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I have no idea in even guessing how many people collect each army so i was wondering if anybody had a rough idea of what armies are the most popular?

Thanks for your time

Vanilla Space Marines. I'm out!

 StarTrotter wrote:
Vanilla Space Marines. I'm out!

Right.
I'd opt for Ultramarines which is one of the most flexible chapters in terms of variety and tactics.

A battle-mech IG army, a GK codex type army, and a codex SM army. all are small except the IG, for an IG army is never finished and just grows

If I look to the players in our area and count each chapter as a separate army: Imperial Guard.

Kangodo wrote:
If I look to the players in our area and count each chapter as a separate army: Imperial Guard.

Eh, I wouldn't really say that's a fair thing to do. It's going to horridly fragment that codex to no end and compare it to entire factions

There are several popular armies. Overall, Vanilla Space Marines are probably the most popular particularly Ultramarines. Past that, IG have a tendency to be popular due to the charm of the regular man mixed with historicals, SW are rather popular, GK seem to be decently popular probably due to how cheap they can be, CSM and BA don't quite hit as high probably but they seem to be top sellers and Nids have frequent codex updates so probably a rather popular army.

As per the least common, which are much more blatant. Dark Eldar, Chaos Daemons, and SoB (significantly less common actually) are the least common armies. The rest vary as time goes by.

Think basic spacemarines, a fairly forgiving first army, not too complex and can be run at all levels from noon to tournament.

+ never get too behind as always updated every edition

Barnzie4Moop wrote:
I have no idea in even guessing how many people collect each army so i was wondering if anybody had a rough idea of what armies are the most popular?

Thanks for your time

No idea. I mean sales would indicate that Space marines are most COMMON. But I dont know if that means thery are most POPULAR per se...

Sisters of battle

A ton of polls conducted over a long time has come to the conclusion these are the most common.

1. Vanilla Space Marines (By a huge margin)
2. Astra Militarum
3. Chaos Space Marines
4. Eldar

Past this point they drop off and start to "level" out. I can't remember any of the rankings of the others. These numbers can fluctuate over time and location. But as a whole this is a "general" trend.

Edit
Think of it like this.

I think a lot of players have had this though process to reach the top 4 played.

1. Oooooo Warhammer 40k. I don`t care I love it. MARINES WOOO.
2. Ugh all the new players ruined marines and super humans. Time to just be a human.
3. I want to play humans, but not be too trendy. So bad guys. Hipsters First Choice.
4. Ah crap too much people playing humans, but I don`t want to play anything weird or bad. Have to stand out a little. Hipsters approved second choice and only approved xenos. Familiar enough but not wholly alien and unknown. Can sometimes be `good`

That`s how I like to imagine it.

Gamgee wrote:
A ton of polls conducted over a long time has come to the conclusion these are the most common.

1. Vanilla Space Marines (By a huge margin)
2. Astra Militarum
3. Chaos Space Marines
4. Eldar

Past this point they drop off and start to "level" out. I can't remember any of the rankings of the others. These numbers can fluctuate over time and location. But as a whole this is a "general" trend.

Edit
Think of it like this.

I think a lot of players have had this though process to reach the top 4 played.

1. Oooooo Warhammer 40k. I don`t care I love it. MARINES WOOO.
2. Ugh all the new players ruined marines and super humans. Time to just be a human.
3. I want to play humans, but not be too trendy. So bad guys. Hipsters First Choice.
4. Ah crap too much people playing humans, but I don`t want to play anything weird or bad. Have to stand out a little. Hipsters approved second choice and only approved xenos. Familiar enough but not wholly alien and unknown. Can sometimes be `good`

That`s how I like to imagine it.

That is pretty much how most people might view it, however. A lot of folks might jump tO the deep end and visit the xenos or chaos faction right from the start. I would say that depends on whether you start up witha lot o folks or not. I know for my 2nd reincarnation into WH40K, I chose IG because we had more than enough MEQ armies for our gaming group.

