I really really like stats and spreadsheets, and have tried in recent times to collate as much info about the games we play as a group as possible. I've added to this by going back to old photos and trying to piece together bits of information about them. But there were so many childhood games that we've forgotten and weren't recorded. I think I've got everything we've played in the 40k space since properly getting into that, but fantasy is lacking about 2003-2012 years. All of which were at prime game playing ages - end of high school and through Uni. Disposable income and free time was at its zenith.
One semi-important point to note with the data is that we've played a fair amount of in-group tournaments. This has skewed the data a fair bit, as a large proportion of our recorded fantasy history is from these early tournaments and missed a lot of the fun, casual games.
So I thought I'd pool together some of the interesting stats and charts here.
Firstly, a quick overview of the amount of games we play and average sizes of games. Here is where the first of the tournament skew comes in with the amount of 2 players games.
Sadly, the amount of games played per year is dropping as the amount of free time we have drops. Covid had a bit of an impact in 2020, but for us here in South Australia we were able to get back playing relatively quickly. A big impact on games has also been the group moving around. We've had members move to Canberra, Oxford, Whyalla and Cairns.
Dwarfs are standout the most played faction, but should be even higher as a lot of early games involved dwarfs. Having a player who only plays Dwarfs definitely works to push those numbers up.
The Legion of Chaos and Elves faction both came out with End Times and have only been used once each, so don't read too much into their 100% win rate.
Interestingly most of the games recorded here are 8th edition games. The Elven factions have good win/loss rates, is that because their books were regarded as quite strong, or were they in the hands of players who also won a lot? Poor Dwarfs though, they became very predictable.
Interestingly the two charts above show that Skaven play in larger games, while Tomb Kings and High Elves are fielded in lesser numbers. Which satisfyingly makes some semblance of fluff sense.
For me personally, I've played with a lot of armies! The big missed data here are early games playing with Empire, Skaven, and Beastmen. I sold my Beastmen around the end of 7th, I really loved their early army books, but their new one didn't feel like the Beastmen I enjoyed anymore.
The Tomb Kings numbers are a bit of a surprise, but do come off the back of two separate small tournaments.
There's a lot going on with these, mainly just the huge amount of factions available. I've kept everything that comes from the Space Marine codex (i.e. codex compliant chapters) in that count, but separated the others like Blood Angels etc. So if you combined all the Space Marine factions together it would account for a larger proportion of factions.
For me, the Imperial Guard numbers are quite high as I've got two separate factions, a homebrew one and Tallarn. Plus I played a lot of games early on in a Narrative campaign with these.
Necrons I've used in a small tournament, that included warm up games. Plus, having painted this army for the tournament I'm keener to pull them out. I fear though that Genestealer Cults may not see much of the table for a while. I'm not really happy with where they are or how they play at the moment.
Yuk, those colours don't make for nice looking pie charts sorry. But we've certainly played with a fair few different chapters!
Since the release of Horus Heresy 2nd edition, this has become our primary system with several great events and mini campaigns