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Was Rogue Trader more popular than Fantasy when it came out? Or did interest gradually grow and did 40k take over a bit later?

IIRC (and it's been a while..)

Fantasy was already big when RT dropped if i recall right.

RT was something new, with a similar ruleset, and a lot of Fantasy players bought the RT book, then used their fantasy armies to test it out.

Helps that the models back then were not gruesomely expensive, so getting a 40k army on the side didn't require selling a kidney..

Fantasy was more popular just by virtue of it being out first and out longer. It took a little for 40k to catch on.

Certainly in the UK there were plently of fantasy players before Rogue trader appeared,

but when it did a fair number of them picked it up to try out. The actual game really took of as the models started to appear in larger numbers

When 40k came out, where I lived there was no model shop/Games Workshop in town, just a shop that sold stamps and collectables. It sold RPGs, Figures for RPGs by Grenadier/Ral Partha etc, Micro Armour and 40k stuff - no other wargamings stuff at all. In the club we had in town at the time, all the players were playing historicals or 40k and nobody ever played Fantasy. They didn't even sell the Rogue Trader book and I had to mail order it from Nottingham.

Until GW came to town, the only time i'd ever seen Fantasy was in the White Dwarf Magazine. It was a shame as I always wanted a Brettonian Army, but nobody was interested in playing around here. I always got the impression it was the bigger of the two games, perhaps until the mid/end point of 40k 2nd edition.

I remember Space Hulk being really big, being sold places where 40k and fantasy were not. I wasn't into the main games back then, only their 'side' games which had near equal support. I don't recall 40k and fantasy dominating like they do now though. Fantasy only seems to have waned on the last ten years IMO.

There were only about five GW stores when I was young, there wasn't one in Wales. When we got a gift voucher from one of my dad's friends we had to go to Bristol GW to buy the newly released predator. Because there were so few GW stores most shops carried a wide range of products so I mostly remember shops being full of RPGs, not Warhammer.

 Ascalam wrote:
RT was something new, with a similar ruleset, and a lot of Fantasy players bought the RT book, then used their fantasy armies to test it out.

This. You could use your primitives in 40k. you had volumes (Like the chaos books and siege) that were written for both rulesets.

I wasn't in gaming when RT was actually released, as I started right before 2nd was being released.

That said, I don't recall 40k really being on par with(or possibly surpassing) WHFB until 2nd edition took hold. My assumption is that this is due to WHFB having alot of momentum by virtue of a large miniature range and being in it's third edition when RT was released.

Despite it's flaws, 2nd edition really a much easier way to run larger battles (closer to the size of WHFB engagments but not quite) with a more coherent set of rules and codices.

Anyone remember warhammer siege, good times. Missions at the back of the book that allowed 40k forces to play against fantasy armies.

I look back fondly at RT and the add ons, then realise that a small skirmish game takes as long to play as some 2000+ point battles in the latest editions.

D100 anyone? Roll on the madboyz table?

robertsjf wrote:

 Ascalam wrote:
RT was something new, with a similar ruleset, and a lot of Fantasy players bought the RT book, then used their fantasy armies to test it out.

This. You could use your primitives in 40k. you had volumes (Like the chaos books and siege) that were written for both rulesets.

Ah yes, chaos champions could get plasma pistols as gifts in fantasy...

Yes, I think 40K really took off with 2nd edition when they introduced Codexes and you didn't need to own some obscure back issue of WD to field your army.

 Ascalam wrote:
IIRC (and it's been a while..)

Fantasy was already big when RT dropped if i recall right.

RT was something new, with a similar ruleset, and a lot of Fantasy players bought the RT book, then used their fantasy armies to test it out.

Helps that the models back then were not gruesomely expensive, so getting a 40k army on the side didn't require selling a kidney..

Actually it was more to do with that GW encouraged you to use there or anyone else's minis at the time. Not the crazy only our hobby stuff they are now.

I would say that back in the day, when I started in 1989, WFB was the big thing, but other games were popular too. I would say things broke down roughly like this, in terms of attention;

WFB: 30%
RT: 25%
Epic: 20%
Specialist Games (though they were not called that then): 25% (Blood Bowl, Space Hulk, Dark Future, Advanced Heroquest)

I would say that by 1994, well into 40K 2nd Ed, it was more like:

RT: 40%
WFB: 25%
Epic: 15%
Specialist Games (now including Warhammer Quest, Man 'o War, new Blood Bowl, but not so much Dark Future): 20%

Of course, that is just my impression, based on my circle of friends and GW Maidstone.

When I started getting into warhammer stuff. The only thing played in my shop was 40k this was in like 93ish so second edition. Like posted before I didn't get to see fantasy at all really unless it was in white dwarf.

When i started somewhere in 1989 it was all D&D not much of GW was known where i lived in Holland.

When I started gaming, NOBODY gamed in shops (1986 or so).

