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When people say most competitive, it means the game with the most competition. That doesn't mean the most popular game, it means the game with the most competitive tournament circuit. You may genuinely think that's X-Wing, and this is because you have an incredible talent for rejecting facts that conflict with your preconceived notions. However, Your subjective opinion on which game has the best ruleset is in fact NOT a measure of how competitive that game is. THAT is what any sane person would call a flawed measure.

There's plenty of games with more popularity but lower competition. 40k is simply both more popular and more competitive at once than other TT games right now, and it's you that has made the unfortunate mistake of conflating the two.


Not that it has ANY bearing on the argument at all anyway. You're wrong about what competition means, but feel free to replace the sentence with "most popular game" "most played game" "most successful game" "the game they think has the coolest lore behind it" "the game their friends play" "the game with the most tournaments", or any of the other countless reasons that people who don't give a jack about painting painting, may have chosen to play 40k. The point still stands either way, so let's not argue semantics any further because you're unmistakably wrong about those too.

I alwasy thought that most competitive ment something like hardest to do, because of personal risk, you know like in sports there is no more competitive fighting sport right now then MMA, otherwise the most competitive sport would be something like football, which is played everywhere around the world save for the US.

 Peregrine wrote:
And fine, it's subjective opinion that playing 40k with unpainted models is wrong. It's subjective opinion that eating rotting food full of maggots is disgusting (and in fact maggot cheese is considered a delicacy by some people). You can say "BUT THATS SUBJECTIVE" all you want, but I'm still going to question the sanity of anyone who would willingly do either of those things.

Haha. The thing is, in this hilariously unwitting metaphor - you're the guy eating the maggots lol. You picked something that the majority of people will identify with as disgusting and the contrary action of not eating maggots being Easily identifiable as rational and normal. However the equivalent of that in relation to our context, would be the fact that an overwhelming majority of people are capable of understanding the fun to be had in playing 40k without painting them, even those of us (like myself) who would rather that people painted them almost unanimously seem to understand the fun in just playing 40k with friends or whatever with an unpainted army, even if its not for us personally. You on the other hand, are sitting out here on the curb yelling at people at the amusement park that what they are doing isn't actually fun, and that you're the one who has gotten it right, all with mouthful of rotten grubs spilling out of your lips.

Building>Gaming>Painting>Collecting. If I should show it perceptually, it would be 26% Building, 25% Gaming, 25% Painting, 24% Collecting.

Primarily a painter and building comes in second, especially as I now have enough bits to sink a battleship and make my miniatures unique.

Fluff and gaming come in joint third and collecting is a side effect of the hobby for me.

I woudl say with building some of us enjoy a subset or maybe even entirley different aspect, that of magnetizing. we work out layouts to magnetize weapons options and try to make everything lien up as close as possible trying to make them so seamless you cannot even tell models are megnetized until you people see them moved.

Karol wrote:
I alwasy thought that most competitive ment something like hardest to do, because of personal risk, you know like in sports there is no more competitive fighting sport right now then MMA, otherwise the most competitive sport would be something like football, which is played everywhere around the world save for the US.

Hardest to win goes hand in hand with it, which is definitely 40k right now, there is just so much competition out there

If it's the one that you risk the most than that's probably also 40k lol you putting down a lot more investment on the table playing that game than any other one. Especially in poland by the sounds of your fairytales.

I suppose football (soccer) is more competitive than MMA in that there are far more participants and as such many incredibly skilled players will never make it to a pro team let alone the top level of pro teams.

Of course 'competitive' can have very different meanings and are context reliant.

As such peregrine is not wrong in thinking that competitive is a game that encourages the type of competition that a tabletop wargame should (tactics, strategy etc. over chance or 'pay to win') and others are not wrong in thinking competitive is having a lot of people to compete with.

