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One of the recurring things I hear both on this forum and on various podcasts is that "way more people play 40K casually than competitively". While that makes sense, for me personally that's never been the case. Every group I've been in has had a majority (however slight) of players following the competitive scene and making tournaments a part of their hobby, and in some cases those groups were the only 40K scene in a given geographic area. So I'm curious how outside the norm my experience is, or to answer the age-old question "How competitive or casual is your 40K?

I chose 2+ tournaments a year (because for a lot of areas that's all there is) including small local events, but obviously there is room to break it down further if there are a lot of responses. Something that's also not very well captured are players that build to the meta but don't go to tournaments, or semi-competitive leagues but use your best judgement on that.

I play about 15 events per year, with 8 of them being Majors. In my area that's probably the most. There are a couple other people that go to events but only a few.

My area has about 3 to 5 that go to 2+ events a year out of 40ish players(that I know of) so about 13%. We don’t have much for local tournaments the last one was a disaster, they tried to run it like an ITC tournament with 5 matches over a 2 day weekend, the guy running the event and acting as a judge left for most of the 3rd match and half the people didn’t come back for day 2. Iirc the person who got 3rd was 0-3 the first day.

40K RTs and GTs-been there, done that,, walked away since it seems to bring out the worst in players.

There are local hardcore WAAC style competitive groups in the area I am aware of but the vast majority in my area now never set foot in a tourney anymore with a few exceptions. like the player sponsored toys for grots charity thing our store tends to do every Christmas. of the regulars at the store, most come in for pre-arranged games with friends or are part of the normal crew that show up every weekend to socialize and get some games in. even our magic group avoids tourney level play preferring to just do whatever is fun especially given the main guy who promotes the magic stuff used to be a pro-player from the very beginning who has come to hate that scene and only wants to play fun decks with big groups.

With our casual play we don't mind if you have that "darn I forgot to move that unit/model" moment go back and move it, we have all had that moment. or sometimes we just say "oops, that's gonna cost me". we especially try to be understanding to new players so they don't start to hate the game because of the way they are treated. "don't be a jerk" is one rule we strive to abide by.

We all have our bad days from time to time of course but at the end of the day this is our social activity. we are there for fun with friends where we can get a good battle in while needling our friends about those bad dice rolls, or the fact that their marines ware dresses, or can't live without everything painted yellow, or test our knowledge of mel brooks and montey python movie quotes etc...

My area is very fragmented, we have some dedicated (20 ish) ITC players for events, but then we have 2-3 groups of 12-20 players that are causal but still try to play good strong lists, just not net lists, and another group that is 100% very causal.

Some of the players (at least 20) will cross play with each group, but then there are many that wont.

A lot of the casual, very dedicated players (semi-comp really) just are not happy with 8th right now at all, so the playing group is very small currently.

Can't say how it's with my area, which would be roughly Berlin, but in my gaming group noone has ever attended an "official" tournament. We do little tournament style games 2-4 times/ year, but these are just 4 people applying organized play rules to their 3 games played that day with an overall winner in the end. I wouldn't count these as "real" tournaments.

There's only around three people in my area who regularly go to tournaments. One won "Best of Astra Militarum" in LVO in either 2017 or 2018 with a Valkyrie and Vendetta heavy list, although now he's been going for SW: Legion recently.

The other two I haven't heard much from. One is an Astra Militarum player that's been experimenting with Vostroyan lists, and another is a Thousand Sons and Nurgle player.

There's one guy who doesn't go to tournaments but should. He understands the nuances of 40k and AoS far more than anyone else, and I rarely see him lose a game even though he rarely uses a top meta list. Main issue for him is being able to go to tournaments as he's a chef for a modestly high end restaurant.

There's around 40-50 people in my area who meet the 2 tourney a year threshold from the ITC tournies, and probably another 25 or so who play at GW Store tournies but not ITC events.

The largest 40K FB group has 285 people in it.

I have no idea how many people only paint and play at the GW Store and don't interact with the wider hobby community though.

I also know of parents who play with their kids, but neither don't really play outside of that.

So, probably <10%, but really hard to pin down a number

I would say approx 20-40% in my local area call themselves competitive players. Approx half of them are fun to play against with the lists I bring. The other half...not so much, when I play them(very infrequently) I basically try to make it as difficult as possible for them. Not going for objectives, moving rearward, Not shooting cuz nobody is in LOS(both ways), etc...

