How did 40k get so much more popular than fantasy? why?

40k got more popular than fantasy in the 90s, and that was before dawn of war

because people don't want to end-up forgotten in a mass-grave bellow a garbage dump

Male power fantasy has never hit harder and more accurately than Space Marines. That and they are the easiest thing to paint in any miniature game.

Hard to say; if I had to put my finger on it, it'd be the faling out of fantasy novels for young people, the fact that those interested in fantasy due to Lord of the Rings were diverted by the LOTR game (which you couldn't use for Warhammer officially which put people off), so anybody who was a fan of fantasy in the general sense

Second was the fact that the lore really consolidated hard, then after Storm of Chaos kind of flatlined. Nothing major really happened after SoC and Warhammer lost a real sense of 'your guys fighting in some world' that it used to have. Warhammer 40k still contained that old heavy metal vibe for a lot longer than Fantasy did which moved away from the aesthetic in many ways.

Next is the logistical problems; Fantasy needs more miniatures than 40k did to run and with the price increases and point cost reductions, suddenly armies needed to be bigger and bigger, which stretched new players and put off a lot of people. Now in an ideal world, that's fine; you take the rules, ignore the army lists for the most part and fight the battles you want, but that definitely wasn't what was encouraged; instead GW drove the tournament angle hard and 40k is better than WHFB for tourney play due to the rules and model count.

Finally neglect really; GW got burnt on SoC and seemed to sulk; a lot of the people who drove Warhammer Fantasy from the beginning in terms of rules, lore and models left Games Workshop, so the creative and executive backing to keep making stuff was gone. It still got releases but rarely and certain factions were completely undermined in what seems half-forgetfullness and half-spite (cough BRETONNIANS cough cough). There just wasn't many updates and the cost for newcomers was too high.

And by fantasy novels, I mean the traditional sort, from Moorcock to more pulpy stuff. I only got into them because my dad was a big fan of michael moorcock and 2000AD and I grew up on a diet of Elric and Slaine.

Are they human? Are they nice guys?

They still got no sexdrive & are impotent.

Did War Altair make it to AoS?

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Like REAL MEN! RAAARGH

40k was just more eye catching.
Fantasy had interesting lore that drew you to the models
40k had interesting models that drew you to the lore.
Guess what sells

I think that may contribute to the appeal - their incel status is a link for the socially awkward, and provides a projection point to rationalize one's own lack of sexual prowess (I am a space monk totally dedicated to warfare vs. I just can't get laid)

Yeah but most neckbeards can at least relate to the latter part.

When I was a nipper, we walked past a GW which at that time was a corner in a department store. I was instantly hooked and since dad had painted his own rpg minatures in the 80s he bought the WFB and 40k starter paint kits. After painting them up I had the choice of which to pursue further, the medieval longbowman or the space knight. To my eternal shame and regret I chose the space marine. Despite being far more into fantasy than sci-fi and coming to exclusively play historicals my 10yo self thought the space knight with his techno-plate and rocketlauncher gun was the coolest thing ever. Maybe if GW had made some Bretonnian footknights for the starter kit things might have gone differently but monopose archer vs. space marine was no contest.

Less anecdotally, I think the fact that 40k has such a unique and deranged aesthetic has a big part to play in it's success. WHF does too of course, but on the surface it's the same old knights and elves and dwarves. Unless you read 2000AD, there is nothing quite like 40k and it's particular brand of dark science fantasy mashup. Evil space wizards zapping elf hovertanks on a distant frozen moon is a powerful image. There are other reasons for 40k's dominance but for sucking people in at first I think the way it looked is very important.

>They are my bulwark against the Terror. They are the Defenders of Humanity. They are my Space Marines and they shall know no fear
vs
>Tomorrow we go to war, to face the hordes of Chaos... Tomorrow we will be buried, in cold graves that await us... And when the fighting is done, and the sun goes down at night... Hear my prayers, save my soul, and take me to Sigmar's Light
Guess which one most people prefer

despite what women and faggots think, most straight men don't think about sex 99% of the time

Dakka > Choppa

also an artefact of gameplay choices, the big square block colliding with other blocks style of game is a fairly easy one for hwgs to substitute, so anyone wanting more can move on to a similar approach, whereas 40k's competitors play quite differently meaning the playerbase is less transferable & thus has to stick with 40k to get a fix. Until 8e anyway, fuck 8e.

Fantasy stagnated with high barriers for new players that forced them to build multiple boxes for even participating in small skirmishes.

