Top 10 Reasons 40k is Still an Awesome Game

[Vangrail]

Personally i love 40k the game is great. Yes they could change some rules and make it better but whatever. The models are great a lot of folks give gw flak about the prices. Honestly they are nit that bad. You get tons of extra bits and you can actually pose your models unlike most model companies. Most of gw sculpts do not require gap filling. They game is always developing and there is tons of selection. The game gets alot of hate but honestly ill blame the power hungry meta guys that are so closed minded when looking at a codex. Thank you for this post people need to relax.

[Blood Shadow]

Haters gonna hate....

I've noticed the same thing, but it may be that I use BoLS as my primary news site for 40k stuff, there's a lot of haters that come on here.

Part of me wants GW to slow down a little, I've totally failed to keep up with most of the Xenos releases, the Formations etc are great.....just suffering from too much information....

[DrBored]

Thanks for the comments guys!

The one extra note I'm going to poke at is about price... Yes, the hobby is expensive. When it's 40 bucks to buy a single box of 10 guys to get started, well, you really have to think to yourself 'Am I going to get this, or am I going to have lunch for the whole week?'.

But every hobby is expensive. Video games are expensive. 500 dollars for an X-Box One, and that just gets you the console and a controller, not counting the extra controllers, games, Live subscriptions, and whatever else you put onto it. For all that money, you could easily get a 2000 point army.

Then there's other hobbies. Have you looked into skiing? 30 bucks a day to rent some skis, and that's just the skis! Not counting the other equipment you'll have to buy. Big jackets, gloves, ski boots and goggles, and then you actually have to *get* to the place where you'll ski, which typically means gas, or a plane ticket, plus a hotel reservation if you're serious. We're well into Apocalypse-sized army with this hobby.

It all comes down to what you're willing to do with your money. If you'd rather do other things with your money, do those things. The thing I like about 40k is that once you buy that 40 dollar kit of 10 guys, you're guaranteed to spend at least two hours just putting them together, and however many hours painting them, and then hours playing with them too. Yes, 40k has a huge start-up cost. Between supplies, paints, and the models themselves, there's really not a great way to do it cheap, and if you want to get into the competitive scene, you'll probably need to invest even more.

But, like I said, that's the case with any hobby, and the more into it you want to be, the more it will take. When it comes to price, GW is expensive enough to keep me from buying everything that strikes my fancy, but inexpensive enough that if I set money aside for a while, I can afford that shiny new kit, and in the interim, I can work on the models that I have and play with what I have. To me, it sets a nice pace throughout the year.

I really don't think that GW intended for people to buy everything for an army in one go. The way their releases are, one a week at best, it's more like they want you to start slow and build up slowly, to become a loyal customer that builds a collection over time. If you've got the cash, sure, go and lay down a couple thousand dollars and get a full tournament TauDar army, and commission someone to build and paint it for you so you can print out a netlist, buy a plane ticket, and stomp some faces in the big tournament scenes...

Or, you can do what most people seem to do, and buy slowly but surely until you have a decent force that you can enjoy.

Or, there's e-bay.

[StingrayP226]

Dr Bored to compare prices you need to look at OTHER miniature games or similar hobby outlets... NOT other completely different hobbies/past times.

GW/40k's competition is companies like Hawk Games, Spartan Games, Privateer Press, Corpus Bella (that is the right name for infinity's makers right?), Wyrd Miniatures, and so on... NOT Sony, Microsoft, and Ski item producters.

Most of these other games have a much gentler price point to shallow to get in, and many of them their game is better built atm.

Now all this being said I could list out issues with most other companies/games too so negitivity goes all around.

Note I am a new player jumping in and I'm doing my best to do it on a limited gaming budget. Thankfully I had stuff I could trade to get started BUT my issue with some price points remain. I've ordered Mantic games Corporation minis on Ebay to see if I can use those instead of GW IG miniatures because of costs and I like the armor style of the Corp guys better anyway. This does mean my army will be illegal in any GW stkre but there are none around here so I'm fine for now.

[ElectricPaladin]

Dr Bored to compare prices you need to look at OTHER miniature games or similar hobby outlets... NOT other completely different hobbies/past times.

GW/40k's competition is companies like Hawk Games, Spartan Games, Privateer Press, Corpus Bella (that is the right name for infinity's makers right?), Wyrd Miniatures, and so on... NOT Sony, Microsoft, and Ski item producters.

Most of these other games have a much gentler price point to shallow to get in, and many of them their game is better built atm.