I love having a collection

I like playing

Painting is alright

I HATE building models (although I do like the occasional conversion)

Dai wrote:
I suppose football (soccer) is more competitive than MMA in that there are far more participants and as such many incredibly skilled players will never make it to a pro team let alone the top level of pro teams.

Of course 'competitive' can have very different meanings and are context reliant.

As such peregrine is not wrong in thinking that competitive is a game that encourages the type of competition that a tabletop wargame should (tactics, strategy etc. over chance or 'pay to win') and others are not wrong in thinking competitive is having a lot of people to compete with.

Yeah, it's a broad term, which is why he's entirely wrong in calling my usage of it a "flawed measure" of competitiveness

Apparently a game with a million tournaments is the most competitive ever. Who cares if they're all , there's a million of them! Quantity over quality!

 Peregrine wrote:
Apparently a game with a million tournaments is the most competitive ever. Who cares if they're all , there's a million of them! Quantity over quality!

Quantity is a quality on its own. One game can be the bestest game ever that if you are gonna compete with just 15 people it will be much less competitive than a game were to be at the top you have to beat 10.000 people.

(Of course assuming theres a minimun of human skill involved in both of those competitions)

Collecting...........20%...........[ 74 ]
Building...........26%...........[ 94 ]
Painting...........24%...........[ 88 ]
Gaming...........30%...........[ 108 ]
Total Votes : 364

Update on the current percentages.

Unsurprisingly (at least to me), Collecting is the lowest.
A little bit surprising to me is that Painting is the second lowest. Given some of the attitudes I've seen here, I expected that to be larger.

As much as I'd like to misinterpret other people's points about what "competitive" means...

I'd say at the moment my primary enjoyment of this hobby comes from the painting side of things. I definitely used to prefer building, and would still class that as one of my favourite things to do, especially if I've got a fun conversion to work on, but for the most part, since getting back into the hobby it's been the painting (even of unaltered, monopose kits) that I've had the most fun with.

As a result of building and painting more and more models, I naturally increase my collection, but even though my pile of grey, unbuilt models would argue with you, I don't tend to buy things without the intention of getting them at least Battle Ready (TM). Now, when I'm building and painting things in my collection, I also usually favour doing so with an eye towards playing them in a game. Even with conversions I will always have a "counts as" in mind to fit into the rules, and whilst I don't paint strictly to official colour schemes, sometimes even downright contrary to them, I paint units that will fit into my armies, and characters that will stand out, but still be recognisably part of the same force. I've only really played Kill Team in the last year, and even then only a couple of times, but I build, and paint the models I collect to fit into the rules as best I can.

The fluff aspect of things is worthwhile giving it's own separate category as part of the hobby, as people do just read the books, or play the video games. I went a few years where my only interaction with the Warhammer universe was playing Dawn Of War videogames. BUT, I'd also say there's a little part of it where folks are more into the crunch, as it were. I rarely play, but you better believe I've read the datasheets in my Blood Angels Codex all at least 10 times more than I have the background pages for each unit. The ratio will definitely be less for some of the other armies I have that I've not collected for 20 years, but still reckon I read more about the rules for units, figure out how they'll work in conjunction with each other, and what tactics and relics, etc I'd like to use with them, than I do reading about the dozen different ways to say "he's a dude. he has a gun, he shoots that gun. he does do himself a war some times. ".

Collecting - great fun! If I had the money and time I'd collect VAST armies!

Building - great fun! Love seeing a model come together. The only drag is cleaning off the mould lines - that is not fun.....

Painting - is not fun for me yet. I still have to learn and practice to get to a point I'm happy with. So for me its not enjoyable, but only because of my own lack of skill. The other no-fun part to me is when I have to part assemble a model so that I can paint hard to reach/impossible to reach areas. I'd far rather just build it all in one go. But that's a willing sacrifice .

Gaming - great fun with the right people! It also gives a focus to collecting I find and doubles back around to reinforce the rest. Esp when you can do some fun stuff or just insane stuff or creative stuff with the game. Sieges and such.


