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There's also another roll-on effect I've come to lovingly label 'Grey Plastic Marine Effect'. A space marine is a space marine is a space marine. The models and options are so ridiculously interchangeable that there is no functional difference between the armies outside of color and a few special characters. As long as you completely avoid painting your guys (or for even more cheese paint a home brew 'chapter') and proxy out a few special characters your codex will get updated at least once a year on a bad year because your codex will be whatever the latest overpowered flavor of the month is.

With that in mind there are two major camps of people that play marines, the new guy to the hobby that was roped in by GW's ridiculously biased advertising and the people that never want to commit to anything other than the latest and greatest cheese. Anything not-marine does not get either of those luxuries. Neither the constant press exposure nor the constant updating including FAQs to update their wargear if their actual codex has gone too long without being beefed up.

Of course they are wicked popular. With one army, you have 5 codex'es at your disposal (counts as C:SM, SW, BA, DA, BT) Their also GWs poster child, and many of the rules really benefit them.

Of course, there is something cool to be said about those players who don't play the SM. I'm the kind of guy that likes to break from the pack when it comes to making something cool, and many people are like that too.

To be honest I don't think there are too many SM players I just think there are too many people playing the same damn lists. Either Vuklan melta spam, SW missile spam or BA general cheesiness (or if you're in my area hordes of Templars, seriously there's 5 of us who play BT at my LGS).

What's needed is variety I suspect many people wouldn't mind seeing so many marine armies if they were all completely different.

Now whilst I do have 3 marine armies (BT, Thousand Sons, GK) I'm also more than willing to play other races. It's just that I don't have the cash at the moment to start yet another army.For example I'd love to do an Eldar army with loads of different aspects or a lot of Wraithguard in it but the cost of the metal models puts me off.