are the easiest army to play which is good for ten year olds. They are eye candy as well. With good skills and decent armor saves they are much more forgiving of mistakes as opposed to Eldar or Orks. SM have a rich back ground to fill your head with.