Because despite having some unique elements, WHF is still a relatively generic fantasy setting, at least on first glance, while 40k is quite unique when compared to other sci-fi settings(which is kind of ironic considering it stole shit from almost all of them). Just the aesthetic itself makes it immediately stand out

>Bulwark of humanity immediately buried under tidal wave of screaming green retards that were born yesterday

Yes, this exactly. I don't know why people are saying "because it's sci-fi" or "because Space Marines", when it's because WHF is a wargame set in a generic fantasy setting while, love it or hate it, 40k is uniquely its own setting with an aesthetic nothing else really brings to the table.

40k models are easier to paint and you can pretty accurately correlate the popularity of an army to the ease of painting and assembly of their units. Someone with a vehicle heavy space marine or IG army will have most of their models, if they follow GW's general aesthetic, be a solid primary color with some detail work. Most of the vehicles, even exotic ones, are mostly made up of large surfaces that are going to be mono-colored. Even lore centric heroes will have their larger surfaces be mostly solid colored and will just be the character model posed on a regular base.

Compare that to Fantasy and you can see where the problems arise.

War machines are a bitch to paint. Compare how many surfaces you have to paint in fine detail just on the gun carriage for a generic cannon. Sure the tank is a larger model but the cannon and its crew are going to take much longer to actually paint well.

Many GW advertisements (showing how their stuff "should" look) have units with details like dual colored pinstriping, bright regalia , multiple sigils on various pieces of armor, even entirely different paint schemes for individual groups within your army if you want them to look diverse. This gets especially painful because most Fantasy armies are fielding alot more units than their 40k counterpart, both numerically and in differentiation.

Also compare the poses many WHFB / AoS models come in, with how many extra props come with the models like flying ghosts or skull worms, how detailed the advertised paint job is, etc etc

This logic kind of holds true across the board for Fantasy vs 40k. Comparing the rules, play environment, fluff and actually watching it being played 40k just comes out seeming like its more fun.

I imagine it's because GWs use of familiar stock fantasty species helped ease people into the rather underused gothic sci fi setting. Said stock species also reflected the universe they evolved in and even humanity itself could be bizarre to the point of being alien.

Also, space. Entire solar systems being wiped out is a lot more terrifying than the same factions fighting over the same continent. It's also great to see elves get shredded by huge human knights with guns. As the Hobbit trilogy showed, elves are still massive faggots on pedestals.

Eldar are fags even for most elves. High Elves>Dark Eldar>Dark Elves>Wood Elves>>>>>Craftworld Eldar

People almost universally have shit-tier taste in entertainment.

>Also Sci fi > fantasy

Exhibit A.

- I loved fantasy but to the passing eye, it looks too much like a generic fantasy setting.
- Was always more expensive to get into
- 40k lore/ aesthetic is very unique even though its lore is borderline plagiarised
- Everything cool and unique about fantasy was copy-pasted into 40k but now it is in Spaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaace and has more daka
- Originally had more comedy
- Smaller investment and my GW still hosts 500 point tournaments every weekend which attracts people who play on a small budget
- GW murdered and desecrated the corps of fantasy

I'm still genuinely angry at the company for how disgracefully they executed the game that started it all and simultaneously gave the finger to people who had invested so much money and time into the hobby. I understand AoS is designed for literal 12-year-olds and it might be more sustainable long-term but its fucking insulting to long-term players/ customers. I have a beautifully painted 5000 point Lizardmen army that will now forever gather dust in my storeroom.

>b-b-but u kan stil pley fentasee. 8th edition iz goeng nowere

Yeah, I also regularly find fresh blood to play Necromunda, Battlefleet Gothic, Mordheim & Inquisitor.

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Lizardmen are in AoS user

Lizardmen are in AoS. Almost unchanged too

Before the space marines were ruined in subsequent releases by talentless writers. They were legitimately the coolest thing GW had thought up.
Example A, just look at them. Not a hint of the shit stain trash they would later become. Space knights with incredible weaponry and valor fighting the good fight. Neo middle age imagery that excites the imagination and gets your blood boiling. Now compare them to this... Subject left.

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Anyone who says anything other than "Americans" is straight up wrong.

>rather underused gothic sci fi setting
40k is literally Dune + Nemesis the Warlock. I really mean that literal too, it's not just a case of "Oh it took some stuff from there"

You could be right but i personally don't think so. In my opinion most people dont give a fuck how hard or easy the army is to paint because they dont paint it at all.

