Player Stereotypes.

[Cerberus1775]

So I taught for 10 years in 4th and 5th grade and special education.  I also play in a Base Ball league that plays by 1864 rules; which means no spitting, no sliding, no cursing, and no gloves.  I was raised a Southern Pentacostal, then out of High School I was US Marine Infantry.  

 

I am playing Word Bearers Chaos with an emphasis on Deamons.  Think I fit the stereotype?

[Stofficus]

Interesting experiences - I guess there's a part of everyone who enjoys some form of creative output, but also high level strategic thinking. I guess people also gravitate to something with a background that resonates with them? I guess in high school I was pretty studious and the Thousand Sons and Tzeentch in general resonated with me - to the extent of playing solely Tzeentch armies for a long time. I guess a career in science still has that magic/sorcerery vibe, right?

 

 

their style of Guard matched their profession

 

That's cool to see - again, if they have an interest in the military, strategy, etc, then it's likely they'd be interested in a wargame involving those - did you guys play any other strategy games, or was it just wargames?

 

 

 

Militaries are somewhere between tribal and cult-like, so people generally go with whatever the norm is - that kind of thinking is more less bred into people through training regardless of the country - "Stop being an individual" being a common insult, so each base/unit/formation or whatnot tends to have a few hobbies which everyone fits in to. 40k is big in a lot of places I've been to, but other times its specific video games or some local activity the military types were in to. 

 

That being said, some people actively recoil from that. For instance, I was a Guard main before joining the military, and now have only played Guard maybe 2-3 times in the intervening 5 years. I really didn't want to go home from wearing camo and dealing with military nonsense to paint camo and imagine military nonsense, but with Orks. 

 

Looking at N1SB's post, you can see a little bit of that more broadly too - high flying corporate types playing the absolute hooligans of the universe rather than, say, Inquisition, Eldar, Custodes or something like that. 

 

The funniest I've seen though is civil service types: overwhelming Necron. Apparently being a low to mid level government employee means you empathize best with undead space robots. 

[Xenith]

So being a blood angel players means... I like blood? 

 

No, the suggestion in the OP is that people pick armies based on their personal characteristics/traits, so it's the other way round - you play Blood Angels because you like drinking blood. 

 

Tongue in cheek aside, what drew you to them? Anything that resonated? There's a whole lot there, like: religious themes, angels, vampire/vampire mythology, great tragedy, sacrifice, underlying anger, beauty/aesthetic appreciation, the colour red, etc. 

[Magos Takatus]

Though I don't currently collect them they were the space marines I was originally drawn to when I got into the hobby. I pretty much had the Ultramarines, Space Wolves, Dark Angels and Blood Angels to choose from since that was pretty much what showed up in the 2nd edition box set. I liked the look of the army in the studio photos. When the Codex Angels of Death arrived I immediately fell in love with the tragic flaw that they were forever trying to overcome and the special characters such as Mephiston caught my imagination. Later I was inspired by the 2nd and 3rd Edition artwork of the Heroic last stands of the Crimson Fists and I collected them for a time. I still appreciate those two chapters though I largely concentrate on my own DIY marines these days.

[grailkeeper]

Is there a big risk of models breaking playing in the military?

 

Mine break way more than I like just transporting them around etc. 

[Captain Antargo]

 

So being a blood angel players means... I like blood? 

 

No, the suggestion in the OP is that people pick armies based on their personal characteristics/traits, so it's the other way round - you play Blood Angels because you like drinking blood. 

 

Tongue in cheek aside, what drew you to them? Anything that resonated? There's a whole lot there, like: religious themes, angels, vampire/vampire mythology, great tragedy, sacrifice, underlying anger, beauty/aesthetic appreciation, the colour red, etc. 

 

Everything listed! 

[Xenith]

 

 

So being a blood angel players means... I like blood? 

 

No, the suggestion in the OP is that people pick armies based on their personal characteristics/traits, so it's the other way round - you play Blood Angels because you like drinking blood. 

 

Tongue in cheek aside, what drew you to them? Anything that resonated? There's a whole lot there, like: religious themes, angels, vampire/vampire mythology, great tragedy, sacrifice, underlying anger, beauty/aesthetic appreciation, the colour red, etc. 

