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"but, but, but SPESS MUHREENS SELL THE MOSTEST, GW fanbois tell me so all the time. You should be HAPPEY muhreens are ruining the hobby by being the only thing you fight, ever, because without me all you stupid not-marines wouldn't even have a codex"

Horse feathers. If GW spent half the effort they do on making and advertising another color of the exact same lifeless miniatures with power armor/bolter/chain sword and without any sense of character on promoting the 40K universe as a whole everything would sell better.

The table top game would improve beyond what color of marine you want to fight with your colored marines today. Imagine, if you will, a world where armies actually fight differently. Not 'oh my power armor has jump packs, your power armor has a gun' different, I mean actually different. I know, it's something hard to comprehend because it never happens anymore but let's go to that magical land of unicorns, rainbows and variety of gameplay for a few minutes shall we?

Play differently? You know why USR isn't so special but universal?
Codex inherent rules are no longer favored by GW, too . There is maybe 1 concept lately (PfP for example) per codex.

Its everyones free choice to play any of the available armies.
Generally, the "heroes" find more interest than the "villains", and "humans" more than "non-humans".
Maybe if 40k had the black&white of lotr and the need for an army of both sides, people would play 2 different armies.
But, 40k is still free. So most will run whatever they want. Do you really expect people choosing "non-human" as often as "human"?
Maybe if GW gave them OP codices and some creative gamers would do their best to autowin.
Is this what youre asking for? No balance, just the "pendulum swing" the halfbrotherofmarneuscalgar mentioned sometimes?
Or do you delude yourself with assumptions of 'multiple SM codices' (and call them just different paintschemes) = I deserve 'multiple non SM codices' ( wich are not just different paintschemes because you claim so ) => more variety? Maybe SM are supported so much because standardized armor and weapons make it possible
to produce more with less investment?

Sometimes, I come to think people whine so much about "too many space marines" because they see the Space Marines as "already taken", so they can't
play them.

Yes, too many play SM.

me and my little brother started 40K with the AoBR set. He got the orks, I got the space marines. I like space marines because of how rich their fluff is, andh ow many different legions, many with their own personalities exist for players to choose from. I enjoyed building my Imperial Fists, and I am looking forward to building an Emperor's Children army in the future.

Yes, they are a good army to start out with, but using them to maximum requires a skilled player behind those models. All said and done, and as much love as I have for marines, they are overplayed and it gets boring to fight 3+ vs 3+. Hence why Eldar are my favorite race now. DIE, HUMANS...

I play marines only because the chaos codex was boring. I was a die hard chaos fan then the new codex came out and it was the most boring non interesting thing I have ever seen from GW. I don't care if its a decent codex its boring. So I picked up marines again and honestly I don't mind playing with or against marines.

Long as I am playing warhammer 40k I am having fun.

Yes, and too many people eat McDonalds and drive Chevys. It's just gonna happen. Deal with it. They're the house brand at Games Workshop, come to terms with it. If you don't like it, try and do some recruiting at your FLGS.

I would say that 90% of 40k players you encounter have a Power Armor army.

SM (with variants), CSM, and coming soon, Grey Knights.

I know that, at my FLGS, every single person has at least some Power Armor. We have BT, SW, Vanilla, CSM, and one Grey Knight player. Now, there are plenty of other armies. Nids, Orks, Daemons, IG, and (D) Eldar, but everyone has at least one Power Armored army.

And no, I don't think this is a bad thing. Power Armor is fun. The 3+ armor save is very, very attractive. I love my Marines for their long range shooting and for Sternguard. Others love them for the TH/SS termies, while others for Vulkan. Point is, between all of our power armor, there are no two alike armies. This is what makes Space Marines great; the versatility.

You can take 5 different books, and make hundreds of unique and different armies. THAT is why so many players have Space Marines.

I haven't read EVERY post in this thread so far, just a few, so please excuse me if I'm repeating something.

The thing I have against space marines is that they're almost always played by little noobs that read the rules wrong and complain about EVERYTHING(I've only seen one kid that actually behaved very well when he played, and he knew all the rules and acted like an adult in every aspect, so there is that rare exception), they almost all play Ultramarines, and they model every unit, from weapon loadout all the way to stance and extra bits, how they are shown on the site for the box set(yes, I know, the models in the AOBR set cant be modelled differently, but most of the time you can tell by their crappy gluing job which are snap-together and which are normal multi-part plastic).

