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Ever since they came out 7th edition, my primary army has been AdMech. They're just such a fun army to play, aesthetically look amazing, and most people I've talked to about them are actually quite happy they have become a playable army.

And yet, I almost never see anyone play them.

I'm part of two different FLGS's, each with their own meta and all that. I've gotten to know quite a few of the players in each one (at the very least I recognize most, if not all of them. And played against nearly all of them at least once by now). And in both stores, I'm the only consistent AdMech player. There are one or two others per store that show up occasionally, but they're so rare to see these days that I hardly count them. And not only that, but for most of the guys I play against, I'm the only AdMech player they've ever faced.

In addition, on websites like this one, I don't see a lot mentioned about them either. There have been times I've had to search pretty hard just to find a decent article/blog/whatever on them.

I've just found it a bit odd is all that, for a faction that most people (that I know) seem to be in favor of, AdMech armies are so few and far between.

I'm curious as to your guys' thoughts on this. Is this a community-wide thing, or is this just my local metas coming into effect here?

I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that, as a faction, it's a newer one. The older players are less likely to have invested in it, therefore there's less of it on the second-hand market, therefore people are less likely to see it on the board and get interested in it, so on and so forth.

They look good, but it's never been clear to me what they offer that the other imperial factions dont.

It has been pretty much the same for Harlequins here during 7th, even after Death Masque bargain and also with Genestealer Cults.

I think this boils down to model ranges being so limited. I just started collecting Ad Mech recently (at the moment as Necromunda gang after Shadow War restarted my addicion to this fine game) and I'm already jealous of even Genestealer Cults range of available miniatures (but I admit, that my context is a bit specific at the moment). With Harlequins, you pretty much have everything except for two minis in Death Masque box. Not much room for collecting, not much room for experimenting or customising your army... If only there were some Forge World Mechanicum models ported to plastic GW 40K this faction would be much more appealing to newcomers. From my experience faction popularity is quite directly proportional to number of unique models manufactured - "rainbow marines" have 114 shop entries (not including non-conformant chapters specific units/variants), AdMech has 20, Harlequins 9...

In my experience, everyone and their mother bought some skitarii or admech when they came out, many played warconvo in 7th because of how good it was, but now leave their admech at home because the models break so easily during transport

Probably the lack of models and options. We get 1 generic hq, 1 character, 1 tank, no transports or flyers, and not much access to Mechanicum. I also wouldn't be surprised if the Cult/Skitarii split stunted initial growth.

I'm sure you'll see more as the faction gets fleshed out with forge worlds, more models, etc.

Probably because most admech players are playing it as their second, third, or nineteenth army. I think this is the most important factor, since people tend to talk about and identify with their largest/first/main army more than their fifth.

Yeah, it's rarely going to be someone's main army, unless they are either very new or their previous army wasn't worth buying new models for or playing last edition.

they were my first army since I liked their aesthetic and I kept them because I loved being able to out shoot all of my friends other armies and still take minimal casualties

There are only two people locally who play Admech, one has Admech as his tertiary army (his primary being Knights, secondary being Dark Angels) and the other is a veteran Imperial player who uses a small amount of Admech (along with most of the Imperial sub factions) in his Guard army. I have only met people in tournaments who use a full force of Admech as their primary army.

They do seem to get forgotten about, like how there is a 2 page thread above this one about how to divvy up the Imperium into non-allied keywords and AdMech still hasn't come up. I haven't seen any at my local store, plenty of chaos a few T'au and varying amounts of SM, sprinkles of Eldar and Tyranid.

I ran a Dark Mech army in 7th, waiting for codices to drop before I can set it up again in 8th.

In 7th it was; Cultmech CAD, Skitarri Maniple, Inquisition Detachment (Daemonblade Inquisitor, Daemonhosts), Officio Assassinorum (Eversor) and I was planning to ally in Renegades for a Defiler.

Makes sense, all your guys' answers. I agree the codex split definitely stunted their growth, plus the lack of Mechanicum isn't helping (still bitter about that. Where's my Fires of Cyraxus book, dang it!). As for them not typically being a primary army other than for newer players, I can definitely see that. I feel like I might be a bit of an oddity in that case, since I consider myself a veteran player but they're now my primary.

Just got curious about it is all. Figured I'd ask you guys. Thanks for all the good answers!