 

Everything listed! 

 

 

Like a true Son of the Great Angel!

[Gederas]

i cant think of that much, except that ork players tend to be middle aged men that work in construction.

they always have at least one child, and they play orks as a way to relieve their manliness in a feminine society. xD

some of them like conan the barbarian alot, and tend to think of themselves sort of like barbarians, man of the wild type of guys. xD

 

for the slaanesh stereotype, i think it may be right. i have a warhammer tattoo, and im shy, introverted coward.

Remember the saying: "Beware the quiet ones, for they're the loudest behind closed doors"

 

 

I noticed that a lot of guard players are or have been soldiers. Of course my data pool is far to small for any grounded general assumptions

If you want a fun one, check out Warhammer groups in military communities. 

 

I spent some time at a base where people weren't only predominantly Guard players, but their style of Guard matched their profession. All the armoured guys had tank armies, the paratroopers had valkyries and storm troopers, artillery had, well, lots of artillery, etc. 

 

Not the most creative bunch at the end of the day, but damned amusing.

This is pretty accurate. Of the guard players I know (as in: Their primary army is guard), the guy who was in a tank company mainly has tanks (dude has ELEVEN BANEBLADE VARIANTS), the infantryman uses mostly hordes of dudes, and the Marine Corps tech officer is building a Tanith army.

 

So I taught for 10 years in 4th and 5th grade and special education.  I also play in a Base Ball league that plays by 1864 rules; which means no spitting, no sliding, no cursing, and no gloves.  I was raised a Southern Pentacostal, then out of High School I was US Marine Infantry.  

 

I am playing Word Bearers Chaos with an emphasis on Deamons.  Think I fit the stereotype?

Raised religious, plays Word Bearers? Story checks out :P

 

The funniest I've seen though is civil service types: overwhelming Necron. Apparently being a low to mid level government employee means you empathize best with undead space robots.

I mean, I work at AAA in the emergency roadside call center, and I often feel like I'm supposed to be a robot that pretends to have empathy to people I could care less for. So, again.... Story checks out? :lol:

[Stofficus]

Is there a big risk of models breaking playing in the military?

 

Mine break way more than I like just transporting them around etc. 

 

If there's on thing the military teaches people, it's how to pack. 

 

When one is skilled in the arts of ensuring your precious bottle of hot sauce remains not only intact, but in exactly the same spot so you can find at at 0330 in the morning after having not slept for 7 days, in a bag which will also include a week's clothing, ammunition, food and more, which will alternate between being thrown violently from large vehicles, slammed into trees, rocks and other debris, being used as an impromptu mount of a machine gun and so on, you can generally figure out how to get models around different parts of your respective country between jobs. 

 

The bigger risk is having bits fall into your boots at home without realizing it, and having a lasgun bayonet stab the bottom of your foot while walking around the middle of nowhere carrying far too much junk on your back. 

 

Otherwise, I know a few guys who've taken a model or two with them on deployment as mementos - some intentionally left behind in some of the most remote and unpleasant parts of this world - but I have yet to hear of someone actually bringing enough warhammer with them to actually play the game "properly" on tour (though more than a few cases of 40k being played with random bits and pieces as "counts-as"). 

[Captain Antargo]

 

Is there a big risk of models breaking playing in the military?

 

Mine break way more than I like just transporting them around etc. 

 

If there's on thing the military teaches people, it's how to pack. 

 

When one is skilled in the arts of ensuring your precious bottle of hot sauce remains not only intact, but in exactly the same spot so you can find at at 0330 in the morning after having not slept for 7 days, in a bag which will also include a week's clothing, ammunition, food and more, which will alternate between being thrown violently from large vehicles, slammed into trees, rocks and other debris, being used as an impromptu mount of a machine gun and so on, you can generally figure out how to get models around different parts of your respective country between jobs. 

 

The bigger risk is having bits fall into your boots at home without realizing it, and having a lasgun bayonet stab the bottom of your foot while walking around the middle of nowhere carrying far too much junk on your back. 