Also, they are almost always played the same way. A bunch of marines with missile launchers and predators coated in as many lascannons as possible trying to shoot the crap out of you, maybe with a lone dread running straight up the center towards the enemy, or a small squad of assault marines(and just like the predator) loaded with a power fist and as many plasma pistols and everything else you can get deep-striking somewhere. It's very annoying, and I almost always regret playing, no matter how things go. I've looked through the SM codex many times, and I am shocked at all the units that are available that are both awesome-looking and seem effective for what their worth, but I've never seen played

I rarely see an army thats played differently, and when I do, its usually an army thats not ultramarines, it fits to the fluff pf the army almost perfectly, and even when its ultramarines, im willing to play them just for the sake of playing something different, and its always a tough battle, and were both having a great time. So I answered yes and no, because 90% of the time its the noob I described above(like the ultramarines player that used to be in my gaming group), but the rare 10% is why I say no, I wouldnt mind at all if I came to a store and had to play 5 different marine players, if they all fit under the 10%er category(like my BA friend), I will love it.

GW should try to promote different armies, or at least different chapters(there are quite a few out there, if you havent noticed). I know you can't do much about what units people choose, but I would at least like to see more people trying them out(thunderfire cannons, special characters that aren't from the ultramarines, I've never seen a Master of the Forge, a Techmarine with/without servitors, or scout bikes to name a few).

When your at a club where every other guy, bar the odd kid Tau player, has a box full of Astartes-in either the vampiric or relegious fanatics variants- and you've just got your poor Imperial Guard, things are kind of put into perspective. Space Marine's are GW's tag army-how many new blood codexes have they had in the last few years?- and thus get all the attention. Personally I don't like them as they seem too overpowered in game terms, and too underpowered in term of fluff. In addition to this it seems that most players are ignorant to the fluff, or play out of the box armys, so Marines are somethings that appeals to them-any idiot can stick a few boxes of (overpriced) Sanguinery Guard together and use them to wipe any other army off the board with little effort-like they'd put any in anyway. Yeah I dislike marines and those who play them really.¬¬

Most marine players in my store tend to suck alot, but are at least nice and know the rules well enough to have a fluid game.

It is the freaken guard players in my area. Overcompetitive manchildren not into socializing while playing a game of plastic toy soldiers that cheat and rules lawer to no end. I hate them... burn... PURGE!

My experience with marine players.

There is nothing wrong with Spacemarines imo, i am just somewhat unhappy that other armies receive far less support when it comes to new miniatures.
With the notable exception of the Thunderwolf the SM miniature range is the best developed of all, while other armies are sometimes severely lacking in that regard.
I mean, just have a look at Chaos Daemons and try not to cry. It's the same for the Eldar, the poor Witchhunters and even Chaos ( which realy deserves a proper dreadnought, i mean 4 excellent plastic variants for the loyalist and only that ugly metal abomination for the traitors? ). Hells, even the Imperial Guard still has a few vehicles which are only supported by Forgeworld ( and therefore extremely expensive ) or are otherwise lacking ( Rough Riders are perhaps the most notable here ).

So, while i have nothing bad to say about Spacemarines i would simply wish for some more attention for the "other" armies.

Personally, from a game balance and metagame perspective, yes, Space Marine armies are too common. Several reasons for this.

First and foremost is that they become the "expected" enemy. Everyone makes their armies designed to fight T4 3+sv dudes with BS4 S4 bolters and AV11 transports with 50-60 dudes and about a half dozen vehicles in 2000pts. If you design your army to beat that, you will be successful most of the time. It removes much of the need to build an all-comers army for many players.

Second, it makes what should be ultra elite shock troops into the average joe. Everyone sees statlines with 4's as the "average", with 3's being below average, when 4's really should be something relatively special. This in turn makes balancing units based around statlines of 3's relatively difficult, especially in a D6 system and when you start getting into very low cost units like guardsmen and grots. For a unit like Space Marines, costing a model off by 1 or even sometimes 2 pts isn't too bad, resulting in an error of 6-11%. For units like grots, guardsmen or gaunts, being off by 1pt means a costing error of 16-33%. Having Space Marine units be the "average" makes costing what really should be the "average" (guardsmen) difficult, and it makes it so that everything must be significantly more capable than a well trained and equipped average human soldier or it is looked at as rubbish. It also means people often get butthurt when stuck with a stat of 3 on a unit rather than 4, seeing 4 as the average instead of something that belongs on incredibly well trained/equipped/superhuman units.

As a result this also makes Space Marines less impressive from a background perspective as well. They are common as chips, you battle them more often than you do the Imperial Guard, the Orks or the Tyranids, often more than all three combined. They lose their mythical special status in ones eyes. I think I've killed the Lord Maccrage about a dozen times at this point, and the Wolf King probably about as many.

It also doesn't help that 7 of the games 16 Codex's are Space Marine books, with ridiculously minor variation being justified for creating a new army. There's no reason for anything but C:SM, C:CSM, and C: DH. Everything else honestly really could be amalgamated without too much trouble. There's more variation and variety within the IG codex (and the last editions one too) or Ork book alone than between just about any two or three Space Marine books. There's more in C:CSM than between C:SM and C: DA or C:SW.