The bulk of the local playerbase, is relaxed have fun oriented and want to see weird/insane gak happen on the tabletop.

Probably a further 5ish% are full on power gamers who only play pick up games(too chicken for tourneys?). They make the rounds to the 6-7 stores that have 40k nights and are increasingly finding less and less games. I think it's just the local community taking a stand and saying no to games with them.

My area is extraordinarily competitive with a pocket of narrative players.

We have about 115 registered players in some fashion, and of those 54 are doing monthly tournaments, another 20 or so travel to 2-4 tournaments a year, and about 5 of them do a major and a handful of regionals.

It's pretty hard to be definitive.

The gaming groups/FLGSs I've been involved with between the U.K. and Canada over the last seven years have had a rotating cast of about a hundred 40k players, tops.

Only one of them ever went to a 'proper' non-local, non-pissant, tournament, to my knowledge.

I'm spotting some serious issues with your methodology, honestly.

Guys I play with are wholly casual. I'd say we play 'properly' (we follow the rules and don't really do anything silly), but I did ask if they did tournaments - and they all said no.

Thanks for the feedback so far guys! The comments are also really helpful. I don’t really have an agenda in all this, just curious.

I'm not sure looking for tournament attendance is the right criterion.

I mean, in my experience WAAC types seldom go to tournaments and, otoh players that attend many tournaments tend to be easy going outside of their training games...

The majority of people I know play in more than 2 local competitive leagues and tournaments, but very few travel to a tournament that would require a hotel and long drive.

I would say I'm WAAC and competitive minded. I don't go to as many events as I would like though, largely because I can't yet surmount the obstacle of actually being able to get there and stay there for the entire duration, so I only play in the local events.

@Lord Katherine that was basically my experience in both Virginia and Florida; people still built “tournament armies” and played meta units/lists, they just didn’t fly to Las Vegas or Chicago. Local/Regional tournaments were all that happened, but I’d still 100% consider them competitive players.

At the local FLGS, every game I've seen for the past five years or so* (at least 2 per weekend day) has been treated as if it were a tournament, if it wasn't some sort of league game. Rest of the week is MtG, board game or RPG nights so my understanding is that 40K/AoS games are only played on the weekends.

If there are any casual gamers/games in my area, they stay away from the FLGS so I'm not aware of them. The folks that do play 40K are known newbstompers and longstanding players from older editions, and I have seen them drive away several prospective players, including me (I only play at home, with my son or brother).

We have a local 40K tournament once a year (Hubcon) that peaked with about 25 people or so playing during 7th. I haven't stayed to watch the last two years, but I know many had switched over to Bolt Action - though the 40K tournament is still ongoing and seems to be picking up (more tables reserved for the games).

*AoS only started up in the last 3 months.

Not really that competitive myself, I just go for five games in two days but I tend to average 5 tournaments a year and there is one per month "friendly" events hosted by my FLGS as well as three teams events and two state events, all are ITC format and growing bigger every month since that became the deal.
The singles are growing but the teams events are what rope almost all players in the area into the two per year bracket with teams being four players and a reserve getting team mates tends to be the bigger concern than having the best team mates.

Of the people I play with only one person is likely to go to a tournament. And so far he's only been to things within about a 2 hr drive.
Of the people I know who play 40k there's definitely 3 or 4 that attend various tourneys.

Seraf wrote:
I'm not sure looking for tournament attendance is the right criterion.

I mean, in my experience WAAC types seldom go to tournaments and, otoh players that attend many tournaments tend to be easy going outside of their training games...

This is why i have not given an answer to the poll myself. As far as casual goes, we are very casual. But there is quite a high turn out of tournaments of any kind, so it seems to be asking two different things to me D:

My local scene is fairly hardcore, with several GT-winning players in my club. There are some others who are much more casual, but I don't play as many games with them and I tend to prefer more competitive stuff. I feel like I'll get better at the game playing against people who can kick my ass. That being said, I sometimes enjoy a casual game or two just to relax and have fun, so really I'm a little bit of both, and I'm lucky enough to have some of both kinds of players in my area.

Around here, we have two big stores pretty close to one another that have large 40k groups. One of them is mostly tournament focused and is part of a large chain that hosts ITC events, and ours is mostly casual because the great majority of the tournament-interested play at the other store.

They have all official ITC terrain, play on a weeknight which our crowd who are mostly working professionals who have families isn't super down with, and host regular competitive events directly sponsored by the store.