SYKOJAK wrote:

Gamgee wrote:
A ton of polls conducted over a long time has come to the conclusion these are the most common.

1. Vanilla Space Marines (By a huge margin)
2. Astra Militarum
3. Chaos Space Marines
4. Eldar

Past this point they drop off and start to "level" out. I can't remember any of the rankings of the others. These numbers can fluctuate over time and location. But as a whole this is a "general" trend.

Edit
Think of it like this.

I think a lot of players have had this though process to reach the top 4 played.

1. Oooooo Warhammer 40k. I don`t care I love it. MARINES WOOO.
2. Ugh all the new players ruined marines and super humans. Time to just be a human.
3. I want to play humans, but not be too trendy. So bad guys. Hipsters First Choice.
4. Ah crap too much people playing humans, but I don`t want to play anything weird or bad. Have to stand out a little. Hipsters approved second choice and only approved xenos. Familiar enough but not wholly alien and unknown. Can sometimes be `good`

That`s how I like to imagine it.

That is pretty much how most people might view it, however. A lot of folks might jump tO the deep end and visit the xenos or chaos faction right from the start. I would say that depends on whether you start up witha lot o folks or not. I know for my 2nd reincarnation into WH40K, I chose IG because we had more than enough MEQ armies for our gaming group.

Oh I know. I was tempted back in the day to get into 40k with Necrons... then just as I got interested new crons dumped on us and I lost my enthusiasm. It wasn't until many years later I seen the Riptide and looked at a large amount of cash in my pocket and started a Tau army as of a 1.2 months ago. (Seen the Riptide when it first came out). Although technically I wanted DE but they seem to be pretty out of date. Now there are rumors they are coming in the near future. Oh well. I don't regret going Tau.

If I had to collect only 3 armies.
1. Tau
2. Dark Eldar
3. Orks

If they ever go back on the space Egyptian theme of the Necrons I'll put them in place of Orks.

I don't know, I've found that things are more spread evenly than they were before. Many years ago, yeah, there were a disproportionate number of space marine players, easily.

But then guard got a new codex, and a lot of people either brought out their guard army or switched to it. And then GK came out, and yes, that's a SM army... except when you're playing henchmen. GK were really popular for awhile, and I know some people who switched from a different SM army to GK, and then stuck around for coteaz lists. And not too long after necron came out with 6th ed, and a lot of people went over to necron, and then tau came out... and then eldar came out...

The days of SM hegemony are pretty long gone. I'm definitely more likely to see a xeno or guard army around than vanilla marines.

The Squats

Vanilla marines and it's not even close. Some tournaments have 30-40% vanilla marine players out of what, 12 or 13 different armies? Even people who you see playing other stuff probably have a SM army at home or did at some point in time.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/606224.page

Probably vanilla marines, then we have a guy who always is like: "I have 3,000 points of everything but chaos" and then we have one or two players for just about everything except sisters of battle. I have never seen a sisters of battle player at my flgs.

We have 1 sisters player at my local GW out of like 30 people. He just built an 1850 sisters army though, before he had space marines and something else, think it was one of the eldars.

In my local area its Marines, probably followed by Tau, with the rest being an even sort of mix except for the naturally rarer ones.

Oddly enough however, AM players are extremely rare and I frequently come across people who say they've ever never played AM before or are playing against it for the first time in a long time when I play it.

SYKOJAK wrote:


That is pretty much how most people might view it, however. A lot of folks might jump tO the deep end and visit the xenos or chaos faction right from the start. I would say that depends on whether you start up witha lot o folks or not. I know for my 2nd reincarnation into WH40K, I chose IG because we had more than enough MEQ armies for our gaming group.

Tau were what got me into 40k originally. I love non humans, and they were advanced "civilized" humanoids that still looked alien enough. A buddy of mine started with SM then jumped to Necrons(oldcrons)

Squats

Space Marines.

Chose your color.

Make your time.

Its Marines as far as I know.

after that I bet its AM in 2nd but I dunno what would be after that