After the last local 40k tournament some concern has arisen over the seemingly small player base. I wanted to take a look at possible reasons for this.
- Cost
This is the most common reason being banded about on my local group. Let’s take a look at what that would be. I headed over to GW.com and came up with this:
I want to play Space Marines, because lets face it, all the new kids do. I want to skip the box set and start playing Ultramarines.
- Start Collecting Space Marines $85
- Codex $50
- Citadel essentials set $35
- Rulebook $60
$230 is the total. That’s not bad at all, and I imagine that GW works really had to lower the barrier of entry. However you need a lot more.
- Additional tac squad $40
- Terminator Squad $50
- Land Raider $75
- Speeder $30
- Vindicator $58
$253 added in makes for $483 total for a really bare bones army, That is kind of expensive and might be prohibitive for someone who doesn’t have a full time job. You probably need $2-$300 more than that to make it more viable and certainly more competitive.
2. Time
If you bought all that stuff, you have to put it together and paint it before you can play it. Playing time is another issue. Every week locally, mostly on the weekends, the GW group plays. From personal experience, life can keep you from playing regularly. If you are younger you may not even have reliable, regular transportation to the store. Some groups are kind of “ride or die” with members spending every free moment in the store,chatting and painting when not playing.
3. Personalities
This is a big one, especially for me. The larger a group grows, the bigger chance you have for “gaming cancer”. That one personality that is so obnoxious, abrasive and/or combative they are a misery to intact with, much less game with. In the past this has been the number one reason that has kept me out of gaming at stores or with certain groups. This is a big concern, because just one person can utterly kill gaming in a area.
4. Competition
In 2018, more than any other time, there are a TON of games to play. Boardgames and card games have never been more popular. They are easier and usually cheaper to buy into and find opponents. There are many other miniature games available nowadays as well. X-wing is the number one tabletop game in world. It can be hard to compete with things like that.
5. Population
In a geographical area, there are only X amount of people that will be interested in playing GW games. Since Age of Sigmar is also popular, the local population may be split between two small groups instead of being one large group. There isn’t much that can be done about this except growing the group.
Growing is what you have to do to combat these factors. There are many different ways to this but that is a whole other post.
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