Our group is separate from the management of the store, run by myself and a few other volunteers, we have mostly GW or nice looking third-party terrain, play sunday afternoons, and our events are typically narrative game days where we have two teams and a branching storyline with unusual missions, or they're 4-5 week campaigns. That's just what we're interested in.

The competitive crowd still does come by at times, but they tend to play eachother with the ITC ruleset. So I put 10-20% as there's usually about 2 tables with people running competitive games enticed by the weekend playtime and the free parking.

Apple fox wrote:

Seraf wrote:
I'm not sure looking for tournament attendance is the right criterion.

I mean, in my experience WAAC types seldom go to tournaments and, otoh players that attend many tournaments tend to be easy going outside of their training games...

This is why i have not given an answer to the poll myself. As far as casual goes, we are very casual. But there is quite a high turn out of tournaments of any kind, so it seems to be asking two different things to me D:

"Competitive" doesn't mean "jerk" or "WAAC" and you shouldn't think it does.

It's hard to say outside my local independent store but 90% of people play in some of their monthly tournaments. A good chunk do official GW tournaments at Warhammer World and me and a few others do a lot of the team England 40k tournaments held in stockport.

I play regularly with about half a dozen friends, 4 of us do tournaments, 2 don't. I figure that it is easier in England due to the ammount of tournaments in a small geographical area, I could be at a tournement every weekend within a 2 hour drive if I wanted to. Most of them are well organised and attended.

 greyknight12 wrote:

Apple fox wrote:

Seraf wrote:
I'm not sure looking for tournament attendance is the right criterion.

I mean, in my experience WAAC types seldom go to tournaments and, otoh players that attend many tournaments tend to be easy going outside of their training games...

This is why i have not given an answer to the poll myself. As far as casual goes, we are very casual. But there is quite a high turn out of tournaments of any kind, so it seems to be asking two different things to me D:

"Competitive" doesn't mean "jerk" or "WAAC" and you shouldn't think it does.

I do not, I was more referring that casual/competitive do not really have much to do with tournament participation. Guess I should have made a post on its own without the quote itself.

I know too little of my community so far, but there are plenty club organized/hosted tournaments of every game. I had watched some tournaments, there are 6-8 players usually playing them. I would say, no more than 4 are serious gamers in a sense that they go for international tournaments around the Baltic. The guy who introduced me to w40k had shown a lot of dirty tricks breaking this game. It was a poor first impression of w40k for me. He also boasted that he is best player in the region, whatever what might mean.

I'm in a town of 120,000 with three post-secondary schools and a large military base. As such we have a pretty healthy gaming community. At the main FLGS downtown there are about 30 regulars, half of whom can be expected to show up on a given Saturday for pickup 40K games. We have five 40K tournaments a year. We have capacity for 44 players and we usually have a waiting list. We get out-of-towners coming to our tourneys and pretty much all of the regulars will sign up for a tournament. There are certainly folks playing 40K in garages/basements who do not come to our tournaments. Our events are not ITC and usually have a theme. Some are one day while others are a whole weekend.

From our group there are probably five or so who travel to really competitive events in the province.

Most everyone in my community participates in local tournaments until they fill up. Usually about 20 people in the local tournaments. Those happen about every 3 weeks to month at 2 different stores. I play in roughly 6 locals and 2-3 ITC events and 1-2 team tournaments a year. Most of our games around here are pretty competitive though. Always match play rules. Always points. Never narrative. Sometimes ITC, Sometimes CA missions. Sometimes big Apoc style games.

Probably play about 10 games a month. Never once a narrative game.

So initially it does look like there is a majority of "casual" players, however it is not as extreme as some anecdotes would suggest (obviously a very small sample size at this point).

Well, the thing is that people who come up to play games are generally known by community at large. We are likely are forgetting or are ignorant of people who buy miniatures to just paint them and play very rarely. If for example I would come to your community shop to buy some models and don't even bother to use workshop and would paint, collect those models at home, would you be aware of me when answering in this thread? When I bad mouth Warhammer in my community, I'm met with a lot of sympathetic ears. People love W40k story, they adore its models, but find game distasteful. Even being massive W40k fan, I'm strongly gravitating towards Warmachine for actual playing. During my free time, I'm browsing Warhammer models. I also find other models of quite poor quality when compared to GW products. Yet, I'm always down for Age of Sigmar or Warhammer 40k tabletop. I know quite few people in my club who are like me, so actual number who play warhammer casually, but do not participate in tournaments is in reality higher.