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Due to the in my opinion tiresome discussion about the Kriegs and the ASL I wondered if the "hobby" aspect of the game is dying out? I started nearly 20 years ago with LoTR and having not much money I build a lot of the terrain myself with scraps my dad would normally throw away. I used the cheapest paints i could find just to get paint onto my miniatures. I even begged my parents to drive me into the next town so I could buy cheap green cloth we would use as a playmat. And we had fun with this poorhammer approach to the game. At the moment I am far more into Turnip28 and Trench Crusade where kitbashing and building your own terrain and fleshing out ideas is essential to the game, which drew me to these two games in particular.

I increasingly get the impression that and increasing number of people in the 40k community no longer care about the hobby itself – kitbashing, terrain building, house rules. They simply want to buy ready-made stuff, jump on the latest meta, and win as many games as possible.

Would love to have some opions on that from the community.

I think the Internet is always as it has been, an echo chamber.

When you get out into the world the Warhammer community is nowhere near as bad and you have to remember m, the vast majority (and I cannot understate vast here) are not online and don't participate in discussions on Dakka/Reddit/FB/Twitter.

To me GW is currently presenting the worst of both worlds. This should be a golden age for kit bashing with more human kits around than ever before. If they were as compatible as 2000s kits like the Catachans, Cadians and Empire this would be fantastic.

But they're not. Each Necromunda set seems to have different arm or head attachments, rifles inevitably are attached to the right arm and have a left hand attached to them, and there is a mind numbing number of small parts that only fit in one place. I think my Arbites needed 11 parts for each rifleman.

And many kits like Primarus Marines are locked into one pose, you have to build them and then hack them apart to make a conversion.

GW is purposfully making kits hard to mix and match.

So yes.

They are asking for a lot of labor in building but choking off opportunities for creativity.

It is true that these days, you need to assemble the model at least into subassemblies before you can really "kitbash" with them. However, I just see it as continuation from the metal years, when all you had was a hacksaw, green stuff and cyanoacrylate glue. At least poly cement is easier to work with, and creates strong bonds once cured..

But you are right, GW doesnt really encourage the DIY part as nearly as much as they did in the past. I especially loathe the obsession with "No Model, No Rules" of late. And whoever head of someone using "Open Play" or anything of the sort these days?

Thankfully, its still all about your playing group and what they're down with. If you find the right group, anything goes, like always

The 4th edition rulebook was the last one with a proper hobby section showing the sort of stuff that made simple scenery and kitbashing seem like part of the hobby. From 5th ed onward it was all GW plastic terrain and boards. So it's been 6 editions of GW moving away from DIY hobby in their publications and into a "buy our realm of battle board".

No. The third Warhammer hobby is bitching about GW.

Honestly, I've always found the kitbash argument a little overrated. Personally the main loss I notice with newer kits is the lack of waist articulation. There's still a lot of opportunity to swap arms and heads around and position them to make models different, even if the instructions encourage specific builds, you can very easily not do that and make something else.

I think the main issue is the poses themselves are a lot more dynamic, which draws the eye to repetition more readily. My main issue with a lot of the older kits is the legs are really basic and boring most of the time, but that does put more emphasis on the parts you can adjust. Overall though I prefer the bigger, more dynamic models to what came before, though there are definitely elements I miss.

If you want more hobby in your army there's tons of opportunity to do so though. Add some 3D print parts, swap arms around. Put some Bolt Rifles on Assault Intercessors and vice versa. It might take some greenstuff to fill some gaps or adjust an angle but that was always the case. The idea you "can't" feels like it mostly comes from people who got some EZ builds from an edition starter and decided that was all there was to it.

Pretty much the main difference is you don’t need to kitbash anymore. But there’s nothing and no-one stopping you from doing it.

As with many things in life, the golden rule is simply Don’t Take The Piss.

Examples of people not following the golden rule, albeit from Yesteryear? Proxying Bloodcrushers (Jugger cavalry) with Bloodletters plonked atop Rohan Horses, using the Rohan Horse Base. Not only fundamentally changes the dimensions, and thus visibility of the unit, but the smaller bases meant you could get more into direct combat.

Player claimed it wasn’t cheating, because he had the right size bases in his box.

Another? Ork Trukks with massive advertising style billboards, specifically to block LoS to advancing Ork Mobs.

So, convert and kit bash away, especially if you’re doing it purely for your own enjoyment and to have a truly unique model on display. But Do Not Model For Advantage, For That Is The Behaviour Of A Richard.

Ideally, and this is really subjective? Do try to make any piece intended for gaming with of roughly the same dimensions, and visually obvious as to what it actually it.

 frwd. wrote:

I increasingly get the impression that and increasing number of people in the 40k community no longer care about the hobby itself – kitbashing, terrain building, house rules. They simply want to buy ready-made stuff, jump on the latest meta, and win as many games as possible.

Would love to have some opions on that from the community.

Well, personally, my hobby is playing miniatures games, not building them.
I've always viewed building the models and terrain as just a necessary 1st step. But many current GW kits annoy the hell out of me because in many cases I'm forced to spend time & effort assembling parts that could/should have been already sculpted together. Ex: The boots on 8 bound. I had to glue the soles of the boots onto the 8 Bounds already booted feet. FFS why??