It also doesn't help that the more recent SM fluff is beyond atrocious, reading like bad internet fanfic.

There is of course also the fact that SM armies are generally cheaper to acquire than many others, and usually require significantly less of a time invest to build and paint than most others, especially relative so something like Tyranids, Imperial Guard or Orks which are going to cost 2-4x as much usually to buy, and take about 2-4x as much time to build and paint. The broad, flat spaces of most SM units also makes them *easier* to paint than most other units unless going for something intense.

The way I see it Spare Marines are the coolest troops to collect in 40K.

I like them cos they're elite - they have great fluff - they're the good guys (most of the time)

The only issue I have is that more than 50% of all players of 40K should be fielding Orks or Tyranids - simply because populationwise in the fluff there are more Orks in the Universe than anyone else!!

Armies will never be played in proportion to their occurence in fluff, for example there is never going to a ratio of IG : SM of 500 : 1 OR Orks : Eldar of 500 : 1.
People will play the army they want to play. And (unfortunatly) a very large percentage enjoy playing space marines.

Heh, yeah, if we were going by fluff it'd be bloody civil war in the Imperium with all those loyalist chapters going toe to toe with one another, and I really don't recall there being a pink marine army with monacles and top hates amidst the 1000 odd chapters out there. Excommunicate Traitorious? ^^

AlexHolker wrote:I don't mind them being popular. I do mind GW assigning excessive amounts of resources to producing Space Marine codices and kits at the expense of everyone else.

TheRedArmy wrote:I dislike every chapter but the Ultramarines simply because it means GW is saying Space Marines deserve more of their time, money, and effort than other races, which is simply not true. The background and differences in many other races deserve various codicies as much as Space Marines - one for each craftworld, one for each major IG Battalion - Cadians, Catachans, etc. All those races deserve their own codicies as well, but they won't ever get them.

And you forget that it is the space marines that make all the other codex armies possible, space marines are the best marketing tool a company like GW could come up with, they make up a massive percentage of GW revenue.

So you either suck it up and play against space marines or pull you fingers out and actually buy from GW (not ebay like most vets) the models for the other races, if you want more support make your army more value for money for GW.

This assumes of course that SM's do in fact support everything else (a rather flawed business model if true) and that other armies could not provide the same level of enthusiasm and revenue if given the same level of support, neither of which are necessarily true.

Just a quick look at sales figures will show its not an 'assumed point', and seeing as most new plays don't go 'holy gak, look how amazing those sisters of battle look' the go 'holy gak, look how amazing those space marines look' its not much of an 'assumed point'.

People can make choices themselves and they choose space marines, you can get in a huff about it or you can put down the dummy and deal with your choice.

I would like to see how many people play solely space marines. Because I think that most people start with the flashy boys in power armor, and once they see the full 40k universe, they move on to bigger and better aliens. Case in point: I've been playing for about 6 months. I started with marines, and I am just starting a tau army, because I like them more.

The fact of the matter is space marines are designed to be a starter army. You start with space marines, learn the mechanics and some strategy, then move onto another army you find cooler.

BluntmanDC wrote:Just a quick look at sales figures will show its not an 'assumed point', and seeing as most new plays don't go 'holy gak, look how amazing those sisters of battle look' the go 'holy gak, look how amazing those space marines look' its not much of an 'assumed point'.

People can make choices themselves and they choose space marines, you can get in a huff about it or you can put down the dummy and deal with your choice.

Where are the available sales figures that break down revenue by army? It sure isn't in GW's available public financial documents.

What I wanna know is how much fluff can I come up with for Witch Hunters fighting Space Wolves? Its hard enough the first 4 times. It just doesn't make sense fighting the same army over and over.

I'm not going to argue the, seemingly obvious, fact that a huge amount of people play space marines. I can certainly see how some people think it isn't fun to always see marines on the other side of the table. It seems to me that the major reasons for the prevalence of marine armies have already been pointed out by previous posts. The relative power of marine codices means that they are attractive to tournament players and people who are looking for a "hardcore" army. On the other hand, their fluff status as the heroes of humanity and the fact they they are an easy paint (though I don't necessarily agree with this) makes them very attractive for beginners. The final piece of the puzzle is financial. I'm sure there are plenty of people who would love to play a horde ork army or a mechanized guard list but simply cannot afford to spend so much money on their hobby.