Now all this being said I could list out issues with most other companies/games too so negitivity goes all around.

Note I am a new player jumping in and I'm doing my best to do it on a limited gaming budget. Thankfully I had stuff I could trade to get started BUT my issue with some price points remain. I've ordered Mantic games Corporation minis on Ebay to see if I can use those instead of GW IG miniatures because of costs and I like the armor style of the Corp guys better anyway. This does mean my army will be illegal in any GW stkre but there are none around here so I'm fine for now.

Stingray is right. Wargaming as a hobby is a middlingly expensive one - more expensive than some, less than others. It's well worth it, for the fun I get from painting and converting and playing, but it's not cheap. However, GW is by far the most expensive of any game I play.

[DrBored]

If you're talking about comparing games, yes, GW is pricey, but I don't like doing that. 40k, miniatures in general, is a hobby. Playing Magic the Gathering is a hobby. Going Scuba Diving is a hobby. We put a resource that we can't save, can't invest in, and can't return, into our hobbies: Time.

Most people have a couple of hobbies. For some, they work out, play 40k, hang out with their sportsy friends, and also have time set aside for reading. For others, it's playing video games from noon to midnight after their part time job. For others still, it's drawing pictures for a few hours, followed by internet browsing for a few more, spaced out by the dog's bathroom schedule.

It's for this reason that I compare 40k as a hobby to other hobbies, because it takes up the resource of Time. Hours to build, hours to paint, hours to play. This isn't a quick game in any respect. Just taking the models out of their cases can take some time to set up. We're not talking about shuffling a deck to play a half-hour game of Go Fish.

"But it's a miniature game and should be held to the standards of other miniature games!" I hear you declare. In the realm of market competition, sure, we can compare those games. X-Wing has a general cost of about 150 dollars, less if you're thrifty, to make a 100 point list and have all the supplies to play a game. You can start into Warmachine for 50, but after that, it gets about as expensive as Warhammer, especially when you mention 100+ dollar super large models. Fantasy is actually *more* expensive than 40k at this point because of the sheer number of models that you need to fill out those blocks of units.

But when considering a hobby, something I'm going to spend a lot of Time and money into, I look at the above things that I listed as the top 10.

Sure, X-Wing is born out of Star Wars, but there's not the depth to it, and when you play, there's a clear good guy and bad guy, unless you're doing 'training exercises'. There's no story. The models are pre-painted, which takes out customization, and there really aren't that many ways to play the game, which takes away variety and flexibility.

Warmachine is balanced and competitive, but it's still bland, and the story does NOTHING to draw me in. There's no depth to it, in my opinion. Yes, it has more variety in armies, but it has little flexibility in how you play those armies. There are set ways, and if you don't do those specific things, your army falls apart.

Again, when it comes to motivation to play a game, yes, I look for more than just how much it costs. If it costs a little more, so be it. It's a hobby, and hobbies, like skiing or scuba diving or modding your car are expensive in money and in time.

I'd rather put both those resources to 40k, because it has the reasons I listed above.

[ElectricPaladin]

You are mixing your points and drawing false equivalencies. We are talking about the cost of the models. While you can certainly try to make a point about the quality of the sculpts and the casts - which is clearly related to the amount of money you pay for them - but bringing in the blandness of the setting and gameplay is irrelevant to this point. You're entitled to your opinion; I enjoy WarmaHordes, but I won't call you wrong, because that's a matter of opinion.

The fact remains that most other games are much cheaper and give you significantly more bang for your buck. You can start a WarmaHordes army for $50. This gets you enough for a small game. You can start a 40k army for $100. This, for many armies, isn't even a playable force. You need to spend another $20ish buying a HQ. Then, when adding to your force, you need to consider that the average unit box is between $40 and $50. While this may be true of WarmaHordes as well, it's important to remember that the average WarmaHordes box is all you need. You don't see a lot of WarmaHordes armies with duplicates of a unit on the table, and you never see a box that contains only half of a unit. In 40k, you see both.

If you want to take it further into other games, it's absolutely no contest. You can start Firestorm Armada with an $80 Patrol Fleet box. Additional squads cost ~$20 to ~$40. Once you own a given squad, chances are very good that you won't need a second instance of that squad ever, with the possible exception of a few of the mainstays of the fleet (carriers, battleships, and cruisers, for example).

