why is 40k a more popular game than fantasy?

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**Kain**

Lobukia wrote:
I love the OP:

"Not starting an argument" ...argues more than anyone in the thread.

"No stereotypes".... Gives us shallow stereotypes.

"40k isn't tactical enough" .... Likes 5th ed better than 6th

"I like rich settings"....prefers DnD Birthright-like copy cat to 40k setting

"I hate marching up and just shooting and then charging".... Likes WHFB better than 40k

"I'm all about fluff and complex tactics"... Cites BoLS

If it's trolling, it's a troll folks, don't feed it.

I've long been desensitized to hypocrisy on the internet I'm afraid.

**Co'tor Shas**

sand.zzz wrote:
Orblivion wrote:
changerofways wrote:
WayneTheGame wrote:
Couple things:

1) I think it's mostly in North America that 40k is more popular; I think I recall reading that Fantasy was more popular in Europe, which might be due to that area's longstanding historical miniatures history.

2) Fantasy isn't quite as exciting, and is bland by comparison because fantasy tropes have been done to death by various sources, and a lot of WHFB is cliche or stereotypes anyways (german humans, french humans, stereotypical drunk dwarfs). On the other hand 40k gives you a lot more customization - for example if you have an Empire army in WHFB, there's a set number of provinces, so it's that or go with a mercenary/Border Prince army; compare that to 40k where you can make your own SM Chapter or IG Regiment or Craftworld or whatever and can do almost literally everything from scratch.

this. I think its because the 40k is a unique, sci-fy, gothic horror universe that is incredibly unique. The amount of people in the world who recognize the term space marines is huge, and the amount of people who know about the fantasy counterpart is small because 40k is so unique and has defined so many other lores like starcraft and star wars

40k didn't define star wars in any way, shape, or form. Unless George Lucas could see the future.

George Lucas didn't create Star Wars. He created movies from the books.

Ummm, how about no. George Lucas did create star wars.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars

**aapch45**

Kain wrote:
Lobukia wrote:
I love the OP:

"Not starting an argument" ...argues more than anyone in the thread.

"No stereotypes".... Gives us shallow stereotypes.

"40k isn't tactical enough" .... Likes 5th ed better than 6th

"I like rich settings"....prefers DnD Birthright-like copy cat to 40k setting

"I hate marching up and just shooting and then charging".... Likes WHFB better than 40k

"I'm all about fluff and complex tactics"... Cites BoLS

If it's trolling, it's a troll folks, don't feed it.

I've long been desensitized to hypocrisy on the internet I'm afraid.

What the hell just happened?
Since when am I a troll? I never quoted BOLS... I made a reference that everyone uses BOLS as their tactic hub.... I do enjoy rich settings?
I do prefer 5th ed to 6th ed... less gak and better vehicle rules..

Automatically Appended Next Post:
I did give shallow stereotypes, to prevent them from popping up in this thread.
I was legitimately curious as to why 40k is more popular, because I see fantasy as the superior game.

**Jancoran**

Fantasy probably WAS...past tense...superior in a lot of ways from a tacticians point of view.

It WAS, probably.

Now the forces look...so...similar. Can you deny this is the case? I can walk into a tourney tomorrow (if anyone shows up) and expect to see exactly what I EXPECTED to see.

I will not give in to TOO much hyperbole here, but can't we all agree that the "meta" of Fantasy has become stale and...well predictable. I know what you're going to use CLOSE ENOUGH that I dont hjave to expend much in the way of planning my counters to any of it.

**Antario**

I think 40k benefits from the smaller units and easier to paint models. I find painting a 2500p WFB army with 100+ humanoid faces a daunting task. The large infantry blocks popular in this edition don't help in that regard. It may discourage new players.

I don't believe it has much to do with the difference in popularity between scifi and fantasy genres. Fantasy seems more popular than ever and 40K owes as much to fantasy as it does to scifi. WFB still has to deal with living in the shadow of Tolkien making the fluff less unique. Space Marines are another advantage for 40k, providing new players with recognizable and identifiable characters as an easy entry point into the setting. There is no real equivalent in WFB.

**BrotherVord**

The 40k Universe is exponentially more developed than the fantasy one. That and the grimdark setting works much better for the models themselves. Warhammer Fantasy is supposed to be grimdark in its own right but many of the models come off as cartooney without intending to. Yes, I realize that if you really look at a space marine it's ridiculous, especially chaos space marines...but something about a majority of the fantasy models just puts me off.

Mostly though, I think it's because 40k is flashier and they have developed the lore much, much more.

**ashcroft**

The irony is that if you look at the WHFB forum the players appear to be mostly happy with the state of the game as it is. I think it can safely be said that that's not the case with 40K players.

40K, as a game, is suffering from its own success, with GW pushing out more and more releases with the sole intent of selling something - anything - and little thought to how it will all hold together.

**-DE-**

That's because 8th culled the fantasy fanbase, and the only folks left are diehard fans. It's a niche game nowadays, unlike 40K.

**Fenrir Kitsune**

-DE- wrote:
That's because 8th culled the fantasy fanbase, and the only folks left are diehard fans. It's a niche game nowadays, unlike 40K.