Maybe I can add something else to this conversation that I haven't seen brought up yet. I started playing towards the end of 2nd edition (circa 1997) and when I started there were 3 different marine codices. They were Ultramarines, (which has since been replaced by C:SM) Space Wolves, and Angels of Death (Blood Angles and Dark Angels). Obviously, lots of people had these armies so when 3rd edition rolled around GW had to update the rules for all of them so that they would not totally invalidate people's armies. Here is where it gets interesting though. In 3rd edition there were three separate xeno armies added to the game. I believe that it was Dark Eldar, Necrons, and Tau in that order (though technically the Necrons had been introduced in 2nd edition their first actual codex was 3rd edition). In the same amount of time there were two new space marine forces added. The Black Templars were added in Codex: Armageddon and proved to be hugely popular which resulted in them getting their own book. The Grey Knights, who had been around since early 2nd Edition and possibly even during the Rogue Trader days, got the Demon Hunter codex some time later if memory serves. I should point out here that calling the demon hunter book a "space marine" codex seems a bit thin to me but that is an argument for another time. The fact of the matter is that, any which way you look at it, GW has added more alien races than space marine variants since 2nd edition. Most of the space marine stuff is simply an update of old material while the xenos stuff is entirely new. I think it could be argued that, at least in some areas, GW expends far more effort on aliens than it does on space marines.

I don't want to defend GW too much (else I might be burned at the stake) but saying that they put no effort into the xenos is simply not true. If too many people play space marines then it is not simply a matter of screaming "GW gives them too much support!" at the top of your lungs and hoping that makes it true. Actually, if you look at the three primary reasons people play space marines at the front of this, overly long, post you will see that GW does not necessarily bear full responsibility for any of them.

I have played warhammer for 4 years, and have only fought an army that wasn't marines once, they've gotten stale for me.

I actually think most of the problems is the spacey marines just have too many codexes.

BluntmanDC wrote:Just a quick look at sales figures will show its not an 'assumed point', and seeing as most new plays don't go 'holy gak, look how amazing those sisters of battle look' the go 'holy gak, look how amazing those space marines look' its not much of an 'assumed point'.

Gee, I wonder what could cause such a situation. Surely it couldn't be because GW hasn't bothered to replace the metal moulds for their core infantry since the '90s, which are now impossible to buy new anywhere but GW Direct, and at exorbitant prices?

I don't mind playing SMs a lot.

I just assume they aren't special elite troops who are available in small numbers.

I assume that's all propaganda, and SMs are actually the IoM's standard space-borne soldiers, and that's why there are such a lot of them.

Having just started a Tau army I used to be Space Marine only player (DIY chapter fielded as either SM or SW). Space Marines are an interesting army that has A LOT of tactical possibilities. They can assault units that are bad in CC. They can choose to out-shoot the ones that will cream them in hand to hand. They can field many builds from one codex and if you buy models the right way you can play 2 or 3 codexes w/ one army's worth of investment (as opposed to buying a tau army which can only be used to play tau).

Admittedly I've been lucky with the local gaming scene where I'm at. I've gotten to play against almost all of the armies w/ the exception of necrons.

SM are very easy to learn and can be a powerful tool if you are willing to take the time to master them. I would recommend them to any new player. Other armies tend to have glaring weaknesses in certain areas that make it hard for a player to adjust. (Tau for example are under the belief that the assault phase is only for moving battle suits out of charge range.) Mastered, a well tuned SM can bring the right kind of fight to any enemy. The background I've had as a SM player will likely enable me to take my Tau far before earning my first loss (as of this posting I have won my first 5 games with them. All vs varying builds of SM types [1 Bike list, 1 foot list, Termy list, Mech list, and mech/gunline list]).

One poster on dakka once referred to the starter sets as "the set w/ Space Marines and the losing army." As long as we have one sided starter sets like this I don't think things will be likely to change anytime soon.

BluntmanDC wrote:

AlexHolker wrote:I don't mind them being popular. I do mind GW assigning excessive amounts of resources to producing Space Marine codices and kits at the expense of everyone else.

TheRedArmy wrote:I dislike every chapter but the Ultramarines simply because it means GW is saying Space Marines deserve more of their time, money, and effort than other races, which is simply not true. The background and differences in many other races deserve various codicies as much as Space Marines - one for each craftworld, one for each major IG Battalion - Cadians, Catachans, etc. All those races deserve their own codicies as well, but they won't ever get them.

And you forget that it is the space marines that make all the other codex armies possible, space marines are the best marketing tool a company like GW could come up with, they make up a massive percentage of GW revenue.

So you either suck it up and play against space marines or pull you fingers out and actually buy from GW (not ebay like most vets) the models for the other races, if you want more support make your army more value for money for GW.

Hahaha. I said it first and said it better at the top of this very page. Man you guys are predictable.

I must admit I keep looking at getting Blood Angels just because they're the easiest list to win with.

GW just needs to bring models out for races faster and update non-SM codexes faster. The reason people don't really play Xenos races (or lesser human races like SoB and the Inquisition) is because they don't get nearly as much releases per army.