Yeah but I'm not fond of the game design and bought those miniatures to play fantasy. Also, everyone who used to play fantasy has disappeared into the ether. Not a single person from the former community picked up the game and I'm too much of a cool and serious and self-respecting adult to play with pre-pubescent children whilst making their soccer-moms uncomfortable.

More interesting and unique aesthetic
More accessible than rank-and-file troops for new players

40k isn't the best ruleset, but honestly it's mostly been better than WHFB's.

no

simple

WHFB circa 1987 was the same game as RT40k; essentially the same statlines (with racial analogs just ported over), special rules, even magic and psychic powers were basically identical

what was different even then was that you could fight a 3,000 point battle in WHFB and it would require you to paint, oh, let's say 1,000 clanrats or goblins or whatever, and base them (and GW didn't sell movement trays, so if you wanted those you had to make them yourself), and then do basically nothing but maneuver your infantry blobs until the guy who'd paid to win with a big dragon or a guy with a magic sword on a flying hippo came in and raped whatever was left after the cannons were finished with you

40k offered a skirmish-based experience - and I'm not talking about just the size of the forces here - whereby your units were able to move more freely, and even ranged units (archers being particularly shit combat troops in WHFB at that time) could fight back in melee

your orks would fare a lot better with their bolters and flak armor than they would with arrers and no armor; and your money was the same either way - blisters of the same kind of thing contained the same number of models and cost the same; plastic kits (of which there were a few right at the start of 40k) would give you a lightweight set of mans with which to travel around kicking asses, and there were (to start with) no flying hippo magic sword combo fuckers to worry about (or dragons)

there were dreadnoughts and robots and soon tanks and bikes (which were more like light tanks because vehicles were fucked back then and all heavy weapons were OP), but they didn't automatically cause fear or turn you to stone or call you names and shit in your lunch

when the two systems eventually diverged, WHFB stubbornly retained shitty stats like Movement and stupid rule dupes like Fear and Terror, where 40k tried to streamline early on and with successive editions (the number of rewrites it got before 2E even came along is often overlooked, but that's the reason there were so many supplements to the early game - playing meant carting around a library shelf of White Dwarfs and reprint books that contained the most up to date set of rules)

and on points? by 1989 you could get 100 termies for 3,000 points, a mere order of magnitude fewer dudes to paint before the big smackdown

This

Where do you live. user? Here there's three different clubs that do fantasy often. Usually using older editions.

Hilarious how black these look

Yeah, only the 1% that is alphas do

Star Wars/Star Trek hype.

Lorelet detected.
Björn fucks more bitches as a dreadnought than you ever will.

Because the setting is unique. WHFB was another tolkein fantasy knockoff among hundreds of such settings. 40k is generic and takes from everything but combines it into a fairly unique setting.

you're a fucking moron

OBSESSED
How is our fault this time?

>40k got more popular than fantasy in the 90s
I think that's the answer to OP's question. During the 90's sci-fi was in (anything with "Star" in the title) and fantasy wasn't.

>More interesting and unique aesthetic
it's really kinda amazing that by stealing from basically everything under the sun they created something unique
there is a life lesson to be found in this

1) Guns and chainsaws get a lot of immediate attention, a more universal "cool" concept.
2)This is just speculation but a lot of potential WHFB players GW might have found during the height of LotR's popularity probably went right for the LotR game instead of Fantasy.
3) Space Marines provide you an immediate designated group of badasses that are easy to impose your own OC heroes on- this is why Skubmar is trying to push the same with Sigmarines.
4) Dawn of War was a right-place-right time game that got the IP a lot of attention outside of the normal tabletop community. You're seeing a similar thing right now with the postmortem WHFB IP thanks to Total Warhammer.

>You're seeing a similar thing right now with the postmortem WHFB IP thanks to Total Warhammer.

That remains the biggest mystery for me. Fantasy gets a big game and GW destroys Fantasy.

With how popular Total Warhammer is, the imminent new edition of the RPG system, Vermintide 2 having a good launch, and so on, do you think GW is doing to do anything to bring it back on the tabletop scene, or just make AoS a lil' darker like they have been and let Warhammer Fantasy live on in third party stuff?

Well, Total Wa was in a low point after the clusterfuck that was the release of Rome 2, and while they began to regain their track with Attila, it would not be a surprise if they managed to screw up Total Warhammer. Clearly GW did not count in CA actually succeding and now we have /v/irgins unamussed at discovering that Karl Franz got squatted by extreme Chaos/Skaven wank.

What MTG card is this?

