How Is 40k Doing In Your Local Wargaming Community?

[Arkhan Land]

40k is the main/only reason my gaming group convenes. i think weve reached a good point with our armies and probably arent going to ditch or add any other systems in the near future. as much as i want to try and break into other games besides 40k/wfb/occasional historical i just dont have the schedule for meeting people at local stores during the daytime/evening.

[BeardMonk]

Its taken a bit of a battering in our club. Which is a shame because with the release of 7th I actually want to start collecting on a small scale (1000pts).

We mainly focus on WM/H, Godslayer, Bloodbowl but you will often find people playing one or more of the specialist GW Games (Mordhiem, Inq and Epic). However, thankfully, Fantasy also seems to be making a slow comeback. Which for me is great as I think its a great game which GW is in danger of inadvertently killing off.

But I have to say many of the older (wiser??) vet players mainly just focus on WM/H these days. Iv heard a lot of “never playing 40K again” and seen lot of vets selling off their models recently. But that’s just one club in one part of London. And I think London a s a whole is still very "wet" for 40K

[The Madman]

Its thriving where I live, Fantasy on the other hand is dwindling away. there are like five fantasy players in the local club and the GW store there is only a pair of them whilst dozens of 40k players take up the tables.

[CoffeeGrunt]

Still going fairly strong here, though this is a small town on the edge of Norfolk in the UK, so it's never going to be booming. Still, I estimate we probably have a couple of dozen regular players, with about half of those appearing for games every week. We've got new players joining at a steady pace, a couple of my friends just got into it, for example.

Dropzone Commander, WarmaHordes, Malifaux, Dystopian Wars and Firestorm Armada are all games that have been floated for the group then sunk. DZC has one guy advocating it who's a bit of a cheesemonger, and thus no-one wants to join. WMH/Malifuax has a couple of players but they really don't seem to be getting any traction. Dystopian Wars was very popular at a point but seems to have died now.

I ordered a Sorylian fleet about three months ago via Spartan Games through the sore, and they still haven't delivered, so really it's Spartan's fault for sucking at selling people their stuff. I would probably play FSA fairly regularly with others if they would actually sell me their damn models, (I've even considered scratch-building some ships from plasticard as a project because of it.)

Attack Wing is very popular here, too. Fantasy is just completely non-existent, but lots of people own armies for it. It just never gets played because there's no pickup game potential for it.

[Gamgee]

19 core players there almost weekly playing (probably more I don't know of). I just got into it and my two cousins followed. As well as a few friends. On top of that there is a few more new players from what I can gather. Currently started with a Tau Support Firebase and almost done painting all of the Broadsides and soon to move onto the Riptide.

My cousin is getting his Cadian Defense Force + Has a squad of IG

Other COusin is less well funded and has a CSM squad + Bezerkers (Aiming for a small 500 point army to start)

My friend is going Tyranid and has several boxes and his Hive Tyrant. All being assembled and painted.

I also know two more places in town that organize these sorts of games. I refuse to go to one of them because the store owner is the biggest asshat around, but it's alright. He can't compete with my chosen FLGS anyway. The third place is a smaller venue.

These players have some overlap with other wargames as well. So I would say 40k is no less than booming here right now. And this is a small by most standards Ontario city. Though big for Canada.

Edit
It probably helps the FLGS gives generous discounts on large orders. He will scale the discount he gives out. I also know him since we game together a lot so bonus. On top of this he is some sort of ordering ninja. Capable of getting pretty much anything you want for any army very quickly in a matter of a week. Two tops. Three if your unlucky.

Edit 2
I would assume.... 30+ players at our one FLGS

[Liam Reford]

At my own local wargaming club over here in Greenock, Scotland a few years back, there used to be a lot of people that played. Now a lot of those guys have fallen away because one guy disappeared over to Dundee.

For the past couple of months, I've been making attempts to attract a 40k crowd back into the club, but haven't been successful with that. It doesn't help that the games that are usually played by the 6 (or less, usually) people that turn up is games like Hail Caesar and Black Powder.

[Auticus]

We had 55 players in our last 40k campaign. Our fantasy campaign currently has 26. Our GW hobby is doing quite well where I am.

[ReveredChaplainDrake]

40k is all but dead where I am. Which I find amusingly, deliciously ironic. The closest indy game store to my house basically took up residence where an old GW store used to be before they shut it down. The locals' attitude was basically that, since GW left us, we'd return the favor.

The last time I popped into the local game store, I saw a couple of guys having a 40k "kill team" tournament using some downloaded Heralds of Ruin rules because, and I quote "GW rules are crap". And that was the only 40k game there. You'll occasionally see some 40k stuff at the hobby stations, but the thought of wasting a gaming table on 40k is pretty much dead and buried. In its stead, WMH has a ton of players (the ex-redshirt store owner lamented only having a mere four Menoth players), but aside from that there's a big push for historical games like Dust. This could be a bit biased, given that the location is in Maryland, where we're spitting distance from Ft. Meade and several Civil War battlefields along the East coast, so we get history buffs and enlisted IRL soldiers.

[silashand]

Doing okay I guess. My group still plays, but it's basically the same few players who have had armies for a while. There are a couple other groups as well, but I don't know how many of them actively play 40K (I know they do Infinity, WARMACHINE, X-Wing and a couple others on a regular basis). Can't say I have seen a new 40K player personally in months. Not trying to bash or anything, but price seems to be the main motivator. Unless you are already sunk into the game and can get by with buying a couple new models here and there no one seems to want to spend the money to buy a complete new army. At least that's just what I have personally heard when I talk to people. Had one guy just dump both his 40K armies and switch to Flames of War a couple weeks ago. Anyway, YMMV...

[apocaleepse]

It's doing well here. There's always plenty of 40k games going.