I also find my "favourite" aspect shifts around. Right now I'm very much in a collect/build phase whilst I'm aiming to steadily push myself toward a painting and gaming phase.

 JNAProductions wrote:
Collecting...........20%...........[ 74 ]
Building...........26%...........[ 94 ]
Painting...........24%...........[ 88 ]
Gaming...........30%...........[ 108 ]
Total Votes : 364

Update on the current percentages.

Unsurprisingly (at least to me), Collecting is the lowest.
A little bit surprising to me is that Painting is the second lowest. Given some of the attitudes I've seen here, I expected that to be larger.

I'd be surprised if many people see the distinction between Building and Painting and I wouldn't be surprised if people didn't actually think Collecting was part of the hobby at all, except purely as a means to an end. The whole premise of the poll seems a little odd to me and while I accept that people will sit at different points on the multidimensional gaming/painting/fluff aspects of the hobby the vast majority of people I've met view the gaming, collecting and painting sides as part of the same thing. Sure, some don't much like painting but they'll still see it as part of the hobby.

Slipspace wrote:
I'd be surprised if many people see the distinction between Building and Painting and I wouldn't be surprised if people didn't actually think Collecting was part of the hobby at all, except purely as a means to an end. The whole premise of the poll seems a little odd to me and while I accept that people will sit at different points on the multidimensional gaming/painting/fluff aspects of the hobby the vast majority of people I've met view the gaming, collecting and painting sides as part of the same thing. Sure, some don't much like painting but they'll still see it as part of the hobby.

Well, the poll isn't about "What do you think is actually PART of the hobby" it's "What are your favorite parts of the hobby?"

Even as someone who doesn't enjoy painting much, I definitely get that for a lot of people, that's the main appeal. I mean, my local GW manager is not just an avid painter, he's a Golden Daemon winner painter. That's dedication right there.

I used to attend 4-5 GT's or "hotel stay" events a year and spend hours on Vassal years ago. Now I play 1-2 games a month that are not RPG related. I evolved into the hobby and collecting side of it as I reached my later 20s.

I paint 15-20+ hours a week and work on hobby stuff. I tend to pick up a few kits a month as well.

Playing with unpainted models gives me a dirty feeling and I hate that back and forth argument that is common on Dakka. One of the primary reasons of quitting Warmachine was the lack of a painting requirement.

 JNAProductions wrote:

Slipspace wrote:
I'd be surprised if many people see the distinction between Building and Painting and I wouldn't be surprised if people didn't actually think Collecting was part of the hobby at all, except purely as a means to an end. The whole premise of the poll seems a little odd to me and while I accept that people will sit at different points on the multidimensional gaming/painting/fluff aspects of the hobby the vast majority of people I've met view the gaming, collecting and painting sides as part of the same thing. Sure, some don't much like painting but they'll still see it as part of the hobby.

Well, the poll isn't about "What do you think is actually PART of the hobby" it's "What are your favorite parts of the hobby?"

The poll is literally "Which Of The Four Hobbies Are You Interested In?" That doesn't say anything about favourite. I hate building models with a passion but I'm still interested in at insofar as it allows me to paint and then play with those models. As with most polls, the way the question is phrased has a big bearing on the answers so I'm not sure you can rally draw too many conclusions from this poll.

Slipspace wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:

Slipspace wrote:
I'd be surprised if many people see the distinction between Building and Painting and I wouldn't be surprised if people didn't actually think Collecting was part of the hobby at all, except purely as a means to an end. The whole premise of the poll seems a little odd to me and while I accept that people will sit at different points on the multidimensional gaming/painting/fluff aspects of the hobby the vast majority of people I've met view the gaming, collecting and painting sides as part of the same thing. Sure, some don't much like painting but they'll still see it as part of the hobby.

Well, the poll isn't about "What do you think is actually PART of the hobby" it's "What are your favorite parts of the hobby?"