It's still more unique than WHFB, which is mostly just generic fantasy

Honestly they could just keep allowing games to be made in the Old World and keep churning out AoS models totally unrelated to it. I mean, it's working and there honestly might not be a large crossover to people who play the games and decide they want play the table top game.

>implying la la magical land is somehow superior to a relatively tangible fantasy universe that isn't being overrun by angry rat men

Give us a break. 40k is a synergy between sci-fi and fantasy, but fantasy more often than not comes down to "this shit happens because magic" and it's left at that. 40k has a lot to explain for such as "why the fuck does the warp form energy" and "how is emotions and souls so powerful at its basest element when it's practically chemicals in reality" but at least some stuff is believable, like power armor and gene enhancement. The more unbelievable stuff can go down to GW notorious history of bad writing skills.

Also sci-fi guns >>>>>>>>>>>>> ancient weird guns >= melee. Unless you're a moron who can't hit a target before 100 - 500 meters, I ain't buyin' that melee is somehow both faster and more efficient than a gun that can rip shrapnel through someone's chest, even if it is somewhat more satisfying to go ham on a mob wielding nothing but a pair of dual hand axes.

That said, I did enjoy Vermintide 2 this evening. Dwarves are the best, even if they suck in tall grass.

>can't hit a target before 10 meters
That's the case for most renaissance guns. When that's achievable is when people move from pike and shot to just bayonets

>Clearly GW did not count in CA actually succeding and now we have /v/irgins unamussed at discovering that Karl Franz got squatted by extreme Chaos/Skaven wank.
Basically this
>be young me
>love LotR
>get into lotr tabletop thanks to a bi-weekly magazine that came with official, but cheap, minis
>start buying white dwarf
>wot ho, this Warhammer stuff is really cool. Especially those Orcs and Gobbos, and new shiny Bretonnians
>minis are all too expensive so parents won’t let me buy any products
>fast forward
>pick up TWW1. It’s everything I dreamed of
>decide to start buying some minis because I have a 9-5 job now and can afford shit
>discover end times, warhammer being squatted, and AoS

Haven’t been that disappointed since mass effect 3 was released.

Renaissance guns most certainly had better range than that, at least to a 100 meters or what not. Follow up shots, between reloads and god awful smokes that stays around like a nasty miasma, don't get really that good. Thank god for smokeless powder, smells better too.

>disappointed by ME3

Oh you poor soul, it only got worse. So much worse. ME3 was a great number of things, a complete tire fire from start to finish however was not one of them.

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TOM???? IS THAT YOU

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I just remember seeing empire and high elf models back in the day and the coolness factor was nothing on 40k

40k has more memes

I think it comes down to a combination of factors. When I started playing GW games at the arse end of the 80s, it was initially through HeroQuest and Space Crusade. A friend then lent me his copy of Rogue Trader and I was hooked, so when I got my first visit to a GW in 1990, I went 40k all the way. To my 10 year old brain, 40k offered everything fantasy did, and guns!

It was also at that time much cheaper to get a viable force going. I collected Orks, and you could get a boxed set of 30 multipart plastic orks for £10. Fantasy on the other hand was almost all metal or more monopose plastics that weren't very good - with the exception of the skeleton army box, but that was way more tedious to paint and much more fiddly to assemble than the orks.

As time moved on into the 90s and 00s, and GW started the big box versions of the games, 40k was always Marines v Someone Else, whereas Fantasy chopped and changed - HE v Goblins, Bretts v Lizardmen, Empire v Orcs. This meant Marines became the easiest army to collect and expand easily, simply by keeping current with the rules, further adding to the appeal of 40k.

Videogame success - DoW drew a lot of people to the hobby, either new players or older players reinterested. Fantasy didn't get a properly good game until after the End times rolled it all up and replaced it with AoS.

Model bloat - Both games started off at a smaller scale. in 3rd edition Fantasy you could easily have games with 10 man units (5 for cavalry) and 40k was similar, with squad sizes of 5-10. Sometime in the early 90s though, fantasy started to shift to much larger infantry blocks. I remember a WD skaven army, I think belonging to Andy Chambers being the first to feature large regiments, and it soon became the norm, whereas 40k remained at that squad level for much longer

Finally, GW's ever increasing hard-on for the Space Marines. With 40k boxed sets meaning 50% of all new players play marines, it made sense for them to get pushed more and more

40k is just more unique. WHFB's quasi-historical elements also helped to separate it from the pack of generic fantasy settings, but everything about 40k is so much further removed from the genre baseline.

