I’ve been back into Warhammer for 3 months now. I have close to 10,000 points of mainly 4 different factions purchased, and about half of that assembled. Even less is painted.

Warhammer has a few problems. What else is new.

Here, I’m talking about the game itself. Tabletop miniatures remain their primary revenue driver by a long shot, even if it’s less profitable than other parts of the business. And those sales are supported by collectors and people playing the game.

In order to grow the hobby, Games Workshop has rightly identified the US market as the primary area of opportunity for expansion. The UK, where they have arguably their biggest concentrated presence, is basically saturated. I’m reading between the lines of some of their recent financial reports but that’s basically the conclusion they came to as well.

It doesn’t mean new folks aren’t coming to the hobby there, but given their location and history combined with the UK’s geography (size / population density), it’s natural to expect. There’s less distance to cover geographically, things are ‘generally easier to get to’, and/but people are more concentrated.

What does this have to do with playing?

The US has more Warhammer stores than the UK in sheer number. More people, and more area to cover.

It’s a different market, but it’s being served in the same way - local trade stores and GW-owned hubs.

People in the US are a lot more spread out. Finding a local game group is almost impossible in some cases, and challenging in others. Many friend groups are siloed and isolated, or too far apart to do more than talk or play online.

If people could play across distances, I think it would go a long way to solving this. I think this is both difficult, but also very technically achievable in the age of ubiquitous internet and abundant electricity. I’m doing something about this, which will be revealed to my Patreon first when it’s ready.

But I think there’s another problem for playing Warhammer, and it’s related to my introduction. There’s a catch-22;

It doesn’t feel good to play without a painted army
AND
It takes weeks or months, and hundreds of dollars, to finish an army

All before you even play your first game!? This is such a huge hurdle to overcome, and Games Workshop does their best to encourage people to get more invested but also it’s just so cool it seems almost inevitable for those who are interested.

But what if Games Workshop stores had fully-painted, 2000-point armies that you could actually play. It would be expensive in upfront inventory costs, but in the long run I think it would pay off. They could rent the armies out, or offer a subscription service to play in-store. It would drive traffic, turn ‘wasted’ inventory into a revenue stream for stores, and crucially let people ‘try before they buy’.

I think Tyranids are cool, but do I like playing them? I don’t know. My choices to find out are presently to

-go through the hurdle of ‘bootlegging’ the game in TTS
-use a friends army (assuming you have friends nearby with the army in question)
-3d-print an army or use proxy models
-buy the army before you play it
-watch videos of other people playing until you get an idea of if you like it or not

Not really great options.

And I think Games Workshop has the infrastructure to support this more or less right now. It would act as a turbocharger for onboarding, likely increase sales of minis, and allow stores to generate more predictable / passive revenue from what are more or less advertising sunk costs (the minis on display).

Now you may be saying “what about combat patrols”?

Great question.

They may be the perfect bridge between ‘getting stores to stock full armies’ and the status quo, which I think isn’t great. You could do a scaled-down version with 10 or 20 factions available for quick games, that let people experience a variety of armies and play styles. They’d take up less room than full 2000-point armies.

I would spend more time in my local GW store if I could do this, and I’d pay for it! Games Workshop may agree, as they are piloting some Cafe locations that appear to be looking to add revenue streams to their physical locations.

Anyway. Food for thought. Maybe that’s what they’re doing, maybe not. And maybe I’ll build it if nobody else does first.

Games Workshop just announced the Warhammer Open will have events in California (January 16-18 and the Netherlands (April 24-26) in 2026 with tickets going on sale November 29 at 1pm EST.

2026 is the year I start learning about competitive play, although I’ll definitely miss these events. These are “golden ticket” events, which I have gathered to mean winning it entitles you to an automatic invitation to the World Championships of Warhammer.

As an aspiring 40k player, I would love to win one of these, however unlikely. So for now, I’ll stick with learning what I can about the circuit, events, and how to start trying to participate.

Post-mortem: I got clobbered. 3 losses, against 3 awesome folks. Each one was a great experience, for me at least. I’m sure they didn’t mind the easy wins haha!

more on this below.

Rehashing what most people know but until I get around to building another one, this is the best army builder out there!

I think there are some tools I would have wanted at certain points in my life, but that don’t exist. Stuff like, a catalogue of every mini ever, but I don’t know that I would use it now. Maybe some people would.

What kind of tools are valuable? I know people 3-D print, that doesn’t interest me. I know there are things like objective markers, measuring sticks, and more - those may be interesting.

I have some ideas I’m playing around with more for newer players - stay tuned!

Social Spotlight

<sub>Cutting in here at the end of the week.

I went mega-viral today (yesterday) on reddit with a story from my tournament. It was (is) a bit surreal, having a ton of visibility and such a positive reaction from everyone. My favorite comment - “This is awesome lol”. Indeed. It was awesome!</sub>

_{Don’t think I can top almost topping the 40k subreddit for the day sharing my enjoyment of Warhammer.}

If you liked this - consider subscribing to this newsletter. I aim to send it Fridays as a nice wrap-up for the week, and so far I’m 1-for-2 but have sent 2 of them!

I’m trying to start a 40k retail store and I figure there’s got to be others out there like me - I’m spending so much money on Warhammer I figured it’s probably cheaper to run a store. Now’s your chance to have a de-risked (for you) version of that!

The numbers work for me if we can make rent as close to zero dollars as possible for me. To that end I need about 20 folks who would be willing to contribute $100/mo through a Patreon membership.

I’ll cover the rest of the costs out of my own pocket including physically manning the store, and you get (really good) discounts and free shipping on Warhammer 40k anywhere in the US.

Win-win?

If you think so, and would like to help out and benefit personally in the process - you now know how!

When I get a few patrons I will sign a lease on a retail location and begin store operations ASAP (will take 1-2 months for licensing and permitting for the business).

The website (part of it) is live at BoardApe .com as well. You can’t actually buy anything yet.

I’m ready to move on this I just need some people to step forward and help me (help you).

That’s a wrap. What a week! If you wouldn’t mind - tell me what you thought. Leave a comment, like, subscribe, follow, stalk me on social media - let me know.

Till next week, this has been your