 

Otherwise, I know a few guys who've taken a model or two with them on deployment as mementos - some intentionally left behind in some of the most remote and unpleasant parts of this world - but I have yet to hear of someone actually bringing enough warhammer with them to actually play the game "properly" on tour (though more than a few cases of 40k being played with random bits and pieces as "counts-as"). 

 

That's honestly really cool! The last part by the way, not getting stabbed in the foot 

[Beaky Brigade]

In my late teens / early 20s I was really into Raven Guard. A dark edgy phase people go through? All about that Istvaan V angst. Come to think of it I did wear more black then and preferred to go out at night.

 

I've always liked model tanks and toy soldiers from a young age so I have a soft spot for the Guard even though I didn't end up in the armed forces.

 

Working in IT now I think my 'player character' figure would have to be a sickly tech priest even though I'm not hugely into admech beyond individual models.

 

I played 20 games of Bloodbowl over 2 seasons and I found it was a mixed bunch of players but possibly a divide between extroverted players playing 'bashing' teams like Orcs and quiet strategic types playing the more passing play orientated teams, with the obscure or joke teams played by real long beard veterans.

 

My most notable game in terms of opponent was Vs someone from the local police service (in a civilian role). He played the unofficial Khorne Daemon team and took hugely detailed notes of everything that happened in the game (to use against me in court?)


I probably have some best kept to myself observations about Space Wolf players and a different inference I made about an individual with a AoS Beastmen army (lots of shirtless muscular hairy dudes) but I'm not judging!

[Evil Eye]

Whilst I have terminal hobby butterfly syndrome, Tyranids have always been my first love. I also love food...checks out.

[jeremy1391]

In the gaming scene I’ve been in for the past 15 years I’ve run across some stereotypes, the meta player usually has a scraggly beard, is generally on the heavier side, never seems to wear a belt, is a human calculator. Die hard chaos players usually seem to be goth or metal heads. A lot of military guys play either guard or marines. Ork players are mostly about the fun of the game and love a good krumpin!

[mughi3]

I will admit back in the day It seemed like every eldar player we ran across was a slim effeminate man. they were cool to game with it just seemed to add to all the jokes about the eldar and slaneesh in general.

 

 

Now that i think about it most of the army/airforce guys i knew/know play guard as well as sometimes some other faction. 

[Daimyo-Phaeron Lenoch]

I will admit back in the day It seemed like every eldar player we ran across was a slim effeminate man. they were cool to game with it just seemed to add to all the jokes about the eldar and slaneesh in general.

 

 

Now that i think about it most of the army/airforce guys i knew/know play guard as well as sometimes some other faction.

Meanwhile, one of the oldest, longest-playing hobbyist and hands down the best painter I’ve ever met at the game store played Eldar and was a large, imposing retired soldier who had been a drill sergeant. Sometimes the best part about stereotypes is seeing how people break them, IMO. :)

[Evil Eye]

 

I will admit back in the day It seemed like every eldar player we ran across was a slim effeminate man. they were cool to game with it just seemed to add to all the jokes about the eldar and slaneesh in general.

 

 

Now that i think about it most of the army/airforce guys i knew/know play guard as well as sometimes some other faction.

Meanwhile, one of the oldest, longest-playing hobbyist and hands down the best painter I’ve ever met at the game store played Eldar and was a large, imposing retired soldier who had been a drill sergeant. Sometimes the best part about stereotypes is seeing how people break them, IMO.

 

Amen to that.

 

As a slight side note, one of the stereotypes that really really REALLY gets my goat despite playing neither faction is the "Krieg/Black Templars players are all closeted Neo-Nazis or something". The latter being tiresome but laughable, what with the Knights Templar having been rather politically inactive for the past few hundred years, but Krieg getting saddled with it REALLY activates my almonds because quite aside from their whole schtick being "Ideal soldiers for a WW1 style battlefield, and that's absolutely horrific" and their tactics of mass wars of attrition supported by slow but mighty armour and heavy artillery being as far from WW2 German tactics as possible, their uniform is based primarily on French bluecoats! Which would be bad enough if it was a genuine misunderstanding/historical illiteracy, but when you have groups like the Tabletop Inquirer [hwack-ptooey!] doubling down on the accusations and stating "Yeah well uh, we can't tell the difference between two different nations from two different eras, so obviously that means they're Nazi-themed!" it really gets me angry. As you might have noticed from this slightly ranty post.