The poll is literally "Which Of The Four Hobbies Are You Interested In?" That doesn't say anything about favourite. I hate building models with a passion but I'm still interested in at insofar as it allows me to paint and then play with those models. As with most polls, the way the question is phrased has a big bearing on the answers so I'm not sure you can rally draw too many conclusions from this poll.

Fair. But it's not like this is going into a science article or anything.

I'd hope that it's at least accurate enough for discussion, at least.

Definitely still worthy of discussion, just with the usual caveats of not reading too much into things. Painting being low may be because some people haven't ticked that box because, even if they do it, they don't particularly enjoy it, while they see Building as being required in order to use their models, therefore important.

 Galas wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
Apparently a game with a million tournaments is the most competitive ever. Who cares if they're all , there's a million of them! Quantity over quality!

Quantity is a quality on its own. One game can be the bestest game ever that if you are gonna compete with just 15 people it will be much less competitive than a game were to be at the top you have to beat 10.000 people.

(Of course assuming theres a minimun of human skill involved in both of those competitions)

Yes, a game does have a minimum player threshold before it can be considered competitive. But a game where you have to beat 1,000 people can be more competitive than one where you have to beat 10,000 people if the quality of competition in those 1,000 games is higher. And that's what you get with 40k. The quality of competition is low and the key to beating the majority of 40k players is simply making the commitment to buy and play the most powerful list in the meta instead of your "fun" list. Even the TOs for major competitive events will openly admit that most of the people attending their event aren't there to make a serious attempt at winning and just want a convenient way to get 4-5 games in a weekend. Same thing with the tons of 10-person local store tournaments that 40k has, where one player cares about competition enough to bring the strongest list and is virtually guaranteed to win. And then you get the tournaments where sportsmanship/painting/comp scoring/etc take the emphasis away from the on-table competition and often award the top prizes to players who didn't compete most successfully. All of that inflates the total quantity of "competitive" 40k play but the quality is still dismal.

Now contrast that with a game like X-Wing, where the level of competition in an individual game is higher because the strategic depth of the game is much better and there are plenty of major tournaments where the majority of players are showing up to make their best effort at winning. X-Wing's quantity of competitive games may not be as inflated by the vast amount of low-tier competition that 40k has, but it's a superior competitive game overall.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Galas wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
Apparently a game with a million tournaments is the most competitive ever. Who cares if they're all , there's a million of them! Quantity over quality!

Quantity is a quality on its own. One game can be the bestest game ever that if you are gonna compete with just 15 people it will be much less competitive than a game were to be at the top you have to beat 10.000 people.

(Of course assuming theres a minimun of human skill involved in both of those competitions)

Yes, a game does have a minimum player threshold before it can be considered competitive. But a game where you have to beat 1,000 people can be more competitive than one where you have to beat 10,000 people if the quality of competition in those 1,000 games is higher. And that's what you get with 40k. The quality of competition is low and the key to beating the majority of 40k players is simply making the commitment to buy and play the most powerful list in the meta instead of your "fun" list. Even the TOs for major competitive events will openly admit that most of the people attending their event aren't there to make a serious attempt at winning and just want a convenient way to get 4-5 games in a weekend. Same thing with the tons of 10-person local store tournaments that 40k has, where one player cares about competition enough to bring the strongest list and is virtually guaranteed to win. And then you get the tournaments where sportsmanship/painting/comp scoring/etc take the emphasis away from the on-table competition and often award the top prizes to players who didn't compete most successfully. All of that inflates the total quantity of "competitive" 40k play but the quality is still dismal.

Now contrast that with a game like X-Wing, where the level of competition in an individual game is higher because the strategic depth of the game is much better and there are plenty of major tournaments where the majority of players are showing up to make their best effort at winning. X-Wing's quantity of competitive games may not be as inflated by the vast amount of low-tier competition that 40k has, but it's a superior competitive game overall.