What about Malifaux? $40 gets you a master's starter box, which includes the equivalent of an HQ and... eh, two units? Malifaux is a true skirmish game, so "unit" is a messy concept. If you buy within the same faction, chances are that an additional master's starter box will give you not only a new master, but also more units that you can use with the masters you already own. Additional models are usually have a cost in the teens (with a few notable exceptions). Many of them are characters, so you don't have to buy doubles. For those that aren't characters, the game is still structured such that you won't have to buy more than one or two.

And again, please don't get side-tracked on the quality of the models. There's too much opinion there. I happen to think that many of the WarmaHordes sculpts are extremely characterful, and as they lack the over-the-top ridiculousness, skulls-on-skulls grimdarkian absurdity of GW sculpts, they are much more believable as well. We can bandy around words like "cartoony" or "proportioned" or "bland" or "absurd" all day and all night, but that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about money.

"Warhammer 40k" is not a hobby. It's a wargame. And among wargames, it's by far the most expensive and least beginner-friendly.

I think you've got a point everywher else, but you're just wrong on this one. The math does not back you up.

[DrBored]

I'm not looking for the math to back me up.

To me, Warhammer 40k is my hobby and the price is worth what I get out of it.

Before I went into the top 10, I started with: "Here's what I perceive to be the top 10 reasons to pick up 40k and run with it."

I, personally, don't care that other wargames are cheaper. They don't deliver the package that I'm looking for in a wargame. To me, 40k is what I really enjoy. The rules are there, the models are of nice quality, the backstory is great, the games are fun, and I've got more friends that play 40k than any other game. Malifaux started and died. Infinity started and died. Warmahordes is played by like 4 jerks that just roflstomp each other. X-wing is impossible to get two people to bring their stuff with them on a regular basis, but I can count on there being at least three people at my FLGS ready to play warhammer 40k regularly. It's the top, and I believe that the top 10 reasons I posted are at least some of the reasons it's remaining at the top.

If Dropzone or Infinity or Malifaux were REALLY that good, they would have caught on and stuck. They didn't. That doesn't mean that *those* games are necessarily bad, but they don't have the same *draw* as 40k. Even though 40k is pricey, and it is, it still commands attention, and in my mind, it commands that attention for good reasons.

So, I will continue to call 40k a hobby, because 40k is my hobby. It's not just the game, it's the modeling, converting, painting, hanging out with friends, reading, and also playing. "Miniature Wargaming" on its own doesn't define what I believe is the hobby to me.

[Lord Asterion]

I don't see how, when talking about models, talking about the quality is sidetracking, there are noticeable differences in GWs quality compared with every other manufacturer of minatures for wargaming. I love Firestorm Amada and DZC and have big armies for both games, but what you're saying really isn't fair, you're comparing static, small resin pieces to the wonderful plastic kits that GW make, for the £21 i paid for 5 scions, I got hundreds of parts, every Scion is different, I can 20 of them with tons of character and choices. the £21 I pay for DZC gets me one Albatross drop ship, a small single pose model.

And it is a hobby, wargaming is one facet of the hobby, just because fo you, wargaming is the main focus, don't make the mistake of thinking that is for everyone. And of course it makes sense to compare hobby costs with each other, even if they're different hobbies, this is something you do with your space time, its expensive, but he's trying to point out that any luxury product you buy to do in your spare time will be as expensive.

Its also disingenuous to say Warmahordes is more expensive because you can play with a $50 army, you can play 40k perfectly well with a $50 army too if you wanted to, the other week I had a great time playing Kill Team all night.

Hobbies are expensive, wargaming is part of the 40K hobby, if you want the variety, quality and lore that 40K provides, its well worth the price of admission and its easier for newbies than any other wargame, for the simple fact that GW pay to have stores in most major areas to teach new people about wargames and get them involved.

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I will say that Dropzone is pretty new and hasn't had much time to establish itself but its massive displays at Salute 2014 this weekend prompted a lot of sales, its a game thats started small and is growing in a very smart way, but, it just doesn't have the same depth of story yet, I love the look of my UCM forces, but I don't feel the same attachment for them as I do with my Orks

[ElectricPaladin]

The trouble is that quality is subjective. You can't just traipse around saying "GW has the best minis because I said so!" There are some clear differences in quality, once in a while - like some of the super crappy Kickstarters you see once in a while - but it's not the same thing. In general, I like WarmaHordes models more than 40k models. In general, I think that Firestorm Armada's sculpts are brilliant and the only difference is that it's hard to make a space ship "dynamic."

I'm happy to talk about price, and I'm happy to debate quality, but if you try to talk about both at once we are going to get confused.