Converting, kitbashing, etc? Is just what I do if what I want isn't made/readily available.
And while I'm really good at it, I'm also happy enough if I don't need to do it. Always have been.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

Another? Ork Trukks with massive advertising style billboards, specifically to block LoS to advancing Ork Mobs.

The rules don't support models blocking LOS in a way that functions. Anyone claiming their models successfully block LOS is kind of a red flag to me.

I think the terrain making side of things is a bigger deal than kitbashing, but perhaps it's always been kind of a separate, related hobby that lots of people don't like.

It's always been core to the whole experience to me - making the world the miniatures live in is a huge part of the appeal.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
To me GW is currently presenting the worst of both worlds. This should be a golden age for kit bashing with more human kits around than ever before. If they were as compatible as 2000s kits like the Catachans, Cadians and Empire this would be fantastic.

But they're not. Each Necromunda set seems to have different arm or head attachments, rifles inevitably are attached to the right arm and have a left hand attached to them, and there is a mind numbing number of small parts that only fit in one place. I think my Arbites needed 11 parts for each rifleman.

And many kits like Primarus Marines are locked into one pose, you have to build them and then hack them apart to make a conversion.

GW is purposfully making kits hard to mix and match.

So yes.

They are asking for a lot of labor in building but choking off opportunities for creativity.

Flip side, they've at least stopped selling incomplete kits to people who don't want to have to kitbash just to put the correct gun on their Razorback.

Our group does more building and painting than playing at the shop.

 Da Boss wrote:
I think the terrain making side of things is a bigger deal than kitbashing, but perhaps it's always been kind of a separate, related hobby that lots of people don't like.

It's always been core to the whole experience to me - making the world the miniatures live in is a huge part of the appeal.

I keep seeing people demand things like cool objectives and it drives me crazy because the objectives are just generic templates. No amount of table rules are going to make interesting tables until players are will to take the time and build interesting terrain and objectives for their tables.

 LunarSol wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

Another? Ork Trukks with massive advertising style billboards, specifically to block LoS to advancing Ork Mobs.

The rules don't support models blocking LOS in a way that functions. Anyone claiming their models successfully block LOS is kind of a red flag to me.

Are you one of the people who truly believe that they can fire through a Rhino because there's that teeny little gap between its road wheels?

ccs wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

Another? Ork Trukks with massive advertising style billboards, specifically to block LoS to advancing Ork Mobs.

The rules don't support models blocking LOS in a way that functions. Anyone claiming their models successfully block LOS is kind of a red flag to me.

Are you one of the people who truly believe that they can fire through a Rhino because there's that teeny little gap between its road wheels?

No, not at all, but giant brick vehicles are absolutely not the norm and most models in the game cannot block LOS with any reliablity.

It is an example from yesteryear.

In terms a of media, it personally feels to me that conversions and kitbashes aren't advertised the way they used to be. Older WD magazine have a lot more articles about creating your own miniatures. It's not entirely gone and WD still seems very supportive of alternative paint schemes. GW and WD feel more focused on selling the latest and greatest in their plastic products. Which makes sense as a miniature company. I don't know, it just feels like personal creativity has taken a back seat for the last decade or so.

I think personal creativity is still alive and doing well. But it's no longer in the "spotlight" when it comes to GW's depiction of the Hobby like it used to be (although to be fair, GW couldnt sell you all of it ready made when they started, which probably also played heavily into it..)

GW itself isn't advertising it as heavily.

HOWEVER

It's 2026 now and the amount of custom content for 40K on every other media outlet for geeks is VAST.

There are whole channels with high rankings devoted to conversions; terrain; painting and so forth.
GW doesn't have to have a "how to make a deodorant tank" article because there's a dozen channels already doing that.

If anything I'd say you're in more a golden age than the supposed golden age of when GW started. 3D printing has even exploded the potential for quality proxies not to mention the amount of details and parts that can be kitbashed with.


And yes I'll also echo what others say about getting out in the real world - real world has clubs and friend groups with custom terrain; custom models; conversions; modelling; hobby stuff and all.


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 tauist wrote:
I think personal creativity is still alive and doing well. But it's no longer in the "spotlight" when it comes to GW's depiction of the Hobby like it used to be (although to be fair, GW couldnt sell you all of it ready made when they started, which probably also played heavily into it..)

Heck I'd argue that GW still do more hobby articles than most of the competition. Most competing brands I can think of show how to model their own models now and then; but by and large aren't doing any hobby stuff either. Again its communities that do it.

 Da Boss wrote:
I think the terrain making side of things is a bigger deal than kitbashing, but perhaps it's always been kind of a separate, related hobby that lots of people don't like.

It's always been core to the whole experience to me - making the world the miniatures live in is a huge part of the appeal.

This is my biggest annoyance. GW produce a bunch of Fortifications for each army in 40k (or almost every army) and they are usually unusable as proper terrain. Instead of that, I'd prefer to see diverse sets of terrain rather than a bunch of increasingly esoteric Imperial stuff. The old ruin sets they did were great for Imperial terrain, but they got rid of them in favour of weird gantries and big blocks of plastic like plasma generators. I think Tau, Eldar, Necrons and Orks could all have modular building/ruin terrain that would provide some visual interest on the battlefield.

The current game rules don't help. The game is so lethal that anything that doesn't block LoS is not very useful as a terrain piece.