Thats just bull. By that logic you'd always see the same list winning every single tourney every single time which just isint true. If you look at top 15 of each major tourney they will all be diffetent. For gods sake a GK army won a GT not that long ago. Its anecdotal sure but you trying to say nobody in that tourney brought what would be considered a top tier 'meta' list? 40k is not perfect obviously and list building is important for sure. It punishes you for poor tactical choices at a competative stage. It's by far the best for me personnaly. If you like x-wing go play x-wing. I dont know why you contintualy gak on everything and anything, and always look for an argument about every single bloody thing. If you're that bitter about 40k you'd do yourself a favour and drop it and not care about it? Youd be doing the people who like the game and tend look for positive a favour too. I imagine so many new hobbyist look at dakka posts and get reppeled by the hate and bile that flows freely on all the threads getting hijacked by a couple of individusls.

 Galas wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
I feel like threads like this exist primarily to make the people who refuse to paint their models feel better about their decision by separating out the painting into its own separate hobby that they can opt out of. In reality painting is inherently part of the gaming hobby, as it's the reason to pay thousands of dollars for miniatures instead of playing a game with $20 worth of cardboard tokens. You can in theory participate without painting, but one has to ask why you are doing such an absurd thing.

Oh no, I paint my models (Or buy less models and pay people to paint them for me), and I absolutely thinks having painted models on the table makes the experience 100 times better.

Is just that I hate it with the burning passion of a thousand stars.

For me is like security checks on an Airport. Something horrible but neccesary for having a experience that I enjoy (Traveling)

I hope for your sake these new contrast paints turn out to be the god send to lazy painters they're being advertised as then

Gaming 100% (the other three are just side effects) also dont really give two hoots about any given fluff as most of it is Saturday Morning Cartoons or that thing from history but on the Moon, Underwater or whatever at best

 Peregrine wrote:

 Galas wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
Apparently a game with a million tournaments is the most competitive ever. Who cares if they're all , there's a million of them! Quantity over quality!

Quantity is a quality on its own. One game can be the bestest game ever that if you are gonna compete with just 15 people it will be much less competitive than a game were to be at the top you have to beat 10.000 people.

(Of course assuming theres a minimun of human skill involved in both of those competitions)

Yes, a game does have a minimum player threshold before it can be considered competitive. But a game where you have to beat 1,000 people can be more competitive than one where you have to beat 10,000 people if the quality of competition in those 1,000 games is higher. And that's what you get with 40k. The quality of competition is low and the key to beating the majority of 40k players is simply making the commitment to buy and play the most powerful list in the meta instead of your "fun" list. Even the TOs for major competitive events will openly admit that most of the people attending their event aren't there to make a serious attempt at winning and just want a convenient way to get 4-5 games in a weekend. Same thing with the tons of 10-person local store tournaments that 40k has, where one player cares about competition enough to bring the strongest list and is virtually guaranteed to win. And then you get the tournaments where sportsmanship/painting/comp scoring/etc take the emphasis away from the on-table competition and often award the top prizes to players who didn't compete most successfully. All of that inflates the total quantity of "competitive" 40k play but the quality is still dismal.

Now contrast that with a game like X-Wing, where the level of competition in an individual game is higher because the strategic depth of the game is much better and there are plenty of major tournaments where the majority of players are showing up to make their best effort at winning. X-Wing's quantity of competitive games may not be as inflated by the vast amount of low-tier competition that 40k has, but it's a superior competitive game overall.

