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Just for fun I checked the Medusa V campaign results to find the number of battles reported for each major faction. I've put the results in Discussion because I want to discuss the relative popularity rather than comment on it as news. Faction No. Bats. % of Tot. Space Marines 30,195 26.4% Chaos 20,063 17.5% Imperial Guard 17,300 15.1% Tau 11,534 10.1% Tyranids 9,137 8.0% Eldar 8,461 7.4% Orks 6,990 6.1% Necrons 6,714 5.9% Dark Eldar 3,943 3.4% Total 114,337 Can we assume this is a reasonable estimate of the number of armies in play? (I mean, it might be that SM players are very, very keen compared to Dark Eldar, but I think not...) No surprise that SM are top. (I think but don't know that SM includes Sisters and Grey Knights.) I'm slightly surprised that Eldar and Orks have such a low showing. I considered them part of the bedrock of the 40K universe, but I suppose they are overdue for new books and models.

The order of popularity is in line with some selling number that GW published some time ago. The only thing i am surprised is that SM are not higher in percentage. Maybe it is related to the fact that a battle between SM agains SM was not possible and it kept them from counting some games

Posted By Kilkrazy 08/13/2006 4:55 PM
Faction  / Number of Battles / % of Tot.
Space Marines - 30,195 - 26.4%
Chaos - 20,063 - 17.5%
Imperial Guard - 17,300 - 15.1%
Tau - 11,534 - 10.1%
Tyranids - 9,137 - 8.0%
Eldar - 8,461 - 7.4%
Orks - 6,990 - 6.1%
Necrons - 6,714 - 5.9%
Dark Eldar - 3,943 - 3.4%
Total 114,337

There, I just cleaned up and better organized the data for ya. I don't think these numbers necessarily correlated to the actual poplularity of the armies, as I'm pretty sure Marines should have a much, much higher percentage than exists up there. Also, as others have noticed, with people playing impossible numbers of games every day since the start of the campaign, the data is going to skew incorrectly.

Those numbers seem about right to me. My only suprises are the popularity of Guard and the lower popularity of Eldar.

Darrian

Thanks for cleaning it up, Nyarlathotep667.

I had pasted my text into the Dakka editor, then submitted it and went to bed without checking the effect.

SM no doubt are more popular that shown in these figures since no-one would fight SM vs SM in the context of the Medusa V campaign. The usual estimate is that SMs account for 40-50% of armies. But perhaps the rank order is correct.

I will try to compare the Medusa V figures with some GT results tonight.

Locally we have comparatively few Marine players. We had a mega CoD battle at the FLGS Saturday and IIRC the following armies showed up

Dark Angels (mine)

Guard * 2 (one mine)

Spacewolves

Necrons

CSM * 3

Home-grown Marines with Traits

Dark Eldar

Tau

Orks

25% Marines

25% CSM

17% IG

33% "Other"

This totally unscientific sample is from a small shop in the boondocks, but it does appears to be a good sample of the local 40K community.

I have a few battles posted myself for Medusa V, using my IG. The results claimed by the leaders are just silly. 

@Xnet445, That breakdown of participants is almost the same as the breakdown we had at the LA Battlebunker this Saturday for our Medusa V event. The difference being that we had 20 players and there were a few more Marines in the mix with 2 Tyranids. Space Wolves won ours, who won yours?

Darrian

If you were to take that list order it almost exactly describes this neck of the words with the exception of necrons over the orks. The one red shirt plays necrons and pushes them on every new player he can. It is interesting that MEQ's are about 40% of the totals I would defiantely put it a lot higher then that though, say 65%. Maybe people with multiple armies are just playing their "B" army for the campaign because they figure everybody is doing marines.

Daemonhunters and Witchhunters had to register under another army since their own was not included. The consensus I've seen on the Eot/Medusa boards was that they should register under Marines due to the perceived simularity with their own goals.

Granted, I doubt there's that many of them registered, but it does skew the numbers a little.

Posted By Darrian13 08/14/2006 7:37 AM
@Xnet445, That breakdown of participants is almost the same as the breakdown we had at the LA Battlebunker this Saturday for our Medusa V event. The difference being that we had 20 players and there were a few more Marines in the mix with 2 Tyranids. Space Wolves won ours, who won yours?

Darrian

The Dark Angels were the big winners, but played by a friend of mine, not me. The other MEq armies mostly cancelled each other out, and the Orks were shot off the table several times. My IG did OK, losing the squishy infantry quickly while the armor dealt death and deatruction. Tthe Tau played Hide-n-Seek all day, and the Catachans stopped almost as many bullets as the Orks

Something's very wrong with those numbers. If the Battles number is the number that each side has participated in, then the % involvements should add up to 2.

If Marines have only participated in 26.4% of battles, then, ignoring the fact that Marine vs Marine battles don't happen, only 14% of armies are Marines. Taking it into account, either 15% or 85% of armies are Marines (the quadratic works out both ways, as far as I can tell). None of these numbers seem realistic.

For reference, I'm figuring this by setting up the %participation = 1 - (1-%armyinvolvement)^2 while including army vs army matchups, and as %participation = 1 - (1-%armyinvolvement)^2 - (%armyinvolvement)^2 when excluding them as we ought.