Just about to say something similar

ashcroft wrote:
The irony is that if you look at the WHFB forum the remaining players appear to be mostly happy with the state of the game as it is. I think it can safely be said that that's not the case with 40K players..

Many people stopped playing fantasy, but the people who still play enjoy it. Mounds n circles, really.

**ashcroft**

-DE- wrote:
That's because 8th culled the fantasy fanbase, and the only folks left are diehard fans. It's a niche game nowadays, unlike 40K.

Ah, I didn't know that. My last involvement with WHFB was around when Brettonians and Lizardmen were in the starter set.

So what went wrong? From a brief browse all I've seen is that 7th was dominated by a few cheesy armies (hmm, this sounds familiar) and that 8th introduced some new horde rule which was simply a push to buy more models.

Makes me wonder if the best argument against a 7th edition of 40K is that if it doesn't fix the current issues it will, in turn, cull the 40K fanbase.

**Jancoran**

We are a ghost town here as far as fantasy goes and it was a very very sudden dropoff from about 16 players to 0. None play now. Its a shocking thing to see.

**GuardStrider**

The meta in my LGS is really WHFB focused, I was collecting an IG army for a while and when I started frequenting this store I realized everyone was playing/starting to play WHFB and there were barely an 40k players, so I had to get an IoB box to play.

**Purifier**

ashcroft wrote:
-DE- wrote:
That's because 8th culled the fantasy fanbase, and the only folks left are diehard fans. It's a niche game nowadays, unlike 40K.
Ah, I didn't know that. My last involvement with WHFB was around when Brettonians and Lizardmen were in the starter set.

So what went wrong? From a brief browse all I've seen is that 7th was dominated by a few cheesy armies (hmm, this sounds familiar) and that 8th introduced some new horde rule which was simply a push to buy more models.

Makes me wonder if the best argument against a 7th edition of 40K is that if it doesn't fix the current issues it will, in turn, cull the 40K fanbase.

dakka is quite representative of the community world wide, I think. You can see that the WHFB forums have many times less posts. Being a person that frequents them, the most common topic is "I'm a 40k player that wants to try WHFB, what army should I take?"
I also don't think it's true that 8th culled. I think it brought back as much as it culled. I'd love to see the dakka Gods draw up statistics on the amount of posts on the WHFB forum in the past year as opposed to the amount of posts in the last year of 7th to actually get some type of statistics on what people are interested in.

**Skinnereal**

Jancoran wrote:
We are a ghost town here as far as fantasy goes and it was a very very sudden dropoff from about 16 players to 0. None play now. Its a shocking thing to see.

It's the opposite at my club.
Hardly anyone brought their square-bases, until the end of last year, and people who'd given up on 40k dug them all back out again.
Of the 4 games on 2 weeks ago, 3 were Fantasy. The other was Dreadball.
Last week, we're up to 2 40k and 2 fantasy and 1 of Deadzone, though.

**AllSeeingSkink**

Purifier wrote:
dakka is quite representative of the community world wide, I think. You can see that the WHFB forums have many times less posts. Being a person that frequents them, the most common topic is "I'm a 40k player that wants to try WHFB, what army should I take?"
I also don't think it's true that 8th culled. I think it brought back as much as it culled. I'd love to see the dakka Gods draw up statistics on the amount of posts on the WHFB forum in the past year as opposed to the amount of posts in the last year of 7th to actually get some type of statistics on what people are interested in.

Isn't Dakka a 40k orientated board more than anything? I'm not an ancient member, but back when I was primarily playing FB rather than 40k I didn't frequent Dakka at all, usually just frequented the forums for the specific armies I collected. If there's no a lot of people chatting about WHFB then you'll tend to not attract a lot of the WHFB players. I DO collect WHFB, I have more WHFB armies than I have 40k armies, and I still rarely ever check the WHFB section of this site.

**Purifier**

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Purifier wrote:
dakka is quite representative of the community world wide, I think. You can see that the WHFB forums have many times less posts. Being a person that frequents them, the most common topic is "I'm a 40k player that wants to try WHFB, what army should I take?"
I also don't think it's true that 8th culled. I think it brought back as much as it culled. I'd love to see the dakka Gods draw up statistics on the amount of posts on the WHFB forum in the past year as opposed to the amount of posts in the last year of 7th to actually get some type of statistics on what people are interested in.
Isn't Dakka a 40k orientated board more than anything? I'm not an ancient member, but back when I was primarily playing FB rather than 40k I didn't frequent Dakka at all, usually just frequented the forums for the specific armies I collected. If there's no a lot of people chatting about WHFB then you'll tend to not attract a lot of the WHFB players. I DO collect WHFB, I have more WHFB armies than I have 40k armies, and I still rarely ever check the WHFB section of this site.

That's certainly not untrue. Something you see more in WHFB is that each army has its own community. I think WHFB caters more to a race loyalty than 40k does, which would explain it. I still think dakka is generally the defacto all-around forum.

**viewfinder**

simple. it's checkers compared to chess.

**Njal Stormpuppy**

It all comes down to setting

**bubble**

Two words- Space Marines

xxx