Of course the TTI seems to have a bit of a thing for accusing historical gamers, critics of GW, people politically right of Mao and anyone else they disagree with of being evil/bigots/worthy of mockery etc, but that's a topic for another time.

 

Oh yes, stereotypes. There's also the whole "Tau players are all anime nerds" one, which is amusing to me as Tau are one of the few factions I've resisted hobby butterflying onto despite being a colossal weeb, to the point I'm working on resculpting a colossally shoddy Asuka bootleg statue into a Tyranid/Asuka hybrid monstrosity to be fielded as a Scythed Hierodule (probably less bad tempered than the real Asuka...). Enough of a colossal weeb, incidentally, to note that Tau battlesuits actually have very little in common with any Japanese mecha designs. The closest I can think of is the Studio Nue redesigns for the "borrowed" mecha for Battletech's Japanese release, which if they were an influence I can't say I blame them for as those were fantastic designs that really need model representations someday.

[nanosquid]

All the hobbyists in my area tend to play more than one army. I definitely gravitate towards the things that lend the most flexibility for conversions, so Orks/necrons/chaos, because I'm still a kid playing with Lego in my head. I tend to see the commonalities between armies played as the one thing that correlates with personality rather than any one specific army. Then again, friend who got me into the hobby is a huge fan of both wizards and Egyptology, and he plays... the obvious faction that would imply.

[Claws and Effect]

I play Raven Guard.

 

I noticed a while back that I tend to gravitate towards the stealthy assassin types in pretty much every game I play.

 

D&D, I play Rogues. Skyrim? Stealthy archer. I really loved the game Tenchu.

 

Musically, I dig metal. With an emphasis on symphonic or atmospheric stuff.

[Scribe]

I really loved the game Tenchu.

Hell yeah. I've always loved those kinds of games.

[Plague _Lord]

My mate that got me into the game those 20 or so years ago plays tau and orks and is an architect and loves blues and rock, with no love for anime of any sorts.

My cousin also plays tau and orks and he is CFO of a company, he enjoys rock and metal but is not a metalhead per se (doesn't dress up as a metal).

My main army was allways Deathguard and the Imperial Guard afterwards. I don't think I can relate to any stereotype as I'm a sports freak, care for my personal hygiene, often wear basketball jerseys while playing warhammer and am an avid classical music and blues listener (I also like metal though and have been to several concerts like iron maiden and metalicca). I also work as a data analist / programmatic marketing specialist. 

 

What I allways loved about DG was their personal tragedy and the asthetic, while in IG I love the struggle of regular humans vs the horrors of the galaxy vibe... I allways play human factions in most games as there is something cool about slaying monsters while being "only human".

[Schurge]

Men play Warhammer in my area and that is the only discernable stereotype aside from *maybe* military playing Guard.

[SirJyo]

I have archived 4chan threads in the past where people have posted the prompt:

 

Post your: Army, profession, fetish.

 

And honestly it seemed to be fairly consistent. I guess this is where game design meets psychology.

I should compile the data into a chart or something.

[Xenith]

I have archived 4chan threads in the past where people have posted the prompt:

 

Post your: Army, profession, fetish.

 

And honestly it seemed to be fairly consistent. I guess this is where game design meets psychology.

I should compile the data into a chart or something.

 

If you decide to post anything here, please keep it board appropriate 

[Gorgoff]

I noticed a long time ago that Ork players almost always play CSM as well. It was like that with me and with almost every Ork player I've met so far. Maybe it's not enough for us to be annoyed with just one army that GW doesn't support properly. 

[byrd9999]

I'm a know it all and I play Thousand Sons. I'm also a Ravenclaw.

 

 

As for stereotypes in my area, I see a lot of overweight white males with long hair, their arms folded and resting on their ample guts, and a look of permanent disapproval on their faces.