Fantasy was a shitfest rules-wise. Fantasy didnt have the Space Marine equivalent. GW wasnt willing to do a serious re-model of the game and decided to butcher de setting with the End Times.

Had they introduced the sigmarines as a new faction and maybe re-arranged the factions a bit and changed the bases to round ones like in AoS they would have had plenty of success.

Another thing is they didnt know the WHFB videogames would be as successful. They were not expecting it at all. Had they launched them before, maybe Fantasy would be alive today. I can perfecly imagine a relauch of Mordheim just like they did Necromunda.

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Yea I know what you mean, I've got 3 full fantasy armies and the friends who played fantasy with me either left the hobby or moved to AoS. Both groups don't want to play 8th Ed anymore despite having full armies. My best friend who I started fantasy with ten years ago doesn't want to play it anymore. It is frustrating

A mixture of fantasy and sci fi like 40k may have been a bit more original, while warhammer fantasy was just one medieval fantasy setting among many

>as a dreadnought
what

40k was already massively more popular than fantasy even in the mid 90's.
I believe it was just a case of fantasy being very generic and the gameplay being very staid, almost boring like historical games.

40k is fantasy.

Fantasy had great potential in the world building but they never went anywhere with it. It also needed a massive overhaul, because it was just a rank and file game and there was no point in painting 40 miniatures if you can play with paper squares instead.

Space Marines, The Emprah, Xenophobia, Orks, Eldar Waifus, Baneblade

I mean, how can fantasy even compete?

by not being a shitty,OP childs setting that appeals to 14 year olds and neckbeards because of "le heresy XD" "le emperor" and being a mature setting.

No, this is Chris, you've called the wrong number. Really though, you can go back and play the original trilogy and still have a good bit of entertainment from all three, opinions on the quality of the third non-withstanding. Andromeda is like a hooker taking a dump in the middle of the room and we're not allowed to point out that there's a big steaming pile in the middle of the room, and there's a shit on the floor too.

>mature setting
We're talking about miniatures games here. You can see yourself out.

...while fantasy is?

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This user is 100% correct.

When I first got into Warhammer, I was young and impatient. It came down to the fact that I bought a regiment of fantasy warriors, put them together in cool poses, super excited.... then tried to line them up and realized none of them fit next to each other. I was so upset, I had just basically wasted money.

Then I saw 40k, saw how it was skirmish based - therefore, no lining up. The lore was just as cool, so I was sold.

I eventually gave Fantasy another try when I was older and enjoyed 6th edition, but still its easier to quickly build 40k units.

I always thought WHFB needed less miniatures and round bases, like they masterfully did in LotR.

The last edition of WHFB was an absolute shitfest of mashing units of worthless tokens against each other. Had they offered movement trays like in LotR and a big expansion to play skirmish games they would have fared much much better.

Also, Spacehulk.

Yeeeep

Shit they could have just ported the LOTR rules over to Fantasy and things would have gone a million times better.

>GW wasnt willing to do a serious re-model of the game and decided to butcher de setting with the End Times.

This is something I really don't understand. There was a lot of good lore and enjoyable characters from the old world as well as some great books from the black library. Why on earth did they not keep the identical setting and just bring out that dumbed-down skirmish rule set.The new lore bothers me more than the game itself.

Oh yeah I almost forgot that they wanted to trade mark ridiculous names for ancient archaic concepts like "wood elves" and "dwarfs".

The lore keeps me away from AoS more than anything else.

fantasy = the nerds who traditionally played these games
40k = normies who would otherwise never get into fantasy

For me, it was simply that I prefer the setting and the models. I like guns and tanks and stuff, and the pseudo 20th century military look of the Imperial Guard.
The 40k setting is also much bigger than the WHFB world, so you have a lot more room to make yourguys truly yourguys. The setting kinda shrunk a bit lately though, with almost everything that happens having to do with some named character.
(The WHFB world also got made a whole lot smaller with AoS. Not a good development IMHO.)

How either of them ended up more popular than Mordheim is the real question.

fantasy has higher quality memes

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The Empire, KARL FRANZ, Intraspecies banter, Goblins, Elf Waifus, Chariots

How can 40k even compete?

You see this smile 40kids. This is a man who made humanity the shining centre of the world without transmitting his daddy issues to everyone.
Not that he had any

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YYEEEAAHHHH

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>40k videogame characters are most famous for their terribad voice acting
>KF has the perfect mix of HAM and pathos

youtube.com/watch?v=HyU_1-Py0dA

Literally explains what the empire is supposed to be in 1 minute flat.

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fantasy is mature.
not an argument