Well after perusing the NewWave event coverage of the Chicago Grand Tournament I think we can begin to see a pattern developing in at least Tournament Play. At the risk of fanning the flames of GW controversy again, I must post a few interesting observations I've made by studying the army selection of this years participants.
http://www.newwave.org/gw/eventscoverage/gtchicago050402/index.htmlHave a look for yourselves but here's what I came up with:
Of the 32 participants in the 40K GT -
23 were Marine or Chaos Players
Of the 23 Marine/Chaos armies 6 were Space Wolf players
1 was an Eldar Warhost
1 was a Tyranid Swarm
2 Were Sisters of Battle forces
2 Were Tau armies
2 Were Ork hordes
I thought that perhaps these stats were maybe a little skewed and it was a coincidence that so many Marine players would enter a GT until I looked at the make up of a few past GT's that NewWave covered (links on the side there). Granted, they don't include all of the entries for any particular GT in their coverage, but if taken as an impromptu poll of statistics of the Marine/Chaos to any other army available you'll see a very unbalanced trend toward Marine armies being played overall. Keep in mind these aren't newcomers to the game, most of the participants are veteran players who commit a lot of time, energy and a significant amount of money to participate in the GTs. So the arguement that Marines are the first choice of "newbies" by default doesn't fly here.
So my question is, why do you think this is? It certainly flys in the face of what "Dirty Steve" continually asserts in WD, saying Eldar and other armies are evenly represented at GTs, dont you think? Or is it because GW has chronically favored Marine/Chaos forces since 3rd edition in both models and rules?
Should the just get it over with a call "Warhammer 40K" - "Space Marines 40K"?