This has to be satire. I play both games and you are flat out wrong. All the top players in X-Wing would be lucky have a single one to crack top 8 in a stacked 40k event. Both games have low level competitors, have you even actually been to an XWing tournament? I know you don't for 40k, so let me fill you in - there are utter scrubs at every single one, and the top-end competition is WAY higher in 40k, you have legitimate professional players who play this game for a living, XWing is great but it simply. cannot. match that. Even in the XWing community we commonly point to the 40k scene for the sort of competitive scene we hope to build towards and what's possible for tabletop gaming. I'm going to hazard a guess here - you don't actually attend events for this game either do you, just like 40k? Do you genuinely think the ruleset means it heightens the maximum possible IQ of the players lol? Nick Nanavati is a goddamn machine and literally does nothing but play 40k and coach other, and he's just a single player. I'm an XWing player, I guess that makes me double-smaht? You think dont play 40k, you don't understand the strategy behind it, and make evident with every post how thin you actual grasp on broad tabletop mechanics actually is, like this post here https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/300/775499.page#10468238. You are not qualified at all to speak on which game is more competitive, even by your own ridiculous measure its 40k by a landslide.

 Peregrine wrote:
The quality of competition is low and the key to beating the majority of 40k players is simply making the commitment to buy and play the most powerful list in the meta instead of your "fun" list.

You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. Just thinking about the thought process behind this declaration this hurts my head.

For starters, if that was all it took to compete, then what happens when these players face each other? Do they ALL get to win the tournament?

Don't think too hard about that one now though.

 SHUPPET wrote:
All the top players in X-Wing would be lucky have a single one to crack top 8 in a stacked 40k event.

Well yes, I'd imagine that the best X-Wing players would struggle to win a completely different game against the best players in that game. Not sure what your point is though.

Both games have low level competitors, have you even actually been to an XWing tournament?

Of course I have, and I have the tournament prizes to prove it. But I'm sure that, like your bizarre claim that I don't play 40k, you'll just declare that I don't go to X-Wing tournaments regardless of the truth.

you have legitimate professional players who play this game for a living

Lolwut. That is a joke, right? There is no way anyone is even breaking even playing 40k "professionally". Winning enough to offset some of the costs of attending the events, sure, but even poverty-level wages are higher than 40k tournament prizes. Unless by "professional players" you mean professional media creators/game store owners/etc who happen to use 40k as part of their content but do not derive any meaningful percentage of their income directly from playing the game?

You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.

I know perfectly well what I'm talking about. I've been told directly by major 40k event organizers that most of the players in their events are not there to seriously compete. They want to spend a weekend playing 40k, bring their normal (and not very well optimized lists), and generally treat it as 40k night at their local store but with more games to play.

For starters, if that was all it took to compete, then what happens when these players face each other? Do they ALL get to win the tournament?

Oh FFS, you know that's not what I'm arguing. A typical major 40k event has a handful of people taking it seriously, and those people end up competing at the top tables while the rest of the players have their casual semi-competitive games on the lower tables. Obviously once those few players start facing each other there's competition and it involves more than just deciding to show up with a tournament list.

For me, it would go:

1) Lore: love it. This is a pretty well fleshed out universe, and every current faction feels unique and interesting.
2) Gaming: I'm a gamer by nature. I just enjoy interacting within a setting.
3) Building: I enjoy tweaking lists and seeing all the various ways the units can interact with each other and with the opponent.
4) Collecting: I have young children, so this one is tough for me. Hard to display a cool army when 5 year old fingers are eager to play with the "new toys".
5) Painting: As I said in the other thread, this isn't something I enjoy at all. I'm just terrible at it and not really interested in getting better.

40k is a miniature wargame. The hobby is miniature wargaming, not 'the games workshop hobby' that geedubs have promoted in an effort to include pure painters or pure collectors. Collecting is more a by product of the hobby. You won't be able to play without getting some miniatures and I suppose that could be deemed a collection. I'm sure that there are hobbyists who must have all the things/gotta catch'em all but that's an aside of what miniature wargaming is about. You could equally collect all the funkopop dolls (until they release the next one) and put those on a shelf. I'd suggest that on its own, buying inanimate chunks of plastic is less a hobby and more of a compulsion (which GW encourages to make sales). A hobby is something you do.