GW didn't have a retail arm outside of the UK.

Gaming clubs were mostly Historicals players, with a few WHFB mobs brought in to boost numbers.

40k took a couple of years to show up in these clubs (it was mostly backyard "shed" crowds who only mingled at conventions (if they went to them).

I'd say WFB was bigger than 40k in my area right up until 40k 3rd edition came out.

 ExNoctemNacimur wrote:
Was Rogue Trader more popular than Fantasy when it came out? Or did interest gradually grow and did 40k take over a bit later?

40k was instantly popular when it was released. I struggle to remember 25 years on but the closest to a major scifi wargame with similar production values was Battletech. There were some other scifi lines about but not many and only at well stocked games shops.

There were other rulesets kicking about like Laserburn (actually a 40k predecessor) but it was all very much small run black and white print type books with little or no illustration. I think 40k changed that insofar as it (to me) was the first full package colour scifi wargame, on the fantasy side it was more common with whfb already in its 3rd edition and various RGGs. From memory all the miniatures shown in it were GW figures with the exception of the vehicles and buildings which were scratch built including the now famous landraider. All in all a great package but for the hefty sum (at the time) of £15.

And that is where I do disagree to the generally given PoV in that wargaming wasn't cheap. I was about 10 when it was released and wasn't getting more than 50p to a pound per week in pocket money. My initial forays in to wargaming were limited to fantasy dwarfs and Psycostyrene Orcs as the were conveniently 50p per blister in spite of my preference for 40k marine (60p each or £2.50 for 5 but who could wait 5 weeks to save up!), but this was as true for WHFB as it was for 40k.

What WHFB had was an establish fan base who soon at the very least dabbled with 40k plus the many people calling out for a good scifi game, meaning it took off quickly then eventually over took WHFB. I think the existence of the many white dwarf articles and army lists showed GWs response to the popularity it generated. True there were many models made prior to 40ks release (they were in the rulebook!) but not on sale for some time afterwards but GW quickly started making more new lines to meet demand (Landraiders, rhinos and terminators for example).

Sorry for the brain dump, I'm at my daughters ballet lesson and I really have nothing else to do!

I am one of the oldest members of the site.

I remember the first edition of Fantasy when I was at university in 1980-82. 40K was not released until I think 1987, though GW were producing Space Marine figures earlier than that.

At about that time, the price of a 25mm infantry figure was typically 25p for a GW model, 20p for other companies. However the GW models were more individual and detailed, being for RPG and skirmish.

The first plastic Space Marines and Imperial Army were £10 for a box of 30.

As for overall expense, a typical historical mass battle wargame required an army of perhaps 100 to 300 models. An average army say the equivalent of 200 figures counting cavalry as double price -- would have cost £40 in 25mm. Naturally it would be cheaper in 15mm which was and is a popular scale for many periods.

The other thing as notprop noted is that GW brought professional RPG production values to wargames rules. The typical rulebooks of the time were A5, black and white paperbacks, with limited illustrations, amateurishly typeset on typewriters. On the plus side the price reflected it. WRG Ancients 5th edition, (1976) cost £1.50.

A lot of it depended on where you lived at the time.

I know that the stores which were around me during the late 1980s and early 1990s didn't even get Rogue Trader in when it first was released and didn't really carry any Citadel Miniatures for that matter other than some of the "Ral Partha Imports" which were Citadel figures produced by Ral Partha under a mutual agreement (Citadel produced some Ral Partha figures as well).

Most of the science fiction games of the period were counter based. As opposed to using miniatures - you had a variety of little card board chits which were in the back of a book or came as part of a boxed set. In particular, GDW had a half dozen or so which won the various Origin Awards for wargames and miniature games. The companies also tended to go ahead and rely on third party production of miniatures - which lead to sporadic line development (or false starts as was the case in the original Space Marines game which had a supplier for miniatures who went out of business before they went into production).

Around the same time that RT was released though, you also had games like Battletech come into full production, new offerings like Star Wars Miniature Battles from WEG, Armored Assault from ICE, Heavy Gear from DP9 and Dirtside from GZG. Add into that the existing offerings and it was pretty tight for a game like RT to get ground in many US markets.

It wasn't really until after GW went corporate that they pushed hard into the US and started showing up in normal supply chains - 1992/93 time period. They ran advertisements in magazines like Dragon and you could find them in "big" game stores who could afford to order direct - but it wasn't very popular compared to other games (though neither was WHFB in the US) until then.

I remember being introduced to 40k just as I started secondary school, at the end of RT. It was still pretty obscure, not many schoolfriends were into it, and it fell very much into the RPG crowd.

It was the release of 2ed a few months later that boosted it's popularity around me - the boxed set and more 'toy' feel made it much more popular with a broader section of kids - not just the ones who played RPGs.

Most of my secondary school years were spent with a pretty big group of 2ed 40k and 4ed Fantasy players.