The three stool legs that hold miniature wargaming up as a hobby are lore, building, painting. Playing with those miniatures is the end of the hobby, buying things is strictly adjacent.

Lore includes 30+ years of novels codexes and rulebooks but if all you ever did was gain a surface level knowedge of the factions you play and play against, the lore is part of your hobby.

Building includes kitbashes, intricate conversions scratchbuilt models and producing terrain, but if all you ever did was build models out of the box that would be enough to fully participate.

Painting includes 'tabletop ready' and eyewatering golden daemon winners, but if all you ever did was prime, pick out a few details badly and maybe throw on a shade, you are painting.

Playing is supposed to be the end goal of all of the above- to put painted armies on a modelled table and simulate future space battles. It is informed by all of the above- how you have learned and applied the lore, how you have assembled and painted your miniatures ( and terrain) all affect the quality of the game. You play the game when you know enough rules to move your minis around. It includes listbuilding as listbuilding is so vital to the game (you don't build lists to not play with them). You could play in a mighty campaign spanning real time years with maps and persistent casualties and resource allocation, and personal vendettas, but if all you ever did was drop in for a pick up game once in a blue moon, you are playing the game.

You tend to get issues when one person's enjoyment of one aspect, interferes with another persons enjoyment of a different aspect.
"Your models must be painted." "But I just want to game!"
"Your Looted Wagon is on the wrong base." "But I converted it specially!"

Nobody has an issue with figure painters, collectors or covertaholics who never play the game. They don't describe themselves as 40k players and because they don't sit down to a game with their gorgeously painted mini, entire ultramarines chapter or extremely cool tyranid-landraider hybrid, their lack of interest in the rules or any other aspect of the game never causes any issues.

I'd say the issues arise when someone wants to play a wargame while ignoring one of the three legs on which it stands. Having zero regard to lore (as opposed to little knowledge) means any roleplaying/narrative fun is sucked out of the game and it becomes a sterile pissing contest. Building minis so poorly that they detract from the game is rare enough, but it happens- coke can drop pods and headless/weaponless marines are seen in the wild along with frustrating proxies. Its more often that painting gets dropped and the visual aspect of the game suffers. It only suffers for the player who enjoys the visual aspect, which is the vast majority- even those who don't enjoy painting.

Volleyball is mainly about hitting a ball over a net, but there are similar pillars that if removed can spoil the game for others. If I showed up to play beach volleyball (casually or competitively) with no clothes below the waist and tried to argue that I just wanted to game, not wear clothes or a uniform, I might be politely encouraged to go put some shorts on. This wouldn't present an issue if I found like minded individuals who similarly prioritised playing the game over any aesthetic concessions.

I voted for all four. I probably wouldn't do any of it if I couldn't do it all.

The whole experience just sort of feeds into itself with me.

I enjoy building and painting - I think I prefer the experience of building more, but I like the endorphin rush of "completing" something that only comes with finishing up a paint job.

That being said, I don't like doing either of them enough to do if all I was doing was painting miniatures for the sake of painting miniatures. The fact that I can add them to my collection of personally painted miniatures and flesh out my armies is a huge motivating factor, and my main motivation to play games is to actually use that collection for their intended purpose.

Essentially, I also enjoy collecting and gaming, but probably not enough that I'd do either of them if I hadn't personally built and painted the miniatures that I'm collecting and gaming with.

The whole sort of thing just sort of feeds off of itself. Gaming is fun, but if all I wanted to do was play a game, I'd get a board game or a video game. Collecting stuff is fun (I also have a reasonable collection of vinyl records, among other things I've collected in the past), but miniature wargaming collections just feel so satisfying because I'm partially responsible for how cool the items in the collections are. None of it really feels fun enough for me to do by itself, but when all four aspects come together it's something really special for me.

And that's not even considering the lore and fiction side of things which has a definite part to play, though it's a little more muddied in the equation, along with nostalgia.